The Teacher Jobs Shortfall

Last week the Economic Policy Institute popped out an article attached to this graphic:

Their headline was the dramatic shortfall of jobs in public ed, particularly when compared to their projection of the number of jobs needed to keep up with enrollment.

I have a number of questions raised by the graph.

Does this reflect a shift to private employers? How many public school jobs are being shifted to private and charter schools? We know about the dramatic shifts of this nature occurring in places like New Orleans and Cleveland, where pubic schools have been shut down so that they can be replaced with charters. But is that process occurring in smaller ways throughout the country-- Bogwump High School cuts three teachers, but Bogwump Corporate Charter opens with a six teacher staff. And that raises its own second question-- is the EPI accepting the fiction that charter schools are public schools, or is it correctly counting charter teaching jobs as non public school jobs.

Public education added 400,000 jobs between 2003 and 2008?!?! Okay, not exactly a question, but-- damn. Did everyone go on a staff spending spree with their stimulus money? Did regulations and court decisions create a ballooning demand for special needs teachers? I mean, I was going to look for data to indicate whether that's abnormal growth or not, but I don't really need to. If that were normal growth, that would mean twenty yeas ago there were no teaching jobs at all, and I'm pretty sure that's wrong.

But that raises the real question-- are we looking at a shortfall, or a market correction after an employment bubble?

What is that projection based on? EPI says we should have added 123,000 jobs over the 2008 numbers (or 377,000 over where we are now) in order to keep pace with student growth. I'm curious about exactly what formula was used top determine that number.

Where is the understaffing happening? If this chart and the EPI interpretation of it are correct, we have schools that are grossly understaffed, overworked, and financially strapped. Everything I know tells me that is true-- but not everywhere. My own school, for instance, has shed many staff positions in the last ten years, but we have also dropped student population considerably. The same story is true in most districts in my region.

So has somebody done a more specific regional study? Do we know exactly where local public schools are failing to keep staffing rates up to speed with student population numbers? This is definitely more of a problem in some places than in others-- do we know where those places are? And do we have some data beyond the anecdotal?

The Great Recession was hard on teaching as a profession, and it raised the curtain on reformster policies that were also hard on the teaching profession, particularly in public schools. Given the number of people who have been chased out of the profession, this chart is but half as picture, and too broad of one to be really useful. The profession is hemorrhaging teachers, particularly teachers of color and young teachers, and where it is not hemorrhaging them, it is chasing them away vigorously by making the profession as unattractive as possible (looking at you, North Carolina).

Are we shedding jobs to keep up with shedding teachers? Are we chasing teachers away by shedding jobs? And most importantly-- how do these dynamics play out differently from place to place?

Ultimately this chart raises many questions for me. If you have the answers, let me know. If I find any answers, I'll pass them along.

What We Haven't Learned from the Widget Effect

Do you remember that awesome post I wrote that totally changed the face of American education?? You don't?? Well, let me just keep mentioning that awesome post (and how it changed the face of American education) for the next five years and maybe my massive importance will start to sink in.

That's about where we are with TNTP and "The Widget Effect," a "report" I'm not going to link to for the same reason I don't mention TNTP's leader by name or provide links to pro-anorexia sites-- some things are just already taking up too much of the internet.

The Widget Effect is celebrating its fifth anniversary of its own importance. If you're unfamiliar with the "report," let me summarize it for you:

We don't pay teachers differently based on how good they are. We should do that.

That's it. Pump it up with extra verbage and slap on some high-fallutin' graphics, and you've got a "report" that other "report" writers love when they need to add some gravitas to the footnote section of their "report." As you may have heard, there's particular interest in the "We should do that" portion; TNTP is a huge fan of teacher evaluating.

TNTP has presented several anniversary evaluation commentary-paloozas, including this one that sandwiches a thoughtful Andy Smarick piece in between two large slabs of reformy baloney. But that's not where we're headed today. Today we're going to look at "4 Things We've Learned Since the Widget Effect." Let's do a little check for understanding and see if our five years of study have paid off.

Implementation Matters More Than Design

Correct! Reformsters have learned (and are still learning) that if you promise people a warm, cuddly pet and then drop an angry badger into their home, they lose interest in your promises very quickly. Further, you do not provide useful damage control by repeating, "But it's really intended to be warm and cuddly" while the badger has the children cornered and terrified on top of the credenza. Teacher evaluation has had teachers on top of the credenza for about five years, so happy anniversary, honey badger!

TNTP offers a solution best summarized as "Do it better." Sigh. In more words, the recommendation is that if you train your key people and give them time to do a better job, the badgers will be warmer and cuddlier. TNTP describes these key people with words like "Chief Academic Officers" and  "middle managers." The odd terminology leads us back to a central question-- does TNTP think the badgers are warm and cuddly, or does it just want to convince us so we'll let the badgers trash the house. I won't rule out the former, but I lean toward the latter.

Multiple Measures-- Including Data about Student Learning Growth-- Are the Way To Go

The old observation technique was a bust, TNTP says. They support this by saying that it's just common sense. So there ya go.

While the issue of evaluation remains hotly debated, multiple measures might be the one place where something resembling a consensus has emerged. That’s a positive thing we should celebrate.

Really? Which consensus would that be? There's a fairly large consensus that "including data about students learning growth" (aka VAM) is problematic because every instrument we have that claims to do it is no more reliable than having the badgers read tea leaves through a crystal ball. I'm guessing that's not the consensus being referenced.

So incorrect on the main answer. Their recommendation, however, is to have multiple observations by multiple observers. In buildings with enough administrative staff to implement it, that idea is... not stupid.

You Can't Fix Observations If Observers Don't Rate Accurately

Observations are also one of the best examples of the gap between design and implementation. If you’re concerned about the potential variability of value-added scores, you should be truly frightened by the statistical Wild West that is classroom observations. 

They're onto something here. Here's the thing about administrators-- if they are even remotely competent, they know how good their teachers are. They'll use the fancy piece of paper if you make them, but if the observation instrument tells them one thing and their brain, sense, and professional judgment tell them another, guess who wins. If you ask, "What are you going to believe-- the observation form or your own eyes?" They will go with their own senses.

Now, if your principal is a boob, or hates you for some reason, this effect is Very Bad News. Maybe you call that the statistical Wild West, but that's still better than VAM, which is a statistical black hole caught in a box with Schroedinger's cat strapped into the hold of the Andrea Doria sailing through the Sargasso Sea as it falls into the Negative Zone just as the Genesis Bomb goes off.

TNTP's solution-- easier, shorter paperwork. Because reducing a complicated human observation of complex human interactions to a short, simple checklist totally works. I suggest that TNTP staffers field test the principle by piloting a spousal observation form to be tested on evaluating their wives and husbands.

Double fail on this item.

Done Right, Teacher Evaluations Really Can Help Teachers and Students

We're going to go to the research connected to the IMPACT evaluation system in DC. And damn-- these people can't really be that confused or dopey, can they? I want to believe that they are willfully manipulative and misleading, because that would at least mean they're smart enough to understand what they're saying, and as a teacher, it makes me sad to imagine a lump of dumb this large in the world.

Okay, here's the deal. They measure a teacher's awesomeness. They give the teacher feedback on the measurement. They measure again, and the teacher proves to be more awesome. Let me see if I can illustrated why this proves almost nothing.

Chris: If you pass my test for being my awesomest friend, I will give you a dollar. Now, hold up some fingers?

Pat: Okay. How'd I do?

Chris: Bummer. If you had held up four fingers instead of three, I would have known you were my awesomest friend.

[Fifteen minutes later]

Chris: Okay, let's take the awesome friend test again. Hold up some fingers.

Pat: Cool.

Chris: You did it. Four fingers!! Here's a dollar!

[Later over supper at Chris's house]

Chris: Mom, Pat and I became much better friends this afternoon!

The IMPACT system and the attendant research are not useless. They prove that teachers can be trained to respond to certain stimuli as easily as lab rats. They do not, however, prove jack or squat about how the system "improves" teaching-- only that it improves teacher response to the system.

TNTP recommends staying the course. I recommend that TNTP release a dozen honey badgers into their offices and hold some special training meetings on top of the credenza. If the credenza is all covered up with the Widget Effect's birthday cake, just feed the cake to the badgers. Tell them they're celebrating one of the most influential reports of the last five years.

Update on Pearson's Mistake

For those of you who followed my earlier post about the (latest) Pearson test screw-up, the multi-national educational juggernaut did actually respond to Sarah Blaine's original post with an apology of sorts.

Pearson did make an error on the specific quiz question in a lesson in the Envision Math textbook and we sincerely apologize for this mistake. 

As corporate apologies go, it's actually refreshingly clear and unequivocally weasel-word free.

The down side, as Blaine notes, is that it doesn't acknowledge the larger issues she raised, other than to note that "trust in our products and services is key." Well, yes. And I would make fun of them for pointing out the obvious, except that we see too many examples of corporations that don't see the obvious, so bravo, Pearson, on seeing the obvious.

So the larger issues go unaddressed (a little transparency, folks?), but at least they said, "We screwed up. Sorry about that." Which by modern corporate standards is not too shabby. Is it too snarky for me to note that apparently all that practice apologizing for mistakes that Pearson has had is apparently paid off?  Maybe? Sorry about that.

College-ready Five Year Olds

We periodically hear of the notion of college-ready five year olds. Not that they are ready to go to college while still that young, but that we can clearly tell in kindergarten whether these children are on the collegiate trajectory or not.

Recently a pair of teachers attempted a response to Carol Burris's Real Clear Education interview. Since the two work for Student Achievement Partners, a group started by CCSS architect David Coleman and financed by Bill Gates, what the two SAPs is not exactly a surprise.


The kindergarten SAP argues that her students (at her select charter school in Oakland, California) are able to do super-hard things that let her know that they are ready for college. In particular she is arguing for having kindergartners count to 100. She does not clarify whether she uses the technique of Rote Repetition of the Numbers With No Idea What They Mean or the technique of Counseling Out Students Who Can't Count To 100.

I'm excited about being able to ID college-ready five year olds. This presents a host of opportunities including the chance to start applying to college at age six. I mean, my high school juniors and seniors get very stressed about the whole application process. Imagine how much more relaxed and focused they could be if they had locked up that collegiate spot by age seven. They are just childhood as an excuse to be lazy anyway.

Of course, deciding college that early would really mess with David Coleman"s College Board SAT revenue stream. There's a pretty hefty industry driven by the general college-seeking panic of teenagers and their parents, so even as Core boosters claim that we can determine the college prospects of small children, reformsters once again face two challenging choice:

1) Shift the industry around to monetize the new impact areas or

2) Pretend they don't understand the implications of what they're saying.

For cradle-to-career railroad, it's a big number two all the way.

Mind you, they've occasionally admitted that they really do want to be able to predict the adult life of a small child with a "seamless web that literally extends from cradle to grave." But nobody who A) knows who Big Brother is or B) wants a future in American politics is going to hold up that infamous Marc Tucker "Dear Hillary" letter and say, "Yes, this is what we should do." Not out loud.

Reformsters could argue that the very notion of being able to place a five year old in a college is silly because, of course, any number of things in his life outside of school could happen in the next thirteen years to interfere with his college readiness-- but they can't make that argument because then they would have to admit that life factors outside of school affect the child's education.

No, we have to pretend that the educational journey is a train-- one track, one beginning and ending, everyone traveling along the undeviating, uninterrupted trail.

So if that's true, why wouldn't we fill out those college applications at the end of kindergarten? If all students are going to meet the same standards at the same time, and we can tell whether kindergartners are on track, and there's only one track, why isn't that good enough?

I suspect that in a dark moment of honesty, some reformsters would say it was good enough, that they already knew that Chris was destined for a life of corporate servitude and all we're doing is waiting for the sapling to grow large enough to harvest.

But in the meantime, reformsters will at once pretend that it's not absurd to declare a five year old on track for college, even as they fail to acknowledge the implications of that college-ready declaration. If we know that a five year old is on track for college, why not sign her up now? The answer-- sort of-- is that reformsters can't explain why a five year old's college application is absurd without also explaining why reform itself is absurd.

How To Align Painlessly

(Originally post at View from the Cheap Seats)

The Dream

The ideal, as imagined by the Common Core Crowd looks something like this:

A group of fresh-scrubbed teachers gather in a room with a consultant (because, after all, they're only teachers and lack the expertise to do this work on their own). The CCSS expert teaches them how to "unpack" the standards, and over the course of many days, the teachers unpack a standard and decide how best to implement that standard in a well-constructed CCSS-aligned lesson. Depending on the consultant, they will probably also incorporate some features that are not actually in the Core, but which the consultant likes.

Once implemented, this new curriculum will totally revolutionize the way these teachers teach, and soon, awesome test scores will descend upon them like manna from heaven. Because once you align the to the standards, your students will automatically be prepared for the aligned standardized tests.

The Reality
Well, sadly, some peoples' reality will be a pursuit of the dream. If your administration has soaked too long in the special Common Core Coolade, the Dream will be your goal. Good luck with that.
For the earthbound districts, the process looks something more like this.

1) Spread out printouts on big desk. On one side, the printout of the Common Core National Standards (or the lightly edited version that your state is passing off as state-developed standards). On the other side, your pre-existing curriculum.

2) Go through curriculum, cross-referencing against standards. Look for standards that you can reasonably claim are being met by old lessons (e.g. "This paper I have them write about Great Expectations requires them to support their statements with evidence from the text. Check!") Check standards off of list.

3) Gather up standards you didn't meet. Make one last attempt to justify attaching them to pre-existing units. Rig up some new unit to meet those standards. Finish checking off list.

4) Go to PARCC/SBA/Whatever websites and gather up sample questions. Buy some sample question practice books. Schedule test prep units strategically through year.

5) Wait for High Stakes Test results. Analyze results to see what test prep units you need to beef up. Start collecting materials for next year. decide which units you can cut to make room for additional test prep. Do not forget to count your test prep units as part of your aligned curriculum.

Alternate approach

For the above steps 1-4, substitute the folowing:

1) Buy pre-aligned book and materials from dependable vendor like Pearson. Print out their alignment materials. Insert printout in alignment report for district.

Anyone Can Play

Slapping some Common Core numbers on the same old same old is a popular game these days. For instance, at a site called ELA Common Core Lesson Plans, we can find a deadly dull lesson on humor in literature that could easily be from ten, twenty, thirty years ago, except for the CCSS standards tags at the end. Or take this site that cheerfully plugs literature circles as a great CCSS technique, as if lit circles haven't been around almost as long as crop circles. Watch a video of a teacher using basic techniques that were actually well known long before CCSS. Or check out this lesson using song lyrics to teach figurative language, a technique used by every English teacher in the history of ever. But hey-- there are standards numbers attached to it, so it must be Common Core.

In fact, these lessons cover the other challenge of alignment-- what to do with the parts of lessons that actually contradict the Core approach. Teaching humor in texts? You're probably cheating by bringing in information from outside the four corners of the text, because humor's pretty hard to get in a context-free vaccuum. And we'd better hope that the fifth grade teacher working with the text about Harriet Tubman and slavery is not actually answering her students' questions about the origins of racism and slavery, because that would be contrary to the Core's love of Close Reading 2.0.

So painless alignment is not only about finding ways to line up things you already do with the Core-- it also involves ignoring the Core when it wants you to stop using tried and true successful practices you've used in the past.

Painful Alignment

There are of course more painful ways to align. Teachers who have been through a reality-based alignment in which CCSS has no major effect on their classroom may well wonder what the big fuss is. But the Dream described above is pretty painful.

Alignment by textbook series can be fairly painful until you have worked out your own unoffical editted edition of modern classics like the elementary math textbooks that require you to perform twenty sensless math activities in thirty minutes.

It can get worse. Core-soaked administrators may anticipate your roguish behavior, or may simply not trust you to behave yourself and stay within the lines. In that case, you may be subjected to the most painful alignment of all-- alignment by script, in which you are required to simply do exactly what is laid out in the pre-crafted modules. If you are in a scripted district, my condolences-- you work for dopes.

The Realest Alignment

All of these approaches bring us back to the bottom line. We've seen this movie before, under NCLB-- the ultimate alignment instrument for the district is the High Stakes Test. Advocates of the Core may swear that if you follow the standards, the test scores will take care of themselves. This is simply not true, and we all know it. Test prep was the order of the day under NCLB, and under the Core, the high stakes test will drive the curriculum bus once again. All other alignment is just doing the deck chair dance of doom.

Watch Public Education Nation Today

On Saturday, starting at noon, there will be a live event in the auditorium of the Brooklyn New School, featuring four panels:

Testing and the Common Core: New York Principal of the Year Carol Burris will lead a discussion  with educators Takeima Bunche-Smith, Rosa Rivera-McCutchen and Alan Aja.

Support Our Schools, Don’t Close Them: Chicago teacher Xian Barrett will moderate a panel featuring education professor Yohuru Williams, Hiram Rivera of the Philadelphia Student Union, and a representative of the Newark Student Union.

Charter Schools: North Carolina writer and activist Jeff Bryant will host a discussion that will include New Orleans parent activist Karran Harper Royal, New York teacher and blogger Gary Rubinstein, and Connecticut writer and activist Wendy Lecker.

Authentic Reform Success Stories: The fourth panel will be led by Network for Public Education executive director Robin Hiller and will include New York teacher and activist Brian Jones, and author of Beyond the Education Wars: Evidence That Collaboration Builds Effective Schools, Greg Anrig.

Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown, In Conversation: The event will finish off with a conversation between leading community activist Jitu Brown and Diane Ravitch, who will talk about where we are in building a movement for real improvement in our schools.

There are some great names here, and subjects well worth discussing. There is clearly an agenda for solutions, not just complaining about reformster baloney.

Anybody connected to the internet can watch a live stream of the event. And if you would like to help with the costs, you can follow this link to the NPE website and contribute by way of paypal.

I cannot watch today-- it's Homecoming weekend and I'm the student council adviser, so I'm about to spend most of the next 36 hours in the gym. I am counting on all of you to watch, to blog and tweet about what you see and hear, to spread the word that there are non-corporate voices out there, smart, well-informed voices that support public education and see ways to move forward that aren't primarily focused on making somebody rich(er).

Planning vs. Creativity

Indeed, nothing stunts growth more powerfully than our attachment to the familiar, our blind adherence to predetermined plans, and our inability to, as Rilke famously put it, “live the questions.”

This comes from an article written by Maria Popova at her blog Brain Pickings (it'[s a great blog, despite her love for Duckworth's grittology) entitled "The Perils of Plans: Why Creativity Requires Leaping into the Unknown." Popova is looking at Dani Shapiro's memoir Still Writing which includes this great line:

The writing life isn’t just filled with predictable uncertainties but with the awareness that we are always starting over again.

And in reference to her own career

It might seem to you that all this has been the result of a methodically carried-out plan. Or any plan at all. But I planned none of it. Almost everything that has happened in my writing life has been the result of keeping my head down and doing the work. 

Shapiro's view matches what many writers have to say about writing-- that it is neither the result of waiting for some uncontrollable bolt of squishy lightning to strike, nor can it be harnessed by a careful and precise plan.

If you've taught writing, you've worked with young writers on both ends of the problem scale. On one end you find students who want to wait until they're in the mood, until they've had an inspiration, at which point they imagine the genius will just automatically pour out of them. On the other end, you find students who want a list of steps to follow, an exact hoop-by-hoop layout of where to jump in order to land on writing excellence.

The hoop jumpers want to be right. They want to know that there is One Right Way to get to the One Right Destination and they want you to tell them what it is. They want to know that every step they take will be Correct, and so not fraught with risk or uncertainty.

And while Popova and Shapiro are looking at writing, living your life is itself a creative venture. Our students need to learn to deal with the writerly creative uncertainty because they will meet it every day of their lives-- from deciding whether to marry someone to deciding what house to live in to picking a job to deciding what to have for lunch. To really live your life, you have to be willing to take the leap into the unknown.

The secret is not in the plan, but in the preparation. Build your muscles, marshal your strength, develop your focus so that you know the direction you want to go and have the strength and determination to deal with the obstacles and uncertainty. The best way to flub the leap into the unknown, to come up short, is to flinch and pull back at the very moment you should bear down and put all your strength and focus into launching yourself.

Putting faith in the Plan limits your possibilities, and it makes you inflexible. You make your choices based on what you think you're supposed to be able to achieve instead of your true goals. And when things don't go according to plan (as they will), you are stuck because your guide was the plan, not the goal. Planning is the straightjacket of creativity.

Again-- this is not just about writing. This is about living your life.

One of my most fundamental objections to the reformster ideals for education is that they seek to enforce a reality in schools that does not reflect the reality of the world. It is the tyranny of the hoop-jumpers. They seek to have students practice and model an approach to life that is stunted, small, low on possibilities, devoid of true creativity, sad, grey. They believe in planning, not just for themselves, but for everyone. Not even a range and variety of plans, but one plan for everyone. It is not just a bleak view of education. It is a bleak view of life.

They will say, "Oh, but within the standards and tests there is freedom to achieve the goals any way you wish." Yes, and Henry Ford offered the Model T in any color the customer wanted, as long as it was black.

It's good for us as teachers to think about pedagogical method, instructional strategies, best ways to organize content, all that good teachery stuff. But we also need to step back and ask larger questions. I prefer to ask, "Does my classroom model approaches for living a full, rich, creative life with bravery and strength? Are we learning an openness to the uncertainty of that leap?" I can't say I always know exactly how to get there, but that's the leap, and I try to take it anyway.