William Bennett appeared on Campbell Brown's reformster PR site to stick up for the Common Core, but he ignores some inconvenient truths in the process.
The first stretcher is in his thesis-title: the GOP is wrong to run away from the Common Core-- because the standards are working. "Working" is a heck of a subjective term here, but let's see where he's going, shall we?
He starts with some history, noting that many GOP governors who used to love the Core have decided to dump the standards because it's politically expedient to do so. He is not wrong, but he conveniently ignores parts of the story. Perhaps most notable is that so many of these states actually adopted the standards before they were actually written. Bennett also gives a head nod to the notion that "federal overreach" sullied the otherwise beauteous standards, as if the standards would have had a chance of adoption without the full force of federal coercion and cash behind them (spoiler alert: they would not have).
So the story is not, "States adopted educational standards because they examined the standards and decided that Common Core would make education in their states great. Now those same state leaders are dumping the Core for crass political reasons."
No, the story is, "Some politicians adopted a policy because they thought it would be politically (and financially) advantageous to do so, and then dropped that policy when it became politically advantageous to do so." This is not a new story, and it is not a surprising story, and the degree to which career politicians pretend to be surprised by it is baffling.
Bennett correctly calls out Chris Christie for the hypocrisy of dismissing the Core without making any "substantive policy changes." That's fair, but again-- adopting the Core was a political gesture, and so is disowning it. I'm shocked-- shocked, I tell you.
Bennett then embarks on a journey of logic-chopping and baloney-slicing.
Christie recognizes that New Jersey still needs tough, internationally benchmarked standards that resemble CCSS.
Well, except that CCSS is not internationally benchmarked, and never has been. And the word "tough" is meaningless rhetoric. Something can be tough and still be a waste of everyone's time, like sitting through the film version of Les Mis or listening to twenty-four straight hours of heavy metal polka music.
Many polls indicate that the American people support higher and more rigorous standards and testing.
Let's pretend that those poll results aren't baloney in their own right. Let's pretend that the word "higher" means something when applied to standards. None of that means that the Common Core (Bennett carefully skips around how the brand name does in the polls ) is a hit with anyone. I can say that I am really hungry and would like to eat, but if you bring me a plate of raw liver covered with fried kale, I will still send it back. "But you said you wanted supper," you might say, but you'd be silly to do so.
Bennett then repeats his titular assertion that the Core are "working," which is yet another very vague rhetorical flourish. Does he have evidence?
In a word, no.
Bennett instead brings up the Achieve Honesty Gap report, a report with all sorts of problems, such as treating NAEP as a benchmark test. Oddly enough for Bennett's argument, the Achieve report also doesn't mention the Common Core, ever. Bennett's point is that the Big Standardized Test results are getting more in line with NAEP results. This assumes a great many things, not the least of which is that BS Tests are giving us a real measure of how Core-tastic students are, but since there are many parts of the Core that will never be on the BS Test (collaborative learning, reading full works, and critical thinking, for starters), it seems unlikely that the Core tests are even measuring what they claim to intend to measure.
But Bennett's baloney-fest isn't over.
Christie has every right to call for a review of the standards in New Jersey, in fact, most states review their standards every few years anyway.
(Yes, Bennett seems to want to mostly spank Christie in this piece). Bennett is also conveniently forgetting that the Common Core Standards were carefully constructed NOT to be reviewed every few years or even ever. Set in cement, copyrighted, and with states pledged to add no more than fifteen percent and to change not a whit or tittle, the Core also had no mechanism in place for review or revisit, and the architects left the scene quickly for pricey new gigs.
Given the Core pushback and the lack of any authoritative body to oversee anything, the copyright issue has evaporated. But CCSS was designed not to change a bit, and certainly not to be reviewed by the states. In that sentence, Bennett himself has made the case for dropping the Core.
Bennett also invokes the doctrine of Core Inevitability, a sort of sour grapes argument that says, "Fine, make your own standards. But they will inevitably look like the Common Core because CCSS is so close to the Platonic ideal of education standards that all standards must be a pale shadow of the Core awesomeness." This is a highly charitable and extra-fantastical view of the Common Core Standards, which remain the mediocre, poorly written product of educational amateurs.
Bennett finishes with one more hopeful eruption.
If a state ends up tweaking and renaming the standards, it will be acting in a way that is entirely consistent with how the Common Core was designed to function – as exemplar standards for states to improve and build upon.
Yeah, see above. That is very specifically NOT how the Common Core was designed to function. States were forbidden to improve or build upon CCSS. Bennett is entitled to be bitter and disappointed that same political winds that once filled CCSS sails have now deserted the SS Common Core. He is not entitled to pretend that the SS Common Core was built to be some sort of mighty, nimble ocean vessel when in fact it was always, from day one, a wobbly, leaky dinghy with a brick for a rudder.
Friday, July 24, 2015
Send Word to Harrisburg
If you are in Pennsylvania, and you care about the proliferation of our lousy Keystone and PSSA tests (our version of the federally-mandated Big Standardized Tests), then you have not just an opportunity, but an obligation.
The PA State House Education Committee is having public hearings about the state of PA testing next Wednesday, July 29 (10AM in room G50 of the Irvis Building, 450 Commonwealth Ave, Harrisburg, if you're in the neighborhood).
But if, like me, you have a life and obligations and commitments and you can't make it to harrisburg, there is an alternative. From our friends at Opt Out PA:
If you are an educator or district administrator in PA with a unique view on the negative impacts on high stakes testing, please consider submitting written testimony by Monday the 27th to the following contact: Jonathan Berger, Executive Director, Education Committee (R) PA House of Representatives at jberger@pahousegop.comAsk that your comments be entered into the hearing record, and your testimony will be disseminated to all committee members prior to the hearing. For resources on relevant legislation and opting out of high stakes tests visit http://optoutpa.blogspot.com/
So, I know what I'm doing over the next few days.
I have no idea what the outcome (or intended outcome) of the hearing is supposed to be, nor how much attention the letters will receive. But even if they aren't read, handing a legislature a giant stack of print-outs with the note that they're all opposed to testing-- well, that matters.
It's easy to argue that there's no point in speaking up because the game is rigged and the outcome is already set. Maybe. But I still don't want to imagine the folks railroading education being able to say, "Well, we asked, and nobody said anything, so we figured it was okay." It's like the old sports saw about the number of shots you don't take. People who speak up may not always be heard, but people who don't speak at all go unheard 100% of the time. We should shoot for the better odds. Write a letter before Monday.
The PA State House Education Committee is having public hearings about the state of PA testing next Wednesday, July 29 (10AM in room G50 of the Irvis Building, 450 Commonwealth Ave, Harrisburg, if you're in the neighborhood).
But if, like me, you have a life and obligations and commitments and you can't make it to harrisburg, there is an alternative. From our friends at Opt Out PA:
If you are an educator or district administrator in PA with a unique view on the negative impacts on high stakes testing, please consider submitting written testimony by Monday the 27th to the following contact: Jonathan Berger, Executive Director, Education Committee (R) PA House of Representatives at jberger@pahousegop.comAsk that your comments be entered into the hearing record, and your testimony will be disseminated to all committee members prior to the hearing. For resources on relevant legislation and opting out of high stakes tests visit http://optoutpa.blogspot.com/
So, I know what I'm doing over the next few days.
I have no idea what the outcome (or intended outcome) of the hearing is supposed to be, nor how much attention the letters will receive. But even if they aren't read, handing a legislature a giant stack of print-outs with the note that they're all opposed to testing-- well, that matters.
It's easy to argue that there's no point in speaking up because the game is rigged and the outcome is already set. Maybe. But I still don't want to imagine the folks railroading education being able to say, "Well, we asked, and nobody said anything, so we figured it was okay." It's like the old sports saw about the number of shots you don't take. People who speak up may not always be heard, but people who don't speak at all go unheard 100% of the time. We should shoot for the better odds. Write a letter before Monday.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Excuses? Maybe a Few After All
Charter operators continue, slowly but surely, to learn.
Chris Barbic, as he steps away from his job as superintendent of Tennessee's Achievement School District, gives a sideways nod to the notion that poverty might matter after all.
Let’s just be real: achieving results in neighborhood schools is harder than in a choice environment. I have seen this firsthand at YES Prep and now as the superintendent of the ASD. As a charter school founder, I did my fair share of chest pounding over great results. I’ve learned that getting these same results in a zoned neighborhood school environment is much harder.
Yes, turns out that when you have to educate the students who come with the territory, their situation matters.
And now, Ohio Charters (motto: Setting the Bar So Low That All Other Charters Look Good) have experienced the same epiphany. Here's the lede from the Cleveland Plain Dealer story from yesterday:
Ohio's school rating system is unfair to schools serving poor, urban kids and needs to change, a charter school advocacy group is telling state legislators.
Yep. Ron Adler, head of the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education ("Leadership for Public Charter Schools"), says, "When students from Cleveland public schools and Cleveland area charter schools are continually rated against the highest performing suburban schools they will always be cast off as failures."
We can set this beside the recent discovery at Bellwether Thinky Tank for Free Market Education that-- shock-- standardized tests alone might not be good measures of how good a high school is. It might be more complicated than that.
Oh, hey, and remember that time that charters stopped saying "We can do more with less" and started saying "We deserve at least as much money as public schools, if not more."
Just in case charter operators start ret-conning the charter movement, let me remind you how this song used to go.
"No Excuses for Poor Children Not To Learn, Research Shows" says the Heritage Foundation in 2000. "Schools can help all kids-- poverty is no excuse" says Eva Moscowitz in the NY Post just a year ago (if you look at the actual URL, it says the "poverty myth" is a "lame excuse"). Perhaps you haven't yet grabbed your copy of No Excuses: 21 Lessons from High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools. Or we could flash back to this Forbes article highlighting the effectiveness of "No Excuses" management in high-poverty schools-- in Ohio.
Before you get too excited, note that as with all things charter, Ohio is an extra special case. They set the bar for charter school closings (in Columbus alone, seventeen closings in one year), they fund charters at a higher rate than public schools, they have a problem with ghost students in charters, and they just bid adieu to the state's school choice chief who was cooking the books to make charters look better.
So when Ohio starts talking about factoring in demographic issues, they're actually talking about using models like the one already used in California to (unofficially) fudge the poverty factor by pretending to compare schools that are similarish. Perhaps a VAMmish addition of comparisons to imaginary schools would help as well.
Unfortunately, this is probably not good news, leading as it does to a search for an evaluation system that "proves" that charters are actually doing great. The increased discussion of charter problems and factors and costs is happening, I'm afraid, because charter folks feel confident that they are well enough settled in the landscape that discussing their issues will not lead to people saying, "Well, if they cost as much as public schools and don't do any better job, let's just get rid of them and invest all that money in public schools." So while it may be heartening and a little entertaining to see charters start to make excuses, what that may mean is that the public has started to take charters for granted. Too bad, because the rise of excuses is just one more piece of evidence that charter operators don't know a single thing that public school educators didn't already know.
Chris Barbic, as he steps away from his job as superintendent of Tennessee's Achievement School District, gives a sideways nod to the notion that poverty might matter after all.
Let’s just be real: achieving results in neighborhood schools is harder than in a choice environment. I have seen this firsthand at YES Prep and now as the superintendent of the ASD. As a charter school founder, I did my fair share of chest pounding over great results. I’ve learned that getting these same results in a zoned neighborhood school environment is much harder.
Yes, turns out that when you have to educate the students who come with the territory, their situation matters.
And now, Ohio Charters (motto: Setting the Bar So Low That All Other Charters Look Good) have experienced the same epiphany. Here's the lede from the Cleveland Plain Dealer story from yesterday:
Ohio's school rating system is unfair to schools serving poor, urban kids and needs to change, a charter school advocacy group is telling state legislators.
Yep. Ron Adler, head of the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education ("Leadership for Public Charter Schools"), says, "When students from Cleveland public schools and Cleveland area charter schools are continually rated against the highest performing suburban schools they will always be cast off as failures."
We can set this beside the recent discovery at Bellwether Thinky Tank for Free Market Education that-- shock-- standardized tests alone might not be good measures of how good a high school is. It might be more complicated than that.
Oh, hey, and remember that time that charters stopped saying "We can do more with less" and started saying "We deserve at least as much money as public schools, if not more."
Just in case charter operators start ret-conning the charter movement, let me remind you how this song used to go.
"No Excuses for Poor Children Not To Learn, Research Shows" says the Heritage Foundation in 2000. "Schools can help all kids-- poverty is no excuse" says Eva Moscowitz in the NY Post just a year ago (if you look at the actual URL, it says the "poverty myth" is a "lame excuse"). Perhaps you haven't yet grabbed your copy of No Excuses: 21 Lessons from High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools. Or we could flash back to this Forbes article highlighting the effectiveness of "No Excuses" management in high-poverty schools-- in Ohio.
Before you get too excited, note that as with all things charter, Ohio is an extra special case. They set the bar for charter school closings (in Columbus alone, seventeen closings in one year), they fund charters at a higher rate than public schools, they have a problem with ghost students in charters, and they just bid adieu to the state's school choice chief who was cooking the books to make charters look better.
So when Ohio starts talking about factoring in demographic issues, they're actually talking about using models like the one already used in California to (unofficially) fudge the poverty factor by pretending to compare schools that are similarish. Perhaps a VAMmish addition of comparisons to imaginary schools would help as well.
Unfortunately, this is probably not good news, leading as it does to a search for an evaluation system that "proves" that charters are actually doing great. The increased discussion of charter problems and factors and costs is happening, I'm afraid, because charter folks feel confident that they are well enough settled in the landscape that discussing their issues will not lead to people saying, "Well, if they cost as much as public schools and don't do any better job, let's just get rid of them and invest all that money in public schools." So while it may be heartening and a little entertaining to see charters start to make excuses, what that may mean is that the public has started to take charters for granted. Too bad, because the rise of excuses is just one more piece of evidence that charter operators don't know a single thing that public school educators didn't already know.
ME: Reformster Drive By
One of the basic premises of reformsterism is that nobody who actually lives in your state or district already knows what your community needs to do about education-- you must bring in an expert. So a whole cottage industry of traveling education consultants/experts/talking heads has sprung up, despite the lumps of cognitive dissonance floating in this ideological soup (when the phone rings at Fordham, and someone is looking for a reformy expert on how the states should have more power over ed reform, do the Fordham folks ever say, "Hey, you have the know-how and wisdom to operate your district without help from DC, so we aren't going to go there"?)
Examples of the smaller fish can be as instructive as the whales of the consulting expert industry. And so, let's travel to Maine and meet Vicki E. (Murray) Alger.
Alger will be in Maine to present on Friedman Legacy Day, a totally not-made-up holiday that will be celebrated by the Maine Heritage Policy Center in Portland. On July 31, Alger will be talking about The Future of School Choice in Maine. Admission to the luncheon meeting is a mere $25 for non-members. The event starts with the usual blurbly excesses:
Allowing parents to choose which school their children attend is a common-sense measure that has been shown to promote educational growth and achievement, and foster healthy competition among schools.
None of those things are true. Heck, even the adjectives (common-sense, healthy) are not true. But it lets us know which brand of baloney is being served right up front. Why is Dr. Alger (because, of course, she's a PhD) here in Maine? She's not only going to sing the praises of choice, but she is going to let these Mainesters know how their state is doing, choice-wise.
So who is Vicki E. (Murray) Alger? Is she some sort of Mainey expert on school choice? Well, of course not. Why would you call on someone local to explain your local issues? Alger lives in Phoenix, Arizona. But her reformy credentials are impeccable.
In 2003, Alger received her PhD in political philosophy from the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas (a private Catholic college in Texas). I could not find a profile that covered any of her adventures before grad school. The Institute statement of purpose contains some awesome language, like this:
The IPS attempts to correct the tendency in higher education at the Ph.D. level toward increasing specialization at the expense of utility, ever more barbarous and repugnant technical jargon at the expense of intelligibility, and indifference to the need human beings have to make good choices in life. Yet the primary aim of education, so we assert, is to supply useful knowledge, expressed with clarity, and ordered in accordance with a notion of the good.
Alger taught some college courses and lectured here and there before landing at the Goldwater Institute as the Director of the Center for Educational Opportunity. She went on to do her thing at the Pacific Research Institute and the Platte Institute for Economic Research, eventually spending enough time on the rubber chicken circuit to land a spot on the Friedman Foundation's Speakers Bureau. She has written (or co-written) a number of books, including Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Reform, and she is apparently working on a history of the US Department of Education. She has even written a work for ALEC.
Like any good one-person industry, she has an LLC (I've got to get that done one of these days). They/she are/is dedicated to transforming education. Here's what they can do for you!
Examples of the smaller fish can be as instructive as the whales of the consulting expert industry. And so, let's travel to Maine and meet Vicki E. (Murray) Alger.
Alger will be in Maine to present on Friedman Legacy Day, a totally not-made-up holiday that will be celebrated by the Maine Heritage Policy Center in Portland. On July 31, Alger will be talking about The Future of School Choice in Maine. Admission to the luncheon meeting is a mere $25 for non-members. The event starts with the usual blurbly excesses:
Allowing parents to choose which school their children attend is a common-sense measure that has been shown to promote educational growth and achievement, and foster healthy competition among schools.
None of those things are true. Heck, even the adjectives (common-sense, healthy) are not true. But it lets us know which brand of baloney is being served right up front. Why is Dr. Alger (because, of course, she's a PhD) here in Maine? She's not only going to sing the praises of choice, but she is going to let these Mainesters know how their state is doing, choice-wise.
So who is Vicki E. (Murray) Alger? Is she some sort of Mainey expert on school choice? Well, of course not. Why would you call on someone local to explain your local issues? Alger lives in Phoenix, Arizona. But her reformy credentials are impeccable.
In 2003, Alger received her PhD in political philosophy from the Institute of Philosophic Studies at the University of Dallas (a private Catholic college in Texas). I could not find a profile that covered any of her adventures before grad school. The Institute statement of purpose contains some awesome language, like this:
The IPS attempts to correct the tendency in higher education at the Ph.D. level toward increasing specialization at the expense of utility, ever more barbarous and repugnant technical jargon at the expense of intelligibility, and indifference to the need human beings have to make good choices in life. Yet the primary aim of education, so we assert, is to supply useful knowledge, expressed with clarity, and ordered in accordance with a notion of the good.
Alger taught some college courses and lectured here and there before landing at the Goldwater Institute as the Director of the Center for Educational Opportunity. She went on to do her thing at the Pacific Research Institute and the Platte Institute for Economic Research, eventually spending enough time on the rubber chicken circuit to land a spot on the Friedman Foundation's Speakers Bureau. She has written (or co-written) a number of books, including Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Reform, and she is apparently working on a history of the US Department of Education. She has even written a work for ALEC.
Like any good one-person industry, she has an LLC (I've got to get that done one of these days). They/she are/is dedicated to transforming education. Here's what they can do for you!
Vicki Murray Associates LLC
is committed to helping your organization translate limited-government
free-market principles into effective education policy and practice.
Our team provides specialized research expertise
with a proven track-record of advancing and informing key education
policies, together with real-world experience in developing effective
web-based applications.
But by far my favorite of Alger's side affiliations are her fellowships at the Independent Institute and the Independent Women's Forum. Right Wing Watch calls the IWF "an anti-feminist organization" that houses a bunch of lady right wing "scholars." But I've looked at the IWF website, and I call them fabulous!
Remember when Bic came out with a pen "for her" and was promptly eviscerated by the Amazon reviewer hive mind? Well, we may now know where those designers went after that debacle. The Independent Women's Forum looks like it might be part of the website for Ladies Home Journal, if LHJ had built a website in 1962. It's a shade darker than Barbie pink, but boy is it pink. And every headline is rendered in a swoopy, soft, pretty font. They would like you to "help lead the charge against the so-called 'War on Women'" and join a network of women who "value limited government, free markets, personal liberty, and responsibility." But also, they like to shop. And-- most awesome of all-- they invite you to subscribe to their newsletter, the IWF Weekly Roundup, "Where Being Right Is Fashionable."
Why spend so much time and interwebs stalking on a reformster who is a C-lister? Because here once again is the pattern of affiliations, connections, and general insider world of reformsterism, a big machine that keeps sending out folks into local settings to tell community members why they need someone to come in from outside to give them an educational makeover (but not somebody from DC-- nosirreebob).
And you can make an actual career out of this. Again, I have no idea where Alger grew up or did her undergrad work, but a policy PhD and she's been supporting herself just as a thinky talky writey pusher of free markettry. It's a career as a professional outsider, without any real ties to the industry whose rules you'd like to rewrite, a career in which one never actually does anything except give other people advice about how to regulate other people who are doing the actual work. And all of it done, not in the spirit of inquiry like a scientist trying to understand What's Going On Here, but with a specific agenda to push.
The bummer for me is that I'll be arriving in Maine for a few days vacation about two-or-three hours after Alger does her luncheon thing. It would have been nice to go catch some wisdom and see her in action, but I don't think I'm going to make my wife get up four hours earlier just for that privilege. And somehow I doubt that she's sticking around all that long. Vicki, if you're reading this, I'd be happy to meet you for dessert or coffee or something later in the day. Just give me a holler, unless I can't afford the cost of a meeting, in which case, I wish you well. And if any of my New England friends can make it, please ask her for me where she grew up.
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
We Can't Go Back
Those of us who argue against reformster policies in education sometimes fall into the mistake of wanting to go back, to roll back the clock to the days before high-stakes test driven accountability, federally-coerced standards, and privateering began messing with public education in earnest.
We can't, and we shouldn't want to. Because there is real work we need to do.
Teacher Quality
The assertion that the education system is overrun with terrible teachers and that if we just root them out, all will be hunky-dory-- that's a dumb assertion. But I am not going to look you in the eye and say there are not teachers who desperately need help or even teachers who just need to get out of the classroom. Those people exist. What often does not exist is any system or mechanism for helping them out and thereby lifting up the schools in which they teach.
Some of the work needs to be done on the administrative level. School leaders can do a better job of hiring and a better job of growing staff.
We also need to look at the supply chain. One of the unfortunate effects of thirteen years of assault on public education is some real damage to the teacher pipeline.
If only teaching were like other professions. Doctors, nurses, lawyers-- they control their own professional pipelines. To become a doctor, you have to go through a doctor-certified program and win the approval of other doctors. To become a teacher you just have satisfy a bunch of bureaucrats who haven't a clue what you do.
Equity
People who hate No Child Left Behind still praise its disaggregation of results. Some folks are right now still arguing that we must test every student every year so that non-white, non-wealthy, special needs students will not be hidden and invisible. Yes, some of those folks are money-grubbing opportunists, but some are absolutely sincere, and they have a point.
We cannot just say, "Oh, just trust us to take care of those kids. We always did right by them in the past." Because we didn't. Not in some places.
Is it really that surprising to say so? Schools reflect their communities. If your community is racist, chances are racism is embedded in your institutions as well. If your community bows to the power of the wealthy, chances are your not-so-wealthy students are getting the short end of the stick.
Reform programs have not addressed equity issues. They have instead disenfrachsed community members and resegregated students. But just because someone has sold you snake oil, that doesn't mean your illness isn't real. We face the challenge of providing excellent education for all students, and we have to do a far better job of meeting that challenge.
Accountability
Real accountability is not stack ranking, and it is not making many schools compete for limited resources. But we owe taxpayers a full accounting for what we do with the tax dollars they hand to us and the trust they place in us.
Schools have not always been great at transparency. We close the doors and tell our community, "Trust us. And leave us alone." In some communities public schools really have behaved like the obnoxious monopolies reformsters accuse us of being.
Parents are entitled to know how their students are doing. taxpayers are entitled to know what they're getting for their hard-earned dollar.
The Irony
There are some schools that have met and conquered these challenges, and the rest of us can learn from them. We need to learn from them.
The irony is that many reformster programs, like the high stakes testing currently under the legislative microscope, have been sold as solutions to all of these problems, when in fact they don't solve any of these problems.
But in pushing back, we have to remember two things. First, don't confuse pointing out the false solutions with dismissing the actual problems, second, don't forget that the problems still need to be addressed.
We cannot go back, and even if we had a fully-tricked out DeLorean, we shouldn't go back. The problem with reformster policies is not that they keep us from staying in a perfect past, but that they keep us from moving forward into a better future. That journey into the future, that pursuit of real solutions and real improvements that actually address our real challenges-- that's what we need to reclaim.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
We can't, and we shouldn't want to. Because there is real work we need to do.
Teacher Quality
The assertion that the education system is overrun with terrible teachers and that if we just root them out, all will be hunky-dory-- that's a dumb assertion. But I am not going to look you in the eye and say there are not teachers who desperately need help or even teachers who just need to get out of the classroom. Those people exist. What often does not exist is any system or mechanism for helping them out and thereby lifting up the schools in which they teach.
Some of the work needs to be done on the administrative level. School leaders can do a better job of hiring and a better job of growing staff.
We also need to look at the supply chain. One of the unfortunate effects of thirteen years of assault on public education is some real damage to the teacher pipeline.
If only teaching were like other professions. Doctors, nurses, lawyers-- they control their own professional pipelines. To become a doctor, you have to go through a doctor-certified program and win the approval of other doctors. To become a teacher you just have satisfy a bunch of bureaucrats who haven't a clue what you do.
Equity
People who hate No Child Left Behind still praise its disaggregation of results. Some folks are right now still arguing that we must test every student every year so that non-white, non-wealthy, special needs students will not be hidden and invisible. Yes, some of those folks are money-grubbing opportunists, but some are absolutely sincere, and they have a point.
We cannot just say, "Oh, just trust us to take care of those kids. We always did right by them in the past." Because we didn't. Not in some places.
Is it really that surprising to say so? Schools reflect their communities. If your community is racist, chances are racism is embedded in your institutions as well. If your community bows to the power of the wealthy, chances are your not-so-wealthy students are getting the short end of the stick.
Reform programs have not addressed equity issues. They have instead disenfrachsed community members and resegregated students. But just because someone has sold you snake oil, that doesn't mean your illness isn't real. We face the challenge of providing excellent education for all students, and we have to do a far better job of meeting that challenge.
Accountability
Real accountability is not stack ranking, and it is not making many schools compete for limited resources. But we owe taxpayers a full accounting for what we do with the tax dollars they hand to us and the trust they place in us.
Schools have not always been great at transparency. We close the doors and tell our community, "Trust us. And leave us alone." In some communities public schools really have behaved like the obnoxious monopolies reformsters accuse us of being.
Parents are entitled to know how their students are doing. taxpayers are entitled to know what they're getting for their hard-earned dollar.
The Irony
There are some schools that have met and conquered these challenges, and the rest of us can learn from them. We need to learn from them.
The irony is that many reformster programs, like the high stakes testing currently under the legislative microscope, have been sold as solutions to all of these problems, when in fact they don't solve any of these problems.
But in pushing back, we have to remember two things. First, don't confuse pointing out the false solutions with dismissing the actual problems, second, don't forget that the problems still need to be addressed.
We cannot go back, and even if we had a fully-tricked out DeLorean, we shouldn't go back. The problem with reformster policies is not that they keep us from staying in a perfect past, but that they keep us from moving forward into a better future. That journey into the future, that pursuit of real solutions and real improvements that actually address our real challenges-- that's what we need to reclaim.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Helping the Newb
A critical element in the development of strong, young teachers is mentoring.
It's one of those areas in which we do not resemble other professions-- fledgling doctors and lawyers are mentored and prepared for the Big Show by other doctors and lawyers. But young teachers depend on the luck of the draw-- get a good co-op for student teaching and then hope that in your first job, you're taken under a reasonably wise wing. Too many young teachers have floundered early in their career simply because they didn't draw a lunch period with the right older professionals.
Some states (mine included) have a sort of mentoring program requirement on paper, but it's not much. In fact, it's kind of surprising how little real mentoring is formally in place, given that this is an area or agreement between the most raging reformsters and the most dedicated defenders of public education (let's ignore the reformsters who want a master teacher with two assistants to teach 150 students-- that's a horse of another hue).
The bad news is that little is being done to create programs that address the need.
The good news is that we don't have to wait.
The one thing we can do as teachers without waiting for anybody's support or permission (though those are certainly swell) is support, assist and aid our new colleagues. Here are some simple actions to take when helping new folks in your building grow and develop as educators.
Ancient Scrolls, Not Blank Slate
There are things that people in your building know just because they've been there for years. You will be amazed at how many you don't even think about. Share these with your new colleague. Distinguish between the unwritten rules (Don't ever park your car by the blue line) and the mores (If you ever call the secretary "hon," she will lose every requisition you ever file).
Questions, Not Answers
When you're starting out, it's not just that you aren't sure what to do-- it's that you don't know how to figure out what to do. The Teacher School solution to this is to make teachers-in-training write twenty-page lesson plans for fifteen minute lessons. This is an unsustainable solution. This is having someone do 100 actions in order to make sure they complete the two actions they need to do.
So help your new colleague figure out how to figure out.
That means asking questions rather than giving answers. If she asks, "What test should I give for this unit," you could hand her a test to run off. Or you could ask, "What do you want to know about what the students know? What did you want them to get out of this unit? What would be a good way to find out whether or not they learned those things?"
Their Voice, Not Yours
Like having a student teacher, only more so. Do not try to make your new colleague into a mini-you. Help her find her own voice. When she asks how you handle Lesson X, provide multiple options. "I do it like this, but Mrs. McSwaggalot does it this way, and I've read about a teacher who used this other technique. Did you have any ideas of your own? What do you think would fit you best?"
As I told a young, warm-hearted, chirpy, female student teacher years ago, "This approach works best for a middle-aged bearded man with a reputation for being grumpy and scary. It may not be a great fit for you. That's okay."
Mistakes, Not Safety
This is a careful balance. It's just passive-aggressive meanness to let your new colleague attempt a lesson that will explode in flames and shrapnel. But just because you didn't care for how something worked out for you when you tried it twenty years ago does not mean that it couldn't work for her this year.
Failure is not (necessarily) disaster. Mistakes in the classroom can be an extraordinarily useful source of learning, for students and teachers alike. Don't tell her not to try. Don't tell her to take the safe route every time. "Be brave and learn stuff" is a fine motto, but you have to accept the risks that come with it. And this is also an excellent time to remember that she is a full-grown certified professional, and ultimately it's her choice, not yours.
Space, Not Isolation
Give her space to do all of the above. But don't leave her hanging. If you know she was trying a risky lesson today, stop by and stick your head in. Either it went swell and she wants to brag to somebody who can appreciate it, or it didn't go well and she needs to hear that this does not mean that she is the worst teacher in the universe and her career is over. Having to wear a brave face until you get home to your empty apartment and sit and cry about the horrible day while trying to grade papers that you suspect you are unfit to score until you finally fall asleep to the sound of the cat lady downstairs hollering at her brood, only to awaken far too early the next morning and wonder if today will bring something equally horrific or if your best hope is that a tornado will sweep you off the Ohio coast deep into Lake Erie-- I'm just speaking generally, of course.
Anyway, boom or bust, she can use someone to help her process the events of the day, to figure out what she's been through that would make her a better teacher.
Yes, give her space. Remember that she's a grown-ass certified professional teacher person. She deserves the same respect you show the rest of your colleagues, but while you may not have actually seen Mr. Thibidibideaux in ten years, she is probably not ready to be left in the isolations bubble of her room.
Shut Up
Be mindful of your own desire for an audience. After decades of experience, you've got someone who hasn't already heard and yet can perhaps appreciate all your stories. Maybe you'd like to bitch and moan about the horror of it all-- well, shut up, because she's got enough to carry without lugging your sad baggage, too. Maybe you have so many Brilliant Ideas about how to teach that you've been dying to pass on-- well, shut up, because she's got plenty to think about and ideas of her own and a pressing need to find her own classroom voice.
Do open your library of resources. But just lend her a book-- don't insist on reading it to her and telling her what it all means.
Listen and Learn
The thing about mentoring, officially or unofficially, is that it is great for you. It forces to think about what you do and how you do it and why you do it, which forces mindfulness, and everything is better done mindfully. It let's you see other ways of approaching a classroom and exposes you to new ideas that you might not have encountered.
There's a lot of balancing to do. Some off this depends on what the two of you bring to the table (or the three or six or ten of you, if the mentoring is being handled by many people) just like any other relationship. Be sensitive to the other person in the relationship. Be alert to the areas in which your colleague is wiser than you (and if you can't imagine such a thing, go back to your room and leave her alone).
Finally, be aware that you may not be the right person for the job. In that case, back away gracefully and help recruit the right person for the job.
Your goal is to help develop a partnership, not induct a subordinate, to help someone grow into the shape that is naturally theirs, not the shape you've chosen for them. But it is also not your place to simply drop nuggets of wisdom then turn away and leave the recipient on her own while you retreat to your own cave. In fact, the whole business is an awful lot like teaching done well. Go figure.
It's one of those areas in which we do not resemble other professions-- fledgling doctors and lawyers are mentored and prepared for the Big Show by other doctors and lawyers. But young teachers depend on the luck of the draw-- get a good co-op for student teaching and then hope that in your first job, you're taken under a reasonably wise wing. Too many young teachers have floundered early in their career simply because they didn't draw a lunch period with the right older professionals.
Some states (mine included) have a sort of mentoring program requirement on paper, but it's not much. In fact, it's kind of surprising how little real mentoring is formally in place, given that this is an area or agreement between the most raging reformsters and the most dedicated defenders of public education (let's ignore the reformsters who want a master teacher with two assistants to teach 150 students-- that's a horse of another hue).
The bad news is that little is being done to create programs that address the need.
The good news is that we don't have to wait.
The one thing we can do as teachers without waiting for anybody's support or permission (though those are certainly swell) is support, assist and aid our new colleagues. Here are some simple actions to take when helping new folks in your building grow and develop as educators.
Ancient Scrolls, Not Blank Slate
There are things that people in your building know just because they've been there for years. You will be amazed at how many you don't even think about. Share these with your new colleague. Distinguish between the unwritten rules (Don't ever park your car by the blue line) and the mores (If you ever call the secretary "hon," she will lose every requisition you ever file).
Questions, Not Answers
When you're starting out, it's not just that you aren't sure what to do-- it's that you don't know how to figure out what to do. The Teacher School solution to this is to make teachers-in-training write twenty-page lesson plans for fifteen minute lessons. This is an unsustainable solution. This is having someone do 100 actions in order to make sure they complete the two actions they need to do.
So help your new colleague figure out how to figure out.
That means asking questions rather than giving answers. If she asks, "What test should I give for this unit," you could hand her a test to run off. Or you could ask, "What do you want to know about what the students know? What did you want them to get out of this unit? What would be a good way to find out whether or not they learned those things?"
Their Voice, Not Yours
Like having a student teacher, only more so. Do not try to make your new colleague into a mini-you. Help her find her own voice. When she asks how you handle Lesson X, provide multiple options. "I do it like this, but Mrs. McSwaggalot does it this way, and I've read about a teacher who used this other technique. Did you have any ideas of your own? What do you think would fit you best?"
As I told a young, warm-hearted, chirpy, female student teacher years ago, "This approach works best for a middle-aged bearded man with a reputation for being grumpy and scary. It may not be a great fit for you. That's okay."
Mistakes, Not Safety
This is a careful balance. It's just passive-aggressive meanness to let your new colleague attempt a lesson that will explode in flames and shrapnel. But just because you didn't care for how something worked out for you when you tried it twenty years ago does not mean that it couldn't work for her this year.
Failure is not (necessarily) disaster. Mistakes in the classroom can be an extraordinarily useful source of learning, for students and teachers alike. Don't tell her not to try. Don't tell her to take the safe route every time. "Be brave and learn stuff" is a fine motto, but you have to accept the risks that come with it. And this is also an excellent time to remember that she is a full-grown certified professional, and ultimately it's her choice, not yours.
Space, Not Isolation
Give her space to do all of the above. But don't leave her hanging. If you know she was trying a risky lesson today, stop by and stick your head in. Either it went swell and she wants to brag to somebody who can appreciate it, or it didn't go well and she needs to hear that this does not mean that she is the worst teacher in the universe and her career is over. Having to wear a brave face until you get home to your empty apartment and sit and cry about the horrible day while trying to grade papers that you suspect you are unfit to score until you finally fall asleep to the sound of the cat lady downstairs hollering at her brood, only to awaken far too early the next morning and wonder if today will bring something equally horrific or if your best hope is that a tornado will sweep you off the Ohio coast deep into Lake Erie-- I'm just speaking generally, of course.
Anyway, boom or bust, she can use someone to help her process the events of the day, to figure out what she's been through that would make her a better teacher.
Yes, give her space. Remember that she's a grown-ass certified professional teacher person. She deserves the same respect you show the rest of your colleagues, but while you may not have actually seen Mr. Thibidibideaux in ten years, she is probably not ready to be left in the isolations bubble of her room.
Shut Up
Be mindful of your own desire for an audience. After decades of experience, you've got someone who hasn't already heard and yet can perhaps appreciate all your stories. Maybe you'd like to bitch and moan about the horror of it all-- well, shut up, because she's got enough to carry without lugging your sad baggage, too. Maybe you have so many Brilliant Ideas about how to teach that you've been dying to pass on-- well, shut up, because she's got plenty to think about and ideas of her own and a pressing need to find her own classroom voice.
Do open your library of resources. But just lend her a book-- don't insist on reading it to her and telling her what it all means.
Listen and Learn
The thing about mentoring, officially or unofficially, is that it is great for you. It forces to think about what you do and how you do it and why you do it, which forces mindfulness, and everything is better done mindfully. It let's you see other ways of approaching a classroom and exposes you to new ideas that you might not have encountered.
There's a lot of balancing to do. Some off this depends on what the two of you bring to the table (or the three or six or ten of you, if the mentoring is being handled by many people) just like any other relationship. Be sensitive to the other person in the relationship. Be alert to the areas in which your colleague is wiser than you (and if you can't imagine such a thing, go back to your room and leave her alone).
Finally, be aware that you may not be the right person for the job. In that case, back away gracefully and help recruit the right person for the job.
Your goal is to help develop a partnership, not induct a subordinate, to help someone grow into the shape that is naturally theirs, not the shape you've chosen for them. But it is also not your place to simply drop nuggets of wisdom then turn away and leave the recipient on her own while you retreat to your own cave. In fact, the whole business is an awful lot like teaching done well. Go figure.
Best Quote of the Month
Courtesy of Maria Popova at Brain Pickings, this quote from poet Mary Oliver.
It has frequently been remarked, about my own writings, that I emphasize the notion of attention. This began simply enough: to see that the way the flicker flies is greatly different from the way the swallow plays in the golden air of summer. It was my pleasure to notice such things, it was a good first step. But later, watching M. when she was taking photographs, and watching her in the darkroom, and no less watching the intensity and openness with which she dealt with friends, and strangers too, taught me what real attention is about. Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter.
This is the sentence I want on a t-shirt, a billboard, a big fat sign across the back of my classroom.
Attention without feeling... is only a report.
Attention without feeling is, of course, the goal of test-driven, top-down, faux-data-obsessed, close-any-community-school-that-doesn't-make-numbers reformsterism. We're supposed to give attention to students without caring. We're supposed to give attention to testing and learning and content-delivery without caring about any of it.
Attention is necessary. It's crucial. But by itself it is not enough. I can pay attention to my wife, my children, my friends, my students-- but without feeling, caring, empathy, it's an empty exercise. Listening without hearing. Looking without seeing. We can do so much better.
It has frequently been remarked, about my own writings, that I emphasize the notion of attention. This began simply enough: to see that the way the flicker flies is greatly different from the way the swallow plays in the golden air of summer. It was my pleasure to notice such things, it was a good first step. But later, watching M. when she was taking photographs, and watching her in the darkroom, and no less watching the intensity and openness with which she dealt with friends, and strangers too, taught me what real attention is about. Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter.
This is the sentence I want on a t-shirt, a billboard, a big fat sign across the back of my classroom.
Attention without feeling... is only a report.
Attention without feeling is, of course, the goal of test-driven, top-down, faux-data-obsessed, close-any-community-school-that-doesn't-make-numbers reformsterism. We're supposed to give attention to students without caring. We're supposed to give attention to testing and learning and content-delivery without caring about any of it.
Attention is necessary. It's crucial. But by itself it is not enough. I can pay attention to my wife, my children, my friends, my students-- but without feeling, caring, empathy, it's an empty exercise. Listening without hearing. Looking without seeing. We can do so much better.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)