Even though this blog is mostly about the spleen ventage, I do make it a point to remember the Good Parts, too. So here, for your Sunday night (or Monday morning or Wednesday afternoon or whenever your Up could use some Pickme), here are the five most positive posts from Curmudgucation (so far). I know that irony is often my stock and trade, but for these posts, I'm not kidding!
Why American Public Education Is Worth the Fight
American public education is one of the most awesome institutions created in the history of human civilization. It deserves our love and affection and protection precisely because it is such a wonderful expression of what makes us great as a people.
Should I Be a Teacher?
I never quite understand why everyone doesn't want to be a teacher. But nowadays there seems to be some question, even among people who are drawn to it. And certainly it's a scary world for teacher these days. Here's how to know if it's for you!
Should I Quit?
In the era of the public resignation letter, it's no surprise that many of us struggle with the question of leaving the profession. I faced my own dark night, though it came before the Age of Reformy Stuff. I stayed. Here's why.
Evaluating That
It's only been a couple of months since #evaluatethat had its day as a big hashtag. It was a great reminder of what teachers do, and why we should watch each others' backs. In fact, as soon as I finish this, I think I'll go on twitter and look through those tweets again.
I Love My Job (Seriously)
There are days when I think you run the risk of being called crazy if you admit that you love what you do. But I love what I do. I love this job. Even in these struggly times, I love my job. I know I'm lucky not to be in the thick of the worst of it, but I guess what I can do is send word to those of you on the front lines that you memory isn't playing tricks on you-- teaching really is one of the greatest jobs in the world.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
From One Reluctant Warrior to Another
Anthony Cody posted A Call to Battle for reluctant Warriors earlier this week, and it got me to really thinking about my own reluctant warrior status, and what I would say to someone else just entering the fray.
I'm not a fighter. On those personality tests that measure such things, I usually emerge as a peacemaker. But from day one, teaching has forced me to confront the need, sometimes, to fight.
My first teaching job started with a strike and ended with layoffs. It took me another five years to land a permanent full time gig, and in the meantime, I wondered if the universe was sending me a message (roughly, "Do something else, dummy!"). But there wasn't anything else I'd rather do, so I soldiered on.
I had always figured that I would sometimes have to wrestle with students who didn't exactly consider the wonders of studying English one of the most important part of life. But I was naively surprised to discover that many of the people who I'd figured would support education-- parents, administrators, board members, government officials-- actually spent more time creating obstacles than helping. And I started to realize that teaching was not a walk in the park or a ride on a parade float, but actually guerilla warfare. Like most teachers, I was inclined to follow the rules, stay inside the lines, respect the system. We all learn at some point that standing up for our students means standing up against the system, and that it's worth it.
Not everybody decided to fight. Some folks let the obstacles have their occasional win on the theory that they were mostly doing good work. Some could simply never bring themselves to break the rules or argue with a boss. Some just hate the idea of conflict. I get that. I'm one of those people.
Has it gotten worse? I believe it has. It used to be that the occasional misguided administrator would recommend some piece of educational malpractice. Then the state suggested it. Then the state mandated it. Nowadays, the federal and state governments have teamed up to make some acts of educational malpractice the law of the land.
I had the same sorts of thoughts when I found myself on the path to becoming the president of a teachers' union on strike. Sometimes you don't choose the fight, but the fight chooses you. Sometimes you are caught in a conflict of someone else's creation, and your only choice is to either stand up or to be one of those good men who does nothing.
So if you're going to become a reluctant warrior, what can you do?
Trust your judgment.
Not blindly. I think my judgment is pretty good, but I'm also painfully aware that I have screwed up big time in my life, that I have failed students, that I have made poor choices. But I hope that I've learned lessons from all of that (including not to blindly trust myself).
But if you are a trained professional educator, that means you're the expert. If the answer key gives an answer that you know is wrong, you don't just say, "Well, the answer key must be right." Trust your professional judgment and
Network
Talk to other people whose judgment you trust. Even if-- especially if-- they don't necessarily come from your identical perspective.
You may have an opportunity to make allies that nobody else can. Do not fall into the trap of declaring enemies so ferociously and finally that you miss the chance to convince someone to join your side. If there's anything we know about the battle over public education, it's that it has made strange bedfellows on both side of the fight.
And there are groups to join. On Facebook the most active voice is the Bad Ass Teachers page, an action group that can provide you with something simple to do to take action in the fight every single day. Organizations like this are popping up all over. If you are a joiner,it's a great way to find likeminded people to focus your warrior activities.
Speak
In staff meetings. In professional development. In neighborhood social gatherings. Don't be a jerk about it, but speak up. Share your perspective.
Read about the issues on line, and when you read something you agree with, leave a comment saying so. When you read something you disagree with, leave a comment saying so. When we stay silent, folks are able to imagine whatever they like running through our brains. When we speak, they must deal with the truth.
And in these times, words of support are always a help. Let people know you are on their side. You know how lonely guerilla warfare gets.
Act
This is a challenge. Perhaps you live and work in one of the epicenters of this fight, in which case you have opportunities to take to the streets, swell a crowd, make some noise. Or, like me, you may live someplace quiet and far away from the toughest parts of this fight. But you can still do something.
The Network for Public Education (a group you should join) has prepared a simple kit for nudging your Congressperson and agitating for a Congressional inquiry into the abuses of High Stakes Testing. You can send an e-mail or a regular old paper letter. Everything you need is right here.There is also a petition nearing its final days, urging the removal of high stakes testing from RttT/NCLB. Like most White House petitions, it may well fall short of the required numbers of citizens willing to register and sign up, but look-- you're already sitting here at your computer. Click on this link.
Tell your state and national union bosses what you want from them. Get involved in your local. Communicate regularly. Call your state and federal elected representatives repeatedly. Write to them. It's not always or only about who has the money. inBloom had way more money that Leonie Haimson, but inBloom is no longer in New York State, and Leonie Haimson surely is. Corporate money is most useful in silencing the critics, but you can choose not to be silenced.
Educate yourself. Read the blogs. Search out the info. And then spread the word, any you can think of. We're teachers, and that makes us one of the most dangerous type of warrior there is, reluctant or not.
Ultimately, for me, it is not about whether I would change the world or not-- it is about whether I will live out my values or not, whether I will live a life that demonstrates what I believe. I know what it's like to be reluctant to fight, but as rough as conflict may feel, it's not as bad as living a life that doesn't match what you care about, what you value, what you hold to be true and important. We all have to stand up for something; why not stand up for what we actually believe?
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Interviewing with HAL
In a recent post, The New Teacher Project (TNTP) asks an interesting question. And by "interesting," I mean "dumb."
Can Better Questions Lead to Better Teachers?
By "better," TNTP means "very specific multiple choice questions asked by a computer." As it turns out, I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this question, so let's end the suspense right away. Jessica Cardullo, contributing writer to the TNTP blog, here is the answer to your question:
No.
Or possibly, "for the love of God, no." I was also tempted to go with "No, dummy," by I do not know Ms. Cardullo and for all I know, she's a highly intelligent person who was assigned to write about a dumb question.
TNTP is the big-boys-and-girls version of TFA; they take people who have an actual history of working for a living in some non-teaching job and try turning those folks into teachers. It's actually a far less ridiculous concept than TFA, and if TNTP didn't have the same corporate weenie connections as TFA, I might be inclined to take it seriously. But instead, they are run by the kind of people who come up with ideas like this one.
First we have to figure out what "better" means when applied to teachers. Cardullo starts out by contrasting broad questions such as "Why do you want to be a teacher" with focused questions such as "Which of these statements best describes you" followed by multiple choice answers from which to select. Or they could be asked agree-or-disagree statements such as “All students should be held to the same grade level standards,” and “teachers in high-need schools must be given equal resources to teachers in wealthier schools if they are going to be evaluated by the same standards.” And I'm starting to see their problem, because by "better," maybe we mean "fully aligned with the biases of this organization."
Cardullo assures us that lots of standardized test questions such as these will elicit a picture filled with "nuance" and "texture." Because I think we can all agree that when we really want a nuanced and textured picture of a person, we hand that person a set of standardized test questions.
But TNTP is really looking at this "interview pointillism."
One interesting possibility: using computer-based interviews, at least at the outset of someone’s application to one of our training programs, to ask these sorts of questions. It’s an interview model that sounds inhuman and even a little scary, like the quest for machine-based efficiency gone too far. But we’re looking into computer interviews not because we’re trying to skimp on time, but because we think they might actually predict future teacher performance better than our old model, a daylong in-person interview.
Well, yes. If by "interesting" you mean "inhuman." Now, it's not that they never believed in rigorous interviews and screening; they've got training screening and interview screening and even phone interviews. It's just that "when we took a hard look at whether performance during the screening process was connected to classroom performance, we found very little relationship."
Now, I can definitely draw a conclusion from that, and my conclusion is that TNTP's screening people are very, very bad at their jobs. Either they don't know what to look for in prospective fellows, or they make it really easy to game their system, or they just don't know how to draw impressions about the character and ability of other carbon-based life forms. I might send them for training. I might reassign them. I might fire them. But the brain trust at TNTP has a better idea.
Multiple choice questions.
Seriously.
Rather than relying on whatever meaning interviewers ascribed to an open-ended conversation, these “forced-choice” computer survey questions could give candidates—and us—a clear, specific and common set of terms and ideas to review regarding their skills, experience, aspirations and expectations for teaching as a career. They could replace part of our existing application screen to allow us to drill down on the handful of particular skills we know we’re looking for, like professionalism, critical thinking and receptivity to feedback, which our experience tells us that most effective teachers possess.
You know, my ordinary approach is to exaggerate outrageously in order to make my subject look foolish, but today I am stumped. And by "stumped" I mean "saddened and astonished." In addition to the virtues of drilling down and attempting to determine critical thinking with a bubble test, Cardullo goes on to tout the virtues of computer assessment because it can't be biased (only the person who writes the assessment questions can be biased-- seriously, what is this magical belief that when a person says something or writes something it has human bias, but as soon as you type his words into a computer, magical elves dance out and suck all the personal bias away, leaving nothing but sweet, sweet perfect objectivity. And by "sweet" I mean "imaginary"). (And yes, I know we're practically describing the Praxis test here, but I'll save curmudgeoning about that for another day.) There are so many things wrong here. Sooooooo many. Let's just pick two.
1) You know what the best way to gauge someone's ability to interact with other human beings? Have them interact with other human beings. Yes, all the human beings involved in that process will bring their own personal biases, ideas, personalities, human foibles, hair styles and histories into the process. So will all the students who walk into a classroom. This is how human beings are. Stop trying to create systems that don't allow for humans to be human! If your humans in charge of talking to the humans can't handle talking to humans, you need to hire different humans.
2) You know what's really easy to lie to? A bubble test. Your questions will be biased and you will be testing your candidate's ability to figure out what you want him to say. What you won't have is the benefit of seeing him roll his eyes and flip the bird at the computer screen. Your standardized test will tell you exactly nothing except how good he is at navigating bureaucratic baloney. That is, of course, excluding the candidates who will decide that any organization that tries to screen humans for a job that's all about working with humans without involving any humans-- well, that organization is to be avoided.
Cardullo acknowledges this last problem. It is possible that this approach might shrink the talent pool. "The idea of a computer predicting which candidates have the potential to become effective teachers might sound a little crazy." If by "a little crazy" you mean "unbelievably stupid," then yes, you are correct. But in reform land, they have fallen so far down the rabbit hole, they cannot see how far they've fallen and how little sense they make. And by "rabbit," I mean "stupid."
Can Better Questions Lead to Better Teachers?
By "better," TNTP means "very specific multiple choice questions asked by a computer." As it turns out, I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this question, so let's end the suspense right away. Jessica Cardullo, contributing writer to the TNTP blog, here is the answer to your question:
No.
Or possibly, "for the love of God, no." I was also tempted to go with "No, dummy," by I do not know Ms. Cardullo and for all I know, she's a highly intelligent person who was assigned to write about a dumb question.
TNTP is the big-boys-and-girls version of TFA; they take people who have an actual history of working for a living in some non-teaching job and try turning those folks into teachers. It's actually a far less ridiculous concept than TFA, and if TNTP didn't have the same corporate weenie connections as TFA, I might be inclined to take it seriously. But instead, they are run by the kind of people who come up with ideas like this one.
First we have to figure out what "better" means when applied to teachers. Cardullo starts out by contrasting broad questions such as "Why do you want to be a teacher" with focused questions such as "Which of these statements best describes you" followed by multiple choice answers from which to select. Or they could be asked agree-or-disagree statements such as “All students should be held to the same grade level standards,” and “teachers in high-need schools must be given equal resources to teachers in wealthier schools if they are going to be evaluated by the same standards.” And I'm starting to see their problem, because by "better," maybe we mean "fully aligned with the biases of this organization."
Cardullo assures us that lots of standardized test questions such as these will elicit a picture filled with "nuance" and "texture." Because I think we can all agree that when we really want a nuanced and textured picture of a person, we hand that person a set of standardized test questions.
But TNTP is really looking at this "interview pointillism."
One interesting possibility: using computer-based interviews, at least at the outset of someone’s application to one of our training programs, to ask these sorts of questions. It’s an interview model that sounds inhuman and even a little scary, like the quest for machine-based efficiency gone too far. But we’re looking into computer interviews not because we’re trying to skimp on time, but because we think they might actually predict future teacher performance better than our old model, a daylong in-person interview.
Well, yes. If by "interesting" you mean "inhuman." Now, it's not that they never believed in rigorous interviews and screening; they've got training screening and interview screening and even phone interviews. It's just that "when we took a hard look at whether performance during the screening process was connected to classroom performance, we found very little relationship."
Now, I can definitely draw a conclusion from that, and my conclusion is that TNTP's screening people are very, very bad at their jobs. Either they don't know what to look for in prospective fellows, or they make it really easy to game their system, or they just don't know how to draw impressions about the character and ability of other carbon-based life forms. I might send them for training. I might reassign them. I might fire them. But the brain trust at TNTP has a better idea.
Multiple choice questions.
Seriously.
Rather than relying on whatever meaning interviewers ascribed to an open-ended conversation, these “forced-choice” computer survey questions could give candidates—and us—a clear, specific and common set of terms and ideas to review regarding their skills, experience, aspirations and expectations for teaching as a career. They could replace part of our existing application screen to allow us to drill down on the handful of particular skills we know we’re looking for, like professionalism, critical thinking and receptivity to feedback, which our experience tells us that most effective teachers possess.
You know, my ordinary approach is to exaggerate outrageously in order to make my subject look foolish, but today I am stumped. And by "stumped" I mean "saddened and astonished." In addition to the virtues of drilling down and attempting to determine critical thinking with a bubble test, Cardullo goes on to tout the virtues of computer assessment because it can't be biased (only the person who writes the assessment questions can be biased-- seriously, what is this magical belief that when a person says something or writes something it has human bias, but as soon as you type his words into a computer, magical elves dance out and suck all the personal bias away, leaving nothing but sweet, sweet perfect objectivity. And by "sweet" I mean "imaginary"). (And yes, I know we're practically describing the Praxis test here, but I'll save curmudgeoning about that for another day.) There are so many things wrong here. Sooooooo many. Let's just pick two.
1) You know what the best way to gauge someone's ability to interact with other human beings? Have them interact with other human beings. Yes, all the human beings involved in that process will bring their own personal biases, ideas, personalities, human foibles, hair styles and histories into the process. So will all the students who walk into a classroom. This is how human beings are. Stop trying to create systems that don't allow for humans to be human! If your humans in charge of talking to the humans can't handle talking to humans, you need to hire different humans.
2) You know what's really easy to lie to? A bubble test. Your questions will be biased and you will be testing your candidate's ability to figure out what you want him to say. What you won't have is the benefit of seeing him roll his eyes and flip the bird at the computer screen. Your standardized test will tell you exactly nothing except how good he is at navigating bureaucratic baloney. That is, of course, excluding the candidates who will decide that any organization that tries to screen humans for a job that's all about working with humans without involving any humans-- well, that organization is to be avoided.
Cardullo acknowledges this last problem. It is possible that this approach might shrink the talent pool. "The idea of a computer predicting which candidates have the potential to become effective teachers might sound a little crazy." If by "a little crazy" you mean "unbelievably stupid," then yes, you are correct. But in reform land, they have fallen so far down the rabbit hole, they cannot see how far they've fallen and how little sense they make. And by "rabbit," I mean "stupid."
Duncan to Rest of US: Shut Up
Last week Arne Duncan and John King shared a bill at the National Action Network gathering in NYC. King's message was "Blah blah blah standards tests blah." Same old, same old. Duncan, however, field tested a new message that translates basically to, "All youse normals, just shut up."
John King's history as NY High Commissioner of Educationy Stuff is that of an old school politician-- he says dumb things and does dumb things-- and he never fails to disappoint. But while Duncan is consistent in his pursuit of bad policy, he's a new school post-Reagan pol who understands that if you say good things, you can just go ahead and do bad things that don't match. Except, of course, that he also gets bad cases of the dunderheads, and then dumb things just fall out of his mouth. So I didn't pay much attention to what King had to say; I could probably write it for him. But as quotes started to appear from the Random Noise Generator that is Arne's mouth, I perked up.
Part was pure boilerplate. "I challenge you to support your governor as he challenges the status quo and tries to raise standards, raise expectations, and evaluate and support your teachers and principals."
At the risk of setting off the redundant redundancy alarm myself, let me repeat that neither King nor any of the other Purveryors of Reformy Nonsense are fighting the status quo. The PoRN stars have had years upon years to show us all how their complex of standards based test driven high accountability baloney will save us all, and it isn't happening. NY is special because it has had every single element the PoRNs want-- the charters, the TFA, the testing, the teacher evaluations, the centrally produced teacher-proof CCSS curriculum materials (okay, they haven't killed tenure yet)-- and yet none of those programs has produced anything remotely like success. In New York State the reformy nonsense IS THE STATUS QUO.
King is not challenging that status quo. He is challenging all the people who hate the status quo he and Cuomo have bolted into place.
As a side note, I'll point out that apparently Arne's list is a bunch of things that King is going to do singlehandedly. There is no call for everyone to pitch in and help, no "we're all in it together to lift up the public schools that belong to all of us." Nope. Just "support this guy while he does these things." (He also tagged Cuomo as a brave national leader.)
Arne has been trying out a new talking point lately. It's on display in the latest #AskArne video (which, for the love of God,you should not watch, but I summarize it for you here). Here's the version he used in NY.
It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be rocky, there is going to be mistakes. People need to listen, they need to be humble in this and be nimble and make changes. But to sort of stop and go back to the bad old days simply doesn’t make sense to me.
This new rhetoric is familiar to anyone who, at the age of six, slipped on the ice, fell down, got up, and exclaimed, "I meant to do that. Shut up."
A year ago, in settings such as his infamous "How To Present The News About CCSS The Way I Want You To" speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the PoRN position was, "Anything you've heard about problems with CCSS stuff is a lie. This stuff is great, and we must implement it exactly the way it's laid out"
Last winter we had moved on to "Stay the course. Don't lose momentum! It's starting to work!"
Now we're swinging around to, "Well, of course there will be some problems and mistakes. We totally expected that. It's absolutely part of the master plan for implementation to involve the screwed up torpedoing teacher careers and crushing eight-year-old spirits." Okay, it doesn't generally get as specific as that last part, but our new talking point is basically, "Yeah, when I fixed your carburetor, I totally expected the front end of the car would burst into flames. That's how it's supposed to work. Shut up."
"People need to listen. They," Arne advises, "need to be humble...and nimble..."
People? Which people, I wonder. Not King, who we are supposed to cheer for, nor Cuomo who is a brave leader. Nor did Duncan use that oh-so-obscure construction "We." There isn't a bit of Arne's talk to suggest that what he means is "We reform pushers need to stop and check ourselves, our ideas, and our plans. We need to listen to the people who have been affected by our work and really consider how it's playing out on the ground. We need to be humble enough and flexible enough to be able to say that even though we really believed in a program, it needs to be changed in light of the reality that our children are facing." I mean, geeze, Arne-- if I can see all the way from rural PA what you should be saying, why can't you?
When, in the same speech, Arne characterizes parent concerns as "drama and noise," it becomes even clearer who is actually supposed to be doing the listening. And it's not Arne. No, when someone says, "I need to be humble and listen," it means "I have to do better." But when someone says, "You need to be humble and listen," it means, "Shut up. Remember your place. Stop all your drama and noise."
The "bad old days" flourish is, as always, insulting. I invite Arne to try it out in, say, Massachusetts where the bad old days featured better standards and better results than the current reformy mess. The only thing I like about the "bad old days" construction is that it's an admission that the "status quo" line is a lie. How can we "return" to the bad old days, if they are what we are fighting against right now?
It seems like a screw-up, but I'm sure it's exactly what he meant to say. I'll shut up now.
John King's history as NY High Commissioner of Educationy Stuff is that of an old school politician-- he says dumb things and does dumb things-- and he never fails to disappoint. But while Duncan is consistent in his pursuit of bad policy, he's a new school post-Reagan pol who understands that if you say good things, you can just go ahead and do bad things that don't match. Except, of course, that he also gets bad cases of the dunderheads, and then dumb things just fall out of his mouth. So I didn't pay much attention to what King had to say; I could probably write it for him. But as quotes started to appear from the Random Noise Generator that is Arne's mouth, I perked up.
Part was pure boilerplate. "I challenge you to support your governor as he challenges the status quo and tries to raise standards, raise expectations, and evaluate and support your teachers and principals."
At the risk of setting off the redundant redundancy alarm myself, let me repeat that neither King nor any of the other Purveryors of Reformy Nonsense are fighting the status quo. The PoRN stars have had years upon years to show us all how their complex of standards based test driven high accountability baloney will save us all, and it isn't happening. NY is special because it has had every single element the PoRNs want-- the charters, the TFA, the testing, the teacher evaluations, the centrally produced teacher-proof CCSS curriculum materials (okay, they haven't killed tenure yet)-- and yet none of those programs has produced anything remotely like success. In New York State the reformy nonsense IS THE STATUS QUO.
King is not challenging that status quo. He is challenging all the people who hate the status quo he and Cuomo have bolted into place.
As a side note, I'll point out that apparently Arne's list is a bunch of things that King is going to do singlehandedly. There is no call for everyone to pitch in and help, no "we're all in it together to lift up the public schools that belong to all of us." Nope. Just "support this guy while he does these things." (He also tagged Cuomo as a brave national leader.)
Arne has been trying out a new talking point lately. It's on display in the latest #AskArne video (which, for the love of God,you should not watch, but I summarize it for you here). Here's the version he used in NY.
It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be rocky, there is going to be mistakes. People need to listen, they need to be humble in this and be nimble and make changes. But to sort of stop and go back to the bad old days simply doesn’t make sense to me.
This new rhetoric is familiar to anyone who, at the age of six, slipped on the ice, fell down, got up, and exclaimed, "I meant to do that. Shut up."
A year ago, in settings such as his infamous "How To Present The News About CCSS The Way I Want You To" speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the PoRN position was, "Anything you've heard about problems with CCSS stuff is a lie. This stuff is great, and we must implement it exactly the way it's laid out"
Last winter we had moved on to "Stay the course. Don't lose momentum! It's starting to work!"
Now we're swinging around to, "Well, of course there will be some problems and mistakes. We totally expected that. It's absolutely part of the master plan for implementation to involve the screwed up torpedoing teacher careers and crushing eight-year-old spirits." Okay, it doesn't generally get as specific as that last part, but our new talking point is basically, "Yeah, when I fixed your carburetor, I totally expected the front end of the car would burst into flames. That's how it's supposed to work. Shut up."
"People need to listen. They," Arne advises, "need to be humble...and nimble..."
People? Which people, I wonder. Not King, who we are supposed to cheer for, nor Cuomo who is a brave leader. Nor did Duncan use that oh-so-obscure construction "We." There isn't a bit of Arne's talk to suggest that what he means is "We reform pushers need to stop and check ourselves, our ideas, and our plans. We need to listen to the people who have been affected by our work and really consider how it's playing out on the ground. We need to be humble enough and flexible enough to be able to say that even though we really believed in a program, it needs to be changed in light of the reality that our children are facing." I mean, geeze, Arne-- if I can see all the way from rural PA what you should be saying, why can't you?
When, in the same speech, Arne characterizes parent concerns as "drama and noise," it becomes even clearer who is actually supposed to be doing the listening. And it's not Arne. No, when someone says, "I need to be humble and listen," it means "I have to do better." But when someone says, "You need to be humble and listen," it means, "Shut up. Remember your place. Stop all your drama and noise."
The "bad old days" flourish is, as always, insulting. I invite Arne to try it out in, say, Massachusetts where the bad old days featured better standards and better results than the current reformy mess. The only thing I like about the "bad old days" construction is that it's an admission that the "status quo" line is a lie. How can we "return" to the bad old days, if they are what we are fighting against right now?
It seems like a screw-up, but I'm sure it's exactly what he meant to say. I'll shut up now.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Dead Wood & Tenure
Some people want to insist that schools can be run like businesses. We can get into all the reasons they are wrong another day; for today let's go ahead and say that there are things for Education Leaders to learn from businessmen.
W. Edwards Deming used to like to quote from his own mentor, Peter Scholtes, in talking about deadwood in an organization. The observation came out in many phrasings over the years, but the basic point was this:
So you're firing the deadwood in your organization. Was it dead when you hired it? Or did you hire a live tree and then kill it?
Gregg Stocker is a business guy who has worked primarily in the oil and gas biz. He wrote the book Avoiding the Corporate Death Spiral: Identifying and Eliminating the Signs of Decline and contributed to The Lean Certification Handbook. He writes a blog about lean management entitled Lessons in Lean, and I have no idea what thoughts he has about public ed (he's a Demmings-style standardization guy, so we might disagree on several issues, actually). But he did write a blog post expanding on the deadwood problem that I find interesting in the context of current tenure debates.
Who is responsible for the poor performers in an organization? These are the people about whom leaders regularly complain and blame for many of the company’s problems. According to Jack Welch, they are the 10% of the workforce who need to improve or be fired.
Stocker talks about holding leaders responsible for the poor performance of team members.
I have found that, in many organizations, the responsibility to coach and develop talent is much lower on the list of priorities than documenting and replacing the poor performers.
Compare this concept in management to the fake Vergara lawsuit. The Vergara lawsuit tries to hide behind Civil Rights rhetoric and claim that schools lack the managerial power to fire bad teachers. And yet there is no proof anywhere in sight that firing poor performers (even if we can agree on who they are, which is a huge if, but let's move on anyway) improves the organization. The Jack Welch model of firing your way to excellence has been widely discounted and abandoned in the business world; even Microsoft decided that stack ranking was bad for the business.
But as always, public education is where bad management theories go to die, so we are being told from Kansas to California to Pennsylvania that public school systems need to fire their way to excellence.
In her interview with Josh Edelson of Salon regarding the Vergara case, Linda Darling-Hammon hits this pretty clearly, both in terms of firing:
First of all, just to be clear: It is extremely easy to get rid of teachers. You can dismiss a teacher for no reason at all in the first two years of their employment. And so there is no reason for a district ever to tenure a “grossly ineffective” teacher — as the language of the lawsuit goes — because you know if a teacher is grossly ineffective pretty quickly, and it’s negligence on the part of the school district if they continue to employ somebody who falls into that classification when they have no barriers to [firing them]. And districts that are well-run, and have good teacher evaluation systems in place, can get rid of veteran teachers that don’t meet a standard and [don’t] improve after that point.
She's also crystal clear about the importance of teacher development:
But in fact, the ability to keep teachers and develop them into excellent teachers is the more important goal and strategy for getting a high-quality teaching force. Because if what you’re really running is a churn factory, where you’re just bringing people in and, you know, firing them, good people don’t want to work in a place like that. So it’s going to be hard for you to recruit. Second of all, you’re likely not paying enough attention to developing good teachers into great teachers, and reasonable teachers into good teachers.
Run Schools Like a Business fans should note that it is Darling-Hammond who is in tune with sound business theory. Stocker lists five steps that help good leadership keep the forest alive:
1) Make it difficult to fire someone for performance issues.
2) Recognize terminations as a failure of the system.
3) Establish systems and support for team member development.
4) Make it clear that developing team members is a responsibility of leadership.
5) Promote based on leadership abilities.
The first and second steps are the most striking of the lot. In the first one, his full meaning is that it should be easier to fix someone than simply fire them. The second is an invitation to examine your hiring practices-- if you keep hiring dead wood, that's a hiring problem. This is extra true in school districts where the interview process essentially extends over tow or three years of pre-tenure, during which we have ample time to spot the unfixables and send them packing.
Stocker wraps up with this thought:
Besides showing respect for people, placing a high priority on coaching and development will help the organization improve performance by reducing turnover, improving morale, and engaging more people in improvement efforts.
Imagine how different things would be playing out if the Vergara defendants were in court demanding that poor schools (you know-- the ones that none of the Vergara Nine actually attend) were given the support, training, and development programs needed to create highly excellent teaching staffs. Imagine if the argument were that schools were failing students by repeatedly firing teachers instead of keeping them and investing the time, resources and support in turning those teachers into exemplars, or if it were the hiring practices of the school district were on trial.
In other words, if we wanted to talk about bad teachers in public schools, we could consider some strategies that might actually help instead of the one that everybody is fairly certain will not help at all. We would still have a lot to talk about, and some of that conversation would be difficult and contentious. But it would be far more useful than this thin smokescreen being laid down simply to cover one more attempt to create a world where teachers are churned and burned so that schools can be cheap and staffs can be cowed and obedient.
W. Edwards Deming used to like to quote from his own mentor, Peter Scholtes, in talking about deadwood in an organization. The observation came out in many phrasings over the years, but the basic point was this:
So you're firing the deadwood in your organization. Was it dead when you hired it? Or did you hire a live tree and then kill it?
Gregg Stocker is a business guy who has worked primarily in the oil and gas biz. He wrote the book Avoiding the Corporate Death Spiral: Identifying and Eliminating the Signs of Decline and contributed to The Lean Certification Handbook. He writes a blog about lean management entitled Lessons in Lean, and I have no idea what thoughts he has about public ed (he's a Demmings-style standardization guy, so we might disagree on several issues, actually). But he did write a blog post expanding on the deadwood problem that I find interesting in the context of current tenure debates.
Who is responsible for the poor performers in an organization? These are the people about whom leaders regularly complain and blame for many of the company’s problems. According to Jack Welch, they are the 10% of the workforce who need to improve or be fired.
Stocker talks about holding leaders responsible for the poor performance of team members.
I have found that, in many organizations, the responsibility to coach and develop talent is much lower on the list of priorities than documenting and replacing the poor performers.
Compare this concept in management to the fake Vergara lawsuit. The Vergara lawsuit tries to hide behind Civil Rights rhetoric and claim that schools lack the managerial power to fire bad teachers. And yet there is no proof anywhere in sight that firing poor performers (even if we can agree on who they are, which is a huge if, but let's move on anyway) improves the organization. The Jack Welch model of firing your way to excellence has been widely discounted and abandoned in the business world; even Microsoft decided that stack ranking was bad for the business.
But as always, public education is where bad management theories go to die, so we are being told from Kansas to California to Pennsylvania that public school systems need to fire their way to excellence.
In her interview with Josh Edelson of Salon regarding the Vergara case, Linda Darling-Hammon hits this pretty clearly, both in terms of firing:
First of all, just to be clear: It is extremely easy to get rid of teachers. You can dismiss a teacher for no reason at all in the first two years of their employment. And so there is no reason for a district ever to tenure a “grossly ineffective” teacher — as the language of the lawsuit goes — because you know if a teacher is grossly ineffective pretty quickly, and it’s negligence on the part of the school district if they continue to employ somebody who falls into that classification when they have no barriers to [firing them]. And districts that are well-run, and have good teacher evaluation systems in place, can get rid of veteran teachers that don’t meet a standard and [don’t] improve after that point.
She's also crystal clear about the importance of teacher development:
But in fact, the ability to keep teachers and develop them into excellent teachers is the more important goal and strategy for getting a high-quality teaching force. Because if what you’re really running is a churn factory, where you’re just bringing people in and, you know, firing them, good people don’t want to work in a place like that. So it’s going to be hard for you to recruit. Second of all, you’re likely not paying enough attention to developing good teachers into great teachers, and reasonable teachers into good teachers.
Run Schools Like a Business fans should note that it is Darling-Hammond who is in tune with sound business theory. Stocker lists five steps that help good leadership keep the forest alive:
1) Make it difficult to fire someone for performance issues.
2) Recognize terminations as a failure of the system.
3) Establish systems and support for team member development.
4) Make it clear that developing team members is a responsibility of leadership.
5) Promote based on leadership abilities.
The first and second steps are the most striking of the lot. In the first one, his full meaning is that it should be easier to fix someone than simply fire them. The second is an invitation to examine your hiring practices-- if you keep hiring dead wood, that's a hiring problem. This is extra true in school districts where the interview process essentially extends over tow or three years of pre-tenure, during which we have ample time to spot the unfixables and send them packing.
Stocker wraps up with this thought:
Besides showing respect for people, placing a high priority on coaching and development will help the organization improve performance by reducing turnover, improving morale, and engaging more people in improvement efforts.
Imagine how different things would be playing out if the Vergara defendants were in court demanding that poor schools (you know-- the ones that none of the Vergara Nine actually attend) were given the support, training, and development programs needed to create highly excellent teaching staffs. Imagine if the argument were that schools were failing students by repeatedly firing teachers instead of keeping them and investing the time, resources and support in turning those teachers into exemplars, or if it were the hiring practices of the school district were on trial.
In other words, if we wanted to talk about bad teachers in public schools, we could consider some strategies that might actually help instead of the one that everybody is fairly certain will not help at all. We would still have a lot to talk about, and some of that conversation would be difficult and contentious. But it would be far more useful than this thin smokescreen being laid down simply to cover one more attempt to create a world where teachers are churned and burned so that schools can be cheap and staffs can be cowed and obedient.
Anti-Test & Pro-Core
I have explained repeatedly why I don't believe that the CCSS can be cut free from The Standardized Test Program that accompanies them (both here and here). But it really should come as no surprise that a large (and possibly growing) number of people are calling for just that. I think it's because they're a little fuzzy on what CCSS actually is.
We've seen this in the world of ed reform before. In decades past, when a new reformy idea appeared, a large number of people looked at it like a big projection screen. College professors see an opportunity to plug in their favorite educational theory. Consultants see a chance to shift some of the language in their presentations and make some new money riding the coattails of the Big New Thing. Even classsroom teachers get to thinking, "Now I can finally do that unit with widgets and flying squirrels that I've always wanted to do."
And beyond the projection problem, each reformy blitz, by its top-down nature, has come with its own game of telephone. The folks at the top tell their underlings, who tell their middle managers, who tell the state ed department regional functionaries, who tell the principals, who tell department heads, and by the time we arrive at the classroom teacher, "Implement outcomes based education with clear performance standards" has become "Staple hedgehogs to waffles in the granulator."
CCSS has been prime for both of these factors. It is the top-downiest ed program ever, providing superior opportunity for garbling the message. And the messaging was so vague and so filled with puffery that many, many people simply heard, "Core blah blah blah CRITICAL THINKING blah blah blah blah AWESOMENESS blah blah blah QUALITY." But of course, everyone has a separate idea of what "awesome quality" looks like.
I am convinced that the vast majority of CCSS supporters have no idea what the standards actually say. In all fairness, that's also true of many opponents, but still, to really look at the CCSS is to realize they are the bad work of some unwise amateurs, so the bus runs only one way-- from Supporterville to Land of Disenchantment.
These supporters, whether they're rich content fans like Sol Stern, or "now I can teach thinky stuff" like Kathy Powers, or creative innovative teacher fans like Starr Sackstein, or more rigor for those darn kids (now where's my check) folks like the Fordham Institute gang-- what they see when they look at the Common Core is not actually there.
In earlier reforms, this kind of disunity of vision was not a big deal. Everyone went about his business, wrestling for his vision, and classroom teachers just sort of sorted it out. Nobody knew for sure what Outcomes Based Education meant, ever. There was no single controlling document to bind everyone to a single vision.
But the People In Charge saw this, and saw that it was Not Good. They wanted more uniformity, more control of the process, and so The Test. "You will teach to The Test," they said. "Or else."
So now The Test is the controlling document, and for the first time in reformy history, people are faced with an independent corroboration of what the True Face of Reform looks like. And all the people who had their own happy vision of what the imagined Common Core should be are freaking out.
"But-- but-- but that's not what I meant at all!" Like somebody discovering that their match.com date does NOT look like Brad Pitt, they are shocked. All the Sterns and the Powers and Sacksteins and Petrillis are exclaiming, "Well, there must be some mistake! This test is not at all what the Common Core Test is supposed to look like."
Sorry, folks. Yes. Yes, it is.
Granted, they're entitled to some of their shock. The PARCC, SBA, and various state knockoffs are deeply stunted. But you didn't really think we were going to get measures of collaboration or true close reading in there, did you? "Oh," cry the supporters of the imaginary CCSS in their heads, "but this isn't how I thought it would be at all. You are not my gentleman caller! There must be some mistake!"
And so they want to decouple, to delay, to rewrite, to pull pack, to somehow pry the test off the face of the imginary CCSS that they love so much, because this test, this ugly stupid miserable unfair invalid pointless data-mining child-abusing test is sucking the life out of their CCSS dreams!
I am past wanting a reality check for these folks. I cheer them on. I hope they do damage the test, pull it back, take it away. For one thing, it's doing serious damage as an assessment tool. For another, removing the tests hurts the CCSS.
See, I've come to realize I had it wrong. What I said was "You can't decouple the standards from the tests," but what I meant was, "You can't decouple the standards from the test without damaging both of them." So bring it on. Decouple away. Strip those tests and send them back to their cave. The tests, as deluded supporters of CCSS are learning, are the big ugly fangs of the CCSS regime. Pull the tests, and you pull the teeth. Let them attack the tests while believing they won't hurt the CCSS in the process. I welcome their assistance, witting or un.
Without the testing program, the CCSS are just a big bunch of not-really-enforceable suggestions about what to cover. Everyone would go back to pursuing their own personal imaginary version of what they mean, and in disorder there would be weakness, weak national standards yielding to de facto local standards. Without the testing teeth, the CCSS would be, in the words of the great philosopher Yukon Cornelius, a humble bumble.
We've seen this in the world of ed reform before. In decades past, when a new reformy idea appeared, a large number of people looked at it like a big projection screen. College professors see an opportunity to plug in their favorite educational theory. Consultants see a chance to shift some of the language in their presentations and make some new money riding the coattails of the Big New Thing. Even classsroom teachers get to thinking, "Now I can finally do that unit with widgets and flying squirrels that I've always wanted to do."
And beyond the projection problem, each reformy blitz, by its top-down nature, has come with its own game of telephone. The folks at the top tell their underlings, who tell their middle managers, who tell the state ed department regional functionaries, who tell the principals, who tell department heads, and by the time we arrive at the classroom teacher, "Implement outcomes based education with clear performance standards" has become "Staple hedgehogs to waffles in the granulator."
CCSS has been prime for both of these factors. It is the top-downiest ed program ever, providing superior opportunity for garbling the message. And the messaging was so vague and so filled with puffery that many, many people simply heard, "Core blah blah blah CRITICAL THINKING blah blah blah blah AWESOMENESS blah blah blah QUALITY." But of course, everyone has a separate idea of what "awesome quality" looks like.
I am convinced that the vast majority of CCSS supporters have no idea what the standards actually say. In all fairness, that's also true of many opponents, but still, to really look at the CCSS is to realize they are the bad work of some unwise amateurs, so the bus runs only one way-- from Supporterville to Land of Disenchantment.
These supporters, whether they're rich content fans like Sol Stern, or "now I can teach thinky stuff" like Kathy Powers, or creative innovative teacher fans like Starr Sackstein, or more rigor for those darn kids (now where's my check) folks like the Fordham Institute gang-- what they see when they look at the Common Core is not actually there.
In earlier reforms, this kind of disunity of vision was not a big deal. Everyone went about his business, wrestling for his vision, and classroom teachers just sort of sorted it out. Nobody knew for sure what Outcomes Based Education meant, ever. There was no single controlling document to bind everyone to a single vision.
But the People In Charge saw this, and saw that it was Not Good. They wanted more uniformity, more control of the process, and so The Test. "You will teach to The Test," they said. "Or else."
So now The Test is the controlling document, and for the first time in reformy history, people are faced with an independent corroboration of what the True Face of Reform looks like. And all the people who had their own happy vision of what the imagined Common Core should be are freaking out.
"But-- but-- but that's not what I meant at all!" Like somebody discovering that their match.com date does NOT look like Brad Pitt, they are shocked. All the Sterns and the Powers and Sacksteins and Petrillis are exclaiming, "Well, there must be some mistake! This test is not at all what the Common Core Test is supposed to look like."
Sorry, folks. Yes. Yes, it is.
Granted, they're entitled to some of their shock. The PARCC, SBA, and various state knockoffs are deeply stunted. But you didn't really think we were going to get measures of collaboration or true close reading in there, did you? "Oh," cry the supporters of the imaginary CCSS in their heads, "but this isn't how I thought it would be at all. You are not my gentleman caller! There must be some mistake!"
And so they want to decouple, to delay, to rewrite, to pull pack, to somehow pry the test off the face of the imginary CCSS that they love so much, because this test, this ugly stupid miserable unfair invalid pointless data-mining child-abusing test is sucking the life out of their CCSS dreams!
I am past wanting a reality check for these folks. I cheer them on. I hope they do damage the test, pull it back, take it away. For one thing, it's doing serious damage as an assessment tool. For another, removing the tests hurts the CCSS.
See, I've come to realize I had it wrong. What I said was "You can't decouple the standards from the tests," but what I meant was, "You can't decouple the standards from the test without damaging both of them." So bring it on. Decouple away. Strip those tests and send them back to their cave. The tests, as deluded supporters of CCSS are learning, are the big ugly fangs of the CCSS regime. Pull the tests, and you pull the teeth. Let them attack the tests while believing they won't hurt the CCSS in the process. I welcome their assistance, witting or un.
Without the testing program, the CCSS are just a big bunch of not-really-enforceable suggestions about what to cover. Everyone would go back to pursuing their own personal imaginary version of what they mean, and in disorder there would be weakness, weak national standards yielding to de facto local standards. Without the testing teeth, the CCSS would be, in the words of the great philosopher Yukon Cornelius, a humble bumble.
Thursday, April 10, 2014
A Mercedes Schneider Reader
When it comes to fired-up scholarship, passionate digging out of detail, and supplying simple facts for the Resistance, it is hard to beat Mercedes Schneider.
Schneider has one of the most varied backgrounds in the field. She started out as a classroom teacher of German and English, then acquired a PhD in applied statistics and research methods from the University of Northern Colorado and moved to Indiana to teach at Ball State. But there were curves yet to negotiate; Katrina hit her family head on. She decided to go home, and took a job teaching high school English in 2007. The university let her know that professors don't get to recover from that sort of step backwards. Writes Schneider, "But I love to teach. High school, I decided, would be fine with me."
When I started wading into the school reform swamp, I realized that many of the posts that I kept returning to for facts, data, numbers, details, context and sequence-- so many of them were on her blog. Schneider has a book coming out sometime this month, and I have no doubt that it will be valuable and necessary reading for everyone who cares about public education and what is happening to it. But until it arrives, I've collected some of my favorite Schneider pieces. If you are not a regular Schneider reader, you should be, and these are a fine place to start.
Schneider has one of the most varied backgrounds in the field. She started out as a classroom teacher of German and English, then acquired a PhD in applied statistics and research methods from the University of Northern Colorado and moved to Indiana to teach at Ball State. But there were curves yet to negotiate; Katrina hit her family head on. She decided to go home, and took a job teaching high school English in 2007. The university let her know that professors don't get to recover from that sort of step backwards. Writes Schneider, "But I love to teach. High school, I decided, would be fine with me."
When I started wading into the school reform swamp, I realized that many of the posts that I kept returning to for facts, data, numbers, details, context and sequence-- so many of them were on her blog. Schneider has a book coming out sometime this month, and I have no doubt that it will be valuable and necessary reading for everyone who cares about public education and what is happening to it. But until it arrives, I've collected some of my favorite Schneider pieces. If you are not a regular Schneider reader, you should be, and these are a fine place to start.
Cheating as We Worship: The Almighty Standardized Test
A personal but still fact-loaded reflection on the many ways in which the worship of The Test leads everybody involved to cheat in a variety of creative and not-always-obvious ways.Twelve Embarrassing Years of NCLB and RTTT: Time for Arne to Blame USDOE
Schneider examines the long list of people that Arne likes to blame for the alleged problems in education, from moms to teachers to lawmakers to-- well, you name it. And then she lays out exactly how each of those attempts to shift blame is a lie.Success Academy Tax Documents: Moskowitz Can Afford the Rent
Here's an example of what Schneider does so well. While everyone else was trading allegations and rhetoric about what Eva Moskowitz could or couldn't afford and her charters did or didn't need, Schneider went to the paperwork, dug through the publicly available tax records, and published the real numbers.NCTQ Letter Grades and the Reformer Agenda–Part VIII
After this piece had run, NCTQ removed Michelle Rhee from its board of directors, but this remains one of the best dissection of Rhee's dismal career, going back to her own stories about her failed attempt to be a TFA classroom body.The Common Core Memorandum of Understanding: What a Story
Still one of the most jaw-dropping narrative-destroying pieces of investigative journalism anyone has done about the genesis of the Common Core. Schneider unearth's the memorandum of understanding that lays out who will create them and how they will be implemented. This is your go-to link for every time someone tries to tell you that the Core are the result of a state-led initiative.Gates Money and Common Core– Part VI
I'll give you part six so you can work your way backward through the links to the other sections. Schneider has done massive amounts of work tracking the Gates money and discovering where it went. Who did Gates pay off? This series lays it out for you, thanks to what had to be long and tedious research.
More on the Common Core: Achieve, Inc., and Then Some
More on the core and the roots from which it emerged, with particular attention to Achieve as well as some of the principle architects.
Beware of Data Sharing Cheerleaders Offering Webinars
An example of the kind of respect and attention that Schneider draws in the education world. Come for this column, but stay for the comments in which the some of the top scholars and business leaders of the data mining world get into a spirited discussion of the issues at hand. You could pay for a fancy webinar and not see a discussion this exciting and illuminating.
There are plenty of other classics-- some great work on the data track miners and a whole cast of reformy characters whose names you may not know. Schneider employs her tireless research and her scathing wit on each. Read these, explore some more, and get ready to grab a copy of her book the moment it becomes available.
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