Boy, I hadn't thought about this in a while, but then Mark Zuckerberg personally recommended the clip to me (well, the facebook link algorithm tossed it up on my feed) .
Go ahead and watch it. It's quick and simple and powerful.
The main point here is that leaders, while celebrated and honored, are not nearly as important to a movement as first and second followers, who make the difference between a single nut and a growing movement. Seeing that point made again sparked two separate thoughts.
Teacher Leaders
The vast majority of "teacher leader" programs are not about leadership at all-- they're about conning teachers into being first and second followers. Caspar McGrubmoney provides whatever program is being promoted (the leader) and now, so that the program doesn't look like a lonely nut dancing alne in a field, the hunt is on to recruit teacher leaders who are really meant to be the first and second followers who make the lonely nut look like a burgeoning trend.
When you are asked to take point and be the teacher leader on an implementation of some program, you are not being asked to be a leader-- you are being asked to give the program your first follower stamp of approval. They don't really want you to be a leader-- they want you to be a first follower to make the actual designated leader look less like a lone nut.
The vast majority of attempts to raise up teacher leaders aren't looking for leaders at all.
Of course, much of the reformster agenda has been a search for first followers. To see why it doesn't work, imagine if Dancing Guy had started offering other people fifty bucks to be his first follower, and they took the money and proceeded to dance, not with joy and commitment, but with mechanical half-heartedness. The innumerable "How the Common Core Showed Me How To Teach" essays we've been subjected to have been failed attempts to generate first followers.
Ditto the occasional slanted poll that attempts to create the illusion that the first followers have arrived and a crowd has already gathered.
The biggest challenge in the video-- the idea that the leader must embrace the first follower as an equal.
Nobody ever took a video of the guy who gets up in a field and does some horrible bad imitation of dancing, twitching without joy, rhythm or a sense of the music, but gesturing wildly for people to come join him and give him money when they do. Then he just gives up and hires some guys to force everybody to get up and dance with him, and punch them if they don't dance "right." That guy is dancing to some Common Core reformy tune. He's probably trying to dance in a three piece suit. It's hard to get first followers when your dance sucks.
Students
We give a lot of attention to fostering leadership among students. I've never encountered anything about fostering first followers.
Yet there have to be valuable abilities there. Spotting just which leader to throw your lot in with. How to recognize whether you've made a mistake or not. How to welcome others to the movement. How to follow.
This works so much against our culture of Looking Out For Number One-- the dynamics of how to get in on and foster a movement by being an effective early follower are so powerful, but so alien to how we tend to think. It may really rankle to talk about being a good follower, but of such things are important movements made. Now I am really, really curious about how to make such a thing part of my classroom world. If you've got any helpful materials or insights, I would love to hear about them.
Saturday, September 19, 2015
Dyett: How the Hell Can This Still Be Happening
UPDATE: As of today, this is NOT happening any more. The fight for Dyett has entered another phase. The school is going to open; the fight ahead is for the form it will take. In the meantime, I wish good health to each of the courageous hunger strikers. 34 days is a hell of a lot longer than I could have lasted.
You know, I don't really have anything new to add to a discussion of the Dyett High School hunger strike, because after thirty four days, very little has changed.
It has been almost two weeks since CPS tried to shut the strikers up by announcing a bogus "compromise" in which the city got everything that it wanted and the activitists got to sit outside the press conference, carefully locked away from any possible voice in the future of Dyett High. That was not a compromise or a capitulation-- it was officials' attempt to put out a brushfire by depriving it of oxygen.
It has been a month. A month without solid food. A month of getting the word out, of standing up to the city as it tries to deprive one more not-white not-wealthy neighborhood of the stabilizing influence of a democratically, locally controlled school.
Dyett is the worst of the reformster movement in a microcosm-- residents will be stripped of their local school, given no voice in what will replace it, because their Betters have decided what they need, what they deserve. And because small politicos want to make sure that local voices are shut out, that power is not allowed into the hands of ordinary citizens.
Dyett is all of us, sooner or later (and in some places, already)-- privatizers and profiteers shutting down democracy so that they can get their hands on those sweet sweet piles of tax money and keep their hands on the wheels of power.
I say it every time-- people who want to concern troll and tone police need to notice that the community members of Bronzeville have done every by the book. They developed their own plan, in conjunction with local institutions and educational experts. They worked the system. They filed the forms. They attended the meetings and waited patiently. And when they finally decided to take action, even then, they threatened no damage to anything but their own bodies. There is not a single action that anyone can point to and say, "Well, of course nobody will listen to them if they act like that. They should have done X instead."
And still the system has made no attempt to hear them, to work with them, to acknowledge that they should have a say in the future of their own community.
Reformsters who repeatedly argue that poor families should have a voice in their children's education should be outraged. Instead, they are silent.
Again, I have nothing to say about the situation in Dyett that I have not said before-- except, how the hell, in this country, can this still be happening? How can the leaders of Chicago not head over to Bronzeville and meet with these folks? How can leaders not take the measure of the commitment behind this hunger strike and not say, "Well, we should at least hear them out."
That's the bare minimum needed to convince anyone that Chicago's leaders are human beings able to recognize the humanity of the hunger strikers.
What they should be doing is simple-- they should give the citizens of Bronzeville back the control of their own community school. The Dyett plan-- the only fully developed and solid plan for the school that exists-- should be implemented.
I have nothing new to say, but I have to say something, because this shit is still going on. Follow the progress and news here. Pass the word. The hope among Chicago's political class is that the Dyett strikers will be forgotten, that people will stop talking about them, that the famously short American attention span will lapse, that the pressure will stop. Don't let that happen.
People should not have to starve themselves just to have a voice in their own community schools. People should not have to starve themselves just to hold onto their basic democratic rights. This is wrong, and it is unfathomable that it has now gone on for thirty-four days.
You know, I don't really have anything new to add to a discussion of the Dyett High School hunger strike, because after thirty four days, very little has changed.
It has been almost two weeks since CPS tried to shut the strikers up by announcing a bogus "compromise" in which the city got everything that it wanted and the activitists got to sit outside the press conference, carefully locked away from any possible voice in the future of Dyett High. That was not a compromise or a capitulation-- it was officials' attempt to put out a brushfire by depriving it of oxygen.
It has been a month. A month without solid food. A month of getting the word out, of standing up to the city as it tries to deprive one more not-white not-wealthy neighborhood of the stabilizing influence of a democratically, locally controlled school.
Dyett is the worst of the reformster movement in a microcosm-- residents will be stripped of their local school, given no voice in what will replace it, because their Betters have decided what they need, what they deserve. And because small politicos want to make sure that local voices are shut out, that power is not allowed into the hands of ordinary citizens.
Dyett is all of us, sooner or later (and in some places, already)-- privatizers and profiteers shutting down democracy so that they can get their hands on those sweet sweet piles of tax money and keep their hands on the wheels of power.
I say it every time-- people who want to concern troll and tone police need to notice that the community members of Bronzeville have done every by the book. They developed their own plan, in conjunction with local institutions and educational experts. They worked the system. They filed the forms. They attended the meetings and waited patiently. And when they finally decided to take action, even then, they threatened no damage to anything but their own bodies. There is not a single action that anyone can point to and say, "Well, of course nobody will listen to them if they act like that. They should have done X instead."
And still the system has made no attempt to hear them, to work with them, to acknowledge that they should have a say in the future of their own community.
Reformsters who repeatedly argue that poor families should have a voice in their children's education should be outraged. Instead, they are silent.
Again, I have nothing to say about the situation in Dyett that I have not said before-- except, how the hell, in this country, can this still be happening? How can the leaders of Chicago not head over to Bronzeville and meet with these folks? How can leaders not take the measure of the commitment behind this hunger strike and not say, "Well, we should at least hear them out."
That's the bare minimum needed to convince anyone that Chicago's leaders are human beings able to recognize the humanity of the hunger strikers.
What they should be doing is simple-- they should give the citizens of Bronzeville back the control of their own community school. The Dyett plan-- the only fully developed and solid plan for the school that exists-- should be implemented.
I have nothing new to say, but I have to say something, because this shit is still going on. Follow the progress and news here. Pass the word. The hope among Chicago's political class is that the Dyett strikers will be forgotten, that people will stop talking about them, that the famously short American attention span will lapse, that the pressure will stop. Don't let that happen.
People should not have to starve themselves just to have a voice in their own community schools. People should not have to starve themselves just to hold onto their basic democratic rights. This is wrong, and it is unfathomable that it has now gone on for thirty-four days.
Two Million
At some point this week, the hit count on this blog passed two million.
It's very gratifying, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that, as a hack writer, it's cool to have an audience.
But I don't for a moment imagine that those two million hits are about me, about two million times that people said, "That Pete Greene's a helluva guy-- let's just click on over and see what he's saying." It's about something else entirely.
That's two million times that somebody said, "This stupid thing that's happening in public education pisses me off."
That's two million times that somebody said, "Public education is foundational to our country, our democracy, our way of life, and for some reason, it seems to be under attack."
That's two million times that somebody said, "Public education matters to me, and we have got to do something about the attacks on it, even if it's only to share information, understanding and awareness."
That's two million times that somebody said, "Public education is one of the most important issues in America today, and we need to talk about it."
All right, yes. Rhetorical flourish. It's probably some combination of less than two million times for each of those, plus a few times that somebody said, "What's this? I thought I was clicking through to an article about Nigerian prince's penis enlargement treatment." Hooray for the internet.
But my point is this-- two million hits don't mean that I'm an important guy. They mean I'm writing about important issues. And when I think back two years to when I got started, feeling as if there were just a handful of us, isolated and ignored and trying to build a grasp of what was going on, two million hits for this little blog feel like a piece of a victory, a small part of the work of building a network and spreading awareness.
This is post 1355. The blog started back in August of 2013, and I'd be grateful if you never went back and looked at that stuff, because it took me several months to figure out what I was doing. There is a book-- a kind of "best of" collection-- that you can buy here or on amazon. And because I love personalized stuff for Christmas presents, there's a cafepress store for me to shop for my family. All of this goes back to my original intent here-- to give myself a way to blow off steam about the ongoing attacks against public education and occasionally entertain myself in the process.
But beyond that original purpose, I've found the need to try to spread the word and awareness and understanding and, somehow, simultaneously fight back and build bridges. I have been fortunate to meet (both in the meatworld and in cyberia) many intelligent, gifted, passionate people who have influenced and inspired me a thousand different ways. And I hope that I've been able to shed some light and provide some language for the discussion.
This is an important conversation we've been having, and I'm privileged to be even a small part of it. We have lots of work to do, lots of people to wake up, and lots of progress to make for public education. Keep talking. Keep reading. Keep passing along the work of writers that speak to you (the right hand blogroll on this page is a great place to begin).
American public education is too important for us to keep silent.
It's very gratifying, and I'd be lying if I didn't say that, as a hack writer, it's cool to have an audience.
But I don't for a moment imagine that those two million hits are about me, about two million times that people said, "That Pete Greene's a helluva guy-- let's just click on over and see what he's saying." It's about something else entirely.
That's two million times that somebody said, "This stupid thing that's happening in public education pisses me off."
That's two million times that somebody said, "Public education is foundational to our country, our democracy, our way of life, and for some reason, it seems to be under attack."
That's two million times that somebody said, "Public education matters to me, and we have got to do something about the attacks on it, even if it's only to share information, understanding and awareness."
That's two million times that somebody said, "Public education is one of the most important issues in America today, and we need to talk about it."
All right, yes. Rhetorical flourish. It's probably some combination of less than two million times for each of those, plus a few times that somebody said, "What's this? I thought I was clicking through to an article about Nigerian prince's penis enlargement treatment." Hooray for the internet.
But my point is this-- two million hits don't mean that I'm an important guy. They mean I'm writing about important issues. And when I think back two years to when I got started, feeling as if there were just a handful of us, isolated and ignored and trying to build a grasp of what was going on, two million hits for this little blog feel like a piece of a victory, a small part of the work of building a network and spreading awareness.
This is post 1355. The blog started back in August of 2013, and I'd be grateful if you never went back and looked at that stuff, because it took me several months to figure out what I was doing. There is a book-- a kind of "best of" collection-- that you can buy here or on amazon. And because I love personalized stuff for Christmas presents, there's a cafepress store for me to shop for my family. All of this goes back to my original intent here-- to give myself a way to blow off steam about the ongoing attacks against public education and occasionally entertain myself in the process.
But beyond that original purpose, I've found the need to try to spread the word and awareness and understanding and, somehow, simultaneously fight back and build bridges. I have been fortunate to meet (both in the meatworld and in cyberia) many intelligent, gifted, passionate people who have influenced and inspired me a thousand different ways. And I hope that I've been able to shed some light and provide some language for the discussion.
This is an important conversation we've been having, and I'm privileged to be even a small part of it. We have lots of work to do, lots of people to wake up, and lots of progress to make for public education. Keep talking. Keep reading. Keep passing along the work of writers that speak to you (the right hand blogroll on this page is a great place to begin).
American public education is too important for us to keep silent.
Friday, September 18, 2015
Duncan Still Oblivious
Riding along with Arne Duncan on the back-to-school bus tour, Alyson Klein had the opportunity to do a little Q & A with Arne Duncan. The discussion indicates that there are some things that Arne just doesn't get. I recommend reading the whole piece, but there are a few moments I'd like to zero in on.
Accountability
In the midst of discussing whether or not certain reporting categories may have masked or weakened accountability, Arne says this:
Accountability means different things to different folks. What we're asking for in the bill is not just data, which some would say is accountability, and not just transparency, which some would say is accountability, but actual action. And I think what we've been focused on the whole time with waivers is trying to transform low-performing schools.
So it's not real accountability until the big bosses tell you what you have to do next. It's a view of accountability that really tells us a lot about how Duncan sees the power dynamic. It's not just that the federal government is entitled to get whatever information they want to have, but that they are also entitled to tell the local entity what to do about any inadequacies that the feds diagnose.
Or to put it another way, in Duncan's vision of accountability, if a local district isn't getting results that the feds consider satisfactory, then that local district loses the right to local control.
This is one of the (many) ways in which the corporate management model doesn't fit democratic government. A CEO never rises to a height at which he says, "Okay, from up here I definitely don't have the right to tell people at that lower level what to do." The higher a Master of the Universe rises, the more people he is empowered to boss around. This is different from a federal system such as the one we allegedly have, where the highest levels of "management" are not supposed to be able to boss local elected officials around.
School Improvement Grant program
Duncan is sure this is working, despite the fact there's no reason to believe that the modest gains of some schools would not have been gained without any federal, string-encrusted largesse. Then we get to the large number of schools that went backwards. But Duncan is a believer because "everywhere I go I see firsthand the difference it's making." Can Duncan really believe that he sees schools that haven't been carefully selected and carefully prepared for his visit? Or that only his policies made teaching critical thinking possible?
ESEA
Duncan refused to speculate or predict or offer plans for how to deal with the imaginary bill that may or may not eventually pass. He really doesn't seem to see any responsibility in the huge degree of pushback against the department because of his own work, and refers Klein to this piece by Kevin Carey that argues that a strong department is required to keep an eye on those lazy, cheating states.
His One Big Regret?
Duncan has his list of policy goals that he "regrets" haven't happened yet (early childhood ed money, etc), but pressed on what mistakes he would actually do differently, he cites the almost two years spent trying to fix No Child Left Behind with Congress. In hindsight, they should have just blasted the waivers through sooner.
It's not that I don't get the frustration of trying to work with a Congress that exemplifies how miserably dysfunctional our form of government can be. But when Duncan lists this as a regret, he's basically saying, "I wish we had circumvented the foundational structure of our government sooner. I regret that the framers created three branches in our government. I regret that American Presidents can't just rule by fiat."
The Money Quote
Duncan can generally be counted on to say something that is just kind of amazeballs. Here's the quote you'll be reading from this interview in many places:
...I think [overall] waivers have gone pretty darn well. You guys don't cover it much. But we have 44 pretty happy customers across the political spectrum.
Maybe this isn't a clueless quote. Maybe he is not, as some folks assume, referring to 44 states. Maybe the 44 happy customers are actually just 44 individual citizens of the US who are happy with how the waivers worked out. I could believe that, even if Duncan didn't count himself. But if that's not what he meant, then he's smoking something.
But Don't Miss This
Klein asks if he's worry that all of the crappy numbers coming back on Big Standardized Tests might scare the natives and cause more pushback. Here's his response:
What we're getting finally for the first time in decades is the truth...
And how is it, exactly, that he knows these tests tell the truth?
This is classic Duncan, the backwards data-driving reasoning of many reformsters. Duncan already knows The Truth, which is that many, many students, teachers and schools are failing. A test will prove to be a good test and data will prove to be good data by matching the conclusion that reformsters have already reached. Duncan is absolutely convinced that US schools are filled with big lying liars who tell the lies, and he will work tirelessly to find anything that will help him prove what he has already concluded.
Meanwhile, he's clueless. "No one is that focused on scores," he says, and I'm now thinking that he's not so much smoking something as shunting it directly into his brain. Because the kids who can't move on to Fourth Grade in some states because their scores were too low, or the schools that are being shut down or sucked dry by charters because their scores are too low, or the teachers whose professional evaluation is in some part set by BS Test scores-- I think all of those folks are pretty focused on scores. Plus, Duncan's comment sidesteps a big question-- why should anybody be focused on test scores at all?
I've come to believe that Arne means well. But he really needs to get off the bus, and do it some place in the real world.
Accountability
In the midst of discussing whether or not certain reporting categories may have masked or weakened accountability, Arne says this:
Accountability means different things to different folks. What we're asking for in the bill is not just data, which some would say is accountability, and not just transparency, which some would say is accountability, but actual action. And I think what we've been focused on the whole time with waivers is trying to transform low-performing schools.
So it's not real accountability until the big bosses tell you what you have to do next. It's a view of accountability that really tells us a lot about how Duncan sees the power dynamic. It's not just that the federal government is entitled to get whatever information they want to have, but that they are also entitled to tell the local entity what to do about any inadequacies that the feds diagnose.
Or to put it another way, in Duncan's vision of accountability, if a local district isn't getting results that the feds consider satisfactory, then that local district loses the right to local control.
This is one of the (many) ways in which the corporate management model doesn't fit democratic government. A CEO never rises to a height at which he says, "Okay, from up here I definitely don't have the right to tell people at that lower level what to do." The higher a Master of the Universe rises, the more people he is empowered to boss around. This is different from a federal system such as the one we allegedly have, where the highest levels of "management" are not supposed to be able to boss local elected officials around.
School Improvement Grant program
Duncan is sure this is working, despite the fact there's no reason to believe that the modest gains of some schools would not have been gained without any federal, string-encrusted largesse. Then we get to the large number of schools that went backwards. But Duncan is a believer because "everywhere I go I see firsthand the difference it's making." Can Duncan really believe that he sees schools that haven't been carefully selected and carefully prepared for his visit? Or that only his policies made teaching critical thinking possible?
ESEA
Duncan refused to speculate or predict or offer plans for how to deal with the imaginary bill that may or may not eventually pass. He really doesn't seem to see any responsibility in the huge degree of pushback against the department because of his own work, and refers Klein to this piece by Kevin Carey that argues that a strong department is required to keep an eye on those lazy, cheating states.
His One Big Regret?
Duncan has his list of policy goals that he "regrets" haven't happened yet (early childhood ed money, etc), but pressed on what mistakes he would actually do differently, he cites the almost two years spent trying to fix No Child Left Behind with Congress. In hindsight, they should have just blasted the waivers through sooner.
It's not that I don't get the frustration of trying to work with a Congress that exemplifies how miserably dysfunctional our form of government can be. But when Duncan lists this as a regret, he's basically saying, "I wish we had circumvented the foundational structure of our government sooner. I regret that the framers created three branches in our government. I regret that American Presidents can't just rule by fiat."
The Money Quote
Duncan can generally be counted on to say something that is just kind of amazeballs. Here's the quote you'll be reading from this interview in many places:
...I think [overall] waivers have gone pretty darn well. You guys don't cover it much. But we have 44 pretty happy customers across the political spectrum.
Maybe this isn't a clueless quote. Maybe he is not, as some folks assume, referring to 44 states. Maybe the 44 happy customers are actually just 44 individual citizens of the US who are happy with how the waivers worked out. I could believe that, even if Duncan didn't count himself. But if that's not what he meant, then he's smoking something.
But Don't Miss This
Klein asks if he's worry that all of the crappy numbers coming back on Big Standardized Tests might scare the natives and cause more pushback. Here's his response:
What we're getting finally for the first time in decades is the truth...
And how is it, exactly, that he knows these tests tell the truth?
This is classic Duncan, the backwards data-driving reasoning of many reformsters. Duncan already knows The Truth, which is that many, many students, teachers and schools are failing. A test will prove to be a good test and data will prove to be good data by matching the conclusion that reformsters have already reached. Duncan is absolutely convinced that US schools are filled with big lying liars who tell the lies, and he will work tirelessly to find anything that will help him prove what he has already concluded.
Meanwhile, he's clueless. "No one is that focused on scores," he says, and I'm now thinking that he's not so much smoking something as shunting it directly into his brain. Because the kids who can't move on to Fourth Grade in some states because their scores were too low, or the schools that are being shut down or sucked dry by charters because their scores are too low, or the teachers whose professional evaluation is in some part set by BS Test scores-- I think all of those folks are pretty focused on scores. Plus, Duncan's comment sidesteps a big question-- why should anybody be focused on test scores at all?
I've come to believe that Arne means well. But he really needs to get off the bus, and do it some place in the real world.
NC Can't Get It Right
Hard to believe there was a time when North Carolina embarrassed the rest of the South by showing them how education could be done right. Now they just seem intent on embarrassing themselves.
North Carolina has finally settled their eleven-week budget standoff. Now, as a Pennsylvanian, I can't poke much fun at that. Our legislature's budget failures are practically annual rituals, and while North Carolina just keeps operating under the old budget terms, here in the Quaker State we let the wheels of government grind to a messy halt while our elected leaders sit around failing to fulfill their most basic responsibility.
But the budget always reflects the values of the state, and North Carolina's budget hammers home yet again their disinterest in supporting their school system and a firm commitment to driving teachers out of their state.
The legislators did bump up starting salary for teachers to $35K. This is perhaps better understood in the context of the NC state teacher salary scale.
2014-2015 2013-2014
So on the left is where NC teachers were last year. It makes an interesting comparison to the previous year-- the new schedule has only six steps, so teachers get four years to slide backwards against inflation, until you hit twenty-five years, when you can just start drifting back forever. And am I reading this correctly-- did teachers with 33 years or more actually take a pay cut??
Of course, the real pay losses of the stalled steps would be offset by an increase in the whole scale, but that's not going to happen. Instead of a 2% raise for state employees, everyone gets a $750 bonus instead. So, peanuts for, as one writer put it, a tip. And you know the definition of bonus-- a pay benefit that your employer never has to give you ever again.
I have great admiration for the teachers trying to make a career in North Carolina. This sort of no-raise-for-you behavior has been the norm for too long down there, and the $750 tip is no more than a gesture, and not a very polite gesture at that. I expect that all across the state, many teachers would like to offer the legislature an impolite gesture of their own.
UPDATE: Courtesy of regular reader Anne Patrick, here's the new salary schedule
North Carolina has finally settled their eleven-week budget standoff. Now, as a Pennsylvanian, I can't poke much fun at that. Our legislature's budget failures are practically annual rituals, and while North Carolina just keeps operating under the old budget terms, here in the Quaker State we let the wheels of government grind to a messy halt while our elected leaders sit around failing to fulfill their most basic responsibility.
But the budget always reflects the values of the state, and North Carolina's budget hammers home yet again their disinterest in supporting their school system and a firm commitment to driving teachers out of their state.
The legislators did bump up starting salary for teachers to $35K. This is perhaps better understood in the context of the NC state teacher salary scale.
2014-2015 2013-2014
So on the left is where NC teachers were last year. It makes an interesting comparison to the previous year-- the new schedule has only six steps, so teachers get four years to slide backwards against inflation, until you hit twenty-five years, when you can just start drifting back forever. And am I reading this correctly-- did teachers with 33 years or more actually take a pay cut??
Of course, the real pay losses of the stalled steps would be offset by an increase in the whole scale, but that's not going to happen. Instead of a 2% raise for state employees, everyone gets a $750 bonus instead. So, peanuts for, as one writer put it, a tip. And you know the definition of bonus-- a pay benefit that your employer never has to give you ever again.
I have great admiration for the teachers trying to make a career in North Carolina. This sort of no-raise-for-you behavior has been the norm for too long down there, and the $750 tip is no more than a gesture, and not a very polite gesture at that. I expect that all across the state, many teachers would like to offer the legislature an impolite gesture of their own.
UPDATE: Courtesy of regular reader Anne Patrick, here's the new salary schedule
Testing: The Circular Argument
This morning, the indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes us on a trip to Massachusetts, where profiteers have captured many of the positions of power in the education world.
Much has been said about commissioner Mitchell Chester, who heads up the fast-evaporating PARCC test consortium, but who will also recommend to the state what Big Standardized Test they will use. This is pretty much like having the owner of a Ford dealership decide what kind of cars should be used for your municipal fleet.
But I was also struck by Schneider's look at Harvard University's EdLab, which appears to be nothing more than a college based reformy thinky tank set to cook up policy recommendations for the privatizers and profiteers while using the Harvard banner as a cover. You can read the whole thing at her blog.
But I was particularly struck by this quote from Roland Fryer, the economics guy who was speed-installed as a professor to head up EdLab. He's talking (back in 2012) about his belief that there should be a two-tier testing system:
I haven’t figured out why no one has tried a two-tiered system for standardized testing. So, I live in Concord, Massachusetts which is a wonderful suburb of Boston — my wife and I just moved there — and I actually don’t want a lot of standardized testing in Concord because it will crowd out my kids learning Shakespeare and those types of things I never really read. However, in the schools that are failing, we really do need standardized tests because at least we know where they are and that’s really, really important. Just because we don’t test them doesn’t mean they’re not failing. And so I would actually say if schools are high-performing suburban schools or high-performing schools ought to be able to say, ‘You know what? 90 percent passed the test in 2008, let’s not take the test for 2 or 3 years so that we can focus on different and more holistic types of instruction’. For schools that are in the bottom, I think they ought to test those kids every day.
The standing argument for the Big Standardized Test is that without it, we will never know which schools are failing. But Fryer argues that we only need the test for the schools that are failing. But how will we find them without the test? Hell, he had only "just moved" to Concord-- how could he know if the schools were any good if they weren't being regularly tested.
There are two clear take-aways in Fryer's statement.
As I have always maintained, we do not need tests to find the schools that are in trouble because we already know exactly where they are. Hell, we already know that we can predict test scores just with demographic information.
Second, this is one of the most bald-faced statements I've ever seen about using the tests to just beat down the "failing" schools. Knowing where the failing students are is "really, really important"? Why, exactly-- and what the hell would be the purpose of testing them every day if that means stripping away the kind of quality education that you want to preserve for your kids in the 'burbs?
This is testing advocacy at its most obvious poor-bashing worst. We don't need a two-tier system. We need a zero-tier testing system.
Much has been said about commissioner Mitchell Chester, who heads up the fast-evaporating PARCC test consortium, but who will also recommend to the state what Big Standardized Test they will use. This is pretty much like having the owner of a Ford dealership decide what kind of cars should be used for your municipal fleet.
But I was also struck by Schneider's look at Harvard University's EdLab, which appears to be nothing more than a college based reformy thinky tank set to cook up policy recommendations for the privatizers and profiteers while using the Harvard banner as a cover. You can read the whole thing at her blog.
But I was particularly struck by this quote from Roland Fryer, the economics guy who was speed-installed as a professor to head up EdLab. He's talking (back in 2012) about his belief that there should be a two-tier testing system:
I haven’t figured out why no one has tried a two-tiered system for standardized testing. So, I live in Concord, Massachusetts which is a wonderful suburb of Boston — my wife and I just moved there — and I actually don’t want a lot of standardized testing in Concord because it will crowd out my kids learning Shakespeare and those types of things I never really read. However, in the schools that are failing, we really do need standardized tests because at least we know where they are and that’s really, really important. Just because we don’t test them doesn’t mean they’re not failing. And so I would actually say if schools are high-performing suburban schools or high-performing schools ought to be able to say, ‘You know what? 90 percent passed the test in 2008, let’s not take the test for 2 or 3 years so that we can focus on different and more holistic types of instruction’. For schools that are in the bottom, I think they ought to test those kids every day.
The standing argument for the Big Standardized Test is that without it, we will never know which schools are failing. But Fryer argues that we only need the test for the schools that are failing. But how will we find them without the test? Hell, he had only "just moved" to Concord-- how could he know if the schools were any good if they weren't being regularly tested.
There are two clear take-aways in Fryer's statement.
As I have always maintained, we do not need tests to find the schools that are in trouble because we already know exactly where they are. Hell, we already know that we can predict test scores just with demographic information.
Second, this is one of the most bald-faced statements I've ever seen about using the tests to just beat down the "failing" schools. Knowing where the failing students are is "really, really important"? Why, exactly-- and what the hell would be the purpose of testing them every day if that means stripping away the kind of quality education that you want to preserve for your kids in the 'burbs?
This is testing advocacy at its most obvious poor-bashing worst. We don't need a two-tier system. We need a zero-tier testing system.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
WSJ on Teacher Quality
Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal convened a trio of educational experts to discuss the question "How Do We Raise the Quality of Teachers."
I'm not sure what got into them, exactly, but reporter Leslie Brody actually included a teacher in her trio of experts. In fact, not just a teacher, but New York teacher, activist and writer Jose Luis Vilson. I have huge respect for Vilson for a variety of reasons (the man teaches math to middle school students!), not the least of which is his calm and focus and ability not to get caught up in opposing things, but always clearly articulating what he is for. It's a skill not all of us have mastered.
Vilson is teamed up in the conversation with Daniel Weisberg, honcho of the New Teacher Project (TNTP) and Kate Walsh of the national Council on Teacher Quality. So, well. That makes one more teacher in one of these conversations than we usually get. Brody edits the conversation by topic, so we'll do the same here.
What is the main obstacle to improving teacher quality in America, and why?
Walsh leads with NCTQ's standard theory that teacher education programs are too easy to get into and too easy to succeed in. NCTQ did a big research project on this very subject, and by "research," I mean they grabbed a bunch of college commencement programs and read through them. Really. I know I exaggerate for effect sometimes, but that's what they actually did.
That said, she makes a valid point about the need to look at the supply side of the teacher pool instead of worrying about making it easier to fire the mythical legions of supposedly terrible teachers. Weisberg chimes in, then ups the ante to beat his particular expired hobbyhorse, which is that becoming a teacher should be more like being a business executive, because smart people want to have a ladder to climb. Also, he wants to make the TNTP's favorite old widget point-- we treat all teachers as interchangeable widgets when we should be treating them as interchangeable widgets of varying degrees of worthiness.
But now Walsh has a cool moment of honest insight
Lately I’ve just grown weary of us all talking about how bad it is to be a teacher. I am not talking about “teacher bashing” but “profession bashing.” We’re all guilty of this profession bashing, everyone from education reformers to union leaders—spending a lot of time talking about all the reasons why no one who is sane should consider a career in teaching.
I am worrying a lot lately that our negative portrayal of the job may be doing more to dissuade people from considering it as a career than any of the other factors we have put on the table.
For those of us in the education-reform camp, we advance our agenda by reminding everyone about how broken the system is.
And all I have to say is, "Well, yes." She goes on to say "the unionists" do the same thing, and I'm not sure Walsh is showing a great understanding of what different camps are arrayed, but I'm awarding bonus points for her previous moment of illumination.
But Vilson is batting clean-up here with what I consider the truest answer to the question. After noting that the bar on teacher programs has been low because people are reluctant to enter the profession because of pay and working conditions, Vilson says this:
This idea of “teacher quality” would be better served if we opened the doors for teachers to have more voice in advancing our profession.
And it is Vilson FTW on the subject of exactly what professional development teachers need:
We know chefs can prepare easy dishes, but their courses will largely depend on the restaurant, locale and the restaurant’s theme. We know basketball players should know how to shoot and dribble, but their skills will depend on their position on the court and the coach’s playbook. Teachers should have a set of researched best practices, but we would do well to help educators learn how to be nimble as well.
Given the funding constraints, how would you attract more high-quality candidates to the field?
Weisberg demonstrates, for neither the first nor last time, that he doesn't particularly understand the job of teaching. He once again touts the notion that there should be specialization. After observing that teachers have to do many different jobs from day one, he suggests that this approach is wrong:
Most professions don’t work this way. For example, I was a lawyer in a past life. That is another multifaceted job, but there is no assumption that every lawyer is expected to be great at every part of it from day one.
The suggestion here is that the way in which teaching is different from lawyering (and other professions he mentions) is a Thing That Is Wrong with teaching, and that the profession would benefit from being broken up into various bits and pieces, like lawyering (and McDonalds). These little pieces of teaching jobs, like data cruncher and lesson planner and "parent engagement specialist" would be way stations on the way to becoming a full-fledged teacher. Except that teaching is a many-jobs-at-once gig. You can't really be the person who talks to the parents if you don't know what's going on with the student, and it's hard to teach the students if you don't have the data, and the amount of time needed to communicate between the members of these various multi-function team would be like a whole extra school day, every day.
Vilson allows as how that approach might appeal to some, mostly you have to do the whole job, and coming in to just grade papers or call parents might not exactly fire the imagination anyway. On the other hand, I agree with Vilson's notion that teaching for 2/3 of a day and training fledgling teachers the other third might be cool.
Walsh agrees that teachers need more support, and theorizes that is why the better teachers gravitate to charters schoo---insert sound of needle dragged across the grooves of a record. Dying to see the data that suggest that charters are getting all the better teachers. Seriously. But she has talked to Fishman Prize winners, who get more support but are paid less, but they are totally cool with lower pay because of the lesser stress.
Well, it's the Wall Street Journal. I'm going to call the inclusion of a real live teacher and public education activist a win this time around, and the conversation published better for it.
I'm not sure what got into them, exactly, but reporter Leslie Brody actually included a teacher in her trio of experts. In fact, not just a teacher, but New York teacher, activist and writer Jose Luis Vilson. I have huge respect for Vilson for a variety of reasons (the man teaches math to middle school students!), not the least of which is his calm and focus and ability not to get caught up in opposing things, but always clearly articulating what he is for. It's a skill not all of us have mastered.
Vilson is teamed up in the conversation with Daniel Weisberg, honcho of the New Teacher Project (TNTP) and Kate Walsh of the national Council on Teacher Quality. So, well. That makes one more teacher in one of these conversations than we usually get. Brody edits the conversation by topic, so we'll do the same here.
What is the main obstacle to improving teacher quality in America, and why?
Walsh leads with NCTQ's standard theory that teacher education programs are too easy to get into and too easy to succeed in. NCTQ did a big research project on this very subject, and by "research," I mean they grabbed a bunch of college commencement programs and read through them. Really. I know I exaggerate for effect sometimes, but that's what they actually did.
That said, she makes a valid point about the need to look at the supply side of the teacher pool instead of worrying about making it easier to fire the mythical legions of supposedly terrible teachers. Weisberg chimes in, then ups the ante to beat his particular expired hobbyhorse, which is that becoming a teacher should be more like being a business executive, because smart people want to have a ladder to climb. Also, he wants to make the TNTP's favorite old widget point-- we treat all teachers as interchangeable widgets when we should be treating them as interchangeable widgets of varying degrees of worthiness.
But now Walsh has a cool moment of honest insight
Lately I’ve just grown weary of us all talking about how bad it is to be a teacher. I am not talking about “teacher bashing” but “profession bashing.” We’re all guilty of this profession bashing, everyone from education reformers to union leaders—spending a lot of time talking about all the reasons why no one who is sane should consider a career in teaching.
I am worrying a lot lately that our negative portrayal of the job may be doing more to dissuade people from considering it as a career than any of the other factors we have put on the table.
For those of us in the education-reform camp, we advance our agenda by reminding everyone about how broken the system is.
And all I have to say is, "Well, yes." She goes on to say "the unionists" do the same thing, and I'm not sure Walsh is showing a great understanding of what different camps are arrayed, but I'm awarding bonus points for her previous moment of illumination.
But Vilson is batting clean-up here with what I consider the truest answer to the question. After noting that the bar on teacher programs has been low because people are reluctant to enter the profession because of pay and working conditions, Vilson says this:
This idea of “teacher quality” would be better served if we opened the doors for teachers to have more voice in advancing our profession.
And it is Vilson FTW on the subject of exactly what professional development teachers need:
We know chefs can prepare easy dishes, but their courses will largely depend on the restaurant, locale and the restaurant’s theme. We know basketball players should know how to shoot and dribble, but their skills will depend on their position on the court and the coach’s playbook. Teachers should have a set of researched best practices, but we would do well to help educators learn how to be nimble as well.
Given the funding constraints, how would you attract more high-quality candidates to the field?
Weisberg demonstrates, for neither the first nor last time, that he doesn't particularly understand the job of teaching. He once again touts the notion that there should be specialization. After observing that teachers have to do many different jobs from day one, he suggests that this approach is wrong:
Most professions don’t work this way. For example, I was a lawyer in a past life. That is another multifaceted job, but there is no assumption that every lawyer is expected to be great at every part of it from day one.
The suggestion here is that the way in which teaching is different from lawyering (and other professions he mentions) is a Thing That Is Wrong with teaching, and that the profession would benefit from being broken up into various bits and pieces, like lawyering (and McDonalds). These little pieces of teaching jobs, like data cruncher and lesson planner and "parent engagement specialist" would be way stations on the way to becoming a full-fledged teacher. Except that teaching is a many-jobs-at-once gig. You can't really be the person who talks to the parents if you don't know what's going on with the student, and it's hard to teach the students if you don't have the data, and the amount of time needed to communicate between the members of these various multi-function team would be like a whole extra school day, every day.
Vilson allows as how that approach might appeal to some, mostly you have to do the whole job, and coming in to just grade papers or call parents might not exactly fire the imagination anyway. On the other hand, I agree with Vilson's notion that teaching for 2/3 of a day and training fledgling teachers the other third might be cool.
Walsh agrees that teachers need more support, and theorizes that is why the better teachers gravitate to charters schoo---insert sound of needle dragged across the grooves of a record. Dying to see the data that suggest that charters are getting all the better teachers. Seriously. But she has talked to Fishman Prize winners, who get more support but are paid less, but they are totally cool with lower pay because of the lesser stress.
Well, it's the Wall Street Journal. I'm going to call the inclusion of a real live teacher and public education activist a win this time around, and the conversation published better for it.
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