Lazy.
I'm not a fan of that word, at all. But I hear students described as lazy by a parent, a teacher, even the students themselves. I've heard it too many times just in the last week.
I see it as a cheap, dismissive shortcut-- not very useful or helpful for dealing with a student problem.
It's not that I don't believe in laziness. I have no doubt that actual lazy people exist. But too often "lazy" is just shorthand for "apparently not willing to spend time and effort on the things I believe they should spend time on." In the course of my career, I have met very few actual lazy students. On the other hand, I have often encountered the following sorts of students.
The stress-averse student. There is a huge amount of stress associated with doing things one sucks at. Adults who are successful and in control of their own lives often forget just how stressful it is to do something, day after day, that one does not do well. It takes a certain kind of strength to get back on a horse when one knows beforehand that the horse is going to kick you in the teeth. And so the stress-averse student finds ways to put off getting on the horse to the point that it seems as if she has forgotten how to even find the stable.
The comfortable student. Nothing stalls the development of a student like comfort. I've lost count of the number of students who started out as performers who performed really well for eighth graders, when they were in eighth grade. Fast forward and in eleventh grade some of those same performers are still putting out great performances-- for an eighth grader. They would rather keep doing what they've always done than try new things, strange things, uncomfortable things.
The beaten-down student. Some students are simply too drained and tromped-on to easily find the energy for school. Home is not a haven, a place to recharge and get ready for a new day. It's a difficult and, in the worst cases, dangerous place. Some students face challenges that don't leave them a lot of focus or stamina for school. Plus, that kind of life can change your priorities. When you're wondering whether or not you're going to eat tonight, it's hard to get all worked up about a quadratic equation or gerund phrases.
The cost-benefits analyzer. For instance, I'm pretty sure I could learn conversational Chinese, but I see a huge cost in terms of time and opportunity cost, and I don't see a very large benefit, so I don't expect I'll ever try to learn conversational Chinese unless some part of that equation changes. Nobody thinks less of me because of that; rational adults make these sorts of cost-benefit decisions all the time. Children are not always good at cost or benefits assessment, but the basic analysis process still works the same.
Now, you could say that these are all just fancy ways to say "lazy." I disagree. I think the difference is critical.
"Lazy" is a character judgment, and irreparable flaw. If a student is "just plain lazy" then that's like saying they're "just plain short" or "just plain left-handed"-- there's nothing I can do about it. "Lazy" gives me the power to dismiss that student, to declare that they are doing poorly because of some innate character flaw far beyond my control.
But if the student is stress-averse, then it's on me to help coach him past his fear of failure, to set him up for success, to find ways to make class less of a kick in the teeth. If the student is comfortable in the same old place, then I can do something about making her uncomfortable enough to want to move forward. If the student is beaten down, then it's my job to help lift him back up. And if the student has done a cost-benefits analysis that is not in my favor, I need to make a better sales pitch about the costs and te benefits.
"Lazy" leads to resentment-- this damn kid is just holding out on me. I've seen that expression on a parent's face in a conference, and I've seen the expression on the child's face as she absorbs the message that she is just defective and shifty and bad.
But understanding the student's failure, reluctance, inactivity, stubbornness, unwillingness to move forward-- it gives me the opportunity to be a partner, to help the child (because after all-- I'm the adult in the room, not my students) figure out how to find his own strength, his own ability, his own success. You do not help people stand up strong by making them small.
Believing in that child's potential does not erase the child's obstacles. Neither does simply expecting that the child will succeed as if there were no challenges in her path. The obstacles that students face aren't excuses to fail, but they aren't imaginary, either. When we deny their ability to succeed, that's wrong. But when we deny the reality of their experience-- obstacles included-- that's wrong, too. Nor do I think that a better understanding of what's holding the student back will suddenly unlock a happy land of unicorns and rainbows. But you have to start with what is true for the student. And you also have to remember that sometimes students do things on their schedule, not ours. The flowers will not bloom sooner because you insist or expect or demand.
Are there actual lazy students? Probably. But usually I find the appearance of laziness is more data about what sort of coaching that student needs to find her success. And a diagnosis of "lazy" is not useful. (Note: a diagnosis of "lacks grit" is equally useless).
Most important of all-- we have to recognize that sometimes what we want simply doesn't line up with what our students want, and then recognize that this is not proof that the child is somehow defective. If we can extend the same respect to them that we give to all other human beings, that can be the beginning of powerful and important things.
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Monday, March 9, 2015
Throwdown in Upstate NY*
It appears that some board members of the Kennmore-Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District (generally known as the Ken-Ton district) have had enough.
The district is located north-ish of Buffalo, NY, and serves roughly 75,000 residents. And tomorrow night, board president Bob Dana wants to fire a shot across the state capital's bow.
The story has just been picked up by the Buffalo press in the last hour. In that piece, Dana is plenty clear:
“Enough is enough. He’s slowly bleeding us away,” Dana said of Cuomo on Monday. “I have never been a conspiracy theorist. But every time I look at the things that are getting proposed and where they’re coming from, they’re not fair, they’re not legal, they’re not right.”
He has two resolutions drafted and ready to go.
First, a resolution that protests both the current 20% system and the proposed 50% for counting standardized test results in teacher evaluations, and demands that both be abandoned. The resolution calls for a representative council drawing from many of the states educational professional groups to develop a fair and equitable teacher evaluation system. If those demands aren't met,
The Board of Education of the Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda UFSD will, upon the approval and acceptance of the KTA & KAA, seriously consider eliminating using student test data as part of our teachers and administrators evaluations. Furthermore, it would be expected that the KTA & KAA would be receptive to recalculating the remaining portion of their evaluations to a total 100%.
Second, a resolution that the governor stop holding school funds hostage and comply with the court-ordered return to districts of the money owed them by the state of New York. If the state won't do so, the district will
seriously consider not administering standardized testing in grades 3-8.
In other words, Dana would like to tell Andrew Cuomo to "go get stuffed." I'm paraphrasing.
While some district folks are calling on parents to support the board by submitting opt-out letters, not everybody is feeling feisty. The district's superintendent Dawn Mirand has sent out a statement that basically says, "I feel your pain. Everybody is frustrated and school boards want to watch out for their children and districts, but it would really be better if we didn't go do something crazy that would earn us a serious spanking by the state. I will keep working within the law to do something about the state's mess of dumb regulations, but in the meantime, the law is the law and let's not volunteer to be made an example of. Vote no on this thing." I'm paraphrasing.
The meeting of the five member board is tomorrow (March 10). It looks like it could be quite the adventure. Granted, a resolution to seriously consider possibly doing stuff leaves the board a lot of wiggle room, but if nothing else, it marks the frustration level in the outskirts of Cuomo's domain. Stay tuned. [Update: The account of how this meeting turned out can be found here.]
*All right. I spent five minutes debating the intricacies of New York geographical subdivisions. I had this argument forty years ago in college with residents of what may be either "Western NY, " "Upstate NY," "Buffalo-area-the-rest-of-the-state-is-really-East-of-Us NY" and other variations I have since forgotten. I mean no malice toward anyone who does not care for my geographical designation. I had to locate it somewhere.
The district is located north-ish of Buffalo, NY, and serves roughly 75,000 residents. And tomorrow night, board president Bob Dana wants to fire a shot across the state capital's bow.
The story has just been picked up by the Buffalo press in the last hour. In that piece, Dana is plenty clear:
“Enough is enough. He’s slowly bleeding us away,” Dana said of Cuomo on Monday. “I have never been a conspiracy theorist. But every time I look at the things that are getting proposed and where they’re coming from, they’re not fair, they’re not legal, they’re not right.”
He has two resolutions drafted and ready to go.
First, a resolution that protests both the current 20% system and the proposed 50% for counting standardized test results in teacher evaluations, and demands that both be abandoned. The resolution calls for a representative council drawing from many of the states educational professional groups to develop a fair and equitable teacher evaluation system. If those demands aren't met,
The Board of Education of the Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda UFSD will, upon the approval and acceptance of the KTA & KAA, seriously consider eliminating using student test data as part of our teachers and administrators evaluations. Furthermore, it would be expected that the KTA & KAA would be receptive to recalculating the remaining portion of their evaluations to a total 100%.
Second, a resolution that the governor stop holding school funds hostage and comply with the court-ordered return to districts of the money owed them by the state of New York. If the state won't do so, the district will
seriously consider not administering standardized testing in grades 3-8.
In other words, Dana would like to tell Andrew Cuomo to "go get stuffed." I'm paraphrasing.
While some district folks are calling on parents to support the board by submitting opt-out letters, not everybody is feeling feisty. The district's superintendent Dawn Mirand has sent out a statement that basically says, "I feel your pain. Everybody is frustrated and school boards want to watch out for their children and districts, but it would really be better if we didn't go do something crazy that would earn us a serious spanking by the state. I will keep working within the law to do something about the state's mess of dumb regulations, but in the meantime, the law is the law and let's not volunteer to be made an example of. Vote no on this thing." I'm paraphrasing.
The meeting of the five member board is tomorrow (March 10). It looks like it could be quite the adventure. Granted, a resolution to seriously consider possibly doing stuff leaves the board a lot of wiggle room, but if nothing else, it marks the frustration level in the outskirts of Cuomo's domain. Stay tuned. [Update: The account of how this meeting turned out can be found here.]
*All right. I spent five minutes debating the intricacies of New York geographical subdivisions. I had this argument forty years ago in college with residents of what may be either "Western NY, " "Upstate NY," "Buffalo-area-the-rest-of-the-state-is-really-East-of-Us NY" and other variations I have since forgotten. I mean no malice toward anyone who does not care for my geographical designation. I had to locate it somewhere.
Bush's Fuzzy Wall
Jeb Bush took to the Washington Post last Friday to try to clarify his education policy ideas. We can probably look forward to many repeats of this process, because Candidate Bush has a powerful need to keep clarifying his education policies until he can find some version of them that isn't hated by voters both inside and outside his party.
His WaPo piece intends to clarify the line on federalism. People in his party hate Common Core, and they hate it at least in part because they see it as federal intrusion on state functions, so it would be useful for Bush III if he could find a way to convince voters that he likes a big, strong wall between the lovely garden of state powers and the big scary snake of federal intrusion.
He's going to need some more clarifying, because this version of the wall is fuzzy and porous.
He starts out with a simple chicken-wire wall foundation, trying to blame the intrusiony part of Common Core Etc on the Obama administration. For those who have followed the Core closely, this will not be particularly convincing, as what the Obama administration gave the Core Creators was pretty much what they asked for. There was never pure, pristine version of the Core somewhere back before Obama got his hands on it. The administration did not pervert CCSS; they fulfilled its every dream.
But Bush III is clear-- "the federal government's role in elementary and secondary education should be limited." That seems like a nice, clear, solid, snake-resistant wall. But then he clarifies what he means.
It should work to create transparency so that parents can see how their local schools measure up; it should support policies that have a proven record; and it should make sure states can’t ignore students who need extra help. That’s it.
Oops. This is not so much a snake-resistant wall as a special snake door leading to snake tunnel that leads directly to the garden.
We could take a shortcut by simply pointing out that all of these policy ideas are exactly what got the fat federal fingers all over education in the last few years, but let's pretend we're starting from scratch. Why do these three supposedly clear policy divides make a better open door than a closed window?
Transparency. This formulation is stupid. It presumes that schools are ordinarily giant opaque black boxes, mysterious and secret fortresses whose walls no parents' gaze can pierce. Parents sit at home for 180 days, scratching their heads and wondering how their children are doing, too foolish and helpless to gather any information.
But if by "measure up" Bush means "measure their school in comparison to some other school many states away," then there is no way to accomplish that without federal intrusion. There's no way to create such a cross country report card without having the federal government declare what should be taught, when it should be taught, and how the teaching of that material should be measured.
You can't have a national report card without a national curriculum and national testing. Federal intrusion doesn't get much intrudier than that.
Support policies that have a proven record. Proven to do what? Proven to whose satisfaction? As long as the feds are setting the rules for what counts as success, they are (again) setting the curriculum and evaluation agenda for the country.
Make sure states can't ignore students who need extra help. This one assumes ill intent by the states, and that certainly doesn't bode well for the feds stepping back. If we're pre-emptively accusing the states of ignoring some students, then the only way this works is if the feds decide which students need extra help. That means determining which students aren't where they should be, and that can only be done if the feds decide where those students should be, which means, once again, that in order to do this supposedly simple federal task, the feds have to set a curriculum, a scope and sequence, and impose a federal level assessment, and that assessment will mean a federal-level school record for each student. How can the feds say, "Yo, state-- you are not doing right by Chris" unless the feds know exactly how Chris is doing?
What Bush has laid out is a fuzzy out-of-focus picture of a wall that is barely pretending to cover up a giant, neon THIS WAY sign with blinking arrow for every federal snake in the area. There is no way for Bush's Three Little Tasks to be truly accomplished without the federal government taking a central and controlling role in education.
He's going to need to clarify his education policy some more, because this isn't going to soothe anybody.
His WaPo piece intends to clarify the line on federalism. People in his party hate Common Core, and they hate it at least in part because they see it as federal intrusion on state functions, so it would be useful for Bush III if he could find a way to convince voters that he likes a big, strong wall between the lovely garden of state powers and the big scary snake of federal intrusion.
He's going to need some more clarifying, because this version of the wall is fuzzy and porous.
He starts out with a simple chicken-wire wall foundation, trying to blame the intrusiony part of Common Core Etc on the Obama administration. For those who have followed the Core closely, this will not be particularly convincing, as what the Obama administration gave the Core Creators was pretty much what they asked for. There was never pure, pristine version of the Core somewhere back before Obama got his hands on it. The administration did not pervert CCSS; they fulfilled its every dream.
But Bush III is clear-- "the federal government's role in elementary and secondary education should be limited." That seems like a nice, clear, solid, snake-resistant wall. But then he clarifies what he means.
It should work to create transparency so that parents can see how their local schools measure up; it should support policies that have a proven record; and it should make sure states can’t ignore students who need extra help. That’s it.
Oops. This is not so much a snake-resistant wall as a special snake door leading to snake tunnel that leads directly to the garden.
We could take a shortcut by simply pointing out that all of these policy ideas are exactly what got the fat federal fingers all over education in the last few years, but let's pretend we're starting from scratch. Why do these three supposedly clear policy divides make a better open door than a closed window?
Transparency. This formulation is stupid. It presumes that schools are ordinarily giant opaque black boxes, mysterious and secret fortresses whose walls no parents' gaze can pierce. Parents sit at home for 180 days, scratching their heads and wondering how their children are doing, too foolish and helpless to gather any information.
But if by "measure up" Bush means "measure their school in comparison to some other school many states away," then there is no way to accomplish that without federal intrusion. There's no way to create such a cross country report card without having the federal government declare what should be taught, when it should be taught, and how the teaching of that material should be measured.
You can't have a national report card without a national curriculum and national testing. Federal intrusion doesn't get much intrudier than that.
Support policies that have a proven record. Proven to do what? Proven to whose satisfaction? As long as the feds are setting the rules for what counts as success, they are (again) setting the curriculum and evaluation agenda for the country.
Make sure states can't ignore students who need extra help. This one assumes ill intent by the states, and that certainly doesn't bode well for the feds stepping back. If we're pre-emptively accusing the states of ignoring some students, then the only way this works is if the feds decide which students need extra help. That means determining which students aren't where they should be, and that can only be done if the feds decide where those students should be, which means, once again, that in order to do this supposedly simple federal task, the feds have to set a curriculum, a scope and sequence, and impose a federal level assessment, and that assessment will mean a federal-level school record for each student. How can the feds say, "Yo, state-- you are not doing right by Chris" unless the feds know exactly how Chris is doing?
What Bush has laid out is a fuzzy out-of-focus picture of a wall that is barely pretending to cover up a giant, neon THIS WAY sign with blinking arrow for every federal snake in the area. There is no way for Bush's Three Little Tasks to be truly accomplished without the federal government taking a central and controlling role in education.
He's going to need to clarify his education policy some more, because this isn't going to soothe anybody.
Legal Assault on Public Ed in Boston
“Boston’s public charter schools are helping students succeed. But to
get into one of the city’s public charter schools, kids literally have
to win the lottery. Kids should not have to be lucky to get an adequate
education,” said Paul Ware, a partner at Goodwin Procter and former
chairman of the firm’s litigation department. “It’s time for action to
ensure that all students in Boston have stronger educational
opportunities.”
That quote might lead one to expect that the next words out of Ware's mouth might be, "So we will going to court to insure that every public school in the Boston has the resources and support necessary for success." But it turns out that March is Opposites Month in Boston, and so what actually happens next is that three big time law firms are going to court to strip more resources from Boston Public Schools.
Paul F. Ware Jr., Michael B. Keating, and William F. Lee, partners at top Boston law firms, are planning to file a lawsuit on behalf of children who want to attend charter schools but allegedly didn't win Boston's charter school lottery. Charter students reportedly make up 4% of total students in Massachusetts; presumably the other 96% will just have to go round up lawyers of their own.
Boston has hit its limit of 34 charter schools. Last summer the legislature declined to add to that. This dance over charter caps is an annual ritual in the pilgrim state, where resistance to charters can become spirited (a quick google turned up two previous charter-related lawsuits, filed in order to keep charters out of communities). Feelings in MA have been rather split among voters when it comes to charters, with no strong groundswell of charter support on which to hang a political hat.
So now, lawyers will be trying the civil rights argument, claiming that those students who are not getting to escape public schools are having their civil rights violated. Civil rights violations affecting the students still in public schools, such as having their schools inadequately funded, or having more of their funding sucked away by charters-- these are apparently not the kind of civil rights violations that concern these lawyers.
Mark Kenen of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association thinks the suit is swell and that it fits their thirty-year argument that charters should be allowed to flourish.
This argument rests on the assertion that charters have been successful. That's a tough argument to back up. Attempts to provide data and support lead to pieces like this one at Edushyster in which some fairly simple number crunching leads to the conclusion that Boston charters are producing about three male graduates per charter per year.
The worry this time is that the lawsuit will be filed against state secretary of education James A. Peyser who, like his boss Governor Charlie Baker, feels the charter love to his very core. I suppose it's theoretically possible that this is all sock puppet theater, leading quickly to the moment where Peyser and Baker declare themselves forced by the courts to do exactly what they couldn't get permission for from the legislature. In other words, public ed proponents are worried that the defense against this lawsuit might not be very spirited, or even life-like.
It's a troubling argument to repeatedly encounter-- the notion that the state has a moral obligation to allow the rescue of some students in a manner that simultaneously strips other, apparently less-worthy students, of the resources and support needed for their schools. This is lawsuit to demand that the state rob Peter in order to help Paul turn a charter profit.
There are moral and civil rights issues at play here, but they are aligned precisely opposite of where the charter supporters wish to display them. If rich lawyers want to get up in arms about the civil rights of students, my recommendation is that they stand up for all students, even the ones who aren't trying to get into charter schools.
That quote might lead one to expect that the next words out of Ware's mouth might be, "So we will going to court to insure that every public school in the Boston has the resources and support necessary for success." But it turns out that March is Opposites Month in Boston, and so what actually happens next is that three big time law firms are going to court to strip more resources from Boston Public Schools.
Paul F. Ware Jr., Michael B. Keating, and William F. Lee, partners at top Boston law firms, are planning to file a lawsuit on behalf of children who want to attend charter schools but allegedly didn't win Boston's charter school lottery. Charter students reportedly make up 4% of total students in Massachusetts; presumably the other 96% will just have to go round up lawyers of their own.
Boston has hit its limit of 34 charter schools. Last summer the legislature declined to add to that. This dance over charter caps is an annual ritual in the pilgrim state, where resistance to charters can become spirited (a quick google turned up two previous charter-related lawsuits, filed in order to keep charters out of communities). Feelings in MA have been rather split among voters when it comes to charters, with no strong groundswell of charter support on which to hang a political hat.
So now, lawyers will be trying the civil rights argument, claiming that those students who are not getting to escape public schools are having their civil rights violated. Civil rights violations affecting the students still in public schools, such as having their schools inadequately funded, or having more of their funding sucked away by charters-- these are apparently not the kind of civil rights violations that concern these lawyers.
Mark Kenen of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association thinks the suit is swell and that it fits their thirty-year argument that charters should be allowed to flourish.
This argument rests on the assertion that charters have been successful. That's a tough argument to back up. Attempts to provide data and support lead to pieces like this one at Edushyster in which some fairly simple number crunching leads to the conclusion that Boston charters are producing about three male graduates per charter per year.
The worry this time is that the lawsuit will be filed against state secretary of education James A. Peyser who, like his boss Governor Charlie Baker, feels the charter love to his very core. I suppose it's theoretically possible that this is all sock puppet theater, leading quickly to the moment where Peyser and Baker declare themselves forced by the courts to do exactly what they couldn't get permission for from the legislature. In other words, public ed proponents are worried that the defense against this lawsuit might not be very spirited, or even life-like.
It's a troubling argument to repeatedly encounter-- the notion that the state has a moral obligation to allow the rescue of some students in a manner that simultaneously strips other, apparently less-worthy students, of the resources and support needed for their schools. This is lawsuit to demand that the state rob Peter in order to help Paul turn a charter profit.
There are moral and civil rights issues at play here, but they are aligned precisely opposite of where the charter supporters wish to display them. If rich lawyers want to get up in arms about the civil rights of students, my recommendation is that they stand up for all students, even the ones who aren't trying to get into charter schools.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Mike Petrilli Goes To War
Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute spoke today in front of the New York Council of School Superintendents, a speaking engagement that was enough to stir up general commotion before he ever even opened his mouth. I'm not a NYS superintendent, but the text of the speech is on line, so let's see what he had to say.
Petrilli starts by re-casting his topic. The speech was billed as "How To End the Education Wars," but he modifies that to how to survive them. And he then launches his three ideas:
Be the voice of the sane and sensible center
Petrilli uses the new fave talking point for reformsters in which he characterizes the pro-public-education folks (and name checks Diane Ravitch) as those who have given up, think that education is hopeless in the face of poverty, believe that schools cannot do any better. This is the new improved straw man version of dismissing reform critics because they "use poverty as an excuse." It's a snappy rhetorical point, but it's a lie, a deliberate misreading of what folks in the pro-public-ed camp are saying.
It's a particularly galling point coming from the man who has explained on more than one platform that the proper role of charters is to rescue those students who are deserving, snatching them from the midst of the undeserving mob. It's galling from charter fans in general, as their whole point is that public schools are hopeless and we should not waste another cent trying to help them do better.
But it's also insulting to the millions of teachers who are in the classroom day after day, doing the best they can with the resources they have. Hey, teachers-- if you're not succeeding with all of your students, it has nothing to do with obstacles and challenges in your path. You just don't believe enough.
The Petrilli pivots to criticize reformers, mostly for creating unrealistic definitions of success and failure. All students will not be ready to go to college, and not all schools labeled failing are, in fact, failing.
He suggests that superintendents advocate for growth measures in evaluating schools. He calls on them to call out schools that are failing, because it will increase their credibility. He does not take any time explaining what standards the individual student growth should be measured against, nor why.
He also throws in a plug for vocational education, and on this I'm in complete agreement with him.
But in this section Petrilli has mapped out a "sensible center" that I do not recognize. On the one side, an extreme straw-man version of reform opponents, and on the other, a tiny concession that assumes the fundamentals of reform are sound. Petrilli's sensible middle has nothing to say about the destructiveness of test-driven accountability, the warping of the system that comes from making schools accountable to the federal government, or the lack of full funding and support. On the one hand he dismisses anyone who wants to talk about the effects of poverty on education, but on the other, he acknowledges the unfairness of comparing schools where students arrive already behind on their first day. Petrilli's sensible middle is a bit of a muddle.
Ask for the ball-- then run with it.
This is also a hot new reformster talking point (also on view in Rick Hess's cage-busting teacher) in which people who are getting ground down by the system are responsible for boot-strapping themselves into a better place.
Petrilli gives it to both sides with superintendents and teacher evaluations. He chides the superintendents-- we reformers never would have had to come after you on this if you hadn't been doing such a crappy job (and we skip, again, the question of why the ed system is responsible for coming up with a system that reformsters approve of. I don't like the way some think tanks are run-- should they have to come up with a new system that makes me happy?) On the one hand, he feels their pain because of course it's "damn near impossible" to fire a teacher, and again, Petrilli is too smart to actually believe that's true. Unless he and I have radically different definitions of "damn near impossible."
At the same time, Petrilli characterizes Andrew Cuomo's teacher evaluation proposal as "insane," noting that the trend is to use test scores less, not more. But he tells them they can do a better job with evaluating and canning probationary pre-tenure teachers. Not sure I disagree with this, but he cites Joel Klein's work with this system in New York City, but the last I read, New York's Teacher Tenure Twilight didn't yield any useful results.
Petrilli also scolds the superintendents for doing a lousy job on leader development and recruitment, simply waiting for teachers to self-select for administration roles.
So actually, the balls that Petrilli thinks superintendents could grab are relatively small and not terribly significant ones. But of course, they're among the few balls that are still left to superintendents in New York.
On charters: don't fight 'em, join 'em
Petrilli acknowledges that his charter love might be why eyebrows have been raised to ceiling height for his appearance at the supers' gathering, but he says New York is charter territory because Albany leads the nation in production of education red tape. The awesome thing about charters is that they get to run without all that tapiness, and the superintendents should agitate for the same tapeless freedom. And if they can't get it, they should get in on the charter fun.
This third point is brief, perhaps because there are no details to add to this. How does one elaborate on these points. Ask Albany for freedom that they won't grant you in a zillion years? Join the charter game by finding millionaires to back you? Stop being so resentful that politicians, with the backing and encouragement of outfits like the Fordham Foundation, have been steadily stacking the deck against public schools and in favor of charteristas? Yes, it's probably just as well that Petrilli didn't dwell too long on this point.
Petrilli starts by re-casting his topic. The speech was billed as "How To End the Education Wars," but he modifies that to how to survive them. And he then launches his three ideas:
Be the voice of the sane and sensible center
Petrilli uses the new fave talking point for reformsters in which he characterizes the pro-public-education folks (and name checks Diane Ravitch) as those who have given up, think that education is hopeless in the face of poverty, believe that schools cannot do any better. This is the new improved straw man version of dismissing reform critics because they "use poverty as an excuse." It's a snappy rhetorical point, but it's a lie, a deliberate misreading of what folks in the pro-public-ed camp are saying.
It's a particularly galling point coming from the man who has explained on more than one platform that the proper role of charters is to rescue those students who are deserving, snatching them from the midst of the undeserving mob. It's galling from charter fans in general, as their whole point is that public schools are hopeless and we should not waste another cent trying to help them do better.
But it's also insulting to the millions of teachers who are in the classroom day after day, doing the best they can with the resources they have. Hey, teachers-- if you're not succeeding with all of your students, it has nothing to do with obstacles and challenges in your path. You just don't believe enough.
The Petrilli pivots to criticize reformers, mostly for creating unrealistic definitions of success and failure. All students will not be ready to go to college, and not all schools labeled failing are, in fact, failing.
He suggests that superintendents advocate for growth measures in evaluating schools. He calls on them to call out schools that are failing, because it will increase their credibility. He does not take any time explaining what standards the individual student growth should be measured against, nor why.
He also throws in a plug for vocational education, and on this I'm in complete agreement with him.
But in this section Petrilli has mapped out a "sensible center" that I do not recognize. On the one side, an extreme straw-man version of reform opponents, and on the other, a tiny concession that assumes the fundamentals of reform are sound. Petrilli's sensible middle has nothing to say about the destructiveness of test-driven accountability, the warping of the system that comes from making schools accountable to the federal government, or the lack of full funding and support. On the one hand he dismisses anyone who wants to talk about the effects of poverty on education, but on the other, he acknowledges the unfairness of comparing schools where students arrive already behind on their first day. Petrilli's sensible middle is a bit of a muddle.
Ask for the ball-- then run with it.
This is also a hot new reformster talking point (also on view in Rick Hess's cage-busting teacher) in which people who are getting ground down by the system are responsible for boot-strapping themselves into a better place.
Petrilli gives it to both sides with superintendents and teacher evaluations. He chides the superintendents-- we reformers never would have had to come after you on this if you hadn't been doing such a crappy job (and we skip, again, the question of why the ed system is responsible for coming up with a system that reformsters approve of. I don't like the way some think tanks are run-- should they have to come up with a new system that makes me happy?) On the one hand, he feels their pain because of course it's "damn near impossible" to fire a teacher, and again, Petrilli is too smart to actually believe that's true. Unless he and I have radically different definitions of "damn near impossible."
At the same time, Petrilli characterizes Andrew Cuomo's teacher evaluation proposal as "insane," noting that the trend is to use test scores less, not more. But he tells them they can do a better job with evaluating and canning probationary pre-tenure teachers. Not sure I disagree with this, but he cites Joel Klein's work with this system in New York City, but the last I read, New York's Teacher Tenure Twilight didn't yield any useful results.
Petrilli also scolds the superintendents for doing a lousy job on leader development and recruitment, simply waiting for teachers to self-select for administration roles.
So actually, the balls that Petrilli thinks superintendents could grab are relatively small and not terribly significant ones. But of course, they're among the few balls that are still left to superintendents in New York.
On charters: don't fight 'em, join 'em
Petrilli acknowledges that his charter love might be why eyebrows have been raised to ceiling height for his appearance at the supers' gathering, but he says New York is charter territory because Albany leads the nation in production of education red tape. The awesome thing about charters is that they get to run without all that tapiness, and the superintendents should agitate for the same tapeless freedom. And if they can't get it, they should get in on the charter fun.
This third point is brief, perhaps because there are no details to add to this. How does one elaborate on these points. Ask Albany for freedom that they won't grant you in a zillion years? Join the charter game by finding millionaires to back you? Stop being so resentful that politicians, with the backing and encouragement of outfits like the Fordham Foundation, have been steadily stacking the deck against public schools and in favor of charteristas? Yes, it's probably just as well that Petrilli didn't dwell too long on this point.
Super Sardinemastery: Paying More To Teach More
If there's one thing reformsters have pursued with determination and intensity, it is the prospect of cutting payroll costs when operating schools. The fundamental problem of squeezing money out of a school system is that it's extremely difficult to increase revenue; if you want to make more money, you have to cut costs, and most of the costs in operating a school are tied up in paying teachers.
The desire to cut total personnel costs have led to some dumb ideas ("Hey! Let's just have every teacher only work a year or two so every teacher on staff is a beginning teacher only making beginning teacher wages!"), but one of the champions of the Dumb Ideas Olympics is what I call the Super Sardinemaster idea. We round up the very most awesome teachers and just jam as many students into a smaller number of classrooms. Sounds super, huh?
Well, here it comes again. Georgetown University's Edunomics Lab (because nobody brings the dumb ideas to education with such reliable regulatory as economists) offers the "paper" "Paying the Best Teachers More To Teach More Students." And if you are looking for finely packaged baloney, this paper has it in spades.
"On top of many policymakers’ wish lists is increased teacher pay." That's the opening sentence, and it serves as the writers' announcement that this is one more exercise, not in looking for or examining reality, but putting a pretty package on an ugly policy idea. Not unsurprisingly, it is one of the statements in this paper that does not come with a footnote, because who, exactly, would you cite? Certainly there are policymakers who have made mouth noises about wishing teachers were paid more. What is notable about those policymakers is that none of them have put their money where their mouth noises are. Compare the amount of money that policymakers want to put aside to boost charter schools with the amount of money they want to put aside to boost teacher pay. I don't want to make a big deal out of this point; we all knew going into teaching that nobody was clamoring to pay us Big Bucks. But when you open your paper with a lie, you put me on notice as a reader.
The writers do sort of acknowledge that a merit pay system that costs less than a regular payroll system is not going to happen, but they only do that so that they can set up their own twisted version of merit pay. Their proposal is simple-- fire all the bad teachers and jam all of their students into a classroom with the remaining good teachers. The district in turn can raise the remaining teachers' salaries because there are fewer of them.
At this point I have to tip my hat (or possibly my entire head) to Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters (and the successful battle against inBloom) for doing a bunch of my homework for me.
The big class with a great teacher idea seems to have made its public mainstream debut in a 2010 Bill Gates speech to the CCSSO. Not surprisingly, Arne Duncan was shortly thereafter talking it up.
We spent billions of dollars to reduce class size,” Duncan told ABC’s Andrea Mitchell in 2011, when we could instead give teachers higher salaries in exchange for larger classrooms, thereby attracting much more talented teachers.
That was back in 2011, and as near as Haimson can tell, nobody ever actually tried to do it. Broad "graduate" (can you graduate from a fake superintendent training program?) John Covington was going to give it a try in Kansas City Schools, but instead resigned and went to Michigan to work for EAA which played with using computers as a way to shoehorn many many students into single classrooms.
But boosting the idea all along the way has been Marguerite Roza, who is in fact the co-author of this latest work that we're now ploughing through.
The hook from which any such proposal hangs is the assertion that great teaching matters more than small class size, but even in the Edunomics paper, that's a shaky hook indeed. The "research" cited includes "research" like a paper from the Fordham Institute and research that "modeled the effects"-- in other words, not actual research on the actual stuff we're talking about.
Edunomics also has to tap dance around preferences. Parents prefer smaller classes; that's unequivocally true, but Rozas and her co-author try to get past that by citing research that says parents would prefer a 27-student class with a great teacher to a 22-student class with a random teacher. This ignores a great many things, not the least of which is that in many districts, a 27-student class would represent far smaller class-size than most teachers and students are currently dealing with.
There's also some useless research suggesting that a majority of teachers would rather have a $5K bonus than two fewer students in class. This research comes from Dan Goldhaber, Michael DeArmond and Scott Deburgomaster, “Teacher Attitudes About Compensation Reform: Implications for Reform Implementation,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 64, No. 3 (April 2011) and we could spend some time trying to evaluate its bona fides, but really, who cares? We aren't talking about two students-- we're talking about enough students to significantly cut the teaching staff. This is like trying to argue that because you like having your back scratched with a one of those little backscratchers, you would undoubtedly like to be impaled with a rake.
Edunomics offers some specific program proposals. For instance, it might be best to implement this in a growing district where you don't actually have to fire many people-- you can just keep jamming the incoming students into the classrooms you already have. It would save money, and improve student outcomes (by some means that Edunomics doesn't even pretend to have an explanation for). For districts that aren't growing so much, the writers suggest simply not replacing teachers who leave.
The paper does offer some actual money breakdowns by state. By state. The writers do envision modest class size growth because they choose to look at the state as one gigantic school district. This pretty much renders their entire argument invalid because it does not even begin to approach the question of how this would play out in an individual district. Take my own high school-- there are six teachers in my department. Want to guess what class sizes would look like if the district canned one teacher and gave all of that teacher's students to a Super Sardinemaster (spoiler alert: the SS would get classes double the current size).
Of course, in districts like mine, we would simply redistribute the students across all teachers in the department. Cost savings to district = one teacher's salary and benefits. Super Sardinemaster bonuses paid out = $0.
This is just one of the many ridiculous fictions in Roza's paper. If we are really talking about adding two or three students to a class, no district on the planet will be offering bonuses. They will say, "It's just two more kids. Suck it up." After all-- they don't need the teacher's permission to stock up that classroom.
The Super Sardinemaster system also depends on being able to identify those top teachers, and as we keep discovering and pretending not to notice , we have no idea whatsoever about how to do that! None. Oh, don't bring up VAM-- it's a repeatedly debunked crapshoot of a system that tells us nothing useful. Why does Roza recommend that the SS system be implemented without firing teachers? Because no matter which teachers you fire, there will be students and parents standing up for that teacher and explaining why they think she's great.
And of course the Super Sardinemaster system ignores the possibility that part of what makes a great teacher great is the time and space to focus on each individual student.
But stupidest of all is the completely false choice at the center of the Super Sardinemaster proposition. Given the choice between a large class with a great teacher or a small class, virtually every parents will say, "I choose a small class with a great teacher. What do you mean, that's not a choice? Of course it's a choice."
At best, the Super Sardinemaster approach is silly and misguided, with no real basis in solid research, no foundation in common sense, and no grasp of the dynamics of teaching in a real classroom.
At worst, this is another way to attack the pay schedule, to link teacher pay to teacher load. It's not hard to imagine how quickly this could devolve to a pay system where, to get the standard district base pay, you must carry X number of students. A bonus that almost everybody gets is not a bonus-- it's base pay, and everyone who makes less is getting a penalty for not meeting the numbers.
In fact, the Super Sardinemaster system only makes sense if we look at it as an answer to the age-old reformster question, "How can I get away with paying my teaching staff less while still looking like I'm trying to run a high-quality school?" It is not a search for a better education and teacher pay system-- it is the search for a plausible, spinnable lie.
The desire to cut total personnel costs have led to some dumb ideas ("Hey! Let's just have every teacher only work a year or two so every teacher on staff is a beginning teacher only making beginning teacher wages!"), but one of the champions of the Dumb Ideas Olympics is what I call the Super Sardinemaster idea. We round up the very most awesome teachers and just jam as many students into a smaller number of classrooms. Sounds super, huh?
Well, here it comes again. Georgetown University's Edunomics Lab (because nobody brings the dumb ideas to education with such reliable regulatory as economists) offers the "paper" "Paying the Best Teachers More To Teach More Students." And if you are looking for finely packaged baloney, this paper has it in spades.
"On top of many policymakers’ wish lists is increased teacher pay." That's the opening sentence, and it serves as the writers' announcement that this is one more exercise, not in looking for or examining reality, but putting a pretty package on an ugly policy idea. Not unsurprisingly, it is one of the statements in this paper that does not come with a footnote, because who, exactly, would you cite? Certainly there are policymakers who have made mouth noises about wishing teachers were paid more. What is notable about those policymakers is that none of them have put their money where their mouth noises are. Compare the amount of money that policymakers want to put aside to boost charter schools with the amount of money they want to put aside to boost teacher pay. I don't want to make a big deal out of this point; we all knew going into teaching that nobody was clamoring to pay us Big Bucks. But when you open your paper with a lie, you put me on notice as a reader.
The writers do sort of acknowledge that a merit pay system that costs less than a regular payroll system is not going to happen, but they only do that so that they can set up their own twisted version of merit pay. Their proposal is simple-- fire all the bad teachers and jam all of their students into a classroom with the remaining good teachers. The district in turn can raise the remaining teachers' salaries because there are fewer of them.
At this point I have to tip my hat (or possibly my entire head) to Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters (and the successful battle against inBloom) for doing a bunch of my homework for me.
The big class with a great teacher idea seems to have made its public mainstream debut in a 2010 Bill Gates speech to the CCSSO. Not surprisingly, Arne Duncan was shortly thereafter talking it up.
We spent billions of dollars to reduce class size,” Duncan told ABC’s Andrea Mitchell in 2011, when we could instead give teachers higher salaries in exchange for larger classrooms, thereby attracting much more talented teachers.
That was back in 2011, and as near as Haimson can tell, nobody ever actually tried to do it. Broad "graduate" (can you graduate from a fake superintendent training program?) John Covington was going to give it a try in Kansas City Schools, but instead resigned and went to Michigan to work for EAA which played with using computers as a way to shoehorn many many students into single classrooms.
But boosting the idea all along the way has been Marguerite Roza, who is in fact the co-author of this latest work that we're now ploughing through.
The hook from which any such proposal hangs is the assertion that great teaching matters more than small class size, but even in the Edunomics paper, that's a shaky hook indeed. The "research" cited includes "research" like a paper from the Fordham Institute and research that "modeled the effects"-- in other words, not actual research on the actual stuff we're talking about.
Edunomics also has to tap dance around preferences. Parents prefer smaller classes; that's unequivocally true, but Rozas and her co-author try to get past that by citing research that says parents would prefer a 27-student class with a great teacher to a 22-student class with a random teacher. This ignores a great many things, not the least of which is that in many districts, a 27-student class would represent far smaller class-size than most teachers and students are currently dealing with.
There's also some useless research suggesting that a majority of teachers would rather have a $5K bonus than two fewer students in class. This research comes from Dan Goldhaber, Michael DeArmond and Scott Deburgomaster, “Teacher Attitudes About Compensation Reform: Implications for Reform Implementation,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 64, No. 3 (April 2011) and we could spend some time trying to evaluate its bona fides, but really, who cares? We aren't talking about two students-- we're talking about enough students to significantly cut the teaching staff. This is like trying to argue that because you like having your back scratched with a one of those little backscratchers, you would undoubtedly like to be impaled with a rake.
Edunomics offers some specific program proposals. For instance, it might be best to implement this in a growing district where you don't actually have to fire many people-- you can just keep jamming the incoming students into the classrooms you already have. It would save money, and improve student outcomes (by some means that Edunomics doesn't even pretend to have an explanation for). For districts that aren't growing so much, the writers suggest simply not replacing teachers who leave.
The paper does offer some actual money breakdowns by state. By state. The writers do envision modest class size growth because they choose to look at the state as one gigantic school district. This pretty much renders their entire argument invalid because it does not even begin to approach the question of how this would play out in an individual district. Take my own high school-- there are six teachers in my department. Want to guess what class sizes would look like if the district canned one teacher and gave all of that teacher's students to a Super Sardinemaster (spoiler alert: the SS would get classes double the current size).
Of course, in districts like mine, we would simply redistribute the students across all teachers in the department. Cost savings to district = one teacher's salary and benefits. Super Sardinemaster bonuses paid out = $0.
This is just one of the many ridiculous fictions in Roza's paper. If we are really talking about adding two or three students to a class, no district on the planet will be offering bonuses. They will say, "It's just two more kids. Suck it up." After all-- they don't need the teacher's permission to stock up that classroom.
The Super Sardinemaster system also depends on being able to identify those top teachers, and as we keep discovering and pretending not to notice , we have no idea whatsoever about how to do that! None. Oh, don't bring up VAM-- it's a repeatedly debunked crapshoot of a system that tells us nothing useful. Why does Roza recommend that the SS system be implemented without firing teachers? Because no matter which teachers you fire, there will be students and parents standing up for that teacher and explaining why they think she's great.
And of course the Super Sardinemaster system ignores the possibility that part of what makes a great teacher great is the time and space to focus on each individual student.
But stupidest of all is the completely false choice at the center of the Super Sardinemaster proposition. Given the choice between a large class with a great teacher or a small class, virtually every parents will say, "I choose a small class with a great teacher. What do you mean, that's not a choice? Of course it's a choice."
At best, the Super Sardinemaster approach is silly and misguided, with no real basis in solid research, no foundation in common sense, and no grasp of the dynamics of teaching in a real classroom.
At worst, this is another way to attack the pay schedule, to link teacher pay to teacher load. It's not hard to imagine how quickly this could devolve to a pay system where, to get the standard district base pay, you must carry X number of students. A bonus that almost everybody gets is not a bonus-- it's base pay, and everyone who makes less is getting a penalty for not meeting the numbers.
In fact, the Super Sardinemaster system only makes sense if we look at it as an answer to the age-old reformster question, "How can I get away with paying my teaching staff less while still looking like I'm trying to run a high-quality school?" It is not a search for a better education and teacher pay system-- it is the search for a plausible, spinnable lie.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Believing in Charters
The charter talking point of the week was believing in charter schools and charter school students, and it suggests that at some point Franz Kafka and George Orwell had a love child who went into the PR biz.
Charter boosters are outraged-- outraged!!-- that anyone would criticize or question their success, because that must mean that those critics believe that poor African-American students are victims of their circumstances and these critics don't believe that such students can succeed. But charter schools do believe. They believe in all students. Now, here's a completion sentence. Can you finish it?
Because charter school operators believe that all students succeed, they work hard to serve_______.
If you said "all students," you lose, because most modern students are not devoted to serving all students at all. They will serve the chosen few, the students that they consider worthy of being saved.
They will brag about 100% college acceptance rates, when what they should be bragging about is their ability to winnow a group down to only those students they were sure they could prep for college.
"What are you saying," they will reply. "Are you saying that those students we got ready for college couldn't really succeed?"
Of course not. That group of students, however small, represents a real success. And if I were the parent of one of those students, that success would mean the world to me. It's like the old starfish story; any success is a Good Thing, particularly to the person who succeeds.
But there are two problems with this kind of charter success story.
One is that it is not replicable. All that these charter success stories prove is what every public school teacher already knows-- any school that gets to pick and choose its own students body can be hugely successful. And it's not just picking and choosing the quality of the student body-- I just got a new student in my classroom two weeks ago, and that's not unusual. Charters that fight hard not to have to backfill empty seats never have to deal with students who start partway through the year. Charters that advertise for students and families who want a tough, challenging education get few applicants who hate that idea.
I am not saying that charter schools are evil and wrong for using many techniques for getting the student body they want. I am saying that the success they achieve by doing so is not replicable. Public schools cannot do it. We must take all comers.
In public schools, we do not have the luxury of gathering only the sorts of students we can easily believe in. We take them all.
The other problem is that school funding is currently a zero sum game. When charters take some students away from public schools, they take some of the resources that could have been used to serve the students that they left behind.
Imagine firemen showing up to a burning house. There are a hundred children trapped inside, and the fire chief announces that every one of those children deserves to be saved. But instead of saving them all, he gets handful out of the building, and he does it by having the other trapped children lie down so that the saved children can walk out on their backs.
This is not the charter schools' fault. It's the result of dishonest school funding policies. The honest solution is to fully fund all schools. If policymakers want a robust charter system, fund it. Sell it to the taxpayers, and explain why it's necessary that every time a charter school is opened, taxes must go up. Stop selling charters with the financial fiction that you can operate two homes, two businesses, two cars, or two schools for exactly the same cost as one.
But until a more honest funding policy is implemented (I expect it roughly when there's a hockey league in Hell), charter rhetoric about belief in all students is hollow. Charters believe in some students, and the rest of the students that they don't believe in they just avoid having to face or teach. Those they leave to the same public schools they are stripping of resources.
It doesn't have to be that way. Read, for instance, this rather encouraging interview with a KIPP leader from Philly (who at least seems to know what he should be doing).
But in the meantime, if Believe Is All You Need cheerleaders want me to take them seriously when they criticize educators for bring up factors like poverty and resources and funding, they can prove their point very easily. Just follow these simple steps:
1) Take a truly random assortment of students from the community in which they're located.
2) Commit to keeping those students for the long haul, no matter what.
3) For funding, accept only 30% of the cost-per-pupil figure for the local district.
I think I've been clear about what I believe about believing. But if you're going to claim that belief is all any of us in education need, then show me how it's done.
Charter boosters are outraged-- outraged!!-- that anyone would criticize or question their success, because that must mean that those critics believe that poor African-American students are victims of their circumstances and these critics don't believe that such students can succeed. But charter schools do believe. They believe in all students. Now, here's a completion sentence. Can you finish it?
Because charter school operators believe that all students succeed, they work hard to serve_______.
If you said "all students," you lose, because most modern students are not devoted to serving all students at all. They will serve the chosen few, the students that they consider worthy of being saved.
They will brag about 100% college acceptance rates, when what they should be bragging about is their ability to winnow a group down to only those students they were sure they could prep for college.
"What are you saying," they will reply. "Are you saying that those students we got ready for college couldn't really succeed?"
Of course not. That group of students, however small, represents a real success. And if I were the parent of one of those students, that success would mean the world to me. It's like the old starfish story; any success is a Good Thing, particularly to the person who succeeds.
But there are two problems with this kind of charter success story.
One is that it is not replicable. All that these charter success stories prove is what every public school teacher already knows-- any school that gets to pick and choose its own students body can be hugely successful. And it's not just picking and choosing the quality of the student body-- I just got a new student in my classroom two weeks ago, and that's not unusual. Charters that fight hard not to have to backfill empty seats never have to deal with students who start partway through the year. Charters that advertise for students and families who want a tough, challenging education get few applicants who hate that idea.
I am not saying that charter schools are evil and wrong for using many techniques for getting the student body they want. I am saying that the success they achieve by doing so is not replicable. Public schools cannot do it. We must take all comers.
In public schools, we do not have the luxury of gathering only the sorts of students we can easily believe in. We take them all.
The other problem is that school funding is currently a zero sum game. When charters take some students away from public schools, they take some of the resources that could have been used to serve the students that they left behind.
Imagine firemen showing up to a burning house. There are a hundred children trapped inside, and the fire chief announces that every one of those children deserves to be saved. But instead of saving them all, he gets handful out of the building, and he does it by having the other trapped children lie down so that the saved children can walk out on their backs.
This is not the charter schools' fault. It's the result of dishonest school funding policies. The honest solution is to fully fund all schools. If policymakers want a robust charter system, fund it. Sell it to the taxpayers, and explain why it's necessary that every time a charter school is opened, taxes must go up. Stop selling charters with the financial fiction that you can operate two homes, two businesses, two cars, or two schools for exactly the same cost as one.
But until a more honest funding policy is implemented (I expect it roughly when there's a hockey league in Hell), charter rhetoric about belief in all students is hollow. Charters believe in some students, and the rest of the students that they don't believe in they just avoid having to face or teach. Those they leave to the same public schools they are stripping of resources.
It doesn't have to be that way. Read, for instance, this rather encouraging interview with a KIPP leader from Philly (who at least seems to know what he should be doing).
But in the meantime, if Believe Is All You Need cheerleaders want me to take them seriously when they criticize educators for bring up factors like poverty and resources and funding, they can prove their point very easily. Just follow these simple steps:
1) Take a truly random assortment of students from the community in which they're located.
2) Commit to keeping those students for the long haul, no matter what.
3) For funding, accept only 30% of the cost-per-pupil figure for the local district.
I think I've been clear about what I believe about believing. But if you're going to claim that belief is all any of us in education need, then show me how it's done.
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