With Top-down Universal Standards, You Get This...

This video has been making the rounds in the last twenty-four hours. It's Rob Saxton, Oregon Deputy Superintendent laying down some law. We won't tolerate "independent contractors." Teachers will follow the program, or else. He will be a good natured SOB, which appears to mean ruling with an iron hand in a velvet glove.

Thing is, he's not wrong, exactly. If you are going to impose a top-down program across a large organization, nothing short of totalitarian rule will work.

If Ray Kroc tells his franchise managers across the country, "Yeah, just have your cooks whip up those hamburgers the way they like them," McDonald never becomes successful. If the shadowy faces behind Sub-Way tell their stores to just go ahead and slap sandwiches together with their own individual flair, they don't end up running the fastest-growing food outlet in the universe.

So people who are thinking that Saxton (who is, as near as I can tell, absolutely a lifelong career educator with real classroom experience) should loosen up and be more reasonable, or should be fired and replaced with a more reasonable guy-- these folks are missing the point. If Oregon's plan is to institute a standardized uniform approach to education, Saxton is exactly the guy for the job.

People who think that CCSS and reform-driven standardization that gets us all "on the same page" are swell and that if just make sure the bosses are nice guys and not big meanies like Saxton or Arne Duncan-- these people are not thinking this through. For those plans to work, nothing less than a tyrant will work. If we let teachers just modify the plan to suit their own strengths and students and preferences and professional judgment, the plan will fail. You have to stamp out the independent contractors.

You cannot have nationwide standardized education reform without this kind of leadership. You cannot have one without the other.

So if you think a national curriculum with a carefully coordinated program that keeps all teachers on the same page, get used to this guy, because he is the face of leadership in that world.

Why van Roekel Should Go.

I've written before about how NEA President Dennis van Roekel has sold us out, but the passage of time does not make me feel any better about that betrayal.

Much of the worst of it is captured in his now-repeated admonition that anybody who opposes the CCSS needs to say what they would rather do instead. This is dead wrong for several reasons.

First, it implicitly accepts the oft-repeated canard that American public schools are in the midst of some kind of crisis, that they've never been worse, that US education is circling the toilet and OMGs! we must do something something SOMETHINNNNGGGGG now!!

Well, that's just not true. We know it's not true in every way from our own anecdotal experience right up through responsible examination of the almighty data. We know that the collective teaching staff of public education is not perfect, but are on the whole doing a fine job.

And you know who should be the first to say that? The president of the NEA. You know what the president of the NEA should NOT say? "Yes, our schools, staffed by millions of the teachers that I represent, are in such a mess that we absolutely must pursue some remedy immediately!"

Second, the "well, if not CCSS, then what" line is wrong because it puts the burden of proof on the anti-CCSS crowd, which is exactly backwards. You want to me to change what I do, how I work, what I'm guided by in my professional life? Then the burden is on YOU to explain why your proposal makes sense.

This is extra true when the program you're proposing is a proprietary copyrighted income generator for a private firm. Because, on top of everything else, we should remember that the CCSS are not some public trust. The standards are copyrighted and owned by a private corporation [this is a correction from an earlier version].We are talking about awarding the contract for national curriculum development (no-no-no-- don't even start with the technically-correct-but-practically-bullshit assertion that CCSS is not a national curriculum) to a private corporation, without bid or discussion.

This is tantamount to suggesting, "Hey, we are going to have to convert the US to a monarchy. If you don't agree, you'll just have to prove there's something else we should do instead."

This is a student telling me, "Hey, I don't like my grade, so you're just going to have to change it to an A. If you don't like it, you need to tell me what grade you'd rather give me."

Here's a wild and crazy idea, DVR-- if you think I should be excited about CCSS, then try convincing me with actual reasons instead of telling me I have to do it unless I can come up with a good alternative.

"Well, if not CCSS, then what?" is not an invitation to dialogue. It's not even an opening to try to seduce us to the dark side. It is a barely polite invitation to shut up and do as we're told.

I expect, at a bare minimum, the president of my union to treat me like a fellow professional. I do not expect to be dismissed with the same disdain and condescension employed by other "reform" artists.

DVR is also wrong when he asserts that the CCSS are swell, we just have to get a grip on the whole testing thing. It's not that parts of the CCSS are not swell. Some are. I like to refer to those parts as "Things Good Teachers Already Do" (and wouldn't it have been great if my union president had made the same observation). Some parts are extremely not swell. And it is true that we have to get a grip on the testing thing. A grip, a stranglehold,  a stake through its heart-- something.

But being in favor of the CCSS and opposed to testing is like being in favor of knives but opposed to cutting things. And my union's national president should understand that as well as anyone.

Maybe, as one friend suggests, DVR hasn't sold out. He's simply trying to take a stance that he thinks will work best in the face of an oncoming juggernaught that can't be stopped or slowed down. I understand the realities of political realities. I don't expect my union chiefs to sing me songs of unicorns pooping rainbows and free ice cream every Sunday. But I do expect them to stand up for me and my follow teachers, and if they haven't got the nerve to stand up in the toughest storm when we need them most, then what good are they.

And at this point, if DVR were to announce he'd had a come-to-Jesus moment and changed his tune, I'm not sure I'd trust him.

If Dennis van Roekel is simply trying to be politically expedient, he should go. If Dennis van Roekel doesn't understand any of this, he should go. And if he understands it, but he chooses to act otherwise, he should go. You can see what the common thread is here.

Endgame: Changing the Profession

The teaching profession is changing, and it's not a good thing.

You can see it in the products being turned out by colleges and universities. They are being taught the new normal, and the worst part is that many of them don't see anything significantly scary or anti-educational about it. So here's what the new teacher is supposed to look like:

The new teacher is a facilitator. The new teacher is the last link in a program delivery system. The new teacher's job is to unpack the curriculum materials that somebody (state, district, feds) bought from some reputable corporate source (Pearson et al). Once she has unpacked the program, she's to deliver it as scripted, on schedule.

The new teacher is better than old teachers. For one thing, he doesn't keep saying, "This not what I signed up for," because product-- I mean, curriculum implementation is exactly what he signed up for. If the new teacher does get unhappy with being an animatronic tool, that's okay, because he's easy to replace. In fact, turnover is desirable, because if he sticks around too long, he might want a raise or something.

The new teacher thinks scripts are great. The new teacher loves being able to open the book and know exactly what she's supposed to be doing today. Make up her own materials and tests!? Why would she even DO that-- it would put her students out of touch with the curriculum plan that our wise leaders have put in place.The new teacher agrees that every student should be in lockstep, all across the nation. If both the students and teachers can be made to operate like identical interchangeable cogs, says the new teacher, won't that just make the whole machine run smoother, more efficiently? It's a good thing.

The new teacher dutifully collects "data" and works hard to prep for The Test, because the new teacher knows that next to delivering the program, getting good numbers on the test is his most important job. And the new teacher knows that if the test scores are low, it must be because he failed to do an effective job of delivering the program. Either that or the students who did poorly are learning disabled and need to be referred for testing and treatment (or, if it's a charter, just plain old expulsion).

The creation of the new teacher coincides with the rise of the educational leader. When we had old teachers, they provided their own educational leadership, both in their classrooms and in their schools. But the new teacher will just be delivering programs, so we need completely separate people to be educational leaders. New teachers can't be educational leaders (not until they leave their classrooms) because their very job description is all about following instructions.

The new teacher will be as interchangeable as a burger flipper at McDonalds, as replaceable as a telephone customer service rep, as independent as a North Korean army private, and as cheap to hire as all three. The new teacher will be compliant-- certainly no union-joiner. And if he does become non-compliant, he can be easily replaced (because the new teacher operates without tenure or any laws about first in-last out).

The most frightening thing here is that we are all hearing repeated reports that the new teachers have started to arrive. They are in our schools, telling us how awesome the Common Core is and how it will fix the terrible troubles with education and how they are grateful that there's a script to follow for their class. They like the fact that they don't really have to do a thing after they walk out the door at 3:30. And they want the old teachers to stop being so cranky about things that aren't even a teacher's job.

Some of them are here, but it's not too late to become vigilant. Keep watching the skies.

Reformspeak: Giving teachers "credit."

I can't believe it's still necessary to point this out at this stage of the game, but based on some recent conversations, I'm guessing it bears repeating. So here we go.

When a reformer tells you that "teachers are the most important factor in student success," they are not trying to compliment us. They are not honoring us or acknowledging our importance as professionals. They are not being nice.

They are establishing that everything that happens in a classroom is the teacher's fault. They are saying that if a teacher is dropped on a desert island with nothing but a slate, two hundred starving students, and a piece of chalk, a Real Teacher would still turn all two hundred students into Rhoades Scholars. And if that doesn't happen? Well, it's not because of the island or the starving or the limited resources or the cockeyed student-teacher ration-- it's because the teacher failed. Apparently our Mr. Chips of the South Seas is not a Highly Effective Teacher.

Now, I do some good work, and if you drop me barehanded in front of a bunch of students, I will do a decent job. It's nice to have books and tech and paper and other resources, and it's easier if I don't have enough students in the room to fill a Econovan Clown Car. But I can't work miracles. I am at the bottom of the mountain that is my students' lives, and every rainstorm, all the water and debris and dust that it stirs up, that all comes downhill to me.

My co-operating teacher back in Cleveland Heights used to tell me that there are two rules for teaching. Rule #1 is that some students won't learn. Rule #2 is that there's nothing you can do to change rule #1.

That may overstate the case. But sometimes students will fail or fall short despite my best efforts, and I would have to be an egotistical idiot to believe that I am the most important and influential factor in their lives. I would have to be unconscious to have missed the news that study after study shows that the biggest predictor of school success is economic status.

So the next time somebody tries to "compliment" you by saying you're the biggest factor in a students' life, just say, "I'm trying be as large as I can, but I'm only human. I'll give my students all I can, but sometimes it's not enough. I'm just like a doctor. I'll try really hard, but I can't save every single patient."

Off Script

Yesterday, I did one of my stock shticks for class. It's a routine about why we study grammar, and after thirty-some years of doing it, I have it honed to a fine science. It works for me, hits all the marks I want it to hit, and also adds something to the atmosphere and tone of the class. I know from years of results that it helps me do my job and helps set my students up for success.

And yet, in all the years I've had student teachers, I have never had an urge to write the shtick out as a script and tell my student teacher to read it to the class.

First of all, I couldn't. I have done the shtick probably around 150 times. I have never done it exactly the same way twice. On any given day, my tone, pace, detail choice, emphasis, and delivery will vary to match the mood and composition of the class. For this class it might come out a little sillier. For that class, a little more grittily detailed. I am responsive to my audience, because that's the point of a performance.

Abbot and Costello did "Who's on First?" a gazillion times. It was always a little bit different. The greatest jazz musicians played the same standards over and over, and yet never the exact same way twice. Even Glenn Miller, a bandleader who was notoriously exact and demanding, always reserved the right to vary the number of getting-quieter repeats at the end of "In the Mood." Grateful Dead fans have vast collections of different performances of the same songs, because they're not exactly alike.

Even films, immutable and locked in one performance forever, are records of moments of improvisation and invention. The script didn't tell Han Solo to reply, "I know."

The "reform" notion that teachers are just deliverers of content and that teaching will be improved if we can just give them a script and make them stick to it is one of the dumbest ideas to come out of the reform movement. It is an attempt to reduce teachers to robots. And it assumes that the audience doesn't matter at all, that the teacher should not respond or react to them, but simply barrel on while they take it in. Scripting imagines the classroom as a Disneyland ride in which the animatronic figures are not only on the banks of the Small World river, but riding in the boat as well.

I have met so-called teachers who love the script, love that they can just open the book, follow the directions, and not have to engage their brains. I do not respect these "teachers." Not only are they not teaching, but they are setting a terrible example for the students. Is that what we want from our students-- follow the directions, don't deviate, don't think or express unauthorized thoughts?

And I have limited love for Khan Academy and its ilk. I see a value in easily-accessed demonstrations of technical points. But if I stood in front of my class every period and presented exactly the same lesson while ignoring the class's reaction (do they look engaged? excited? confused? bored? lost?), and if every time a student asked me to clarify something, I just repeated the exact same explanation over and over again, nobody would call me a visionary. They would call me a crappy teacher, and they'd be right.

Scripts do not produce excellence. I can sing from the same sheet music that Frank Sinatra used, but I will not equal his performance. I can read lines from the same script that Johnny Depp used in Pirates of the Caribbean, but nobody will think I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. I can buy a Jackson Pollock paint-by-numbers kit, but nobody will want to hang my product in a museum.

Teaching is a relationship between students and teachers. In most respects it is completely unlike any other human relationship, but it shares one important characteristic. In any relationship, both people have to show up. They have to be present. You cannot engage someone else if you are disengaged yourself, and you cannot yourself be engaged if you are simply parroting the words that somebody else has given you to say.

I recognize that one some educational issues there is room for smart, well-intentioned people to have honest differences of opinion. I do not recognize that on this issue. If you like scripting, if you welcome scripting, if you don't want to enter a classroom without a script, you have no business being in the teaching profession.

Not Excited About CCSS #4: One size does not fit all...

How do we possibly figure that one educational experience, every step carefully timed and all goals carefully calibrated, can be exactly right for every single human being in the country?

On what planet does it make that every welder, doctor, musician, dancer, checkout clerk, dental assistant, accountant, truck driver, mechanic, airline pilot, senator, painter, chemist, writer, farmer, and computer programmer in the country need to learn exactly the same stuff on exactly the same schedule?

I'll grant you-- a good case can be made that there certain things that everybody needs to learn, like honesty, humility, and other foundational building blocks of good character. But as every real live human being who ever built those blocks can tell you, that construction work is very much the result of life experience, which has a funny way of unfolding on a schedule that is not responsive to human demands (which is ALSO a lesson that everyone needs to learn).

But we're not talking about that case, because CCSS is more concerned with calculus than character.

If we want to create lifelong learners, if we want to nurture real live human beings who embrace growing and changing and finding a path that best suits their calling, capabilities and character, how can we possibly give them that by making them all line up and march in lockstep.

How did we get to a place where a statement like "People are individuals with different needs and speeds in life" could be something radical.

 " Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality."

There was a time when I would have hesitated to include that quote from Thoreau, because it would have seemed trite and obvious. But nowadays it seems positively revolutionary and reactionary all at the same time. Even though it's non-fiction, I imagine David Coleman would still say, "Damn, Hank, shut up. Nobody gives a shit what you think or feel." And then we would flunk him, because while his writing was passable, his math scores were terrible.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/henrydavid141463.html#kAKR1XD5OWGP270h.99

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/henrydavid141463.html#kAKR1XD5OWGP270h.99

"Run LIke a Business"

The funny thing is, there was a time when saying something should be run like a business was useful and positive. It meant that decisions needed to be made realistically. It meant that you shouldn't spend buttloads of money you didn't have. It meant that you couldn't get so wrapped up in your magical unicorn visions of what the operation did that you forgot about paying the bills and taking care of the nuts and bolts.

But no longer. Today business is well entrenched in a mess best dissected in this column:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-goal-that-changed-corporate-america/2013/08/26/26e9ca8e-ed74-11e2-9008-61e94a7ea20d_story.html

Businesses were no longer about making something or doing something. Businesses became all about maximizing stockholder value, getting return on investment, getting every last drop of blood out of the corporate turnip.

That had a variety of side effects, but the one most recognizable in our current world of education "reform" is this-- when ROI is the most important job of the company, knowledge of the industry is of minor importance as a CEO qualification.

We've watched company after company be taken over and run down by people who know nothing about the industry they're "leading" in. And that's on purpose. If I'm looking for a new CEO of a soup company, I'm looking for a guy who's good at getting money out of companies. What he knows about soup doesn't matter.

In my own little corner of the world, we had a CEO pass through who ran, in succession, a toy company, a soup company, an oil company, and a soap company. He didn't make successes out of any of them, but he did squeeze ROI out, before jetting off to his next gig. The last bankruptcy of Hostess was inevitable, because management was determined to squeeze out every last ounce of life. If the company was still alive, the reasoning goes, there must be some life left to squeeze.

"Run like a business" used to mean "with hardnosed practicality aimed at creating a quality product." Now it means "able to get a good financial return regardless of what the company actually does."

Which is why demands that schools should be "run like a business" are chilling, but accurate. You don't need to understand teaching and students and the material and child development and pedagogy to run a school. You just have to understand how to get a business to cough up some good ROI. We don't need educators in charge-- they just get distracted by the students and the learning. We need businessmen who understand measuring deliverables and squeezing budgets for full returns. And we need to give them full freedom to do their Master of the Universe thing. And talking about "experience" is silly, because all these so-called "experienced" teachers only have experience in what the business is supposed to do, and THAT is just a distraction from the true business of making those dollars flow in the right direction.

I have always maintained that public education is where failed management theories go to die. This time, they're bad enough to do some real damage to the schools they infect.