Dr. Meria Castarphen, superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, thinks everyone is completely misunderstanding the situation.
APS has just announced the slashing of eighteen band and orchestra teachers from the elementary school system, and possibly the funding for those programs as well (the reportage on the latter is a little fuzzy).
That news spread pretty quickly, and Dr. Castarphen took to her personal blog to offer an explanation. Kind of.
Yes, eighteen positions were cut. That was just part of a district "right-sizing" (lordy, but I just live for the day that some boss announces "right-sizing" as an explanation for hiring more people). This right-sizing included cutting 368 positions, including a chunk from the central office. But cutting music?! No!! Well, maybe. Sort of. Yes.
In our cluster planning and our move to a new operating system, APS
has given clusters and schools more freedom and flexibility to choose
how they staff their schools in order to meet the specific needs of
their students. This includes the decision about which arts and music
instruction to offer students.
For example, if principal A observed high interest in band over
orchestra in their elementary school, that principal could choose to
enhance the band program and remove the orchestra program. If principal B
saw a growing interest in visual arts, principal B could decide to
invest more in visual arts, eliminating band and orchestra. If principal
C was interested in enhancing band and orchestra programs, principal C
could choose to increase school class sizes in order to offer a more
robust fine arts program.
See, even if the school doesn't have a band program. It could be taught by, I don't know, pixies, or regular classroom teachers on their lunch hours, or traveling street musicians who were coaxed into the building. Because students can be taught to play instruments, particularly as beginners, by pretty much anybody.
Maybe students will get really interested in a band, which I suppose could happen despite the fact that they have no band or band teacher in the building to pique that interest-- maybe they'll read about bands in books or see some compelling band music on tv or those same instrument-teaching pixies will visit them in their sleep.
Also, please note that middle school and high school band and orchestra are not being cut. Nosirree. They will still be there, thriving despite the fact that students will arrive from the elementary school without any knowledge of playing in a music ensemble or playing an instrument. Because middle and high school programs don't depend on feeder programs in the elementary at all.
She tried to clarify her position in other interviews
"That doesn't mean you eliminate programming because you eliminated a
positon. You can still do the programming with one person instead of two
people," said Carstarphen. "We allow those teachers and those
principals to still offer band and orchestra as part of their design if
they are able to do it with what they have as a student population,
available resources and the interest of the school."
See? They can have a music program. Just not with enough qualified teachers or resources. We aren't taking the puppy to the pound-- we just aren't going to feed it ever, and you can still keep it once it's a dog.
Oh, yeah. And she's in charge of converting Atlanta to an all-charter system. You can read their whole presentation and application for charter status here.
Reading her plaintive pleas for understanding, I could only think of one question--
Is this woman really that clueless?
It doesn't seem possible; in her blog post, she identifies herself as an oboe player. An oboe. The kind of advanced (and expensive) instrument that students generally move onto only in high school after they have mastered a more standard instrument in elementary and middle school.
I mean, there are only two possibilities here. Either she doesn't understand the implications of these cuts, or she understands and she's trying to lie and bluff her way past this.
There are limited clues. Castarphen was hired just a year ago, to replace the superintendent who replaced the superintendent who presided over the Atlanta cheating scandal. When Castarphen was hired, "embattled" turned up often as a descriptor of APS. Previously Castarphen led the Austin school system for five years, a system twice as big as Atlanta's. According to some sources, Atlanta pursued her; but her Austin contract had not been renewed and would be running out now. In 2012, district leaders "admonished" her to build better relationships with staff, parents and community. In fact, she was the only candidate the board brought forward after a process some called "opaque."
In Austin, Castarphen came under fire for a "closed leadership style" and "there are those who believe Carstarphen's hard-charging methods are aimed at bullying people to get her way." That stood in contrast to her defense of No Child Left Behind as a program providing necessary transparency. "And that's at the heart of what the spirit of the law is about: Transparency. Are we doing the job or not?
Before Austin, Castarphen was head of St. Paul Public Schools, where critics accused her of a combative style (the word "bullying" turns up again) and over half the administrators there in 2006 when she arrived left before her departure three years later.
Castarphen's teaching routes go back to teaching middle school Spanish. Studied at Tulane, Harvard. Affiliated with ETS, Council of Great City Schools.
I don't see it. Maybe it's just not her style to say, "We are strapped for cash, and as much as I hate to cut any program off at the knees, I've decided that instrumental music is going to take a gut shot so we can try to save the district." That might have been more honest, but I suppose it would have invited debate, and Castarphen doesn't seem to be a fan. Of course, she now finds herself embroiled in a debate about whether or not musical yetis riding on unicorns will keep Atlanta's music program alive and well. She probably should just stick to a debate about reality.
Upon arriving in Atlanta, she told staff, "You're going to work harder than you ever have before. But we'll try to make it fun, we'll try to make it exciting
and we'll try to make it rewarding."
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
My Question for Hillary
I'll keep it brief.
Candidate Clinton has indicated in talks with NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia that she will absolutely listen to teachers. That's a great promise, but let me pare that down to a more direct question.
Last year, after years of failed administration education policies, the NEA general membership called for the resignation of Arne Duncan. So here's my question:
If you had been President, would you have required the resignation of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education?
Okay, I realize that's a little in-your-face and involves some hypotheticals (such as, would you have ever appointed the guy in the first place), so let me ask a question, because I really want to understand how your administration would represent a break from the destructive policies of the past two administrations:
If you had been President for the past eight years, and knowing what you know now, how would your education policies have been different from the policies that we've actually had?
Please, please please please PLEASE, be specific. Talk about the ESEA rewrite or Common Core or financial incentives for states. But tell us something. If you had been our President for the past eight years, how would US education have been different. Because-- and again, I'm not sure if you get this-- education policy for the last sixteen years has not been good for public education in this country.
I await your response.
Candidate Clinton has indicated in talks with NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia that she will absolutely listen to teachers. That's a great promise, but let me pare that down to a more direct question.
Last year, after years of failed administration education policies, the NEA general membership called for the resignation of Arne Duncan. So here's my question:
If you had been President, would you have required the resignation of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education?
Okay, I realize that's a little in-your-face and involves some hypotheticals (such as, would you have ever appointed the guy in the first place), so let me ask a question, because I really want to understand how your administration would represent a break from the destructive policies of the past two administrations:
If you had been President for the past eight years, and knowing what you know now, how would your education policies have been different from the policies that we've actually had?
Please, please please please PLEASE, be specific. Talk about the ESEA rewrite or Common Core or financial incentives for states. But tell us something. If you had been our President for the past eight years, how would US education have been different. Because-- and again, I'm not sure if you get this-- education policy for the last sixteen years has not been good for public education in this country.
I await your response.
Common Core's Sad Birthday
Man, there's nothing quite as sad as having a birthday that everybody ignores. Nobody throws you a party, nobody sings you a song, nobody even plunks a candy in a store-bought cupcake.
You may have missed it, but June 2 was technically the Common Core State Standards fifth birthday.
You may have missed it because nobody threw the Core a party. The closest we got was a piece in Huffington Post in which Rebecca Klein did a listicle of five of the sillier arguments made against the Core. It was an odd piece, a nostalgic call-back to the days when Core opponents could be broad-brushed with the image of tin-hat reactionaries.
Mercedes Schneider responded with her own birthday piece, reminding us of such highlights as Common Core's enthusiastic adoption by states before it was even actually written. Schneider's piece also recaps the various bogus claims (it will emphasize critical thining!), its tortured creation by a small group of not-teachers, and its odd ownership and copyright by a pair of lobbying groups. Oh, and it's sponsorship by Bill Gates and super-but-totally-not-illegal support form the feds.
This is not the sort of valedictory salute that we'd expect for a five-year-old piece of policy that was going to revitalize public education in this country. But it's not exactly a surprise.
First of all, in order to have that kind of celebration, you need to be able to point to your big successes. And as we survey the five-plus years of Common Core, we can see... well, nothing. The CCSS advocates can't point to a single damn accomplishment. Nothing.
Yes, we get the periodic pieces from classroom teachers lauding the standards. These pieces follow a simple outline:
1) It used to be that I didn't know what the heck I was doing in the classroom, but then
2) I discovered Common Core and so I
3) Began doing [insert teaching techniques that any competent teacher already knew about long before the Core ever happened]
These aren't convincing a soul, and other than these various testimonials, we have been treated to exactly zero evidence that US education has been improved in any way by the Core.
Second, it's hard to throw a party for someone who has no friends. The game has tilted against the Core, and the same "friends" who embraced it when such embraces served a political purpose have now dis-embraced it for the same reason. In fact, the Core has been pierced repeatedly by the same swords it once wielded; for example, having used politics to get the Core installed, supporters now routinely complain that politics are being used against it. So yeah, some of the complaints against the Core are, in fact, crazy and unfounded and even bizarre (CCSS has been created by the One World Order to turn everyone into a gay atheist Commie, etc)-- but the Core boosters created a playing field where that kind of foolishness was fair game, and now they get to pay the price.
Even the Core's reformy allies have dumped it. The Core was going to be useful to push charters, but they no longer need it. Test manufacturers are getting more traction from civil rights rhetoric and the "college and career ready" line. Data overlords have been thwarted by direct opposition and the collapse of the National Test Dream; though they aren't giving up any time soon, the Core is no longer as useful a tool for them.
With the exception of Jeb Bush who, God bless him, may not be right, but at least he's loyal, the Core is out of high profile friends who will so much as speak its name in public.
We come not to praise the Core, but to bury it
As I noted back in March, the term "Common Core" is now essentially meaningless. It means whatever people in a particular place and time want it to mean, and because its creators have moved on to other profitable jobs, there isn't anybody to keep an eye on how the term is used.
We have multiple tests all claiming to be CCSS aligned, none of which are able to assess all the standards. Except for the ones that are aligned to state standards that are kind of the same as Common Core and kind of not. We have a mountain of textbooks claiming to be Common Core aligned with varying degrees of accuracy. We have a whole host of people who have fuzzied up the question of whether it is standards or curriculum. We have tens of thousands of local versions of the Core and programs allegedly aligned. And we have the Core itself swathed in lies like "internationally benchmarked."
Ze'ev Wurman, from the Bush administration, pointed out in Breitbart that the Core is dead because states have slowly but surely reclaimed their right to local control, effectively ending the dream of having every state on the same educational page. He's right in particular because the real driver of curriculum and standards is the Big Standardized Test, and states have been slowly but surely stepping away from the Big National Test dream and installing their own version of a large pointless standardized test that gathers no real useful data but does waste lots of time and money (because all the cool kids want one). Since the test is the curriculum and standards guide, different tests means different standards and curriculum.
So happy fifth birthday and/or wake, Common Core. I could say we never knew you, but the truth is, the better we got to know you, the less we liked you (and we didn't like you very much to begin with). There will be a variety of educational initiatives floating around that take your name in vain, but as a national policy uniting the country behind a single set of clear standards, you are dead as a month-old smear of roadkill.
You may have missed it, but June 2 was technically the Common Core State Standards fifth birthday.
You may have missed it because nobody threw the Core a party. The closest we got was a piece in Huffington Post in which Rebecca Klein did a listicle of five of the sillier arguments made against the Core. It was an odd piece, a nostalgic call-back to the days when Core opponents could be broad-brushed with the image of tin-hat reactionaries.
Mercedes Schneider responded with her own birthday piece, reminding us of such highlights as Common Core's enthusiastic adoption by states before it was even actually written. Schneider's piece also recaps the various bogus claims (it will emphasize critical thining!), its tortured creation by a small group of not-teachers, and its odd ownership and copyright by a pair of lobbying groups. Oh, and it's sponsorship by Bill Gates and super-but-totally-not-illegal support form the feds.
This is not the sort of valedictory salute that we'd expect for a five-year-old piece of policy that was going to revitalize public education in this country. But it's not exactly a surprise.
First of all, in order to have that kind of celebration, you need to be able to point to your big successes. And as we survey the five-plus years of Common Core, we can see... well, nothing. The CCSS advocates can't point to a single damn accomplishment. Nothing.
Yes, we get the periodic pieces from classroom teachers lauding the standards. These pieces follow a simple outline:
1) It used to be that I didn't know what the heck I was doing in the classroom, but then
2) I discovered Common Core and so I
3) Began doing [insert teaching techniques that any competent teacher already knew about long before the Core ever happened]
These aren't convincing a soul, and other than these various testimonials, we have been treated to exactly zero evidence that US education has been improved in any way by the Core.
Second, it's hard to throw a party for someone who has no friends. The game has tilted against the Core, and the same "friends" who embraced it when such embraces served a political purpose have now dis-embraced it for the same reason. In fact, the Core has been pierced repeatedly by the same swords it once wielded; for example, having used politics to get the Core installed, supporters now routinely complain that politics are being used against it. So yeah, some of the complaints against the Core are, in fact, crazy and unfounded and even bizarre (CCSS has been created by the One World Order to turn everyone into a gay atheist Commie, etc)-- but the Core boosters created a playing field where that kind of foolishness was fair game, and now they get to pay the price.
Even the Core's reformy allies have dumped it. The Core was going to be useful to push charters, but they no longer need it. Test manufacturers are getting more traction from civil rights rhetoric and the "college and career ready" line. Data overlords have been thwarted by direct opposition and the collapse of the National Test Dream; though they aren't giving up any time soon, the Core is no longer as useful a tool for them.
With the exception of Jeb Bush who, God bless him, may not be right, but at least he's loyal, the Core is out of high profile friends who will so much as speak its name in public.
We come not to praise the Core, but to bury it
As I noted back in March, the term "Common Core" is now essentially meaningless. It means whatever people in a particular place and time want it to mean, and because its creators have moved on to other profitable jobs, there isn't anybody to keep an eye on how the term is used.
We have multiple tests all claiming to be CCSS aligned, none of which are able to assess all the standards. Except for the ones that are aligned to state standards that are kind of the same as Common Core and kind of not. We have a mountain of textbooks claiming to be Common Core aligned with varying degrees of accuracy. We have a whole host of people who have fuzzied up the question of whether it is standards or curriculum. We have tens of thousands of local versions of the Core and programs allegedly aligned. And we have the Core itself swathed in lies like "internationally benchmarked."
Ze'ev Wurman, from the Bush administration, pointed out in Breitbart that the Core is dead because states have slowly but surely reclaimed their right to local control, effectively ending the dream of having every state on the same educational page. He's right in particular because the real driver of curriculum and standards is the Big Standardized Test, and states have been slowly but surely stepping away from the Big National Test dream and installing their own version of a large pointless standardized test that gathers no real useful data but does waste lots of time and money (because all the cool kids want one). Since the test is the curriculum and standards guide, different tests means different standards and curriculum.
So happy fifth birthday and/or wake, Common Core. I could say we never knew you, but the truth is, the better we got to know you, the less we liked you (and we didn't like you very much to begin with). There will be a variety of educational initiatives floating around that take your name in vain, but as a national policy uniting the country behind a single set of clear standards, you are dead as a month-old smear of roadkill.
Threading Cake (Part II)
Ordinarily when I get into these sorts of cyber-dialogues, I try to make each piece stand on its own. I'm making no such attempt here-- this is part of an ongoing dialogue with Nate Bowling and assorted other folks. You can find the first installments here and here. I'm responding to Bowling's latest entry in this discussion.
Bowling reflects on how cool it is that these kinds of layered and nuanced conversation can break out (I agree-- this to me remains one of the most amazing things about the internet) and then he moves on one of his bedrock assertions, in bold type.
I wholeheartedly reject the geographical determinism and “poor kids can’t” thinking
I think the "geography" issue is a real area of controversy and concern. I bristle at the "helping kids escape their zip code" rhetoric for a couple of reason. One, folks who push that are never talking about rescuing ALL students-- just a few, and in the process of rescuing those few, they make the situation worse for those left behind. That's not a solution. Two, I believe there is enormous power in community and the "social capital" that's built by community, and it worries me that so much "reform" is done in ways that erode that community-- taking away local control, dispersing children to the four corners of other communities. I believe these approaches are in the long term corrosive and destructive, and I also find it concerning that the implication is that there are certain zip codes that we should just go ahead a write off. This strikes me as an even larger, worse version of "poor kids can't"-- "that entire community can't."
At the same time, I recognize that we're on the clock, and telling parents, "Just leave your kids in that burning building while we try to fix the whole structure," isn't going to help them. Man, if we could just bring the kind of resolve we bring to wars-- whip up a few billion dollars, hire the personnel, and just drop a huge educational "surge" into our poorest communities.
As for "poor kids can't"-- I still feel that on this point people in the edu-debate are talking past each other (and some, frankly, are pretending not to understand what other folks are saying). Let's say that one set of kids is living in lower Manhattan and another is living in Sandusky, Ohio. All of them want to go to Philadelphia. Here's the conversation between their parents:
Manhattan Mom: It's easy. You just pick up the Megabus on 34th between 11th and 12th Avenue. It will take less than three hours.
Sandusky Dad: We can't get to that bus stop. But we can take the train and it will take us about fourteen hours.
Manhattan Mom: What do you mean, your kids can't possibly go to Philadelphia.
All of our students are starting from different places (actually, they're going to different places, too, but I'm trying not to over-torture the metaphor), and so they all have different requirements for the trip. Yes, there are people who write certain kids of for one reason or another. I like to call those people "Persons Who Don't Belong in Education." But the problem with most of our large-scale testing is that it checks progress toward Philadelphia by having everybody check in as they pass through Buffalo, which means that both the Manhattan and the Sandusky students have to travel far out of their way just to make the check-in (which doesn't yield any useful information anyway).
Side note on Pro Public Ed
Nate, you dislike my use of "Pro public education," and I understand why. The whole education debate is hampered by the lack of good labeling. I've resisted the use of "reform" for that same reason-- using it admits that public ed is messed up in a major way, and while I agree that constant and eternal moving and searching and growing is required, I reject the notion that public ed is infested with such a deep dysfunctional evil that it needs to be reformed. For my side of things, I've moved on from "resistance" (which seems too reactive) to "pro public education" because it at least hits what I am in favor of. I recognize that there are people who are in favor of certain reformy things who are public ed (and also many who do, in fact, want to dismantle public ed as we know it).
But in this case, I should have simply identified myself as anti-testing, which was the pertinent part of what I was talking about.
Moving toward a solution
I appreciated the comment from Bowling's student, which mirrors what many of my own students say. Testing is so focused on a small piece of the whole person, like taking a picture of their left forefinger knuckle as a way of judging their attractiveness.
As always, I recognize that I am far to one side on the testing issue-- I see no value in standardized testing to justify its use, and I would simply scrap the whole business. It's wasting our time and resources, and that is particularly damaging in communities where time and resources are already scarce and stretched.
Yet I agree that the public (all the public and not just parents) should know how schools are doing. (This is actually one of the reasons I'm also largely anti-charter-- because charter schools as currently practiced are less accountable than public schools).
So how do we do that without standardized tests?
1) Trust classroom teachers. Bowling offers a challenge to design an EOC test for Bio, and my answer would be that I can't create that test unless I taught the class. My own classes do not unfold exactly the same year after year (Hamlet, for instance, is "about" something different every year I teach it) and my tests reflect the shape of the year. I can predict the general shape (think strange attractors in chaos theory).
But to some extent my students shape what the course does. And I create assessments based on what we learned. My instruction drives assessment. If you're going to ask, "But how can you compare students across boundaries of city, state, and time," I'm going to ask, "Why do we need to?"
2) Transparency. The best bosses do not demand that their people drop their work and create and present a report about what they're doing. To do that is to live in a Dilbertesque world in which people can't get work done because they're constantly preparing reports on why their project is behind.
No, the best bosses go and see. Any administrator, parent, elected official-- anybody at all who wants to come sit in my classroom every single day and watch is perfectly welcome. And my students quickly learn that if they ask, "Why are we doing this" I will tell them. Much of the time I tell them even when they don't ask.
Schools should be glass houses. Why did you teach that? What were the test questions? Why doesn't that teacher have enough books? Why isn't that ceiling fixed? How did you use your time today? What did you learn in class today? How much do the suppliers charge for this material? Schools should be able to answer any and all questions.
The more authetically transparent a school is, the less time it has to waste on creating "reports" that are mainly proof that somebody is good at writing reports. And the Big Standardized Tests are just reports with an extra step.
Bowling promises that his next installment will offer some solutions to the testing issues. I look forward to seeing what he has to say.
Bowling reflects on how cool it is that these kinds of layered and nuanced conversation can break out (I agree-- this to me remains one of the most amazing things about the internet) and then he moves on one of his bedrock assertions, in bold type.
I wholeheartedly reject the geographical determinism and “poor kids can’t” thinking
I think the "geography" issue is a real area of controversy and concern. I bristle at the "helping kids escape their zip code" rhetoric for a couple of reason. One, folks who push that are never talking about rescuing ALL students-- just a few, and in the process of rescuing those few, they make the situation worse for those left behind. That's not a solution. Two, I believe there is enormous power in community and the "social capital" that's built by community, and it worries me that so much "reform" is done in ways that erode that community-- taking away local control, dispersing children to the four corners of other communities. I believe these approaches are in the long term corrosive and destructive, and I also find it concerning that the implication is that there are certain zip codes that we should just go ahead a write off. This strikes me as an even larger, worse version of "poor kids can't"-- "that entire community can't."
At the same time, I recognize that we're on the clock, and telling parents, "Just leave your kids in that burning building while we try to fix the whole structure," isn't going to help them. Man, if we could just bring the kind of resolve we bring to wars-- whip up a few billion dollars, hire the personnel, and just drop a huge educational "surge" into our poorest communities.
As for "poor kids can't"-- I still feel that on this point people in the edu-debate are talking past each other (and some, frankly, are pretending not to understand what other folks are saying). Let's say that one set of kids is living in lower Manhattan and another is living in Sandusky, Ohio. All of them want to go to Philadelphia. Here's the conversation between their parents:
Manhattan Mom: It's easy. You just pick up the Megabus on 34th between 11th and 12th Avenue. It will take less than three hours.
Sandusky Dad: We can't get to that bus stop. But we can take the train and it will take us about fourteen hours.
Manhattan Mom: What do you mean, your kids can't possibly go to Philadelphia.
All of our students are starting from different places (actually, they're going to different places, too, but I'm trying not to over-torture the metaphor), and so they all have different requirements for the trip. Yes, there are people who write certain kids of for one reason or another. I like to call those people "Persons Who Don't Belong in Education." But the problem with most of our large-scale testing is that it checks progress toward Philadelphia by having everybody check in as they pass through Buffalo, which means that both the Manhattan and the Sandusky students have to travel far out of their way just to make the check-in (which doesn't yield any useful information anyway).
Side note on Pro Public Ed
Nate, you dislike my use of "Pro public education," and I understand why. The whole education debate is hampered by the lack of good labeling. I've resisted the use of "reform" for that same reason-- using it admits that public ed is messed up in a major way, and while I agree that constant and eternal moving and searching and growing is required, I reject the notion that public ed is infested with such a deep dysfunctional evil that it needs to be reformed. For my side of things, I've moved on from "resistance" (which seems too reactive) to "pro public education" because it at least hits what I am in favor of. I recognize that there are people who are in favor of certain reformy things who are public ed (and also many who do, in fact, want to dismantle public ed as we know it).
But in this case, I should have simply identified myself as anti-testing, which was the pertinent part of what I was talking about.
Moving toward a solution
I appreciated the comment from Bowling's student, which mirrors what many of my own students say. Testing is so focused on a small piece of the whole person, like taking a picture of their left forefinger knuckle as a way of judging their attractiveness.
As always, I recognize that I am far to one side on the testing issue-- I see no value in standardized testing to justify its use, and I would simply scrap the whole business. It's wasting our time and resources, and that is particularly damaging in communities where time and resources are already scarce and stretched.
Yet I agree that the public (all the public and not just parents) should know how schools are doing. (This is actually one of the reasons I'm also largely anti-charter-- because charter schools as currently practiced are less accountable than public schools).
So how do we do that without standardized tests?
1) Trust classroom teachers. Bowling offers a challenge to design an EOC test for Bio, and my answer would be that I can't create that test unless I taught the class. My own classes do not unfold exactly the same year after year (Hamlet, for instance, is "about" something different every year I teach it) and my tests reflect the shape of the year. I can predict the general shape (think strange attractors in chaos theory).
But to some extent my students shape what the course does. And I create assessments based on what we learned. My instruction drives assessment. If you're going to ask, "But how can you compare students across boundaries of city, state, and time," I'm going to ask, "Why do we need to?"
2) Transparency. The best bosses do not demand that their people drop their work and create and present a report about what they're doing. To do that is to live in a Dilbertesque world in which people can't get work done because they're constantly preparing reports on why their project is behind.
No, the best bosses go and see. Any administrator, parent, elected official-- anybody at all who wants to come sit in my classroom every single day and watch is perfectly welcome. And my students quickly learn that if they ask, "Why are we doing this" I will tell them. Much of the time I tell them even when they don't ask.
Schools should be glass houses. Why did you teach that? What were the test questions? Why doesn't that teacher have enough books? Why isn't that ceiling fixed? How did you use your time today? What did you learn in class today? How much do the suppliers charge for this material? Schools should be able to answer any and all questions.
The more authetically transparent a school is, the less time it has to waste on creating "reports" that are mainly proof that somebody is good at writing reports. And the Big Standardized Tests are just reports with an extra step.
Bowling promises that his next installment will offer some solutions to the testing issues. I look forward to seeing what he has to say.
Hillary's NEA Audition [updated]
Yesterday Hillary Clinton met with NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia to take her shot at winning the recommendation of the nation's biggest union. This is a challenging moment for the union because, frankly, their last recommendation turned out to be a giant eight-year suckfest for education.
I'm a registered Democrat, and I vote in every election. Like most of my generation, I vote for candidates and not parties. And while the GOP has been more consistent in its general assault on public ed, the Democratic Party harbors some of the worst opponents of public education and the teachers who work in it (looking at you, Andy Cuomo). It has been particularly striking how much the Obama administration's education policies have been simply an extension of the Bush administration's policies. It is no surprise that Jeb Bush has been a big fan of Arne Duncan, or that Duncan turned to Bush 3.0 for education policy advice.
I would say that the jury is still out on Hillary, but honestly, I'd be lying. Hillary is pretty clearly tied to the same charter-loving, reform-pushing, corporate-driven, test-and-punishing reformsters as our last two Presidents. CAP, one of the fiercest reformster-driven advocacy groups in DC, was simply a holding pen for Clinton campaign leaders like John Podesta; they are close to Hillary and they have never, ever, been a friend to public education or public school teachers. DFER, a group that absolutely loathes teachers and the teachers union, is delighted that Hillary is running.
In the NEA's press release, Garcia says that she and Clinton had "a frank and robust conversation about what is a stake in this coming election." That's followed by a few words from Clinton, none of which are terribly convincing.
Some of it is a plate or verbal twinkies, a pretty puff of empty ear calories.
What we can do together to deal with the issues we know are at the real core of making it possible to look at every little boy and girl and say "yes, you will have the best chances we can give you."
So, we will do stuff for children, and it will be stuff that is good. Glad we clarified that. This clearly sets Clinton apart from all other candidates. But what about education?
Are tests important? Yes. Do we need accountability? Yes.
Are tests important? Really? Which tests? A first grade teacher's weekly spelling test? The useless abomination that is the PARCC?
And we need accountability? To whom? For what? Is she saying that the public should get to know what's going on in their local schools, or is she saying that the burden of proof is on schools to prove to the government that they don't suck?
And then there's this baloney:
So many of our poorer schools have cut off all the extracurricular activities. We’ve taken away band, in so many places we’ve taken away a lot of the sports. We’ve taken away arts classes. We’ve taken away school productions.
Okay, I don't want to minimize what's here. The loss of extra-curriculars, music, sports, the arts-- these are all bad things. But if you're looking at our nation's poorest, most underserved schools, and this is what you see, I am concerned. Perhaps we could also talk about physical plants-- buildings that are crumbling and un-maintained. Perhaps we could talk about support for simple things like, say, textbooks. Or enough teachers to reduce crowded class sizes. We might even talk about the systematic silencing of poor, black voices in places like Newark and Philadelphia, where the non-wealthy non-white community members are being deprived of the fundamental democratic process that is supposed to be basic to our country.
This is just a weird thing to focus on, out of all the issues that face high-poverty schools and communities.
[Update: In Washington Post's coverage of the interview, the stress was on Clinton's promise to listen. Which, I suppose, is better than a statement that she will absolutely ignore teachers. But talk is cheap, and listening is even cheaper.
“She basically said ‘What kind of fool would be making public policy without listening to the people who live in those communities, the people who know the names of the kids’?” Garcia said. “I loved that.”
Well, I love that, too. But the answer to her question is "Everybody in the current administration and all her good friends at CAP." And no, you don't get any credit for Listening To Teachers when the only ones you listen to are ones that are carefully vetted and selected. And you don't get credit for listening to teachers if you then ignore everything they say.
Every major policy decision about education in the last decade has been made without any serious significant input from actual teachers. Clinton's promise to "listen" does not move me.]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hillary Clinton is a better option than Scott Walker. And having just your legs chopped off is a better option than having both your arms and legs chopped off. I'm sick to death of the Democrats arguing, well, yeah, we suck, and we're going to punch you in the face, but that guy over there is going to kick you in the junk, so choose us. And frankly, at this point, when it comes to education I don't see a lot of real policy airspace between Clinton 2.0 and Bush 3.0.
I'm happy see Clinton court the NEA vote, but I remain unconvinced, and an endorsement from my union leaders will not sway my vote in the slightest. They're political animals, and they will make a political choice. But I'm a teacher, and I am so deeply and profoundly tired of voting for people who don't respect me, or my work, or the institution that is both the foundation of this country and the object of my life's work. I'll vote for Sanders or Nader before I throw my vote away on one more politician who's just going to kick me in the face.
I'm a registered Democrat, and I vote in every election. Like most of my generation, I vote for candidates and not parties. And while the GOP has been more consistent in its general assault on public ed, the Democratic Party harbors some of the worst opponents of public education and the teachers who work in it (looking at you, Andy Cuomo). It has been particularly striking how much the Obama administration's education policies have been simply an extension of the Bush administration's policies. It is no surprise that Jeb Bush has been a big fan of Arne Duncan, or that Duncan turned to Bush 3.0 for education policy advice.
I would say that the jury is still out on Hillary, but honestly, I'd be lying. Hillary is pretty clearly tied to the same charter-loving, reform-pushing, corporate-driven, test-and-punishing reformsters as our last two Presidents. CAP, one of the fiercest reformster-driven advocacy groups in DC, was simply a holding pen for Clinton campaign leaders like John Podesta; they are close to Hillary and they have never, ever, been a friend to public education or public school teachers. DFER, a group that absolutely loathes teachers and the teachers union, is delighted that Hillary is running.
In the NEA's press release, Garcia says that she and Clinton had "a frank and robust conversation about what is a stake in this coming election." That's followed by a few words from Clinton, none of which are terribly convincing.
Some of it is a plate or verbal twinkies, a pretty puff of empty ear calories.
What we can do together to deal with the issues we know are at the real core of making it possible to look at every little boy and girl and say "yes, you will have the best chances we can give you."
So, we will do stuff for children, and it will be stuff that is good. Glad we clarified that. This clearly sets Clinton apart from all other candidates. But what about education?
Are tests important? Yes. Do we need accountability? Yes.
Are tests important? Really? Which tests? A first grade teacher's weekly spelling test? The useless abomination that is the PARCC?
And we need accountability? To whom? For what? Is she saying that the public should get to know what's going on in their local schools, or is she saying that the burden of proof is on schools to prove to the government that they don't suck?
And then there's this baloney:
So many of our poorer schools have cut off all the extracurricular activities. We’ve taken away band, in so many places we’ve taken away a lot of the sports. We’ve taken away arts classes. We’ve taken away school productions.
Okay, I don't want to minimize what's here. The loss of extra-curriculars, music, sports, the arts-- these are all bad things. But if you're looking at our nation's poorest, most underserved schools, and this is what you see, I am concerned. Perhaps we could also talk about physical plants-- buildings that are crumbling and un-maintained. Perhaps we could talk about support for simple things like, say, textbooks. Or enough teachers to reduce crowded class sizes. We might even talk about the systematic silencing of poor, black voices in places like Newark and Philadelphia, where the non-wealthy non-white community members are being deprived of the fundamental democratic process that is supposed to be basic to our country.
This is just a weird thing to focus on, out of all the issues that face high-poverty schools and communities.
[Update: In Washington Post's coverage of the interview, the stress was on Clinton's promise to listen. Which, I suppose, is better than a statement that she will absolutely ignore teachers. But talk is cheap, and listening is even cheaper.
“She basically said ‘What kind of fool would be making public policy without listening to the people who live in those communities, the people who know the names of the kids’?” Garcia said. “I loved that.”
Well, I love that, too. But the answer to her question is "Everybody in the current administration and all her good friends at CAP." And no, you don't get any credit for Listening To Teachers when the only ones you listen to are ones that are carefully vetted and selected. And you don't get credit for listening to teachers if you then ignore everything they say.
Every major policy decision about education in the last decade has been made without any serious significant input from actual teachers. Clinton's promise to "listen" does not move me.]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hillary Clinton is a better option than Scott Walker. And having just your legs chopped off is a better option than having both your arms and legs chopped off. I'm sick to death of the Democrats arguing, well, yeah, we suck, and we're going to punch you in the face, but that guy over there is going to kick you in the junk, so choose us. And frankly, at this point, when it comes to education I don't see a lot of real policy airspace between Clinton 2.0 and Bush 3.0.
I'm happy see Clinton court the NEA vote, but I remain unconvinced, and an endorsement from my union leaders will not sway my vote in the slightest. They're political animals, and they will make a political choice. But I'm a teacher, and I am so deeply and profoundly tired of voting for people who don't respect me, or my work, or the institution that is both the foundation of this country and the object of my life's work. I'll vote for Sanders or Nader before I throw my vote away on one more politician who's just going to kick me in the face.
Monday, June 8, 2015
The Graduation Rate
If you want a quick, clear look at the story behind the awesometastic grad rate miracle rate of 81%, this NPR piece from Anya Kanenetz is a good place to start (it's also pretty).
Kamanetz boils down the possible explanations to three:
1) Intervention
2) Making it easier
3) Cheating
The intervention option is clearly the best one. But it is also expensive and time-consuming. So it's no wonder that many districts resort to 2 and 3. We don't have them in these parts, but I keep hearing about recovery credits, which sound suspiciously like cheap extra credit/makeup work projects that allow schools to say a student passed a course. Beyond the official institutional ways to lower the bar, most teachers have also encountered the unofficial approach-- the one where a guidance counselor or a principal or a special ed department head calls you in to explain why you need to offer some extra credit or make-up work or just plain re-compute your final grades in order to achieve the desired result for Chris McSadstudent.
The article also notes that Texas has miraculous improvements in graduation rate, which we can just add to the list of Texas miracles that aren't (like miraculous economic growth or their earlier education miracles). But many states have figured out how to make students disappear before they can hurt the numbers.
I don't dispute the value of graduation rate as a measure of How Well We're Doing. Well, I don't dispute it as long as we change one simple thing.
Four years.
Why, exactly, is the four year part important?
I have taught so many students sooooooo many students who struggled and finally got a handle on things or broke through to understanding or just plain grew up enough that after a tough start in high school, they finally graduated-- proudly and honestly. But they did it in four years. So they don't count.
Here's Pat, who was a hellion in ninth grade and couldn't focus and was defiant and tried to Teach The School a Lesson by flunking everything on purpose. And then sometime around birthday #16, Pat just settled down and figured it out. But by then Pat was a year behind. Pat graduates in five years.
Here's Chris, who was basically homeless until age fifteen. Chris spent two years in ninth grade because there was nobody at home to get Chris to school more than two days a week. But Chris's mom finally got a job and a car and a stable relationship, and Chris did great work in 10th, 11th and 12th grade, graduating in the middle of the class. But Chris did it in five years.
Here's Sam, who decided that cyber school sounded pretty cool. Sam left for cyberia three months into tenth grade, and the entire rest of the year was a wash, and Sam was soon back in public school, where a repeat of tenth grade was necessary to get back to speed. Sam, now convinced there was no alternative except to make public school work out, finished strong. But in five years.
All of these students, on reports of graduation rate, count exactly the same as Hunter, who lost the path forward and just plain dropped out, never to return, never to graduate.
The problem with the four-year graduation rate is the same as with many other reformy measures-- it can't be easily fixed by legitimate means, it doesn't count circumstances that really are wins (see above examples), and it carries high stakes for the individual schools. Put it all together, and you have a high motivation to fudge, game, and cheat the system.
We really-- REALLY-- need a conversation about why, exactly, we believe that someone who takes five (or even six) years to successfully complete high school is a problem or a failure. Why is it so crucial that students graduate by a certain timetable-- and why is that actually MORE important than whether they graduate with a full education or not?
Let's keep counting the graduates, but let's stop counting the years.
Kamanetz boils down the possible explanations to three:
1) Intervention
2) Making it easier
3) Cheating
The intervention option is clearly the best one. But it is also expensive and time-consuming. So it's no wonder that many districts resort to 2 and 3. We don't have them in these parts, but I keep hearing about recovery credits, which sound suspiciously like cheap extra credit/makeup work projects that allow schools to say a student passed a course. Beyond the official institutional ways to lower the bar, most teachers have also encountered the unofficial approach-- the one where a guidance counselor or a principal or a special ed department head calls you in to explain why you need to offer some extra credit or make-up work or just plain re-compute your final grades in order to achieve the desired result for Chris McSadstudent.
The article also notes that Texas has miraculous improvements in graduation rate, which we can just add to the list of Texas miracles that aren't (like miraculous economic growth or their earlier education miracles). But many states have figured out how to make students disappear before they can hurt the numbers.
I don't dispute the value of graduation rate as a measure of How Well We're Doing. Well, I don't dispute it as long as we change one simple thing.
Four years.
Why, exactly, is the four year part important?
I have taught so many students sooooooo many students who struggled and finally got a handle on things or broke through to understanding or just plain grew up enough that after a tough start in high school, they finally graduated-- proudly and honestly. But they did it in four years. So they don't count.
Here's Pat, who was a hellion in ninth grade and couldn't focus and was defiant and tried to Teach The School a Lesson by flunking everything on purpose. And then sometime around birthday #16, Pat just settled down and figured it out. But by then Pat was a year behind. Pat graduates in five years.
Here's Chris, who was basically homeless until age fifteen. Chris spent two years in ninth grade because there was nobody at home to get Chris to school more than two days a week. But Chris's mom finally got a job and a car and a stable relationship, and Chris did great work in 10th, 11th and 12th grade, graduating in the middle of the class. But Chris did it in five years.
Here's Sam, who decided that cyber school sounded pretty cool. Sam left for cyberia three months into tenth grade, and the entire rest of the year was a wash, and Sam was soon back in public school, where a repeat of tenth grade was necessary to get back to speed. Sam, now convinced there was no alternative except to make public school work out, finished strong. But in five years.
All of these students, on reports of graduation rate, count exactly the same as Hunter, who lost the path forward and just plain dropped out, never to return, never to graduate.
The problem with the four-year graduation rate is the same as with many other reformy measures-- it can't be easily fixed by legitimate means, it doesn't count circumstances that really are wins (see above examples), and it carries high stakes for the individual schools. Put it all together, and you have a high motivation to fudge, game, and cheat the system.
We really-- REALLY-- need a conversation about why, exactly, we believe that someone who takes five (or even six) years to successfully complete high school is a problem or a failure. Why is it so crucial that students graduate by a certain timetable-- and why is that actually MORE important than whether they graduate with a full education or not?
Let's keep counting the graduates, but let's stop counting the years.
PA: The Big Bucks
Can you guess who the highest-paid educator in Pennsylvania is?
It's Abington School Superintendent Amy Sichel, who on July 1 will see her salary rise to a healthy $319,714.
Sichel may or may not be worth it. Okay, no-- nobody's worth that kind of money. But Sichel is also not the standard issue shiny bump-and-run superintendent that we see in so many districts. She has spent her entire career in the Abington School District (north of Philly), and she has held the superintendent job for fifteen years (which is roughly 143 in superintendent years).
A profile from 2012, when Sichel was tapped to lead the AASA (the school superintendents association), included praise from the teachers' union and from the school board:
“Amy is a tough cookie and a strong personality. When she comes into the room, you know she’s there,” Debra Lee, president of the Abington Education Association, says. “She’s a no-nonsense person. She expects the most of everyone, but she also gives us the most. She is a wonderful leader, someone you want to follow.”
“She doesn’t beat around the bush with good news or bad news,” [Board President Raymond] McGarry adds. “She has no hidden agendas. She tells you what she expects in terms of behavior and achievement. I appreciate that. There is nothing worse than a leader with unclear goals.”
She has made some gutsy choices, like eliminating all but college-bound tracks. But I give her points for making her changes and then sticking around to see them through. This puts her in a different class than superintendents who make some program changes and stick around just long enough to add those changes to their resume.
Sichel actually testified before Congress about rauthorizing ESEA-- in 2011. In that testimony she made seven recommendations based on the secrets of her own success:
1) Use a standards based model driven by assessment
2) Use a growth model to measure success
3) Make the growth model variable by individual students
4) Base ESEA on realistic and attainable goals
5) Encourage programs based on research on what works
6) Look to districts that are succeeding
7) Put locus of control at state and local level
There are other secrets of her success that she didn't list. For instance, I'll bet dollars to donut holes that she has benefited from having been in the district her whole professional career, thereby knowing the people and the history of her school and community. Building relationships and knowing the territory take time; the average curriculum cowboy riding in on a suprintendency steed cannot easily or quickly master those aspects of the job any more than you can get the person you just met this morning to marry you by tonight.
Another secret is her district itself. Abington School District does have some free and reduced lunch students, but they also have a median family income around $70K (the state and the nation median family income both come in around $49K). The district handles a bit over 7K students and employs about 550 teachers. They have one high school, one junior high, and seven elementary schools. It strikes me as a nearly perfect size and configuration for a school district. It is the kind of district that tells a new superintendent, "We want, during your tenure, for this district to be highlighted on the local, state, and national level" and doesn't balk at doing one-to-one computing for a few thousand students.
In other words, it may well take a village to raise a successful superintendent. I have no doubt that Sichel leads well (I have seen what happens in districts that have all the tools but no actual leadership), but it's also clear that where she is has contributed to her success. Nor is shy about saying she's earned her salary which (remember, this is where we started) the highest in the state, and comes loaded with various performance and retention bonuses on top. It's a huge pile of taxpayer dollars, but the whole story underline how much that rich school districts can do that poor districts cannot
It's Abington School Superintendent Amy Sichel, who on July 1 will see her salary rise to a healthy $319,714.
Sichel may or may not be worth it. Okay, no-- nobody's worth that kind of money. But Sichel is also not the standard issue shiny bump-and-run superintendent that we see in so many districts. She has spent her entire career in the Abington School District (north of Philly), and she has held the superintendent job for fifteen years (which is roughly 143 in superintendent years).
A profile from 2012, when Sichel was tapped to lead the AASA (the school superintendents association), included praise from the teachers' union and from the school board:
“Amy is a tough cookie and a strong personality. When she comes into the room, you know she’s there,” Debra Lee, president of the Abington Education Association, says. “She’s a no-nonsense person. She expects the most of everyone, but she also gives us the most. She is a wonderful leader, someone you want to follow.”
“She doesn’t beat around the bush with good news or bad news,” [Board President Raymond] McGarry adds. “She has no hidden agendas. She tells you what she expects in terms of behavior and achievement. I appreciate that. There is nothing worse than a leader with unclear goals.”
She has made some gutsy choices, like eliminating all but college-bound tracks. But I give her points for making her changes and then sticking around to see them through. This puts her in a different class than superintendents who make some program changes and stick around just long enough to add those changes to their resume.
Sichel actually testified before Congress about rauthorizing ESEA-- in 2011. In that testimony she made seven recommendations based on the secrets of her own success:
1) Use a standards based model driven by assessment
2) Use a growth model to measure success
3) Make the growth model variable by individual students
4) Base ESEA on realistic and attainable goals
5) Encourage programs based on research on what works
6) Look to districts that are succeeding
7) Put locus of control at state and local level
There are other secrets of her success that she didn't list. For instance, I'll bet dollars to donut holes that she has benefited from having been in the district her whole professional career, thereby knowing the people and the history of her school and community. Building relationships and knowing the territory take time; the average curriculum cowboy riding in on a suprintendency steed cannot easily or quickly master those aspects of the job any more than you can get the person you just met this morning to marry you by tonight.
Another secret is her district itself. Abington School District does have some free and reduced lunch students, but they also have a median family income around $70K (the state and the nation median family income both come in around $49K). The district handles a bit over 7K students and employs about 550 teachers. They have one high school, one junior high, and seven elementary schools. It strikes me as a nearly perfect size and configuration for a school district. It is the kind of district that tells a new superintendent, "We want, during your tenure, for this district to be highlighted on the local, state, and national level" and doesn't balk at doing one-to-one computing for a few thousand students.
In other words, it may well take a village to raise a successful superintendent. I have no doubt that Sichel leads well (I have seen what happens in districts that have all the tools but no actual leadership), but it's also clear that where she is has contributed to her success. Nor is shy about saying she's earned her salary which (remember, this is where we started) the highest in the state, and comes loaded with various performance and retention bonuses on top. It's a huge pile of taxpayer dollars, but the whole story underline how much that rich school districts can do that poor districts cannot
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