Wednesday, February 19, 2014
DVR Corrects Course
Dennis Van Roekel today let loose on the NEA Today website with what represents a big set of admissions for him, and what for many of us wins a Captain Obvious merit badge. Regarding the CCSS:
I am sure it won’t come as a surprise to hear that in far too many states, implementation has been completely botched
Well, the "no surprise to hear part" is pretty obvious. And we've been saying the rest for a while. So how big a shift does today's commentary actually represent.
The opening paragraphs can be dismissed, I think, as face-saving revisionist history. New lipstick on the same ugly damn pig. "The CCSS came out and educators leapt forward like good soldiers, embracing the standards with joy blah blah blah but it turns out the bureaucrats muffed the implementation, and you know, we told them not to do that!!" Okay, fine. That, combined with the note of "like a good life long learner, I've been listening to teachers and learning what it looks like on the ground" is probably the closest we'll get to an apology, and I'm okay with that. Politics. It's what's for breakfast, and he still washes it down with the koolaid.
But gone is the factoid about widespread teacher support. Now we're talking about widespread teacher non-preparation for the core, and the non-support teachers are getting with implementation. It sounds a lot like the standard "The standards are swell; it's just an installation problem" so far, but somewhat feistier than in the past.
A few grafs later, he arrives at the sixty million dollar question:
Where do we go from here?
DVR acknowledges that lots of folks want NEA to call for scrapping the standards. And it would be easy to go along with the critics on the left and the right (one bonus point for admitting they all exist), but we don't want to go backwards. Specifically, we don't want to go back to the bad old days of NCLB and teaching to tests and bad bubbling.
DVR, you do know that there were schools before NCLB. We could go back a mere fourteen years and find ourselves back in the age of authentic assessment, an approach that had potential but was snuffed out by NCLB. So, minus one point for ignoring the full range of options.
He moves on to some specifics. Work with teachers. Stop giving old bubble tests that don't match the new standards. Involve teachers in developing some of this stuff.
And in fact the whole thing would be way too weak to mean much (other than DVR is sliding one step closer to living on the same reality as the rest of us), except for one thing. And I am going to hold DVR to that one thing, because if we get that, none of the rest matters.
DVR has a list of seven items NEA wants from "policymakers" (DVR first artfully sidesteps the issue of whether it's states, feds, or corporations that are driving this bus), and at the number one spot, we find this:
1. Governors and chief state school officers should set up a process to work with NEA and our state education associations to review the appropriateness of the standards and recommend any improvements that might be needed.
Can we just tattoo that across the sky? Paint it on DVR's face?
The other six are just arble-garble about testing and proper field-testing and accountability and probably ploughing the road for NEA's Helmsley-fund financed partnership with PARCC and SBA, but I don't care and I'm willing to ignore it, because if we get a do-over on the standards, if we get a state-level method of revising the standards to suit that state with teachers in an actual position to affect the process-- I would do the kind of happy dance that would embarrass grandchildren that aren't even born yet. Rewrite the standards? With the states, not the USDOE? I have to say, I don't hate that idea.
There will be a ton of parsing of DVR's release today, but for me, that one point is the bombshell. Because the standards are the foundation of everything else. And, done correctly, everything else must wait for the standards to be finished and fixed. I have no illusions about the likelihood of that happening easily or even at all. I'm just happy that my national union has even just one thing on the table that I can support. There's an awful lot of platitudinous baloney on this new plate, but for the moment, I'm going to ignore it and focus on the yummy chocolate chip cookie that I can see.
I am already reading the cries that it is too weak and too late, and there's absolutely no question that it's both. But at this point, there are only two options-- being too late, or staying too wrong. You can't fix Too Late. Absent a time machine, DVR can't undo his ongoing period of wrong-headed quackery. At this point the best we could get would be Too Late But Absolutely Right. Too Late But Slightly Less Wrong isn't perfect, but it's still better than Still Dead Wrong And Unwilling To Talk About It. Sometimes better is all you get.
UPDATE : Well, it took DVR about a week to backtrack on this and walk back the most interesting and worthwhile parts. Here's the scoop on that.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
TNTP Enters the Evaluation Game
The New Teacher Project was a Michelle Rhee spin-off from TFA. While TFA is all about shiny new 22-year-old temps, TNTP has thrown its focus toward recruiting more mature candidates looking to change careers (people who have actually held a job). TNTP has long indicated that it believes that some teachers are better than others, and that public education needs a reliable tool for spotting the winners. This has been most thoroughly expressed in their two-- I don't know-- research projects? PR pieces? Prespecti? Ad campaign programs? The Widget Effect and The Irreplaceables.
TNTP has the same root problem with teacher evaluation as TFA-- they love testing, they love Value-Added, and they already think they know who the Good Teachers are, so the evaluation tool must give an answer that checks out against what they already believe to be true. (This technique is known as The Not Very Scientific Method).
These days TNTP shares TFA's desire to bring diversity to classrooms (which is, if nothing else, a more easily-defensible PR position), and like all good supporters of the status quo, they are determined to fight the status quo.
But today they have taken another step in their quest for the appearance of excellence by releasing the TNTP Core Teaching Rubric. And because it's a snow day in my neck of the woods, I've been perusing this document.
The TNTP Core Teaching Rubric streamlines today’s bloated rubrics to bring the same focus and coherence to classroom observations that the Common Core brings to academic standards.
TNTP's premise is that current rubrics are too big and messy and give the observationator way too much to do, and I can hear Danielson-burdened principals across the country say, "No shinloa, sherlock!" And let me give TNTP credit, because if their goal was to come up with a more light and airy rubric, they have scored a big win.
So, okay. Students engaged? Fine. I know research says there's no actual correlation between engagement and learning, but my teacher intuition agrees with everybody else's-- student engagement is good.
But essential content? We're seriously proposing to evaluate teachers based on whether or not they are covering the CCSS. You're right TNTP-- there is not yet enough micromanaging of classroom teachers. Let's evaluate them on how well they allow themselves to be micromanaged.
"Are all students responsible for doing the thinking in the classroom?" Oh, good lord. I know somewhere in my head that these reformers prefer that teachers not think, but to just come out and say it is.... I don't know. Rude. Still, I think the taxpayers in my district would prefer that students not do ALL the thinking in my classroom. (And just to be clear, no, I didn't misplace the "all." If I say "I'll do the driving" or "She'll do the cooking," that does not indicate a shared task.) Later the document describes this element in terms tat make a little more sense, but that is an ongoing issue as well-- it's a short document, but it lacks internal consistency, as if each page was composed in a separate office.
Demonstration of Learning. And so we've hit all the basic reformer food groups. One part something that's supportable, one part bureaucratic nonsense, one part pedagogical nonsense, and now, one part something so obvious that only someone who knew nothing about teaching would think it needs to be pointed out. Oh, and twelve parts essential elements that have been left out because the creators don't know any better.
"Each performance has three components." We will be checking an essential question, descriptor language, and core teacher skills. The essential questions are close in wording to the descriptions above. The descriptor language is one more five-column rubric breaking all of these areas into specifics. As is typical of these holistic scoring tools, it takes an array of multiple details that allows for 152,633 possible configurations (I'm just roughly estimating here) and crams them into five different scores. For those of us who have been steeped in holistic scoring, it's not really as impossible as it seems.
The core teacher skills part is actually my favorite, because it's where the rubric backslides from its clean and simple lines. In this area, we try to reverse engineer what we think the teacher did in order to get the student behavior. For instance, if all the students demonstrate that they are learning, can we trace that back to teacher core skills of leading instruction, checking for understanding of content, and responding to student misunderstanding. Is it possible that, in keeping with the spirit of CCSS math, a teacher could arrive at the correct result, but not in the correct manner? At any rate, the teacher skills are not supposed to be part of the evaluation, but part of the conversation about the results.
As this is a pilot program, users are invited to "take what you learn from a pilot to inform ongoing training and norming. And please tell us what you learn" at an email address. You're invited to change the language of the rubric to fit your local and reminded that this should be one of "multiple measures of performance." You didn't think we were going to leave student test scores out, did you?
Is there a research basis for this? Why, sure. It's the standard reformy model. In this case, TNTP leans on their experience training teachers for the field, but the formula is the same. We know that these are Excellent Qualities because Excellent Teachers use them, and we can identify those Excellent Teachers because they are the ones using Excellent Qualities. Though it should be noted that only a very few should receive the super-duper seal of excellent excellence, modeled on the winners of TNTP's Fishman Prize (an absolutely awesome name for a prize even though I'm sure the actual trophy is nowhere near as cool as the one I imagine).
So there you have it. Not evil or nefarious. Just kind of sloppy, ill-considered, and generally mediocre. Once we all get our school districts to volunteer to do TNTP's field testing for free, we'll have yet another superlative tool for evaluating teachers into such a state of excellence that they won't know what hit them.
TNTP has the same root problem with teacher evaluation as TFA-- they love testing, they love Value-Added, and they already think they know who the Good Teachers are, so the evaluation tool must give an answer that checks out against what they already believe to be true. (This technique is known as The Not Very Scientific Method).
These days TNTP shares TFA's desire to bring diversity to classrooms (which is, if nothing else, a more easily-defensible PR position), and like all good supporters of the status quo, they are determined to fight the status quo.
But today they have taken another step in their quest for the appearance of excellence by releasing the TNTP Core Teaching Rubric. And because it's a snow day in my neck of the woods, I've been perusing this document.
The TNTP Core Teaching Rubric streamlines today’s bloated rubrics to bring the same focus and coherence to classroom observations that the Common Core brings to academic standards.
TNTP's premise is that current rubrics are too big and messy and give the observationator way too much to do, and I can hear Danielson-burdened principals across the country say, "No shinloa, sherlock!" And let me give TNTP credit, because if their goal was to come up with a more light and airy rubric, they have scored a big win.
The rubric scores teachers across four areas. They are:
· STUDENT ENGAGEMENT: Are all students engaged in the work of
the lesson from start to finish?
· ESSENTIAL CONTENT: Are all students working with content aligned
to the appropriate standards for their subject and grade?
· ACADEMIC OWNERSHIP: Are all students responsible for doing
the thinking in this classroom?
· DEMONSTRATION OF
LEARNING: Do all
students demonstrate that they are learning?
So, okay. Students engaged? Fine. I know research says there's no actual correlation between engagement and learning, but my teacher intuition agrees with everybody else's-- student engagement is good.
But essential content? We're seriously proposing to evaluate teachers based on whether or not they are covering the CCSS. You're right TNTP-- there is not yet enough micromanaging of classroom teachers. Let's evaluate them on how well they allow themselves to be micromanaged.
"Are all students responsible for doing the thinking in the classroom?" Oh, good lord. I know somewhere in my head that these reformers prefer that teachers not think, but to just come out and say it is.... I don't know. Rude. Still, I think the taxpayers in my district would prefer that students not do ALL the thinking in my classroom. (And just to be clear, no, I didn't misplace the "all." If I say "I'll do the driving" or "She'll do the cooking," that does not indicate a shared task.) Later the document describes this element in terms tat make a little more sense, but that is an ongoing issue as well-- it's a short document, but it lacks internal consistency, as if each page was composed in a separate office.
Demonstration of Learning. And so we've hit all the basic reformer food groups. One part something that's supportable, one part bureaucratic nonsense, one part pedagogical nonsense, and now, one part something so obvious that only someone who knew nothing about teaching would think it needs to be pointed out. Oh, and twelve parts essential elements that have been left out because the creators don't know any better.
"Each performance has three components." We will be checking an essential question, descriptor language, and core teacher skills. The essential questions are close in wording to the descriptions above. The descriptor language is one more five-column rubric breaking all of these areas into specifics. As is typical of these holistic scoring tools, it takes an array of multiple details that allows for 152,633 possible configurations (I'm just roughly estimating here) and crams them into five different scores. For those of us who have been steeped in holistic scoring, it's not really as impossible as it seems.
The core teacher skills part is actually my favorite, because it's where the rubric backslides from its clean and simple lines. In this area, we try to reverse engineer what we think the teacher did in order to get the student behavior. For instance, if all the students demonstrate that they are learning, can we trace that back to teacher core skills of leading instruction, checking for understanding of content, and responding to student misunderstanding. Is it possible that, in keeping with the spirit of CCSS math, a teacher could arrive at the correct result, but not in the correct manner? At any rate, the teacher skills are not supposed to be part of the evaluation, but part of the conversation about the results.
As this is a pilot program, users are invited to "take what you learn from a pilot to inform ongoing training and norming. And please tell us what you learn" at an email address. You're invited to change the language of the rubric to fit your local and reminded that this should be one of "multiple measures of performance." You didn't think we were going to leave student test scores out, did you?
Is there a research basis for this? Why, sure. It's the standard reformy model. In this case, TNTP leans on their experience training teachers for the field, but the formula is the same. We know that these are Excellent Qualities because Excellent Teachers use them, and we can identify those Excellent Teachers because they are the ones using Excellent Qualities. Though it should be noted that only a very few should receive the super-duper seal of excellent excellence, modeled on the winners of TNTP's Fishman Prize (an absolutely awesome name for a prize even though I'm sure the actual trophy is nowhere near as cool as the one I imagine).
So there you have it. Not evil or nefarious. Just kind of sloppy, ill-considered, and generally mediocre. Once we all get our school districts to volunteer to do TNTP's field testing for free, we'll have yet another superlative tool for evaluating teachers into such a state of excellence that they won't know what hit them.
You Keep Using That Word...
Status quo.
The Masters of Reforming Our Nation's Schools keep railing about the status quo. The current crisis in education requires us to break the mold, change our course, do something different. the status quo, we're told repeatedly, is not working.
Here's the thing.
A Nation at Risk came out in 1983, kicking off the current generation of mania for waving one sort of magical stick or another at schools. "OMGZZ," said the risk-threatened nation. "We had better get wise men in DC a-fixin' this, toot the sweet!" (I'm paraphrasing here.)
No Child Left Behind became law in 2001, becoming effective at the start of 2002 and thereby enshrined the notion of top-down, federal-controlled, test-based, punitive, centrally-designed management of the nation's educational system. NCLB's ridiculous and unreachable requirement that 100% of the nation's students be above average was used as leverage to push states into a more top-down, more federally-controlled, more test-based, more punitive, more centrally-designed system of public schooling under Race to the Top and Common Core.
So when somebody says that we need to change the status quo, I completely agree, because you know what the status quo is?? This. This test-worshipping teacher-punishing student-hating one-size-fits-all mockery of a school system is our status quo.
Every single child now in America's school has encountered only this "reformed" version of public schooling. We have now inflicted this foolishness on an entire generation.
Every criticism of public schools, every test score offered as "proof," every "we have to do better" political press release is not not NOT an indictment of the traditional model of American public schooling. That model has been, depending on your location, something between crippled and crushed for over a decade, buried under the bulk of NCLBRTTT baloney for over a decade.
No, if you want to criticize the State of Education in this country, you will need to direct that to the current keepers of the status quo flame, the folks formerly known as "reformers." We've been living and teaching in their world for over a decade. They have had control of education for the entire school life of our current students. They cannot whine that they are outsiders, bravely trying to pull down the ramparts of the status quo, because they ARE the status quo. And in the words of that great philosopher, Dr. Phil, I have to as, "How's that working for you?" If the car's wrapped around a tree, and you're the one who demanded the driver's seat, don't start blaming the hostages you stuffed in the trunk.
We will have to wait for the language to catch up. What we've been calling "reform" or "reformy stuff" or "that miserable pile of polished turds pushed off on us by corporate tools" is, in fact, the status quo. It is those of us who want to reclaim traditional American public education who are the rebels, the reformers.
In the meantime, every time those folks complain about the need to disrupt the status quo, I will remember the words of the other great philosopher, Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
The Masters of Reforming Our Nation's Schools keep railing about the status quo. The current crisis in education requires us to break the mold, change our course, do something different. the status quo, we're told repeatedly, is not working.
Here's the thing.
A Nation at Risk came out in 1983, kicking off the current generation of mania for waving one sort of magical stick or another at schools. "OMGZZ," said the risk-threatened nation. "We had better get wise men in DC a-fixin' this, toot the sweet!" (I'm paraphrasing here.)
No Child Left Behind became law in 2001, becoming effective at the start of 2002 and thereby enshrined the notion of top-down, federal-controlled, test-based, punitive, centrally-designed management of the nation's educational system. NCLB's ridiculous and unreachable requirement that 100% of the nation's students be above average was used as leverage to push states into a more top-down, more federally-controlled, more test-based, more punitive, more centrally-designed system of public schooling under Race to the Top and Common Core.
So when somebody says that we need to change the status quo, I completely agree, because you know what the status quo is?? This. This test-worshipping teacher-punishing student-hating one-size-fits-all mockery of a school system is our status quo.
Every single child now in America's school has encountered only this "reformed" version of public schooling. We have now inflicted this foolishness on an entire generation.
Every criticism of public schools, every test score offered as "proof," every "we have to do better" political press release is not not NOT an indictment of the traditional model of American public schooling. That model has been, depending on your location, something between crippled and crushed for over a decade, buried under the bulk of NCLBRTTT baloney for over a decade.
No, if you want to criticize the State of Education in this country, you will need to direct that to the current keepers of the status quo flame, the folks formerly known as "reformers." We've been living and teaching in their world for over a decade. They have had control of education for the entire school life of our current students. They cannot whine that they are outsiders, bravely trying to pull down the ramparts of the status quo, because they ARE the status quo. And in the words of that great philosopher, Dr. Phil, I have to as, "How's that working for you?" If the car's wrapped around a tree, and you're the one who demanded the driver's seat, don't start blaming the hostages you stuffed in the trunk.
We will have to wait for the language to catch up. What we've been calling "reform" or "reformy stuff" or "that miserable pile of polished turds pushed off on us by corporate tools" is, in fact, the status quo. It is those of us who want to reclaim traditional American public education who are the rebels, the reformers.
In the meantime, every time those folks complain about the need to disrupt the status quo, I will remember the words of the other great philosopher, Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Monday, February 17, 2014
12 Reasons To Resist TFA
1. Five Weeks.
Let's get the obvious out of the way first. Five weeks of training. My flightiest fifteen-year-old students have longer relationships. The gestation period of a guinea pig is longer. Phileas Fogg could not even get halfway around the world. And even the "five weeks" is overstating it, because as numerous TFA escapees have noted, a large chunk of that five weeks is not actual training, but simply being dumped in front of a faux class to flail away.
The go-to analogy here is "Would you hire a doctor/lawyer who had only five weeks of training," but we don't have to get that fancy. I wouldn't let a five-week plumber touch my pipes or a five-week mechanic touch my car. When I worked a summer as a catalog order phone sales rep, I was trained for two entire weeks, and closely supervised for another month. The only jobs where five weeks of training are adequate involve either "Do you want fries with that" or "Paper or plastic?"
2. Stability.
Schools need it. Schools serving poor and at-risk populations need it even more. Those students need to know that their school is stable, dependable, and there for them every day. Stability is not enhanced by a teaching staff that turns over every single year comprised of teachers who are just passing through. School is where students should meet adults who care enough about the children to stick around for the long haul.
3. A Solution with No Problem.
Maybe once upon a time there was a shortage of teachers (and by "once upon a time" I mean 50-60 years ago), but there sure as heck isn't one now. I find unemployment figures from 6% to 9% for education, and the anecdotal info matches that.
I can believe that Wendy Kopp's mission was noble twenty years ago. But twenty years ago I was married to a different woman, and that's not who I'm going home to tonight. Today's world does not need the TFA solution from twenty years ago.
4. TFA (among others) Doesn't Understand Economics
There are, to be sure, districts that have trouble recruiting teachers. The entire state of North Carolina is doing its best to drive teachers away. But economics tells us how to fix the issue. Heck, we're all instructed in this issue every time some criminal CEO gets a raise.
If you want the right people for a particular job, you have to pay what the invisible hand of the market says you have to pay. If you can't get anybody to work for you shoveling fertilizer for minimum wage, you have to pay more. At the very least, you have to make the job more attractive.
People who squawk about attracting and retaining top quality highly effective teachers keep acting as if this is some mystery. It's not. If you want to get people to do a job, make it worth their while. That doesn't necessarily mean money-- people work for autonomy and a sense of value-- but it certainly doesn't mean you throw up your hands and grab some 22-year-old temp with no training.
5. So Discover a New Problem, or Else
Since no teacher shortage exists anywhere, TFA has massaged its message. Because how are they going to stay in business if they simply announce, "You know what? The teacher shortage of two decades ago is over. Problem solved. We can all go home now." Nope. Instead, TFA has quietly changed its mission to something else entirely.
In this, TFA reveals itself to be a status-quo loving institution just like any other. Because the number one mission of every hidebound dinosaur of an institution, the ironclad law of the institutional jungle, is Self Preservation. And TFA has arrived at that magical spot where the mission is "Say whatever you need to, but keep our directors employed and the money rolling in."
6. Its New Mission Is More Bogus That the Old One
Points for honesty-- we're not even pretending that TFA is aiming itself at education, really. Notice that "teach" doesn't appear anywhere except in their name. And we're going to find these special snowflakes and place them in a classroom-- what they do once they're placed there is anybody's guess.
TFA has repositioned itself as an engine for equality. Twitter is awash in TFA tweetage about getting black teachers in classrooms, and TFA has made "diversity" one of its core values. TFA is hustling like crazy to get black men into the classroom, and of all the ways in which TFA has rewritten/tweaked its mission, this is one of the least objectionable. But its mission remains the same-- recruit the elite, the people who are just better than everyone else, and give them some classroom experience. Just by placing these superior humans in a classroom with, well, inferior humans, the inferior humans will be elevated. Why? Well...
Let's get the obvious out of the way first. Five weeks of training. My flightiest fifteen-year-old students have longer relationships. The gestation period of a guinea pig is longer. Phileas Fogg could not even get halfway around the world. And even the "five weeks" is overstating it, because as numerous TFA escapees have noted, a large chunk of that five weeks is not actual training, but simply being dumped in front of a faux class to flail away.
The go-to analogy here is "Would you hire a doctor/lawyer who had only five weeks of training," but we don't have to get that fancy. I wouldn't let a five-week plumber touch my pipes or a five-week mechanic touch my car. When I worked a summer as a catalog order phone sales rep, I was trained for two entire weeks, and closely supervised for another month. The only jobs where five weeks of training are adequate involve either "Do you want fries with that" or "Paper or plastic?"
2. Stability.
Schools need it. Schools serving poor and at-risk populations need it even more. Those students need to know that their school is stable, dependable, and there for them every day. Stability is not enhanced by a teaching staff that turns over every single year comprised of teachers who are just passing through. School is where students should meet adults who care enough about the children to stick around for the long haul.
3. A Solution with No Problem.
Maybe once upon a time there was a shortage of teachers (and by "once upon a time" I mean 50-60 years ago), but there sure as heck isn't one now. I find unemployment figures from 6% to 9% for education, and the anecdotal info matches that.
I can believe that Wendy Kopp's mission was noble twenty years ago. But twenty years ago I was married to a different woman, and that's not who I'm going home to tonight. Today's world does not need the TFA solution from twenty years ago.
4. TFA (among others) Doesn't Understand Economics
There are, to be sure, districts that have trouble recruiting teachers. The entire state of North Carolina is doing its best to drive teachers away. But economics tells us how to fix the issue. Heck, we're all instructed in this issue every time some criminal CEO gets a raise.
If you want the right people for a particular job, you have to pay what the invisible hand of the market says you have to pay. If you can't get anybody to work for you shoveling fertilizer for minimum wage, you have to pay more. At the very least, you have to make the job more attractive.
People who squawk about attracting and retaining top quality highly effective teachers keep acting as if this is some mystery. It's not. If you want to get people to do a job, make it worth their while. That doesn't necessarily mean money-- people work for autonomy and a sense of value-- but it certainly doesn't mean you throw up your hands and grab some 22-year-old temp with no training.
5. So Discover a New Problem, or Else
Since no teacher shortage exists anywhere, TFA has massaged its message. Because how are they going to stay in business if they simply announce, "You know what? The teacher shortage of two decades ago is over. Problem solved. We can all go home now." Nope. Instead, TFA has quietly changed its mission to something else entirely.
In this, TFA reveals itself to be a status-quo loving institution just like any other. Because the number one mission of every hidebound dinosaur of an institution, the ironclad law of the institutional jungle, is Self Preservation. And TFA has arrived at that magical spot where the mission is "Say whatever you need to, but keep our directors employed and the money rolling in."
6. Its New Mission Is More Bogus That the Old One
Teach For America works to eliminate this injustice by finding,
training, and supporting individuals who are committed to equality and
placing them in high-need classrooms across the country. Through this
experience, they become lifelong leaders for a better world.
Points for honesty-- we're not even pretending that TFA is aiming itself at education, really. Notice that "teach" doesn't appear anywhere except in their name. And we're going to find these special snowflakes and place them in a classroom-- what they do once they're placed there is anybody's guess.
TFA has repositioned itself as an engine for equality. Twitter is awash in TFA tweetage about getting black teachers in classrooms, and TFA has made "diversity" one of its core values. TFA is hustling like crazy to get black men into the classroom, and of all the ways in which TFA has rewritten/tweaked its mission, this is one of the least objectionable. But its mission remains the same-- recruit the elite, the people who are just better than everyone else, and give them some classroom experience. Just by placing these superior humans in a classroom with, well, inferior humans, the inferior humans will be elevated. Why? Well...
7. TFA Doesn't Understand Mobility
The average TFA body's success story goes something like this.
"I was born into a rich family and grew up in a rich neighborhood. My family's connections got me into a top private school, and connections and money made it possible for me to attend a select ivy league college. Now I'm going to go help poor kids get a good education, because the most important factor to getting ahead in this world is education."
Or: "I was born on third base, which makes me uniquely qualified to teach people how to hit triples."
8. TFA Has An Arrogance Problem
TFA has built itself around recruiting and retaining people who are Just Better Than Everyone Else. And then it devotes tons of internal communication to reminding its people that they are Just Better Than Everyone Else. Consequently, many TFAers do not play well with others. They enter schools convinced that the professional teachers who already work there are the problem, and should be ignored. The best schools, even the most not-too-bad schools, depend on collegiality and cooperation. When TFA says "team," they mean their team, not the public school team.
TFA knows they have a problem. Another core value that they've added is "respect & humility."
9. TFA Wastes the Good Intentions of Good People
Many, many TFAers join up for the very best of reasons with the very best of intentions. These are people who really want to help make the world a better place for children who face tough obstacles. Instead, they are made part of a program that sets them up for failure in the classroom and wastes all their good intentions on simply enriching TFA itself. Some of these people actually end up staying in teaching for good, and God bless those people. But how many more of those good people would still be teachers if they had actually gotten involved in, I don't know-- a teaching program.
10. A Classroom Is Not An "Experience."
The classic Onion column said it best. These are real live students with real needs and desires and hopes and dreams and needs. They do not exist simply so that some future Master of the Universe can say, "Hey, I once spent a year in a classroom with some poor people."
Here's one way to understand Being a Professional: when you are doing your job, it's not about you. At all. When you are a doctor in an operating theater, your personal wants and dreams are the least important thing in the room. When you are a lawyer in court, you leave your personal issues for the day outside. And when you are a teacher in a classroom, the very last thing you should be wondering is "What am I going to get out of this?"
Students are not there to provide you with an experience. You are there to provide them with an education.
11. TFA Isn't Very Interested in Teaching
In addition to those already listed, TFA's Core Values are Leadership, Team and Transformational Change. Nothing about teaching. They talk about leadership a great deal, about establishing a culture of excellence, about how it is all challenging. TFA is interested in how the experience will foster your leadership skills and make you a better person when you finally get to your real job.On TFA's website, the verb "teach" rarely appears. Beyond the official materials, there's a lot of talk about TFA as a great resume-builder. But not a lot of talk about teaching.
I had a student teacher once who struggled a great deal. What became clear was that he didn't really want to be a teacher-- he just wanted to be the smartest guy in the classroom. TFA materials remind me of him a great deal. No talk of teaching techniques, pedagogical approaches, breaking down materials into manageable chunks, developmental appropriateness. TFA's pedadgogical approach appears to be, "Arrive in classroom. Be awesome. Demand excellence. Watch education magically occur. Quit and go to grad school for MBA."
12. TFA Diminishes the Profession
TFA institutionalizes the very idea that teaching is so idiot-simple that anybody can do it. Well, at least anybody from among the elite. That feeds very nicely into the newly-reformed conception of teachers as Content Delivery Units. If the teacher's job is just to unpack the unit from Pearson's shipping carton and read the script to the students-- well, yes, if teaching were that simple, any idiot COULD do it.
Or if we decided that the only real job a teacher has is to insure good scores on The Test, well, most idiots could probably do that as well. In the end, TFA has solved its own first problem. If five weeks of training is insufficient to prepare someone to teach, well, then, let's ramp down the professional requirements of a teacher until it's something that you CAN be trained for in five weeks.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Revenge of the Hall Monitors
There's a strikingly odd generational irony that underlies the world of reformy stuff.
The architects of this wave of top-down, rigidly created and enforced educational control-freakery, from the legislative creators of NCLB to the corporate underwriters of CCSS are largely Baby Boomers. Bush, Clinton, Obama, Duncan, Gates-- boomers all. Other generations are represented (e.g. David "Babyface" Coleman and Eli "Elder Statesman" Broad), but school reform remains largely one more attempt by my generation to rewrite the rules of society.
It seems so unexpected. How did the generation that rejected its parents' desire for a stable, solid structure, a generation that found a thousand ways to stand for non-conformity-- how did that generation end up demanding that its own children shape up and snap to? How can it be that middle-aged men are now getting out their well-worn vinyl copy of Pink Floyd's The Wall and thinking that those children's chorus singing "Teacher, leave those kids alone" really needs some rigorous educational pummeling? We were going to fight The Man. Somehow, some of us grew up to be The Man on steroids.
Part of the answer is, of course, that no generation is homogenous. For every kid running through the halls of the school and trying to fight The Power with his scruffy jeans and tie-dye (cause The Power hated tie-dye), there was a kid from the same class, neatly dressed, working as a hall monitor and telling people to be quiet and get to class. Nor have all of us grown up to believe that Kids These Days are slack-brained degenerates who need to be pummeled into obedience.
But, as often noted, Bill Gates was not exactly a young Republican afraid to cross the street without parental permission. Nor was George Bush exactly Exhibit A for How To Properly Pursue an Education.
So what has happened? Is this the revenge of the hall monitors, who have finally secured positions of power and are now finally going to make Those Darn Kids behave? Did we decide that little boxes made of ticky tacky are actually desirable-- at least for other people? Is this just the Boomer's well-documented tendency to believe we have Grasped an Important Righteous Truth and must now make everyone else see?
I don't know. I mean, I really don't know, and I am really puzzled. Has the most individualistic, do-your-own-thing generation in modern memory literally forgotten what it means to be a young human searching for your own place in a one size fits all world? How have we decided that our own experience growing up is one that our own children (or at least other people's own children) absolutely must not have?
In The Lego Movie [mild spoiler alert], Will Ferrell is a father who has created an awesome and amazing Lego world. He forbids his son to touch it, and begins gluing it into place so that those blocks can never, ever take another shape. When he realizes what he is doing to his son, and that he has become the villain in his son's story, he relents, and the two begin to create together. (Also, you should totally go see this movie, because it is absolutely fun in the best way-- children laugh at some spots, adults laugh at other spots, and everybody goes home humming that earworm of a theme song).
We need a moment like that. The leaders of reformy stuff need to look some real, live human children in the eye and start creating with them instead of experimenting on them. They need to stop performing Orwellian gymnastics that use the language of opportunity and choices to describe the reality of straightjacketed one-size-fits-all limits.
Most of all, we need to remember what there was to love about our own lives and challenge ourselves to give our children more. Somehow, reformy boomers have grown up, not to be our parents, but something even worse. We do not create a better world with our children by way of "no" and "less," even if we cloak it with the language of "yes" and "more."
The architects of this wave of top-down, rigidly created and enforced educational control-freakery, from the legislative creators of NCLB to the corporate underwriters of CCSS are largely Baby Boomers. Bush, Clinton, Obama, Duncan, Gates-- boomers all. Other generations are represented (e.g. David "Babyface" Coleman and Eli "Elder Statesman" Broad), but school reform remains largely one more attempt by my generation to rewrite the rules of society.
It seems so unexpected. How did the generation that rejected its parents' desire for a stable, solid structure, a generation that found a thousand ways to stand for non-conformity-- how did that generation end up demanding that its own children shape up and snap to? How can it be that middle-aged men are now getting out their well-worn vinyl copy of Pink Floyd's The Wall and thinking that those children's chorus singing "Teacher, leave those kids alone" really needs some rigorous educational pummeling? We were going to fight The Man. Somehow, some of us grew up to be The Man on steroids.
Part of the answer is, of course, that no generation is homogenous. For every kid running through the halls of the school and trying to fight The Power with his scruffy jeans and tie-dye (cause The Power hated tie-dye), there was a kid from the same class, neatly dressed, working as a hall monitor and telling people to be quiet and get to class. Nor have all of us grown up to believe that Kids These Days are slack-brained degenerates who need to be pummeled into obedience.
But, as often noted, Bill Gates was not exactly a young Republican afraid to cross the street without parental permission. Nor was George Bush exactly Exhibit A for How To Properly Pursue an Education.
So what has happened? Is this the revenge of the hall monitors, who have finally secured positions of power and are now finally going to make Those Darn Kids behave? Did we decide that little boxes made of ticky tacky are actually desirable-- at least for other people? Is this just the Boomer's well-documented tendency to believe we have Grasped an Important Righteous Truth and must now make everyone else see?
I don't know. I mean, I really don't know, and I am really puzzled. Has the most individualistic, do-your-own-thing generation in modern memory literally forgotten what it means to be a young human searching for your own place in a one size fits all world? How have we decided that our own experience growing up is one that our own children (or at least other people's own children) absolutely must not have?
In The Lego Movie [mild spoiler alert], Will Ferrell is a father who has created an awesome and amazing Lego world. He forbids his son to touch it, and begins gluing it into place so that those blocks can never, ever take another shape. When he realizes what he is doing to his son, and that he has become the villain in his son's story, he relents, and the two begin to create together. (Also, you should totally go see this movie, because it is absolutely fun in the best way-- children laugh at some spots, adults laugh at other spots, and everybody goes home humming that earworm of a theme song).
We need a moment like that. The leaders of reformy stuff need to look some real, live human children in the eye and start creating with them instead of experimenting on them. They need to stop performing Orwellian gymnastics that use the language of opportunity and choices to describe the reality of straightjacketed one-size-fits-all limits.
Most of all, we need to remember what there was to love about our own lives and challenge ourselves to give our children more. Somehow, reformy boomers have grown up, not to be our parents, but something even worse. We do not create a better world with our children by way of "no" and "less," even if we cloak it with the language of "yes" and "more."
Friday, February 14, 2014
"Why I Heart Common Core"
Hey. Everybody else is writing one. Why not me? Here's my teacher-cheerleading CCSS letter.
As everybody knows, US education has been descending into failure of Biblical proportions, leading to an entire generation of students who don't know enough to come in out the rain. We were facing world domination by Estonia and South Korea. Thank goodness a bunch of teachers got together, possibly teaming up with parents, to produce the Common Core State Standards which were totally not created by a bunch of guys from the major testing corporations. These life-changing and nation-rescuing standards were voluntarily adopted by 45 states who were in no way influenced by their desire to get their federal ed money and avoid the impending NCLB crash. In fact, these 45 states were so excited about voluntarily adopting CCSS, some of them did it before the standards were actually published.
Some wacko
In my own classroom, Common Core Standards have been pedagogically transformative in a dynamically epistomological kind of way. My students are involved in deep and thoughtful activities that involve interaction, reflection, and involvement. We do projects. We have discussions. We use critical thinking. We read books, and when we do, we read carefully and deeply and discuss ideas about the book while using details from the book to back these up. We even write stuff, and sometime use computers and techy things.
These may sound like activities that teachers have been doing in classrooms since the dawn of time, but before CCSS, I made my students learn everything by rote and repetition. We used pieces of slate that we drew on with charcoal. If we used novels at all, we simply let them sit on the desk and gained insights into the contents by consulting our spirit animals. I mean, I had no idea that critical thinking even was a thing! It used to take me three months just to introduce regular old thinking. Also, grit and rigor. We are awash in grit and rigor, and I can see with my own eyes that the grit and rigor is transforming my useless young hooligans into future investment bankers. It's awesome.
CCSS has liberated me. Once I open my Pearson test book and set up the lesson that is carefully aligned to the standards for that exact day of the school year, I am free to put my own personal spin on it. I could deliver the lesson with a red shirt on, or I could wear a blue shirt. I could recite the opener with a thoughtful face or a happy face. I can part my hair on whatever side I choose. Teachers who say that the Core is restrictive are just cray cray. Because freedom is slavery.
Of course, teachers need time to adjust to these new standards of awesomeness, time to plan lessons around our new materials, and time to adjust students to having just skipped an entire grade of instruction. And maybe we could hold off on the tests until, you know, some are actually written-- though the tests are a necessary part of the learning experience. Also, seeing results from last year's single test will totally tell me what I need to emphasize with next year's students.
But even though the standards have never been tested, we can all be assured that they will make all students gritty and rigorous and college ready. Whether students want to grow up to be artists, welders, scientists, writers, actors, engineers, or stay-at-home parents, don't they all deserve to have the exact same preparation for those futures? But by giving them rigorous tests now, we can unlock all their dreams for the future. Because dreams, rigor, common sense, and effectiveness.
I am a more effective teacher now that I have a set of government and corporate documents to tell me how to do my job. Also, ignorance is strength.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Vicki Phillips Tries Again
Vicki Phillips last EduWonk PR piece for CCSS sparked plenty of debate. Glancing through the comments and Bill Gates's latest heaping helping of baloney in USA Today, it would seem that it was also used as something of a prompt for the newest wave of CCSS talking points.
So it's only fitting that Phillips is back this month to field test the next wave of CCSS support bullets. Phillips is a Pennsylvania product, starting her admin career in Lancaster before becoming part of Smilin' Ed Rendell's revolving doorload of Ed Secretaries who took on the thankless task of powering through his program of unfunded mandates and terrible tests. When she left to head Portland schools, we were not particularly sad.
She works for the Gates Foundation now as Director of Education, College Ready. And now she's here to talk at us some more about the awesome momentum of CCSS.
Stick-to-itiveness. Determination. Tenacity. Grit. These are concepts that every teacher tries to impart to his or her students – the importance of not giving up when the going gets tough.
That's the lede, so we know where this train is headed. That ol' grit-- it is one hugely important quality for students to have. So why, Phillips asks, would we risk stopping the forward movement on CCSS, "the most important U.S. education initiatives in decades." And may I just add, "A bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves." But no-- Phillips is not even going to pretend to create any sort of plausible link between grit and the Common Core (they just go together, like a horse and carriage, love and marriage, apples and oranges).
See, as we move forward, we all knew that we would have to be flexible, willing to "adjust and recalibrate." This is one of the shinier talking points these days, in which reformers speak as if they've always expected there to be a need to carefully consider what we were implementing and no, they were not the ones insisting we all follow their orders precisely, no, that wasn't them at all, nuh-uh. No, the newest round of CCSS reformy folks say things like this:
Equally, we must ensure that teachers and students are truly prepared before consequences for not meeting the standards are implemented.
No more impassioned full-speed-ahead, build-the-plane-while-we-fly-it stuff. No, we want to take our time and get it right. And like any good Orwellian overlords, we are not only going to say this with a straight face, but we will not at all acknowledge that we ever said anything else.
Okay, then. In this brave new world, what does Phillips suggest we are supposed to do to maintain the awesome runaway-truckish momentum of CCSS?
First, teachers must play a key role in the Common Core implementation process.
Teachers must play a key role. A "key role" is what you offer somebody when you want to soften then news that they won't be in a leadership role. "Sorry, you didn't get the new management spot, but golly whiz you will have a Key Role in the transition team." Nobody ever uses "key role" in their CV.
We have apparently seen great success in Cleveland with teacher-created materials. And all around the country teachers are already working "with other education practitioners" and, really, what the hell is an "education practitioner"? This confabulation of teachers and EPs is working "to ensure teachers have access to the high-quality resources and tools they need as the Common Core State Standards are implemented."
And, seriously, as noted in Colin McEnroe's genius column, when somebody talks like this, they are either hiding something or selling something or both.
We'll follow that with a nod to the NEA Master Teacher program, a fully-owned subsidiary of the Gates Foundation, so why wouldn't we be plugging that. It will have a full year's worth of lessons! Districts won't need to hire real teachers with actual skills ever again!! So maybe the "key role" teachers are playing is the role of "making actual teachers obsolete." Thanks for having my back, NEA.
Second, we need to make sure teachers have the time they need to collaborate and prepare for these changes.
I do not disagree with Phillips here. If we are going to be forced to unpack an Augean Stable's worth of CCSSBS, at least give us a shovel and few extra hours to do the job. We all seem to know something that Phillips is pretending not to know, or has forgotten since she was a district administrator-- time costs money, and school districts don't have an endless Gatesian-sized supply of it. So I think I speak for many superintendents when I say, "Thanks! That's a fabulous idea. More time! I never THOUGHT of THAT!" Also, next year the Gates Foundation will buy ponies for all the poor people in America-- all they have to do is build barns for the ponies to live in. It will be super-easy.
And then we get more lip service about how teachers have to beco-opted so they will buy in recruited as valuable co-leaders in the process. Because, finally, reformies have decided that maybe teachers should be involved in all this reformy stuff after all.
Then a full paragraph devoted to how CCSS will make it easier for children to move from one state to another. Certainly a legitimate reason to upend the US education system. Next year Gates will be reconfiguring the climate of the entire Northern Hemisphere so that children can move from Alaska to Hawaii without experiencing discomfort or needing to buy new clothes.
We round on the home stretch with a link to blog by a teacher who thinks CCSS rocks his world. The link is actually broken, but based on the quotes, I think I can reproduce the gist of the teacher's comments:
I used to teach nothing but rote memorization and I tried never to talk to my students and we just used slates and charcoal to do our endless drill, but then CCSS came along and I was all like, "Woah, you mean we can do thinky things!!?? And all sorts of cool learny activities." So thanks to CCSS I know how to teach because before I didn't know how to do nothing. But now critical thinking and computers. Thanx, CCSS.
Now cue the violins and fireworks for the big finish:
This is what we need to remember every time we hear calls to roll back Common Core. We cannot give up. We owe it to our children to continue to move forward and ensure that every child in this country has a chance to pursue his or her dreams. After all, if we expect our children to show grit in the face of adversity, how can we possibly ask any less of ourselves?
[insert inarticulate roar here] What the hell does the implementation of CCSS with its attendant school of bad program pilot fish have to do with making a better life for our children. Show me one single minute freakin piece of evidence that CCSS has anything at all to do with children pursuing their dreams! And "grit in the face of adversity"??!! School is not not NOT supposed to be "the face of adversity," not for students, not for teachers, not for parents or administrators or janitors or bus drivers. What sort of bollixed-up brain-deficient balonery equates school with a test of whether students are worthy or having dreams?
I don't know if Lancaster Superintendent Vicki Phillips lost her understanding of actual schools or if she sold it. But this piece of press-ready PR puffery does her no credit. Please may we not have a third Ode to CCSS Momentum.
So it's only fitting that Phillips is back this month to field test the next wave of CCSS support bullets. Phillips is a Pennsylvania product, starting her admin career in Lancaster before becoming part of Smilin' Ed Rendell's revolving doorload of Ed Secretaries who took on the thankless task of powering through his program of unfunded mandates and terrible tests. When she left to head Portland schools, we were not particularly sad.
She works for the Gates Foundation now as Director of Education, College Ready. And now she's here to talk at us some more about the awesome momentum of CCSS.
Stick-to-itiveness. Determination. Tenacity. Grit. These are concepts that every teacher tries to impart to his or her students – the importance of not giving up when the going gets tough.
That's the lede, so we know where this train is headed. That ol' grit-- it is one hugely important quality for students to have. So why, Phillips asks, would we risk stopping the forward movement on CCSS, "the most important U.S. education initiatives in decades." And may I just add, "A bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves." But no-- Phillips is not even going to pretend to create any sort of plausible link between grit and the Common Core (they just go together, like a horse and carriage, love and marriage, apples and oranges).
See, as we move forward, we all knew that we would have to be flexible, willing to "adjust and recalibrate." This is one of the shinier talking points these days, in which reformers speak as if they've always expected there to be a need to carefully consider what we were implementing and no, they were not the ones insisting we all follow their orders precisely, no, that wasn't them at all, nuh-uh. No, the newest round of CCSS reformy folks say things like this:
Equally, we must ensure that teachers and students are truly prepared before consequences for not meeting the standards are implemented.
No more impassioned full-speed-ahead, build-the-plane-while-we-fly-it stuff. No, we want to take our time and get it right. And like any good Orwellian overlords, we are not only going to say this with a straight face, but we will not at all acknowledge that we ever said anything else.
Okay, then. In this brave new world, what does Phillips suggest we are supposed to do to maintain the awesome runaway-truckish momentum of CCSS?
First, teachers must play a key role in the Common Core implementation process.
Teachers must play a key role. A "key role" is what you offer somebody when you want to soften then news that they won't be in a leadership role. "Sorry, you didn't get the new management spot, but golly whiz you will have a Key Role in the transition team." Nobody ever uses "key role" in their CV.
We have apparently seen great success in Cleveland with teacher-created materials. And all around the country teachers are already working "with other education practitioners" and, really, what the hell is an "education practitioner"? This confabulation of teachers and EPs is working "to ensure teachers have access to the high-quality resources and tools they need as the Common Core State Standards are implemented."
And, seriously, as noted in Colin McEnroe's genius column, when somebody talks like this, they are either hiding something or selling something or both.
We'll follow that with a nod to the NEA Master Teacher program, a fully-owned subsidiary of the Gates Foundation, so why wouldn't we be plugging that. It will have a full year's worth of lessons! Districts won't need to hire real teachers with actual skills ever again!! So maybe the "key role" teachers are playing is the role of "making actual teachers obsolete." Thanks for having my back, NEA.
Second, we need to make sure teachers have the time they need to collaborate and prepare for these changes.
I do not disagree with Phillips here. If we are going to be forced to unpack an Augean Stable's worth of CCSSBS, at least give us a shovel and few extra hours to do the job. We all seem to know something that Phillips is pretending not to know, or has forgotten since she was a district administrator-- time costs money, and school districts don't have an endless Gatesian-sized supply of it. So I think I speak for many superintendents when I say, "Thanks! That's a fabulous idea. More time! I never THOUGHT of THAT!" Also, next year the Gates Foundation will buy ponies for all the poor people in America-- all they have to do is build barns for the ponies to live in. It will be super-easy.
And then we get more lip service about how teachers have to be
Then a full paragraph devoted to how CCSS will make it easier for children to move from one state to another. Certainly a legitimate reason to upend the US education system. Next year Gates will be reconfiguring the climate of the entire Northern Hemisphere so that children can move from Alaska to Hawaii without experiencing discomfort or needing to buy new clothes.
We round on the home stretch with a link to blog by a teacher who thinks CCSS rocks his world. The link is actually broken, but based on the quotes, I think I can reproduce the gist of the teacher's comments:
I used to teach nothing but rote memorization and I tried never to talk to my students and we just used slates and charcoal to do our endless drill, but then CCSS came along and I was all like, "Woah, you mean we can do thinky things!!?? And all sorts of cool learny activities." So thanks to CCSS I know how to teach because before I didn't know how to do nothing. But now critical thinking and computers. Thanx, CCSS.
Now cue the violins and fireworks for the big finish:
This is what we need to remember every time we hear calls to roll back Common Core. We cannot give up. We owe it to our children to continue to move forward and ensure that every child in this country has a chance to pursue his or her dreams. After all, if we expect our children to show grit in the face of adversity, how can we possibly ask any less of ourselves?
[insert inarticulate roar here] What the hell does the implementation of CCSS with its attendant school of bad program pilot fish have to do with making a better life for our children. Show me one single minute freakin piece of evidence that CCSS has anything at all to do with children pursuing their dreams! And "grit in the face of adversity"??!! School is not not NOT supposed to be "the face of adversity," not for students, not for teachers, not for parents or administrators or janitors or bus drivers. What sort of bollixed-up brain-deficient balonery equates school with a test of whether students are worthy or having dreams?
I don't know if Lancaster Superintendent Vicki Phillips lost her understanding of actual schools or if she sold it. But this piece of press-ready PR puffery does her no credit. Please may we not have a third Ode to CCSS Momentum.
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