(This started out as part of this previous column, but it got away from me)
We've been hearing a ton of verbage spewed out over the past umpteen years about failing schools. We need Common Core because our schools are failing. We can't go back to the failing schools of yesteryear. Failing failing failing. Well, the next time somebody tells you that schools are failing, please ask them this for me--
Failing at what?
Is there, for instance, new research to suggest that Americans are largely more unhappy and discontented than in the past, and it's all because of their education? Are we failing to help our children grow up mentally healthy?
Is there a research-based link between high school education quality and the divorce rate? Are we failing to teach our children how to be good marriage partners?
Are we failing to teach children how to properly appreciate and even make music?
Are we failing to raise children who are physically fit and active in sports?
Are we failing to raise children with a clear and well-developed sense of personal responsibility infused with a strong moral compass?
Are we failing to raise young people with a well-developed sense of empathy?
Are we failing to teach children how to self-direct, self-educate, and self-assess as they dive into the vast sea of information and ideas in front of them?
No. I mean, it's clear that we are not 100% on any of those measures, but that's not what the "failing" in "failing schools" means. You know what the "failing" in "failing schools" invariably means?
We are failing to teach students to get really good tests on standardized tests.
We are failing to provide corporations with workers who can be easily absorbed and shed.
And-- well, I've got nothing else. That's it. Scratch the failing schools rhetoric, and it comes down to those two things. That's it. That's the massive failure of American public education.
Our definition of success has become so meager, so narrow, so sad and small. And yet, because it is so narrow, we easily fail. CCSS gives us a system in which a student who walks on water will be marked as failing his swimming test. No, our big failure is to recognize the richness and variety, the beauty and awesomeness that is the full range of human expression and ability and experience.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
What Is "Working"?
At first this post started with a long embedded twitter conversation between @TeacherSabrina and @MichaelPetrilli, spinning off from a discussion of how charters and closings lead to re-segregation, but I've narrowed it down to a most revealing exchange:
@TeacherSabrina "Who should get to decide what works and what doesn't?"
@Michael Petrilli "What works and what doesn't work is a matter of good research."
And there is one of the big disconnects on the side of the Reformsters. Because what works and what doesn't work is not a matter of good research at all. Or rather, the research doesn't matter.
Only one thing matters-- the definition of "works."
Does this raggedy philips head screwdriver work? That depends on whether I want to use it to unscrew screws or punch holes in a soup can. Does telling my wife she's fat work? That depends on whether I want to make her happy or angry.
If I get to define what "working" looks like, all the measuring, testing, researching, test tubial navalgazing introexamination that follows is secondary. Part of what gets folks' backs up about the Reformsters is that they start with, "You do not understand how a school is supposed to work. You are doing school wrong."
The most fundamental part of local control is the community definition of what a working school looks like. The districts under the thumb of colonizers, districts like Newark and Philadelphia, are districts where the community definition has been thrown out.
Imagine a group of parents get together to define what a working school looks like. "It's in the community, so people can walk there. And students are at home in the evenings, learning the responsibilities of being part of a family (however messed up it may be). Student groups do community service in their own community, and students are able to be active in community groups based in the same neighborhood where they live."
Now let's do some scientific research to measure in sciency way how well schools stack up, and lookee here-- Philips Exeter Academy and other elite boarding schools all fail. They are all schools that don't work.
Research doesn't mean jack.
Or rather, by the time the research starts, the people who commissioned it have already picked the winners and losers. Common Core stacks the deck before it even gets to the actual standards, because it defines up front that a working education is only one that prepares the student for a job-- period (yes, yes, or for college-- defined down as the gateway to a higher class of job).
Don't tell me what the research says. Tell me what yardstick you set up for the research.
The generally drift of Petrilli's argument was that bringing in outsiders to replace non-working schools with working schools is a win. But that process doesn't replace a non-working school with a working school-- it replaces the community's definition of "working" with the outsider's definition. It's invasive and extraordinarily patronizing (how do you imagine Philips Exeter's parents would greet an outside that stopped by to tell them their school was failing)?
Are there schools that are failing? Sure. Spectacularly in some cases. You know what those schools have in common? A community that knows it. They don't need Reformsters to come in and tell them to sit down and shut up because they don't run the [your district's name] schools. They don't need someone to come shove them out of the way so that their judgment can be replaced with the judgment of someone superior. They already have all the overly politicized bloated self-important bureaucratic monstrosities they need.
That's why parents in some urban districts initially welcomed reformsters with open arms-- they thought the reformsters were going to help them make schools work. Instead, reformsters have steadily told them that they don't know how a school is supposed to work, and they should all shut up and accept the substitution of other standards for their own. After all, it's supported by research.
@TeacherSabrina "Who should get to decide what works and what doesn't?"
@Michael Petrilli "What works and what doesn't work is a matter of good research."
And there is one of the big disconnects on the side of the Reformsters. Because what works and what doesn't work is not a matter of good research at all. Or rather, the research doesn't matter.
Only one thing matters-- the definition of "works."
Does this raggedy philips head screwdriver work? That depends on whether I want to use it to unscrew screws or punch holes in a soup can. Does telling my wife she's fat work? That depends on whether I want to make her happy or angry.
If I get to define what "working" looks like, all the measuring, testing, researching, test tubial navalgazing introexamination that follows is secondary. Part of what gets folks' backs up about the Reformsters is that they start with, "You do not understand how a school is supposed to work. You are doing school wrong."
The most fundamental part of local control is the community definition of what a working school looks like. The districts under the thumb of colonizers, districts like Newark and Philadelphia, are districts where the community definition has been thrown out.
Imagine a group of parents get together to define what a working school looks like. "It's in the community, so people can walk there. And students are at home in the evenings, learning the responsibilities of being part of a family (however messed up it may be). Student groups do community service in their own community, and students are able to be active in community groups based in the same neighborhood where they live."
Now let's do some scientific research to measure in sciency way how well schools stack up, and lookee here-- Philips Exeter Academy and other elite boarding schools all fail. They are all schools that don't work.
Research doesn't mean jack.
Or rather, by the time the research starts, the people who commissioned it have already picked the winners and losers. Common Core stacks the deck before it even gets to the actual standards, because it defines up front that a working education is only one that prepares the student for a job-- period (yes, yes, or for college-- defined down as the gateway to a higher class of job).
Don't tell me what the research says. Tell me what yardstick you set up for the research.
The generally drift of Petrilli's argument was that bringing in outsiders to replace non-working schools with working schools is a win. But that process doesn't replace a non-working school with a working school-- it replaces the community's definition of "working" with the outsider's definition. It's invasive and extraordinarily patronizing (how do you imagine Philips Exeter's parents would greet an outside that stopped by to tell them their school was failing)?
Are there schools that are failing? Sure. Spectacularly in some cases. You know what those schools have in common? A community that knows it. They don't need Reformsters to come in and tell them to sit down and shut up because they don't run the [your district's name] schools. They don't need someone to come shove them out of the way so that their judgment can be replaced with the judgment of someone superior. They already have all the overly politicized bloated self-important bureaucratic monstrosities they need.
That's why parents in some urban districts initially welcomed reformsters with open arms-- they thought the reformsters were going to help them make schools work. Instead, reformsters have steadily told them that they don't know how a school is supposed to work, and they should all shut up and accept the substitution of other standards for their own. After all, it's supported by research.
US DOE Ambassadors!
US Department of Edumacation press release
There has been much discussion lately of our Principal Ambassador program, a program in which US DOE-indoctrinated principals are inserted into school settings where they can sort of work for the school district while spreading the good word of Common Core Etc. This was spun off of our successful Teacher Ambassador program which replaced classroom teachers with special US DOE agents. Both programs were conjured up as a way tokeep local districts in line provide federal guidance.
Some have said that these programs are classic Duncan Vaporware-- programs that are announced with some fanfare and then ignored, almost as if few people in the real world were actually interested in Arne's great ideas, or as if the department is more interested in announcing things than actually accomplishing things. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, we are pleased to announce several more Ambassador programs!
Ambassador Librarians
Ambassador librarians will be embedded in school libraries, where they will make sure that students are following federal guidelines for reading selections. Should a student attempt to check out a book below his grade level for some lame reason like "he enjoys it," the ambassador librarian will apply a federal ruler rigorously to the child's hand.
Ambassador Lunch Ladies
Ambassador lunch ladies will be place in cafeteria lunch lines, where they will make sure that every student takes some federal cheese (motto: still smelly after thirty years). Ambassador lunch ladies will also circle through the dining area to scold all students who have not eaten all their vegetables. They will also be responsible for monitoring the federal grumpiness guidelines, and report to the department any other lunch ladies who are too often cheerful.
Ambassador Bus Drivers
Ambassador bus drivers will be responsible both for making sure the bus travels where it is supposed to and also for making sure that all the passengers are happy about it. Ambassador bus drivers will be trained in leading the new federally-produced cheerily-engineered songs "If You're Happy I Should Know It" and "It's For Your Own Good."
Ambassador Parent
Let's face it. One of the major factors in student learning is the home situation, and we have learned that many of you weak, lying, sad excuses for parental units would rather talk about "love" and "support" and your precious baby than give the child the rigorous ass-kicking he probably needs. So this federal program will put an additional federally-funded parent in your home to monitor your proper use of motivational techniques and to oversee homework production. Families will also be instructed in proper use of federal bed time standards as well as the federally-approved manner for tucking small children in without exceeding the federally-supported number of bedtime kisses.
The bottom line here is that we can't trust you yahoos to do anything right. We give you all these great programs and instructions and you insist on making your own choices about your own lives and acting as if the federal government doesn't know best. Time after time, we come up with awesome programs like Common Core-- dammit, I can never remember that third word-- what was it-well, never mind, because now that I think about it, we totally DID NOT come up with that one. But we provide these swell programs and people don't just adopt them.
So why shouldn't we send some of our people out there to nudge you along? Why shouldn't we send someone out to help you make the right choice (and to let us know that you're making it)?
These programs are going to be hugely popular. People want to do the right thing, and we know what the right thing to do is, so everybody can be happy!
Our only concern is that demand might be so high that we won't have enough ambassadors to go around. But we have a plan-- we could use distance learning techniques and if an actual ambassador isn't available for your location, we can set up web-cams and internet linkage. Ambassador-cam can be your friendly help and our friendly eyes.
With those types of resources, we can eventually launch the last of the ambassador program-- one that creates an ambassador sibling. Someone friendly and close to you, to help you through every tough situation while keeping you on the right path. It would probably be an older sibling. Probably a boy. Yeah, that's the ticket.
There has been much discussion lately of our Principal Ambassador program, a program in which US DOE-indoctrinated principals are inserted into school settings where they can sort of work for the school district while spreading the good word of Common Core Etc. This was spun off of our successful Teacher Ambassador program which replaced classroom teachers with special US DOE agents. Both programs were conjured up as a way to
Some have said that these programs are classic Duncan Vaporware-- programs that are announced with some fanfare and then ignored, almost as if few people in the real world were actually interested in Arne's great ideas, or as if the department is more interested in announcing things than actually accomplishing things. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, we are pleased to announce several more Ambassador programs!
Ambassador Librarians
Ambassador librarians will be embedded in school libraries, where they will make sure that students are following federal guidelines for reading selections. Should a student attempt to check out a book below his grade level for some lame reason like "he enjoys it," the ambassador librarian will apply a federal ruler rigorously to the child's hand.
Ambassador Lunch Ladies
Ambassador lunch ladies will be place in cafeteria lunch lines, where they will make sure that every student takes some federal cheese (motto: still smelly after thirty years). Ambassador lunch ladies will also circle through the dining area to scold all students who have not eaten all their vegetables. They will also be responsible for monitoring the federal grumpiness guidelines, and report to the department any other lunch ladies who are too often cheerful.
Ambassador Bus Drivers
Ambassador bus drivers will be responsible both for making sure the bus travels where it is supposed to and also for making sure that all the passengers are happy about it. Ambassador bus drivers will be trained in leading the new federally-produced cheerily-engineered songs "If You're Happy I Should Know It" and "It's For Your Own Good."
Ambassador Parent
Let's face it. One of the major factors in student learning is the home situation, and we have learned that many of you weak, lying, sad excuses for parental units would rather talk about "love" and "support" and your precious baby than give the child the rigorous ass-kicking he probably needs. So this federal program will put an additional federally-funded parent in your home to monitor your proper use of motivational techniques and to oversee homework production. Families will also be instructed in proper use of federal bed time standards as well as the federally-approved manner for tucking small children in without exceeding the federally-supported number of bedtime kisses.
The bottom line here is that we can't trust you yahoos to do anything right. We give you all these great programs and instructions and you insist on making your own choices about your own lives and acting as if the federal government doesn't know best. Time after time, we come up with awesome programs like Common Core-- dammit, I can never remember that third word-- what was it-well, never mind, because now that I think about it, we totally DID NOT come up with that one. But we provide these swell programs and people don't just adopt them.
So why shouldn't we send some of our people out there to nudge you along? Why shouldn't we send someone out to help you make the right choice (and to let us know that you're making it)?
These programs are going to be hugely popular. People want to do the right thing, and we know what the right thing to do is, so everybody can be happy!
Our only concern is that demand might be so high that we won't have enough ambassadors to go around. But we have a plan-- we could use distance learning techniques and if an actual ambassador isn't available for your location, we can set up web-cams and internet linkage. Ambassador-cam can be your friendly help and our friendly eyes.
With those types of resources, we can eventually launch the last of the ambassador program-- one that creates an ambassador sibling. Someone friendly and close to you, to help you through every tough situation while keeping you on the right path. It would probably be an older sibling. Probably a boy. Yeah, that's the ticket.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
Jennifer Rubin Strikes Out
Over at the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin took her turn at propping up the ever-besieged conservative defense of Common Core. She did not succeed. (even though I'm giving her an extra swing or two).
Strike One
Rubin starts out with the old standard "We were getting totes whupped on the PISA by all the other kids on the playground, which was completely a crisis because we're worse than Korea and the Netherlands." She crunches some of the subdivisions with a bit more style than the classic version of this argument, but she still fails to spackle over the giant hole in this argument, to wit:
Exactly what is the linkage between standardized test supremacy and anything? Where is the evidence that greater standardized test scores are linked to economic prosperity or military supremacy or better symphony orchestras or happier, more attractive children?
Foul Ball
She points out that the Core is NOT curriculum, as in, it is not responsible for those evil lessons trying to brainwash children into thinking the federal government is better than your mom. She is not wrong here, though she misses the nuance that CCSS made the widespread distribution of such baloneyicious school material far more likely.
She airs out the new talking point-- this should be a pedagogical debate, not a political one. Which is true. It was true back when many of us were saying so, but the pro-Core folks had the political upper hand so they pooh-poohed the pedagogical points. Live/die by sword, and all that.
Strike Two
You have to propose an alternative. Personally, I reject this argument. If a doctor wants to cut out my lungs for no good reason, I do not have to answer the question, "Well then, what other organ do you want me to cut out instead?" It's the Reformsters who wanted to change the education world; it's the Reformsters who have to make a case for doing so.
But I accept that the game has already started. Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives out there. Some states had perfectly good standards before we started, so they could use those. There is a very interesting open source approach out there. Even I have a proposal for standards. Plus guys like Tom Hoffman who can explain the issues in great detail.
Rubin is okay with states coming up with their own standards, though she figures they'll just be cribbed from the CCSS like the Indiana standards are. I'm not sure if she realizes the reason for that (hint: it's not a pedagogical reason-- it's the other one).
Strike Three
Rubin's other big point is that the Core is already happening, and so we just can't stop. This is a particularly entertaining argument from a conservative right now, and I look forward to hearing conservatives bring it up as a defense of the Affordable Care Act. Or will their argument be, "It's really bad so I don't care how far the train is out of the station, we have to stop it before it causes more damage." I'm betting on door number two.
She reminds conservatives that they like standards and rules, and they like businessy stuff, and I think she is maybe half right there, depending on which conservatives we're talking to. But hey-- lots of states are doing things, and "the economies of size are unfolding " which means corporations are heavily into financial foreplay as they begin disrobing the national market for education stuff and you don't want to stop them in the middle of that! You don't want to be THAT guy!
Beanball
Rubin actually writes this sentence in her conclusion. "But the results will speak for themselves." This is worth remembering because we've been at this long enough for results to start talking, and what they're saying is "No signs of success around here, buddy!" Nothing about CCSS and its attendant reforms smells like anything other than flop sweat. In fact, the more results we see, the more people seem to get the sense that the results are saying, "Run away!" The only people who are seeing success anywhere in the neighborhood of the CCSS regime are the people making money from it. And that is a small, select, and increasingly outnumbered group.
Strike One
Rubin starts out with the old standard "We were getting totes whupped on the PISA by all the other kids on the playground, which was completely a crisis because we're worse than Korea and the Netherlands." She crunches some of the subdivisions with a bit more style than the classic version of this argument, but she still fails to spackle over the giant hole in this argument, to wit:
Exactly what is the linkage between standardized test supremacy and anything? Where is the evidence that greater standardized test scores are linked to economic prosperity or military supremacy or better symphony orchestras or happier, more attractive children?
Foul Ball
She points out that the Core is NOT curriculum, as in, it is not responsible for those evil lessons trying to brainwash children into thinking the federal government is better than your mom. She is not wrong here, though she misses the nuance that CCSS made the widespread distribution of such baloneyicious school material far more likely.
She airs out the new talking point-- this should be a pedagogical debate, not a political one. Which is true. It was true back when many of us were saying so, but the pro-Core folks had the political upper hand so they pooh-poohed the pedagogical points. Live/die by sword, and all that.
Strike Two
You have to propose an alternative. Personally, I reject this argument. If a doctor wants to cut out my lungs for no good reason, I do not have to answer the question, "Well then, what other organ do you want me to cut out instead?" It's the Reformsters who wanted to change the education world; it's the Reformsters who have to make a case for doing so.
But I accept that the game has already started. Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives out there. Some states had perfectly good standards before we started, so they could use those. There is a very interesting open source approach out there. Even I have a proposal for standards. Plus guys like Tom Hoffman who can explain the issues in great detail.
Rubin is okay with states coming up with their own standards, though she figures they'll just be cribbed from the CCSS like the Indiana standards are. I'm not sure if she realizes the reason for that (hint: it's not a pedagogical reason-- it's the other one).
Strike Three
Rubin's other big point is that the Core is already happening, and so we just can't stop. This is a particularly entertaining argument from a conservative right now, and I look forward to hearing conservatives bring it up as a defense of the Affordable Care Act. Or will their argument be, "It's really bad so I don't care how far the train is out of the station, we have to stop it before it causes more damage." I'm betting on door number two.
She reminds conservatives that they like standards and rules, and they like businessy stuff, and I think she is maybe half right there, depending on which conservatives we're talking to. But hey-- lots of states are doing things, and "the economies of size are unfolding " which means corporations are heavily into financial foreplay as they begin disrobing the national market for education stuff and you don't want to stop them in the middle of that! You don't want to be THAT guy!
Beanball
Rubin actually writes this sentence in her conclusion. "But the results will speak for themselves." This is worth remembering because we've been at this long enough for results to start talking, and what they're saying is "No signs of success around here, buddy!" Nothing about CCSS and its attendant reforms smells like anything other than flop sweat. In fact, the more results we see, the more people seem to get the sense that the results are saying, "Run away!" The only people who are seeing success anywhere in the neighborhood of the CCSS regime are the people making money from it. And that is a small, select, and increasingly outnumbered group.
Where Are the Teacher Leaders?
Over at EdWeek, Nancy Flanagan is asking "Is genuine teacher leadership dead in the water?" It's one more way of asking the time-honored question, where the heck are all the teacher leaders?
Flanagan has paid her dues on this subject. A Michigan teacher of the year, National Board certified, member of the Teacher Leaders Network and an organizer for the Institute for Democratic Education in America, she is clearly not one of those people who sits in the teachers lounge and wonders why nobody has fixed her problems for her. But ten years ago she helped create the Teacher as Change Agent course for the Center for Teacher Leadership, and she is thinking it may not exactly have paid off in teacher leaderly dividends.
I have always found it, well, odd that teaching is a profession that has so little control over itself. Doctors, lawyers, physical therapists, nurses-- all act as the gatekeepers to their own profession. If I want to open up a lawyer school, I have to get a bunch of lawyers to certify me. If I want to open a doctor school, I need to find some doctors to give the okee dokee. If I want to open a teacher school, I have to convince a bunch of bureaucrats in the state capitol.
That extends to the work place. We do not put teachers in charge of teachers; if teachers want to be in charge, they have to turn into administrators and never be actual teachers again.
The last two decades of "reform" has only made things worse. "I don't see leadership emerging from systemic loss of autonomy over teachers' core work," says Flanagan in considerable understatement. Virtually everything from No Child Left Behind on is predicated on the notion that teachers are not authorities on their field of work and cannot be trusted to self-direct; instead, our assumption these days is that teachers are one of the great flaws in the education system, and no current education program is complete without ideas for how we will get teachers in line.
We have groups calling for teacher leaders. What they want are teachers who will lead other teachers to fall in line with what the Big Bosses dictate, not teachers who will speak up, and certainly not teachers that the Big Bosses would actually listen to. And this, sadly, applies just as much to the national unions as it does to the US DOE.
What do teachers need to become leaders? Not permission-- if you won't stand up until you get someone's permission, you're not a leader. And you're not a leader because someone who's not a teacher at all declared you a leader, especially not if they wouldn't call you a leader until you filled out an application and declared that you stand for what they want you to stand for.
Teacher leaders do need time and resources. My first teacher leader training was about thirty years ago. My school district sent me off for training to be a Lead Teacher (remember that movement) and it was great and inspiring, but at the end of the day my district only supported my doing it as long as on my own time. Giving me release time or flex time to be a Lead Teacher wasn't going to happen; that would not be the last time I had that experience.
The best way to put out a fire is to starve it for oxygen, and schools are so used to living with an attitude of scarcity that withholding oxygen is second nature. Many times I don't think schools even mean to squelch teacher leadership; it's just an automatic reaction, not to teacher leadership, but to anything that would use up more time and/or money. And if I'm being honest, I have to admit that I have occasionally toyed with starting one initiative or another and letting my impulse peter out because, hey, I'm busy with lots of stuff to do.
I agree with Flanagan's implication-- that teacher leadership is dead in the water-- and yet I think that could turn around instantly. I think it's most definitely a topic that we teachers should discuss more with each other.
Flanagan has paid her dues on this subject. A Michigan teacher of the year, National Board certified, member of the Teacher Leaders Network and an organizer for the Institute for Democratic Education in America, she is clearly not one of those people who sits in the teachers lounge and wonders why nobody has fixed her problems for her. But ten years ago she helped create the Teacher as Change Agent course for the Center for Teacher Leadership, and she is thinking it may not exactly have paid off in teacher leaderly dividends.
I have always found it, well, odd that teaching is a profession that has so little control over itself. Doctors, lawyers, physical therapists, nurses-- all act as the gatekeepers to their own profession. If I want to open up a lawyer school, I have to get a bunch of lawyers to certify me. If I want to open a doctor school, I need to find some doctors to give the okee dokee. If I want to open a teacher school, I have to convince a bunch of bureaucrats in the state capitol.
That extends to the work place. We do not put teachers in charge of teachers; if teachers want to be in charge, they have to turn into administrators and never be actual teachers again.
The last two decades of "reform" has only made things worse. "I don't see leadership emerging from systemic loss of autonomy over teachers' core work," says Flanagan in considerable understatement. Virtually everything from No Child Left Behind on is predicated on the notion that teachers are not authorities on their field of work and cannot be trusted to self-direct; instead, our assumption these days is that teachers are one of the great flaws in the education system, and no current education program is complete without ideas for how we will get teachers in line.
We have groups calling for teacher leaders. What they want are teachers who will lead other teachers to fall in line with what the Big Bosses dictate, not teachers who will speak up, and certainly not teachers that the Big Bosses would actually listen to. And this, sadly, applies just as much to the national unions as it does to the US DOE.
What do teachers need to become leaders? Not permission-- if you won't stand up until you get someone's permission, you're not a leader. And you're not a leader because someone who's not a teacher at all declared you a leader, especially not if they wouldn't call you a leader until you filled out an application and declared that you stand for what they want you to stand for.
Teacher leaders do need time and resources. My first teacher leader training was about thirty years ago. My school district sent me off for training to be a Lead Teacher (remember that movement) and it was great and inspiring, but at the end of the day my district only supported my doing it as long as on my own time. Giving me release time or flex time to be a Lead Teacher wasn't going to happen; that would not be the last time I had that experience.
The best way to put out a fire is to starve it for oxygen, and schools are so used to living with an attitude of scarcity that withholding oxygen is second nature. Many times I don't think schools even mean to squelch teacher leadership; it's just an automatic reaction, not to teacher leadership, but to anything that would use up more time and/or money. And if I'm being honest, I have to admit that I have occasionally toyed with starting one initiative or another and letting my impulse peter out because, hey, I'm busy with lots of stuff to do.
I agree with Flanagan's implication-- that teacher leadership is dead in the water-- and yet I think that could turn around instantly. I think it's most definitely a topic that we teachers should discuss more with each other.
Brookings Whips Up Some Teacher Eval Research
The Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings (the folks who remind us that teachers are everything wrong with education) has released a new report, "Evaluating Teachers with Classroom Observations," a study intended to Tell Us Some Things about teacher evaluation and how to do it best. Is this going to be a trip to the unicorn farm? The very first sentences tell us where this report's heart is:
The evidence is clear: better teachers improve student outcomes, ranging from test scores to college attendance rates to career earnings. Federal policy has begun to catch up with these findings in its recent shift from an effort to ensure that all teachers have traditional credentials to policies intended to incentivize states to evaluate and retain teachers based on their classroom performance.
We are off once more to search for ways to perfect the teacher evaluation system. Grover J. Whitehurst, Matthew M. Chingo, and Katherine M. Lindquist have laid down twenty-seven serious pages of unicorn farming. Let me do my best to take you on a condensed tour.
Focus on the Human Observation
Their big take-away is this: "Nearly all the opportunities for improvement to teacher evaluation systems are in the area of classroom observations rather than test score gains." In other words, the VAM side of evaluations is as good as it can be, but that pesky human-observing-human piece needs to be tightened up. Yikes.
You see, only some teachers are evaluated on test score gains, but all teachers are observed. And here's one thing they get right-- the human observation can provide feedback that's actually good for something, while test results are too late and too vague to be of any use to teachers at all.
But that leads us to this curious thought: Improvements are needed in how classroom observations are measured if they are to carry the weight they are assigned in teacher evaluation. Human observation needs to be measured in a more sciency way. Their big support for this is the finding that teachers with top students tend to get top observation scores. Their reasoning makes sense-- Danielson, for instance, wants you to show off your teaching of higher-order questioning skills. Would you rather do that with your Honors class, or the class where you're hoping the students just remember what you covered yesterday?
The solution? Make human observations more like VAM. The authors suggest that the same sort of demographic factoring adjustments that are used for VAMs should be used for human observation. And if that strikes you as a lousy idea-- well, it only gets better.
History of Bad Evaluation
The authors run down the history of teacher quality pursuits. NCLB defined "highly qualified" as "possessing certain qualifications," but then researchers figured out how to attache numbers to teacher quality and that made things better because, science. Recap of some of the iffy research claiming that a good second grade teacher will help you grow up to be rich. This has laid groundwork for new, federally-approved-and-pushed-but-not-actually-mandated-because-hey-that-would-be-illegal eval systems. Which can still allow for great variety between school districts, and as we all know, variety is bad juju.
So they decided to go study four districts to see if they could find unicorns there.
FINDINGS OF THE STUDY
1) Evaluation systems are sufficiently reliable and valid to be swell. There is strong year-to-year correlation between scores. They are just as reliable as (I am not making this up) systems used to predict season-to-season performance in professional sports.
I am not a statistics guy, but I have to note that the study drew on "one to three years of data from each district drawn from one or more of the years from 2009 to 2012." Am I crazy, or does that not seem like very much data with which to determine year-to-year consistency?
2) Only some teachers are evaluated by VAM. So none of these four districts were in a location where the art teacher gets credit for third grade math scores.
3) Observation scores are more stable from year to year than VAM. Don't get excited-- that's a bad thing, apparently. The fact that your administrator knows you and your work gives him a preconceived notion of how effective you are. So a long-standing relationship with a boss who knows you and your work is not helpful-- it's just a bias.
They have no absolutely answer for a VAM-to-observation ratio in evals, but they recommend properly handled observations be at least 50%.
4) School VAM scores throw things out of whack. Good school VAMs hide bad teachers; bad school VAMs hurt good teachers. These should be scrapped or minimized.
5) Better students = better observation ratings. I can think of a zillion reasons for this, but I don't think many teachers disagree. "Please come observe me when I'm teaching my lowest class of the day," said no teacher ever. Then follows several pages of charts and numerical wonkery to reach the conclusion I mentioned above-- observations should be subjected to the same kind of demographic adjustical jim-crackery that goes into VAMs.
6) That kind of adjustment calls for large sample sizes. Which means getting that data-laden legerdemain on a state level. There are charts and graphs here as well.
7) Outside observers are more predictive of next years VAM scores than inside ones. Principals are influenced by what they know. What's called for is an outside observer who doesn't know anything. Well, not anything except how to observe characteristics that are predictive of VAM scores. This produces the most hilarious recommendation of all-- two-to-three annual classroom observations of each teacher. Before principals decide to go hide in an ashram, note that at least one of these should be conducted by a no-nothing outsider.
There are certainly Bad Principal situations where some relief from bias would be a Good Thing. But if we are accepting the premise that a principal's knowledge and understanding of her staff is somehow an obstacle to be avoided, we are approaching again the reformy place where human interactions are bad for education and the people who work in public education are all dopes. This isn't a trip to the unicorn farm; it's a trip to the robot unicorn factory. Where money trees grow.
Conclusion
A new generation of teacher evaluation systems seeks to make performance measurement and feedback more rigorous and useful.
Could be worse. They could have brought up grit. But we're going to wind up by reminding everyone that even though variations in a system may be useful in that they offer the chance to study lots of variables in action, mostly they are bad because, chaos.
Their final paragraph starts with this sentence:
A prime motive behind the move towards meaningful teacher evaluation is to assure greater equity in students’ access to good teachers.
Also, a bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves. Equal access to great teachers may be the stated motivation for the move toward "meaningful" (a meaningless word in this context) teacher evaluation, but what is still missing is the slimmest shred, the slightest sliver, the most shrunken soupcon of proof that a teacher evaluation system would take us one step closer to that goal. Hell, we haven't even proven that "equal access to great teachers" doesn't exist right now! For all we know, we may be following thinky tanks on these ridiculous field trips to the unicorn farm while actual unicorns are back home, grazing in our front yard.
The evidence is clear: better teachers improve student outcomes, ranging from test scores to college attendance rates to career earnings. Federal policy has begun to catch up with these findings in its recent shift from an effort to ensure that all teachers have traditional credentials to policies intended to incentivize states to evaluate and retain teachers based on their classroom performance.
We are off once more to search for ways to perfect the teacher evaluation system. Grover J. Whitehurst, Matthew M. Chingo, and Katherine M. Lindquist have laid down twenty-seven serious pages of unicorn farming. Let me do my best to take you on a condensed tour.
Focus on the Human Observation
Their big take-away is this: "Nearly all the opportunities for improvement to teacher evaluation systems are in the area of classroom observations rather than test score gains." In other words, the VAM side of evaluations is as good as it can be, but that pesky human-observing-human piece needs to be tightened up. Yikes.
You see, only some teachers are evaluated on test score gains, but all teachers are observed. And here's one thing they get right-- the human observation can provide feedback that's actually good for something, while test results are too late and too vague to be of any use to teachers at all.
But that leads us to this curious thought: Improvements are needed in how classroom observations are measured if they are to carry the weight they are assigned in teacher evaluation. Human observation needs to be measured in a more sciency way. Their big support for this is the finding that teachers with top students tend to get top observation scores. Their reasoning makes sense-- Danielson, for instance, wants you to show off your teaching of higher-order questioning skills. Would you rather do that with your Honors class, or the class where you're hoping the students just remember what you covered yesterday?
The solution? Make human observations more like VAM. The authors suggest that the same sort of demographic factoring adjustments that are used for VAMs should be used for human observation. And if that strikes you as a lousy idea-- well, it only gets better.
History of Bad Evaluation
The authors run down the history of teacher quality pursuits. NCLB defined "highly qualified" as "possessing certain qualifications," but then researchers figured out how to attache numbers to teacher quality and that made things better because, science. Recap of some of the iffy research claiming that a good second grade teacher will help you grow up to be rich. This has laid groundwork for new, federally-approved-and-pushed-but-not-actually-mandated-because-hey-that-would-be-illegal eval systems. Which can still allow for great variety between school districts, and as we all know, variety is bad juju.
So they decided to go study four districts to see if they could find unicorns there.
FINDINGS OF THE STUDY
1) Evaluation systems are sufficiently reliable and valid to be swell. There is strong year-to-year correlation between scores. They are just as reliable as (I am not making this up) systems used to predict season-to-season performance in professional sports.
I am not a statistics guy, but I have to note that the study drew on "one to three years of data from each district drawn from one or more of the years from 2009 to 2012." Am I crazy, or does that not seem like very much data with which to determine year-to-year consistency?
2) Only some teachers are evaluated by VAM. So none of these four districts were in a location where the art teacher gets credit for third grade math scores.
3) Observation scores are more stable from year to year than VAM. Don't get excited-- that's a bad thing, apparently. The fact that your administrator knows you and your work gives him a preconceived notion of how effective you are. So a long-standing relationship with a boss who knows you and your work is not helpful-- it's just a bias.
They have no absolutely answer for a VAM-to-observation ratio in evals, but they recommend properly handled observations be at least 50%.
4) School VAM scores throw things out of whack. Good school VAMs hide bad teachers; bad school VAMs hurt good teachers. These should be scrapped or minimized.
5) Better students = better observation ratings. I can think of a zillion reasons for this, but I don't think many teachers disagree. "Please come observe me when I'm teaching my lowest class of the day," said no teacher ever. Then follows several pages of charts and numerical wonkery to reach the conclusion I mentioned above-- observations should be subjected to the same kind of demographic adjustical jim-crackery that goes into VAMs.
6) That kind of adjustment calls for large sample sizes. Which means getting that data-laden legerdemain on a state level. There are charts and graphs here as well.
7) Outside observers are more predictive of next years VAM scores than inside ones. Principals are influenced by what they know. What's called for is an outside observer who doesn't know anything. Well, not anything except how to observe characteristics that are predictive of VAM scores. This produces the most hilarious recommendation of all-- two-to-three annual classroom observations of each teacher. Before principals decide to go hide in an ashram, note that at least one of these should be conducted by a no-nothing outsider.
There are certainly Bad Principal situations where some relief from bias would be a Good Thing. But if we are accepting the premise that a principal's knowledge and understanding of her staff is somehow an obstacle to be avoided, we are approaching again the reformy place where human interactions are bad for education and the people who work in public education are all dopes. This isn't a trip to the unicorn farm; it's a trip to the robot unicorn factory. Where money trees grow.
Conclusion
A new generation of teacher evaluation systems seeks to make performance measurement and feedback more rigorous and useful.
Could be worse. They could have brought up grit. But we're going to wind up by reminding everyone that even though variations in a system may be useful in that they offer the chance to study lots of variables in action, mostly they are bad because, chaos.
Their final paragraph starts with this sentence:
A prime motive behind the move towards meaningful teacher evaluation is to assure greater equity in students’ access to good teachers.
Also, a bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves. Equal access to great teachers may be the stated motivation for the move toward "meaningful" (a meaningless word in this context) teacher evaluation, but what is still missing is the slimmest shred, the slightest sliver, the most shrunken soupcon of proof that a teacher evaluation system would take us one step closer to that goal. Hell, we haven't even proven that "equal access to great teachers" doesn't exist right now! For all we know, we may be following thinky tanks on these ridiculous field trips to the unicorn farm while actual unicorns are back home, grazing in our front yard.
Why Isn't the 21st Century Here Yet?
Technology is awesome and transformative, and will completely change the way we do business in schools and in the classroom. So why hasn't that really happened yet? Why aren't we all working in high-tech, super-duper computer driven schools yet? I think I know, and it has nothing to do with philosophies of education or resistance to change.
I'm starting this piece on my laptop. I'm doing that because, tonight, my desktop refused to boot up. I'm not panicked particularly, because like every person who uses technology, I have things backed up and saved elsewhere; we have all learned that you would be an idiot not assume that any portion of your personal computer tech could fail completely at any moment.
Some of my stuff is saved out on the cloud; I'm not necessarily excited about that because "saved on the cloud" means "only accessible if you have working internet," and, in a not unusual situation, the internet in my neighborhood is running slow tonight. Takes an hour to stream through forty minutes of netflix slow. Maximum of two devices in the house actively internetting slow. Did I mention that this is not a highly unusual situation?
The high school at which I teach is a one-to-one school. Every student has a device (we're still using netbooks, which of course are no longer built by anyone, so there's that to fix, but we're working on it) and I would never want to go back, ever. If your school has the chance to go one-to-one, jump in with both feet.
But as much as I love it, I would be a fool to plan a lesson that depended on every single device in my room working as needed on cue at just the right time. I can assume that on any given day, some devices will not hook into the network, some will not be able to get online, and some will just do something unexpectedly wonky. (As I am finishing this is the morning in my classroom before school, the internet connection is cutting in and out.)
Our tech department does a pretty good job. But we're looking for people to run a network of almost a thousand devices spread over seven buildings. Do you know how much you'd have to pay to recruit someone for that kind of work in the private sector? A lot more than we're going to pay anyone, ever. And maybe if we grew a money tree and could hire that person we'd end up with a network that hummed along perfectly all the time, but I have friends in the private sector, and I hear the stories, and I don't think it's all unicorns pooping rainbows out there, either.
Technology programs, computer designed instruction, all those really cool things are designed by guys working in labs on brand new state of the art equipment in an environment where the wireless is so strong it curls their hair. Out here in the world, the problem with computer technology is simple--
It works most of the time probably. It's only sort of reliable. We can only kind of count on it.
The answer may not be perfection, but redundancy (for instance, notice how our digital native students maintain multiple social media accounts so that there's always a way). Or the answer may be to suddenly re-align our country's financial priorities (imagine if the money spent fighting in Afghanistan were instead spent on public education). But until we have an answer, we're never going to get all the way into the 21st century.
I'm starting this piece on my laptop. I'm doing that because, tonight, my desktop refused to boot up. I'm not panicked particularly, because like every person who uses technology, I have things backed up and saved elsewhere; we have all learned that you would be an idiot not assume that any portion of your personal computer tech could fail completely at any moment.
Some of my stuff is saved out on the cloud; I'm not necessarily excited about that because "saved on the cloud" means "only accessible if you have working internet," and, in a not unusual situation, the internet in my neighborhood is running slow tonight. Takes an hour to stream through forty minutes of netflix slow. Maximum of two devices in the house actively internetting slow. Did I mention that this is not a highly unusual situation?
The high school at which I teach is a one-to-one school. Every student has a device (we're still using netbooks, which of course are no longer built by anyone, so there's that to fix, but we're working on it) and I would never want to go back, ever. If your school has the chance to go one-to-one, jump in with both feet.
But as much as I love it, I would be a fool to plan a lesson that depended on every single device in my room working as needed on cue at just the right time. I can assume that on any given day, some devices will not hook into the network, some will not be able to get online, and some will just do something unexpectedly wonky. (As I am finishing this is the morning in my classroom before school, the internet connection is cutting in and out.)
Our tech department does a pretty good job. But we're looking for people to run a network of almost a thousand devices spread over seven buildings. Do you know how much you'd have to pay to recruit someone for that kind of work in the private sector? A lot more than we're going to pay anyone, ever. And maybe if we grew a money tree and could hire that person we'd end up with a network that hummed along perfectly all the time, but I have friends in the private sector, and I hear the stories, and I don't think it's all unicorns pooping rainbows out there, either.
Technology programs, computer designed instruction, all those really cool things are designed by guys working in labs on brand new state of the art equipment in an environment where the wireless is so strong it curls their hair. Out here in the world, the problem with computer technology is simple--
It works most of the time probably. It's only sort of reliable. We can only kind of count on it.
The answer may not be perfection, but redundancy (for instance, notice how our digital native students maintain multiple social media accounts so that there's always a way). Or the answer may be to suddenly re-align our country's financial priorities (imagine if the money spent fighting in Afghanistan were instead spent on public education). But until we have an answer, we're never going to get all the way into the 21st century.
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