I don't know as much about Michael Fullan as I'd like to. Fullan is an educational expert-professor-consultant from Canada who has been brought to California multiple times to share his ideas about how to revitalize the education system, and is often credited/blamed for what has happened in Ontario. It's a thorny mess, and clearly many folks have wildly different impressions of what has happened and who's to blame or credit-- you can get a feel for the issues by reading this article, including the entire comment section.
All of which is a way of allowing that Fullan's ideas, while intriguing and thought-provoking, have not necessarily been field-tested, and there is some question about whether or not they can survive the transition from theory to reality. And he occasionally makes troubling friends (most notably, the McKinsey Group).
But Fullan does a good "What's wrong with NCLB and RttT" from a non-US perspective. This morning I want to take a look at a paper of his from 2011 that returns to one of his favorite ideas-- choosing the right drivers for system change.
The basic concept makes sense-- if you want to redirect a system, you have to do it by installing the right drivers. The wrong drivers get you the wrong results, like pushing a bulldozer up against the side of your car in an attempt to help drive forward out of the mud. And in "Choosing the wrong drivers for whole system reform," Fullan lays out the wrong drivers that US reformsters have bet the house on, and tells which ones should be used instead.
Accountability (not capacity building)
You manage a widget factory. You want to ramp up widget production to 1000 widgets a week. Which of the following is your first step?
1) Make sure that you have sufficient workers with sufficient training and sufficient materials and sufficient tools to meet that production goal.
2) Gather your workers together and tell them they'd better try harder and meet that production goal, or they were going to be fired.
That's the difference between driving by capacity building and driving by accountability. And since we're in a sector that provides a human service and not a widget factory, the difference between the two becomes even more complicated and troublesome.
Fullan does not call to throw out standards and assessment. The problem, he says is the attitude toward them and their dominance in the system. If that dominance is based "on the assumption that massive external pressure will generate intrinsic motivation it is patently false."
Higher, clearer standards, combined with correlated assessments are essential along the way, but they are not going to drive the system forward. Whole system success requires the commitment that comes from intrinsic motivation and improved technical competencies of groups of educators working together purposefully and relentlessly.
His stance raises a question for me-- is it possible to have those standards and correlated assessments without having them take over the system? I'm not sure I think it is, and in general Fullan still likes accountability as a tool more than I do-- but I do agree that trying to redirect the system by simply demanding that teachers Do It Or Else pushes us into the weeds. The assumption that teachers and schools have the capacity to make all students awesome but are, for some mysterious reason, just refusing to use it is both insulting and destructive. Its ultimate expression is Arne Duncan's repeated assertion that all low-achieving students and students with learning disabilities need is just expectations.
Why do we choose accountability over capacity building? Imagine if the feds and states had said, "We will spend whatever it takes to make sure that every child in this country is sitting in a classroom with no more than fourteen other students" or "We will spend whatever it takes to get every teacher three solid years of higher-level teacher training." It would be expensive.
But accountability feels cheap. It doesn't cost anything to tell teachers they'll be fired if they don't shape up. It doesn't cost anything to tell teachers, "You don't need any more resources. Just use some grit and make it happen." Spending billions on testing doesn't feel or look like a big expense, and accountability hawks keep telling themselves that testing will pay huge dividends.
Fullan says that testing should be done less, with an eye toward figuring out how to improve, not punish. He's also a big fan of transparency of results as well. But he asserts that "no system in the world has ever achieved whole system reform by leading with accountability."
Individual Quality (not group quality)
Fullan says that the land of rugged individuals is particularly susceptible to the idea of individual hero teachers striving away in their individual classrooms, but he says that's not where the magic happens.
He refers to a study by Carrie Leana at the University of Pittsburg which looked at the different effects of human capital (the awesome powers of the hero teacher) and social capital (the interactions between staff and administration). Both are necessary, Fullan says, but it's the social capital that really "is the more powerful."
Fullan suggests that this particularly powerful in combination with an emphasis on capacity-- that social capital creates its own intrinsic motivation, while accountability-style drivers actually break down the social capital. Think of how a ranking system where your pay or even your job rest on "beating" other members of the staff-- this is an approach that actively destroys the social capital in a school.
Fullan acknowledges several large challenges in pushing group quality. In particular, he notes that you have to involve all the teachers. Getting buy-in from a few hand-picked staff members doesn't cut it. And I get a bit nervous myself when he starts talking about how "teacher quality" is just another proxy for student learning-- that the metric is how well students are learning. But in no point in this paper (or in the admittedly small amount of Fullan I've read) does he address the question of how we decide whether a student has learned anything or not.
Fullan often emphasizes the importance of teacher morale and intrinsic motivation to a school system, and he is equally clear here-- school leaders who don't get this part right will not get anything right. Top down, carrot and stick attempts to punish and fire individual teachers to excellence will fail every time.
Technology (not instruction)
I hate to sound like a broken twitter but no other successful country became good through using technology at the front end. Without pedagogy in the driver’s seat there is growing evidence that technology is better at driving us to distraction, and that the digital world of the child is detached from the world of the school.
Fullan is short but sweet on this point. "There is no evidence," he writes, "that technology is a particularly good entry point for whole system reform." In other words, the fact that you're making students take their Big Standardized Test on a computer does not revolutionize anything.
Fragmented (not systemic)
Fullan is a systems guy, and I think they are prone to their own set of blind spots. But he believes that countries who have mastered this start from the idea that teachers are crucial and must be supported. They look to improve the quality of the profession, but they do it through methods of support rather than through threats and punishment-- recruit the best, improve working conditions, differentiated roles, support particularly through the early years of work.
In the absence of a system mindset individual pieces, each of which contains half-truths, are pitted against each other as vested interests bash each other with proverbial baseball bats. No one wins; the system loses every time.
He puts particular emphasis on how the system must come to trust teachers, and that this is a particular issue in the US (and Australia). His advice-- to create a cycle of trust, you have to respect people before you think they've earned it, and then "do the things that build competencies and trust over time." This is not bad advice-- as soon as I read it, I recognized it as what I do in my classroom-- but perhaps because he is primarily addressing policymakers and leaders, he fails to take into account the power differential. I can extend respect to education leaders and policymakers in this country (I really can-- I swear) but I can't "build competencies" because I'm just the help, and I have no real contact with them. In fact, now that I think about it, that may be one of the problems in education, just as it's a major problem in the private sector-- the actual physical gulf between management and the work. If policymakers started respecting me, I would see it indirectly in the policies they created-- but they have no idea whether I respect them or not because they've never met me, seen me, seen my work, talked to me. Absent any sort of communication loop between policymakers and people who actually work in schools, I'm not sure Fullan's trust-building model can take root.I'm going to have to think about this some more.
So what have we learned
I don't think Fullan's told us anything we don't know. Bits and pieces of his ideas have clearly taken hold-- the social capital construct of teacher communities is pretty much the entire guiding idea behind PLCs, and reformsters have cherry-picked tiny pieces here and there.
But Fullan's writing gives us other language to use when discussing what's wrong with US ed policy, and that may be helpful, just as it's always useful to have another model by which we can understand what's happening. I'm going to mull some of his ideas over some more. Meanwhile, readers can use the comments section to debate whether or not Fullan sent Canadian education straight to hell in a handbasket or not.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Saturday, April 18, 2015
NPE: My Session
For those of you who are going to Chicago (cause your baby can take you), we'll have two opportunities to meet. One will be at the luncheon, where I have been promised a Watch What Happens style grilling by Jennifer "Edushyster" Berkshire.
On Sunday, in the last choose-your-own-session spot (known to seasoned conference attenders as the Skip It While You Finish Packing To Leave session) I'll be doing a presentation loosely entitled "Teach Writing Like a Writer and Not Like a Test Prep Content Delivery Specialist." I'll share just a bit of what we've learned about how to test prep for writing at my school, to set up what I've learned about teaching writing from a perspective of real actual writing and not just filling in the paper for a school assignment writing.
If people attend, I'm hoping we can do a little discussing and sharing, and in that spirit you're invited to send me questions of issues that are concerns of yours. I don't know All The Answers, but I know several of the questions. I'll talk both about some technical, mechanical tricks I know as well as some of the bigger thinky issues involved in making some brain adjustments in how students approach writing. The idea is not to turn every student into a professional paid author, but to get them to approach writing like an important part of human expression, and not a painful torture used only in a classroom. I am sure I don't know great secrets that nobody else knows, but my dream is that a bunch of us who are excited about writing can share and support and confirm each other.
I'm both excited and terrified about going to Chicago-- I feel like I'm taking my ukelele to go hang out with rock stars, but I'm on the other hand, I'll get to actually see some faces and hear some voices and meet the rock stars. If you're going, I'll warn you right up front that I am absolutely terrible with names and probably not as clever or snappy as I appear to be on the screen. But I am really looking forward to connecting with everyone from all over (and some of my oldest friends in the world live in Chicago, too). I will be the one with the slightly dazed expression right next to the woman who's way too good for him. If you are also dazed and feel out of your depth, find me and we'll start our own table in a corner.
(And if you're still thinking about going, here's some info...)
On Sunday, in the last choose-your-own-session spot (known to seasoned conference attenders as the Skip It While You Finish Packing To Leave session) I'll be doing a presentation loosely entitled "Teach Writing Like a Writer and Not Like a Test Prep Content Delivery Specialist." I'll share just a bit of what we've learned about how to test prep for writing at my school, to set up what I've learned about teaching writing from a perspective of real actual writing and not just filling in the paper for a school assignment writing.
If people attend, I'm hoping we can do a little discussing and sharing, and in that spirit you're invited to send me questions of issues that are concerns of yours. I don't know All The Answers, but I know several of the questions. I'll talk both about some technical, mechanical tricks I know as well as some of the bigger thinky issues involved in making some brain adjustments in how students approach writing. The idea is not to turn every student into a professional paid author, but to get them to approach writing like an important part of human expression, and not a painful torture used only in a classroom. I am sure I don't know great secrets that nobody else knows, but my dream is that a bunch of us who are excited about writing can share and support and confirm each other.
I'm both excited and terrified about going to Chicago-- I feel like I'm taking my ukelele to go hang out with rock stars, but I'm on the other hand, I'll get to actually see some faces and hear some voices and meet the rock stars. If you're going, I'll warn you right up front that I am absolutely terrible with names and probably not as clever or snappy as I appear to be on the screen. But I am really looking forward to connecting with everyone from all over (and some of my oldest friends in the world live in Chicago, too). I will be the one with the slightly dazed expression right next to the woman who's way too good for him. If you are also dazed and feel out of your depth, find me and we'll start our own table in a corner.
(And if you're still thinking about going, here's some info...)
Am I Counting Down?
One of the things that absolutely burns my toast, grinds my gears, and irritates my irritatable places at this time of year is The Question.
It comes in a variety of forms. Are you counting down the days? Are you ready for summer? Are you excited to get out of there?
I know people are generally trying to be chatty, pleasant, or conversational. I know that they're just latching onto a conceit that has floated around the culture for decades, just like complaining about the old ball and chain or assuming strife with you mother in law. But what I hear is the assumption underneath, which bugs the shit out of me:
Don't you just hate your job? Don't you wish you didn't have to do it any longer than is absolutely necessary?
Well, no. No, I don't. I don't hate my job. I don't find my students annoying and unpleasant. I don't find teaching a dreadful chore.
There are things that go along with the job that are a royal pain, not the least of which is that every year gives me less time to get the job done, squeezed out by testing and test prep and shorter periods and more required extras.
So I try not to be rude (because life is too short to be an ass any more than necessary, even if you have a natural aptitude for it), but I refuse to acknowledge the attempt to engage me in some nudge, nudge, wink, wink bonding over how much I'd like to not be doing my job. I will respond as if it's a real question, answer, "God, no. I am stressing over getting everything in before I run out of time with these guys. There's so much to do and so little time, and then I'll have to send them on their way, and I try not to think about that because I'll miss them."
I'm not an idiot. I look forward to the chance to travel to see family, to enjoy some lazy days with my wife, to work on some of my own projects. And I am grateful for the summer time to recharge and prepare for next year; it is a considerable luxury that regular working folks do not have, and I try never to forget that.
But it pains me to see my fellow professionals play this game. To hang up countdown numbers, or cross off the calendar squares like an advent calendar. I cringe. How can we expect students to take school seriously when we stand in front of them and say, "Yeah, you're right. This place is an awful waste of all our time, and won't we be so much happier when we can get out of here."
If we don't think, or act as if, school is an important, valuable, interesting, exciting place to be, how can we ever, ever hope that students will see any value in being there?
So, no, I'm not counting down. And no, my wife, who loves her work and may well be a victim of staff cuts come next fall, is certainly not looking counting down. And no, I am not counting down to retirement, either. As long as I can get important, exciting, invigorating, rewarding, fulfilling work done, why would I pass up the chance to keep doing it?
Look, I know times are rough for teachers. I know that people teach in places far rougher than my district. I know some people are hanging on by fingernails. And I don't fault those people for a second. You can only do what you can do. You can only take what you can take. When you get to the end, then you have to move on. That day hasn't come for me yet, but I fully get that for some folks, in some places, it has, and I don't think any less of them for it.
But when we, as teaching professionals, buy into, reinforce and amplify the cultural assumption that teaching is awful work and putting up with kids is dreadful and teachers all dream of vacation so they can get away from their terrible situation-- well, hell. We don't talk like that about pro sports or being a rock star or being a lawyer. We don't look into our spouse's beautiful eyes and say, "Man, I'm glad you finally stopped kissing me. I thought that was never going to end."
We don't tell our kids at the end of a Little League game, "Boy, you must be glad you get to go home now." We don't routinely tell the band and choir kids, "Boy, I bet you can't wait to be done with that concert." I don't pep up the cast of the school musical by standing back stage hollering, "Hang in there-- only fifteen minutes till intermission."
If we want people to stop treating public education like a painful unpleasant terrible torture, we can start by knocking it off ourselves. Sometimes standing up for schools means writing letters and making phone calls and carrying signs and walking the picket line. But it's also as easy as looking someone in the eyes and saying, "Counting down till I'm down? Why would I do that? I love this work and I always miss the students when summer comes. But I'm grateful to have the chance to get prepped and ready to go back in the fall, because that is going to be awesome."
It comes in a variety of forms. Are you counting down the days? Are you ready for summer? Are you excited to get out of there?
I know people are generally trying to be chatty, pleasant, or conversational. I know that they're just latching onto a conceit that has floated around the culture for decades, just like complaining about the old ball and chain or assuming strife with you mother in law. But what I hear is the assumption underneath, which bugs the shit out of me:
Don't you just hate your job? Don't you wish you didn't have to do it any longer than is absolutely necessary?
Well, no. No, I don't. I don't hate my job. I don't find my students annoying and unpleasant. I don't find teaching a dreadful chore.
There are things that go along with the job that are a royal pain, not the least of which is that every year gives me less time to get the job done, squeezed out by testing and test prep and shorter periods and more required extras.
So I try not to be rude (because life is too short to be an ass any more than necessary, even if you have a natural aptitude for it), but I refuse to acknowledge the attempt to engage me in some nudge, nudge, wink, wink bonding over how much I'd like to not be doing my job. I will respond as if it's a real question, answer, "God, no. I am stressing over getting everything in before I run out of time with these guys. There's so much to do and so little time, and then I'll have to send them on their way, and I try not to think about that because I'll miss them."
I'm not an idiot. I look forward to the chance to travel to see family, to enjoy some lazy days with my wife, to work on some of my own projects. And I am grateful for the summer time to recharge and prepare for next year; it is a considerable luxury that regular working folks do not have, and I try never to forget that.
But it pains me to see my fellow professionals play this game. To hang up countdown numbers, or cross off the calendar squares like an advent calendar. I cringe. How can we expect students to take school seriously when we stand in front of them and say, "Yeah, you're right. This place is an awful waste of all our time, and won't we be so much happier when we can get out of here."
If we don't think, or act as if, school is an important, valuable, interesting, exciting place to be, how can we ever, ever hope that students will see any value in being there?
So, no, I'm not counting down. And no, my wife, who loves her work and may well be a victim of staff cuts come next fall, is certainly not looking counting down. And no, I am not counting down to retirement, either. As long as I can get important, exciting, invigorating, rewarding, fulfilling work done, why would I pass up the chance to keep doing it?
Look, I know times are rough for teachers. I know that people teach in places far rougher than my district. I know some people are hanging on by fingernails. And I don't fault those people for a second. You can only do what you can do. You can only take what you can take. When you get to the end, then you have to move on. That day hasn't come for me yet, but I fully get that for some folks, in some places, it has, and I don't think any less of them for it.
But when we, as teaching professionals, buy into, reinforce and amplify the cultural assumption that teaching is awful work and putting up with kids is dreadful and teachers all dream of vacation so they can get away from their terrible situation-- well, hell. We don't talk like that about pro sports or being a rock star or being a lawyer. We don't look into our spouse's beautiful eyes and say, "Man, I'm glad you finally stopped kissing me. I thought that was never going to end."
We don't tell our kids at the end of a Little League game, "Boy, you must be glad you get to go home now." We don't routinely tell the band and choir kids, "Boy, I bet you can't wait to be done with that concert." I don't pep up the cast of the school musical by standing back stage hollering, "Hang in there-- only fifteen minutes till intermission."
If we want people to stop treating public education like a painful unpleasant terrible torture, we can start by knocking it off ourselves. Sometimes standing up for schools means writing letters and making phone calls and carrying signs and walking the picket line. But it's also as easy as looking someone in the eyes and saying, "Counting down till I'm down? Why would I do that? I love this work and I always miss the students when summer comes. But I'm grateful to have the chance to get prepped and ready to go back in the fall, because that is going to be awesome."
Living in Dialogue, Teacher Voices, and The NEA 360 Report
At his blog Living in Dialogue, Anthony Cody has published an important series of articles about the creation of NEA's 360 report. Taken together, the articles create a picture of the contentious and fraught (depending on your perspective) process involved in creating the report. They are also a primer in how an attempt to include teacher voices can turn into something else entirely (Cody's leading metaphor of auto-tuning is exceptionally apt).
The report was managed by VIVA, and was intended to be a response to this question:
A wide body of research suggests that instructional quality has an important impact on student learning and development, but is not the only major factor. Are we including appropriate measures and indicators in today’s student accountability systems? How should responsibility for students’ education be assigned and measured at all levels of the education system? How should teachers be supported to provide the best possible education in every classroom? Who should be responsible for providing the resources to create a safe and equitable learning environment for all students?
VIVA collected responses from 953 members, and the selected (through a "proprietary algorithm") seventeen leaderly teachers who were given the job of turning those responses into a report. What Cody presents on the blog is a series of reflections by several of those seventeen teachers.
Start with this article by Cody:
The Auto-Tuning of Teacher Voices: VIVA and the NEA 360 Report on Educational Accountability
And then move on through the full package:
It’s Time to Speak Out: Comparing Reports, by Petra Schmid-Riggins
Using Our Teacher Voices: the Fight to Be Heard, by Amanda Koonlaba
Teachers Speak Out, Then Get Schooled, by Rachel Rich.
Let All Teachers’ Voices Be Heard, by Nancy Kunsman.
We Must Create Avenues for Authentic Teacher Voices to be Heard, by Enid Hutchinson.
The Process and the Report: What Went Wrong, by Joy Peters.
There are several different viewpoints represented here, but a picture of the events that led to a softening, editing, edge-smoothing, teacher-shushing rewrite of the report do slowly emerge. It is riveting reading, though for anyone who has ever tried to produce a report with a committee and for management that has something in particular in mind, much will ring true and familiar.
The package of essays is a bit frustrating in its lack, with one exception, of hard specifics. What exactly was edited out and what exactly was it turned into? That part is not as clear as it might be. But the essays are united in their very personal voices; these six individuals will tell you exactly what it felt like to them to be involved, and I found that helpful. Any attempt to create some sort of objective history would have left me searching for and wondering about personal perspectives.
Ultimately how it all happened is more important than what exactly resulted, because the 360 Report that ultimately resulted and which-- well, tell the truth. You hadn't heard of it. You didn't know there was such a thing. If you go search the NEA website, you can dig up some references to NEA 360 Accountability in the 2014-2016 strategic plan. It appears under "Strategic Goal #1:Strong Affiliates for Great Public Schools—Building affiliate capacity to elevate the voices of education professionals is critical to the advancement of public education in America." In the pages used to explain this bureaucratic mush, NEA360 appears as a thing to be integrated into "existing and future affiliate programs." I was going to dig further, but the NEA strategic plan is one of those documents that actually radiates little particles of sleep-inducing numbness, beamed out by string after string of words put together in bland parades of meaningless generality. So, for now, I'll go no further. I quit while I could still feel my face.
But the NEA360 report itself can be read here. It is built around six recommendations:
1) Implement multi-pronged solutions to the multiple factors that impact student learning, enabling legislators, educators, parents, and students to each clearly understand their particular role and responsibility in every student’s learning process.
2) Widen curriculum to promote all areas of human growth such as curiosity, creativity, collaboration
and other life-long skills.
3) Create equity of educational opportunity for all students through appropriate funding, geographical representation in developing standards (and their accompanying assessments), and raising the pedagogical qualifications of teachers.
4) Empower educators to be decision makers in matters related to curriculum, professional development, and school/district policy.
5) Create a new restructured evaluation system of collaboration where teachers have equal voice of their annual professional growth.
6) Honor the commitment for all students to receive Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), recognizing that the diversity of student needs requires diverse programs to accomplish this goal.
nmahavkjhwljkayqwu-----
Sorry. My face went numb all the way down to my hands.
Look, if any of the 953 respondents said anything close to any of those items, I will eat my hat, deep-fried and stapled to an armadillo. The subheadings (38 in all) are much better, and actually include some useful such as banning the use of standardized tests from teacher evaluation. But there is an awful lot of horse-by-committee hump and spit here. The articles at Living in Dialogue help me understand why.
The articles give a picture of how the impulse to include teacher voices, even when well-meant and sincere (which, okay, maybe VIVA deserves that much credit, or maybe not) can go astray and take us to a place where those voices are just as hard to hear as ever. It's not cheery reading, but while you've got a few extra minutes, it's worthwhile reading.
The report was managed by VIVA, and was intended to be a response to this question:
A wide body of research suggests that instructional quality has an important impact on student learning and development, but is not the only major factor. Are we including appropriate measures and indicators in today’s student accountability systems? How should responsibility for students’ education be assigned and measured at all levels of the education system? How should teachers be supported to provide the best possible education in every classroom? Who should be responsible for providing the resources to create a safe and equitable learning environment for all students?
VIVA collected responses from 953 members, and the selected (through a "proprietary algorithm") seventeen leaderly teachers who were given the job of turning those responses into a report. What Cody presents on the blog is a series of reflections by several of those seventeen teachers.
Start with this article by Cody:
The Auto-Tuning of Teacher Voices: VIVA and the NEA 360 Report on Educational Accountability
And then move on through the full package:
It’s Time to Speak Out: Comparing Reports, by Petra Schmid-Riggins
Using Our Teacher Voices: the Fight to Be Heard, by Amanda Koonlaba
Teachers Speak Out, Then Get Schooled, by Rachel Rich.
Let All Teachers’ Voices Be Heard, by Nancy Kunsman.
We Must Create Avenues for Authentic Teacher Voices to be Heard, by Enid Hutchinson.
The Process and the Report: What Went Wrong, by Joy Peters.
There are several different viewpoints represented here, but a picture of the events that led to a softening, editing, edge-smoothing, teacher-shushing rewrite of the report do slowly emerge. It is riveting reading, though for anyone who has ever tried to produce a report with a committee and for management that has something in particular in mind, much will ring true and familiar.
The package of essays is a bit frustrating in its lack, with one exception, of hard specifics. What exactly was edited out and what exactly was it turned into? That part is not as clear as it might be. But the essays are united in their very personal voices; these six individuals will tell you exactly what it felt like to them to be involved, and I found that helpful. Any attempt to create some sort of objective history would have left me searching for and wondering about personal perspectives.
Ultimately how it all happened is more important than what exactly resulted, because the 360 Report that ultimately resulted and which-- well, tell the truth. You hadn't heard of it. You didn't know there was such a thing. If you go search the NEA website, you can dig up some references to NEA 360 Accountability in the 2014-2016 strategic plan. It appears under "Strategic Goal #1:Strong Affiliates for Great Public Schools—Building affiliate capacity to elevate the voices of education professionals is critical to the advancement of public education in America." In the pages used to explain this bureaucratic mush, NEA360 appears as a thing to be integrated into "existing and future affiliate programs." I was going to dig further, but the NEA strategic plan is one of those documents that actually radiates little particles of sleep-inducing numbness, beamed out by string after string of words put together in bland parades of meaningless generality. So, for now, I'll go no further. I quit while I could still feel my face.
But the NEA360 report itself can be read here. It is built around six recommendations:
1) Implement multi-pronged solutions to the multiple factors that impact student learning, enabling legislators, educators, parents, and students to each clearly understand their particular role and responsibility in every student’s learning process.
2) Widen curriculum to promote all areas of human growth such as curiosity, creativity, collaboration
and other life-long skills.
3) Create equity of educational opportunity for all students through appropriate funding, geographical representation in developing standards (and their accompanying assessments), and raising the pedagogical qualifications of teachers.
4) Empower educators to be decision makers in matters related to curriculum, professional development, and school/district policy.
5) Create a new restructured evaluation system of collaboration where teachers have equal voice of their annual professional growth.
6) Honor the commitment for all students to receive Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), recognizing that the diversity of student needs requires diverse programs to accomplish this goal.
nmahavkjhwljkayqwu-----
Sorry. My face went numb all the way down to my hands.
Look, if any of the 953 respondents said anything close to any of those items, I will eat my hat, deep-fried and stapled to an armadillo. The subheadings (38 in all) are much better, and actually include some useful such as banning the use of standardized tests from teacher evaluation. But there is an awful lot of horse-by-committee hump and spit here. The articles at Living in Dialogue help me understand why.
The articles give a picture of how the impulse to include teacher voices, even when well-meant and sincere (which, okay, maybe VIVA deserves that much credit, or maybe not) can go astray and take us to a place where those voices are just as hard to hear as ever. It's not cheery reading, but while you've got a few extra minutes, it's worthwhile reading.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Testing To Show Off
As pro-test forces scramble to come up with some good reason for New York's students to take the Big Standardized Test, we get this gem of a quote from DFER in USA Today:
Yet collecting educational data is important for the future of education and can help define the the character of a town, said Nicole Brisbane, state director at Democrats for Education Reform.
"Schools are one of the biggest differentiators of value in the suburbs," she said. "How valuable will a house be in Scarsdale when it isn't clear that Scarsdale schools are doing any better than the rest of Westchester or even the state? Opting out of tests only robs parents of that crucial data."
Man, is that flop sweat I smell?
So what are we to make of this, DFER? That testing is meant to be another way to cement the elite stamp of elite awesomeness on elite housing in elite communities with elite schools?
Or should we conclude that previously, nobody anywhere ever had any idea whether the schools in Scarsdale were any good or not?
The second question is my favorite, as it is just one more implication of the bizarre notion that not only can Common Core BS Tests tell us how well a school is doing, but ONLY Common Core BS Tests can tell us how a school is doing. Yessiree-- folks in Scarsdale had no idea whether their schools were any good or not, ever, until the BS Tests came to town.
But at least we have a great new reason that all students need to take those tests-- without them, the Betters would have one less badge of their Betterness. Testing will help us put Those People in their place. Don't let your class down! Don't let the property values drop! Get in there and take a test for the team. Of course, this would also be an excellent reason for everyone in the less wealthy neighborhoods to avoid taking the tests under any circumstances...
Yet collecting educational data is important for the future of education and can help define the the character of a town, said Nicole Brisbane, state director at Democrats for Education Reform.
"Schools are one of the biggest differentiators of value in the suburbs," she said. "How valuable will a house be in Scarsdale when it isn't clear that Scarsdale schools are doing any better than the rest of Westchester or even the state? Opting out of tests only robs parents of that crucial data."
Man, is that flop sweat I smell?
So what are we to make of this, DFER? That testing is meant to be another way to cement the elite stamp of elite awesomeness on elite housing in elite communities with elite schools?
Or should we conclude that previously, nobody anywhere ever had any idea whether the schools in Scarsdale were any good or not?
The second question is my favorite, as it is just one more implication of the bizarre notion that not only can Common Core BS Tests tell us how well a school is doing, but ONLY Common Core BS Tests can tell us how a school is doing. Yessiree-- folks in Scarsdale had no idea whether their schools were any good or not, ever, until the BS Tests came to town.
But at least we have a great new reason that all students need to take those tests-- without them, the Betters would have one less badge of their Betterness. Testing will help us put Those People in their place. Don't let your class down! Don't let the property values drop! Get in there and take a test for the team. Of course, this would also be an excellent reason for everyone in the less wealthy neighborhoods to avoid taking the tests under any circumstances...
Opt Outers Face Confusing Summer
Given the heightened alarm of some New York official, this, I imagine, is what the news from this coming summer will look like.
“Those who call for opting out really want New York to opt out of information that can help parents and teachers understand how well their students are doing,” said Jeanne Beattie, a state Education Department spokeswoman.
Summer vacation is supposed to be a time of camps, family vacations, and growth experiences for students and their families. But the massive opt out movement of last April has led to a confusing collapse of summer traditions.
Back in April, Jeanne Beattie, a state education department spokeswoman said “Those who call for opting out really want New York to opt out of information that can help parents and teachers understand how well their students are doing." Now in July, she has reportedly issued another statement-- "I told you so."
Evelyn Topdraggle of East Bestwig, NY, explains how opting out turned into a vacation nightmare.
"My daughter did not take the Common Core tests in April," said the working mom. "Consequently, when the year ended, I had no idea how she had done. Usually we reward our children with some fun outings to the City in July, but I suddenly realized that I have no idea whether my daughter deserves a reward or not."
Bob Wobble of Upper Wangdoodle, NY, echoes her sentiments. "Since my son didn't take the test, I have no information about how he is doing in his education. I have no idea how well he is doing. I have not been able to decide whether to ground him or to raise his allowance."
Some opt outers report family stress because of the lack of information from the tests whose results will not be reported for another two months. Said Keisha Tripsocket of Dumonde, NY, "I do not know whether to be angry or loving with my daughter. Did she do great, or terrible? Without the information from the tests, I don't know whether I should be affectionate or stern with her."
999 families report having made some serious mistakes with these summer months. Says Flerd Wadley of Boughgidie, NY, "We played it safe and enrolled our son in a summer remedial reading program. It cost us a bunch of extra money and we gave up some extras for the summer. One day I come home and find out he's read an entire stack of Charles Dickens and Toni Morrison. Damn kid could read all along! I sure wish I'd had him take that test so I had known."
Summer camps report declined enrollment as 999 families across the state are paralyzed, lacking even the most fundamental knowledge of how their students are growing and achieving educationally.
Not all families have been stumped. Said Tessa McNoodle of Vistaville, NY, "I was really confused at first since we opted out. But then I just talked to my child's teachers, paid attention to her homework and tests, looked at her report card, spent time with her, paid attention to her, and used my brain and common sense and was able to figure it out. I'm pretty sure that when those Common Core test scores eventually come out, they won't tell me anything I don't already know."
“Those who call for opting out really want New York to opt out of information that can help parents and teachers understand how well their students are doing,” said Jeanne Beattie, a state Education Department spokeswoman.
Summer vacation is supposed to be a time of camps, family vacations, and growth experiences for students and their families. But the massive opt out movement of last April has led to a confusing collapse of summer traditions.
Back in April, Jeanne Beattie, a state education department spokeswoman said “Those who call for opting out really want New York to opt out of information that can help parents and teachers understand how well their students are doing." Now in July, she has reportedly issued another statement-- "I told you so."
Evelyn Topdraggle of East Bestwig, NY, explains how opting out turned into a vacation nightmare.
"My daughter did not take the Common Core tests in April," said the working mom. "Consequently, when the year ended, I had no idea how she had done. Usually we reward our children with some fun outings to the City in July, but I suddenly realized that I have no idea whether my daughter deserves a reward or not."
Bob Wobble of Upper Wangdoodle, NY, echoes her sentiments. "Since my son didn't take the test, I have no information about how he is doing in his education. I have no idea how well he is doing. I have not been able to decide whether to ground him or to raise his allowance."
Some opt outers report family stress because of the lack of information from the tests whose results will not be reported for another two months. Said Keisha Tripsocket of Dumonde, NY, "I do not know whether to be angry or loving with my daughter. Did she do great, or terrible? Without the information from the tests, I don't know whether I should be affectionate or stern with her."
999 families report having made some serious mistakes with these summer months. Says Flerd Wadley of Boughgidie, NY, "We played it safe and enrolled our son in a summer remedial reading program. It cost us a bunch of extra money and we gave up some extras for the summer. One day I come home and find out he's read an entire stack of Charles Dickens and Toni Morrison. Damn kid could read all along! I sure wish I'd had him take that test so I had known."
Summer camps report declined enrollment as 999 families across the state are paralyzed, lacking even the most fundamental knowledge of how their students are growing and achieving educationally.
Not all families have been stumped. Said Tessa McNoodle of Vistaville, NY, "I was really confused at first since we opted out. But then I just talked to my child's teachers, paid attention to her homework and tests, looked at her report card, spent time with her, paid attention to her, and used my brain and common sense and was able to figure it out. I'm pretty sure that when those Common Core test scores eventually come out, they won't tell me anything I don't already know."
Explaining Success Academy
In the summer edition of Education Next, Charles Sahm attempts a response to the recent New York Times look at Success Academy. His article, "What Explains Success at Success Academy," is long and thoughtful, but it ultimately fails to answer its own titular question.
Sahm has taken the time to visit actual Success Academies, and he manages to cheerlead for them without calling their critics a big bunch of staus-quo loving doodyheads, so if nothing else, the article proves that reform apologists can peddle their wares while remaining thoughtful, respectful and reasonable. But his explanations for SA aren't really explanations.
To what does Sahm credit Eva Moskowitz's success?
The What: Content Is King
Moskowitz brags of "balanced literacy on steroids" when she talks about their in-house reading program, and as someone who is not directly familiar with either her program or the programs used by New York public schools, I can't judge. But when Sahm credits her with ideas such as "the choice between content and skills is false," I can't help but see Moskowitz as one more educational amateur who thinks she's a genius because she just "discovered" something that working teachers have known since the dawn of time.
SA middle school students have a required reading list of seven texts, supported by a literature class and independent reading time, and while these are fine ideas, I'm waiting for the part where Moskowitz announces a revolutionary writing program where students use "words" arranged in what she likes to call "sentences." And as we'll see, when it comes to middle school reading, SA does have a secret weapon that they are more reluctant to brag about.
Sahm says that his tours revealed a rich and varied learning environment, not a test prep factory, and Moskowitz swears its true--"You cannot ace these Common Core tests with test prep" he quotes her as saying, which is one of the few times in the article that he captures her in a bald-faced lie. Of course you can; any and all standardized tests can be conquered by test prep.
The How: Quality Conversations
Moskowitz credits her teachers, who are now required to go through in-house training. Once again, we are told about innovations that aren't innovations.
T-school is intense. Instructors place teachers on the hot seat, asking them, for example, to precisely identify the main idea in a college-level text. In Mission Possible, Moskowitz notes that a big part of T-school is “understanding the why”—the purpose behind what’s taught and the way Success handles instruction:“You can’t ask people to do something and take it seriously if they don’t know why they are doing it.” In T-school, teachers learn that “a good lesson flows like a quality conversation.”
Seriously? Do I live in a magical land of awesome innovation and I just don't know it, or does Success Academy owe its success to insights on the order of "When breathing, it is best to draw air in and then exhale before inhaling again."
Sahm goes on to note that SA requires large amounts of work from its teachers. 10-12 hour days are a norm (though when I was a beginning teacher, that was my norm as well). Sahm tackles the churn numbers, and after reading on the subject, I'm prepared to say that although the numbers clearly not low, nobody really knows what they are. He also acknowledges that SA has "teacher-proofed" instruction, requiring teachers to work in lockstep across the system. He suggests this is offset with individual time; I would suggest that simply implementing someone else's lesson plan script is not actually teaching, and anybody who actually needs that script to teach does not belong in a classroom.
It is clear that SA puts plenty of money and resources where its mouth is, and that their content delivery specialists are given tools, equipment, and support.
Caveats
Sahm does acknowledge some of the other standard criticisms of SA. For instance, SA serves a smaller percentage of English language learners and students with special needs than the city's public system.
Sahm also notes the backfill issue. From 3rd through 8th grade, SA loses over half of their students, and it does not fill their seats. You can see a breakdown of the numbers at this report from Democracy Builders, which shows us two things-- that attrition helps keep proficient-score percentages up even when raw numbers are plummeting, and that Success Academy is New York's Queen of off-loading students and filling schools with empty seats. (You can get an overview of the report here and here.)
Sahm also raises some objections in order to dismiss them. He notes that "many say" SA is overly secretive and dismisses that by referencing the many tours given of the school. I don't know who the "many" are, but perhaps they are referencing that time Success Academy went to court in order to block the state from auditing their books.
And he seems to like Moskowitz, calling her salary a bargain from a ROI standpoint. "But her hands-on style, along with the fundraising juggernaut she has built (last year, Success raised $22 million in private support), does raise questions about replication and equity." Well, yes.
Why Success Academy Sure Doesn't Look Like an Education Bargain To Me
There really aren't any questions about replicating SA's success. It is neither possible nor desirable.
First, SA has defined "success" as "high test scores." This is not how great schools define success. Head up to Philips Exeter Academy and ask them to explain what makes them a great school. They will not tout test scores. We have no reason to believe that high tests scores mean squat, and certainly not educational success-- particularly when so much attention is spent on doing test prep rather than actually educating.
Furthermore, SA's "success" is based on a special blend of Things Every Decent School Already Knows and Things No Decent School Can or Would Do.
In the first category we find the idea of giving teachers support and resources to use long-known and proven educational techniques. This is not even re-inventing the wheel. This is walking out to the street, pointing at a parked car, and declaring, "Look what I invented! I'm a freaking genius!!"
The other Captain Obvious innovation is money. I imagine teachers who struggle away in schools without books, heat, light, cleaning and a host of other facilities watching someone like Moskowitz explain that having a clean, well-supplied, well-financed school really helps and thinking, "No shit, Sherlock." It's all the more galling because the bright shiny halls of SA come at the cost of those dim-lit under-funded under-resourced public schools. Moskowitz is like the bully who comes and steals the food off your plate at lunch every day and then on Friday makes fun of you-- "What's wrong with you. You look hungry and weak."
The No Backfills Allowed rule is not so much an innovation as a complete redefining of what a school is and does. It can't be replicated (would we just tell any family that moved with a child older than third grade that their children will never be able to go to school again?) and there's no reason it should be.
In fact, that 56% attrition rate is really just a 56% failure rate; those are students that SA failed to serve, failed to grow, failed to educate-- both the ones who left and the ones who were never allowed to come bask in the shiny glory of SA. There is nothing successful or spectacular about a 56% failure rate.
The SA model is unreplicable, though I'm sure all of us in public ed agree that if we had large resources, constant support, and the power to admit only the students we chose to our classroom, we would all look pretty freakin' awesome-- we just wouldn't be honoring the mission of US public education.
But the SA model is also unsustainable. It has to eat through teachers at a steady rate, adding to the background buzz that teaching is a dull, punishing field that nobody needs enter. It eats through children, creating an ever-enlarging pool of unsatisfied former customers who slowly erode the chirpy PR. And it eats through resources, resources that have to be taken from the public system (both buildings and money) and from well-heeled backers who have to be cozied up to. But a system like SA that has to feed off the public system also slowly destroys the public system. A vampire can only drain the same poor victim so many times before it destroys its own food supply.
One of my measures of a charter school's worth is whether or not it has anything to teach us in public schools. Success Academy offers no educational lessons to anybody; there's nothing new to learn there, nothing that can be replicated, nothing that will still be standing in twenty years.
(Update - I have an inexcusable tendency to misspell Moskowitz's last name. I have fixed it-- at least in this post.)
Sahm has taken the time to visit actual Success Academies, and he manages to cheerlead for them without calling their critics a big bunch of staus-quo loving doodyheads, so if nothing else, the article proves that reform apologists can peddle their wares while remaining thoughtful, respectful and reasonable. But his explanations for SA aren't really explanations.
To what does Sahm credit Eva Moskowitz's success?
The What: Content Is King
Moskowitz brags of "balanced literacy on steroids" when she talks about their in-house reading program, and as someone who is not directly familiar with either her program or the programs used by New York public schools, I can't judge. But when Sahm credits her with ideas such as "the choice between content and skills is false," I can't help but see Moskowitz as one more educational amateur who thinks she's a genius because she just "discovered" something that working teachers have known since the dawn of time.
SA middle school students have a required reading list of seven texts, supported by a literature class and independent reading time, and while these are fine ideas, I'm waiting for the part where Moskowitz announces a revolutionary writing program where students use "words" arranged in what she likes to call "sentences." And as we'll see, when it comes to middle school reading, SA does have a secret weapon that they are more reluctant to brag about.
Sahm says that his tours revealed a rich and varied learning environment, not a test prep factory, and Moskowitz swears its true--"You cannot ace these Common Core tests with test prep" he quotes her as saying, which is one of the few times in the article that he captures her in a bald-faced lie. Of course you can; any and all standardized tests can be conquered by test prep.
The How: Quality Conversations
Moskowitz credits her teachers, who are now required to go through in-house training. Once again, we are told about innovations that aren't innovations.
T-school is intense. Instructors place teachers on the hot seat, asking them, for example, to precisely identify the main idea in a college-level text. In Mission Possible, Moskowitz notes that a big part of T-school is “understanding the why”—the purpose behind what’s taught and the way Success handles instruction:“You can’t ask people to do something and take it seriously if they don’t know why they are doing it.” In T-school, teachers learn that “a good lesson flows like a quality conversation.”
Seriously? Do I live in a magical land of awesome innovation and I just don't know it, or does Success Academy owe its success to insights on the order of "When breathing, it is best to draw air in and then exhale before inhaling again."
Sahm goes on to note that SA requires large amounts of work from its teachers. 10-12 hour days are a norm (though when I was a beginning teacher, that was my norm as well). Sahm tackles the churn numbers, and after reading on the subject, I'm prepared to say that although the numbers clearly not low, nobody really knows what they are. He also acknowledges that SA has "teacher-proofed" instruction, requiring teachers to work in lockstep across the system. He suggests this is offset with individual time; I would suggest that simply implementing someone else's lesson plan script is not actually teaching, and anybody who actually needs that script to teach does not belong in a classroom.
It is clear that SA puts plenty of money and resources where its mouth is, and that their content delivery specialists are given tools, equipment, and support.
Caveats
Sahm does acknowledge some of the other standard criticisms of SA. For instance, SA serves a smaller percentage of English language learners and students with special needs than the city's public system.
Sahm also notes the backfill issue. From 3rd through 8th grade, SA loses over half of their students, and it does not fill their seats. You can see a breakdown of the numbers at this report from Democracy Builders, which shows us two things-- that attrition helps keep proficient-score percentages up even when raw numbers are plummeting, and that Success Academy is New York's Queen of off-loading students and filling schools with empty seats. (You can get an overview of the report here and here.)
Sahm also raises some objections in order to dismiss them. He notes that "many say" SA is overly secretive and dismisses that by referencing the many tours given of the school. I don't know who the "many" are, but perhaps they are referencing that time Success Academy went to court in order to block the state from auditing their books.
And he seems to like Moskowitz, calling her salary a bargain from a ROI standpoint. "But her hands-on style, along with the fundraising juggernaut she has built (last year, Success raised $22 million in private support), does raise questions about replication and equity." Well, yes.
Why Success Academy Sure Doesn't Look Like an Education Bargain To Me
There really aren't any questions about replicating SA's success. It is neither possible nor desirable.
First, SA has defined "success" as "high test scores." This is not how great schools define success. Head up to Philips Exeter Academy and ask them to explain what makes them a great school. They will not tout test scores. We have no reason to believe that high tests scores mean squat, and certainly not educational success-- particularly when so much attention is spent on doing test prep rather than actually educating.
Furthermore, SA's "success" is based on a special blend of Things Every Decent School Already Knows and Things No Decent School Can or Would Do.
In the first category we find the idea of giving teachers support and resources to use long-known and proven educational techniques. This is not even re-inventing the wheel. This is walking out to the street, pointing at a parked car, and declaring, "Look what I invented! I'm a freaking genius!!"
The other Captain Obvious innovation is money. I imagine teachers who struggle away in schools without books, heat, light, cleaning and a host of other facilities watching someone like Moskowitz explain that having a clean, well-supplied, well-financed school really helps and thinking, "No shit, Sherlock." It's all the more galling because the bright shiny halls of SA come at the cost of those dim-lit under-funded under-resourced public schools. Moskowitz is like the bully who comes and steals the food off your plate at lunch every day and then on Friday makes fun of you-- "What's wrong with you. You look hungry and weak."
The No Backfills Allowed rule is not so much an innovation as a complete redefining of what a school is and does. It can't be replicated (would we just tell any family that moved with a child older than third grade that their children will never be able to go to school again?) and there's no reason it should be.
In fact, that 56% attrition rate is really just a 56% failure rate; those are students that SA failed to serve, failed to grow, failed to educate-- both the ones who left and the ones who were never allowed to come bask in the shiny glory of SA. There is nothing successful or spectacular about a 56% failure rate.
The SA model is unreplicable, though I'm sure all of us in public ed agree that if we had large resources, constant support, and the power to admit only the students we chose to our classroom, we would all look pretty freakin' awesome-- we just wouldn't be honoring the mission of US public education.
But the SA model is also unsustainable. It has to eat through teachers at a steady rate, adding to the background buzz that teaching is a dull, punishing field that nobody needs enter. It eats through children, creating an ever-enlarging pool of unsatisfied former customers who slowly erode the chirpy PR. And it eats through resources, resources that have to be taken from the public system (both buildings and money) and from well-heeled backers who have to be cozied up to. But a system like SA that has to feed off the public system also slowly destroys the public system. A vampire can only drain the same poor victim so many times before it destroys its own food supply.
One of my measures of a charter school's worth is whether or not it has anything to teach us in public schools. Success Academy offers no educational lessons to anybody; there's nothing new to learn there, nothing that can be replicated, nothing that will still be standing in twenty years.
(Update - I have an inexcusable tendency to misspell Moskowitz's last name. I have fixed it-- at least in this post.)
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