unionsCaroline Bermudez is senior writer and press secretary at Education Post, Peter Cunningham's pro-reform rapid response war room created to help Tell the Reformsters' Story. And this week Bermudez took to Real Clear Education to complain that "Uninformed, Irresponsible Journalism Is Killing Needed Education Reform."
Bermudez wants to call out the anti-reform narrative, the "amalgamation of all the myths spewed forth against education reformers." These pieces are "political propaganda as nuanced as a jackhammer drilling into concrete." But those pieces come from people like Valerie Strauss and Jeff Bryant who, she implies, are eminently dismissable, but it makes her really sad when the New Yorker publishes film critic David Denby's "hollow critique" of the general anti-teacher tenor of education reform. And he did it without any data!! Or reliable evidence!! Bermudez's indignation would be more compelling if "No data or reliable evidence" were not the reformster movement's middle name. Can we talk about how Common Core arrived without a stitch of evidence to its name, not even for the very idea of using national standards to improve education, and it's still prancing around naked today? Or the kind of fake research regularly churned out by groups like TNTP or NCTQ?
But Bermudez is not here simply to register her righteous shock and blah-blah-blah over a major magazine pointing out what millions of teachers already know. She would also like to take a moment to mock all articles that disagree with the reformsters. She calls the anti-reform pieces "endemic" and notes that reformsters "utter familiar groans" when they come across these articles that so often "repeat the same sound bites."
And then she lists the things she's tired of hearing:
1. Education reformers disrespect teachers.
2. Reformers solely blame teachers for educational failure.
3. Poverty goes unacknowledged by reformers.
4. Public education is fine. Reformers are hysterical.
5. Charter schools privatize public education.
6. Reformers reflexively hate unions.
So, I guess the good news is that she has been listening, kind of? The bad news is that Bermudez does not offer any research, data or arguments in response to any of these alleged criticisms. But education reformers do disrespect teachers, from their idea that anybody from the right background can become a teacher with five weeks of training, to their insistence that bad teachers are the root of educational evil, to their steady attempts to reduce teachers to simple "content delivery clerks."
Of course, almost no reform critics claim that reformers only blame teachers (and that includes the article she linked to, which also doesn't claim that), just as no serious reform critic claims that reformsters don't acknowledge poverty at all. There are some good conversations to be had about poverty, its effects as an obstacle to education, and how to deal. But Bermudez is hell-bent on overstating her case in order to make a point, so she says silly things like claiming that pro-public education writers say that public ed is fine and that reformsters are hysterical (once again, the article she links to, which actually has a good deal of charts and data, doesn't actually say what she suggests it says).
Not all of her points are overstatements. Lots of pro-public ed writers point out that charter schools privatize public education, which is kind of like pointing out that the sky is blue and water is wet. I don't think I've read all that many reformsters who even try to claim otherwise.
Union hatred? Well, yes. DFER hates unions with the hot, shiny hatred of a hundred suns. Vergara, Friedrichs, Baby Vergara in New York-- all lawsuits brought by big-money reformsters to roll back the union, just like the arguments about removing tenure and other job protections, all rooted in a general philosophy that a school leader CEO should be free to make choices without having to deal with a union. maybe her point is that reformsters don't hate unions "reflexively," but after lots of thought and careful consideration. Fair enough.
Of course, she also doesn't argue that any of these oft-repeated points is wrong. Just that they're of-repeated.
Bermudez has some specific recommendations. "Ambitious, valuable journalism" does not, for instance, use terms like "corporate reform." Not that she thinks reformsters should never be critiqued:
While our opponents believe we prefer to live in an echo chamber, we
would much rather have our work analyzed—even challenged—thoughtfully
and without an obvious agenda.
So says the woman who handles PR for a website launched with $13 million dollars from Eli Broad and other reformsters in order to make sure that they get their message out there.
The irony is that I actually know several thoughtful reformers with whom it is possible to have thoughtful, productive conversations. But they generally don't open by making unsupported mis-statements of pro-public education arguments. Bermudez is not trying to start a conversation; like many reformsters before her, she is arguing that the other side should by and large be silent.
She is also promoting the old subtext that Education Post and some others are fond of-- the notion that pro-public ed folks are some large, well-coordinated conspiracy, passing talking points back and forth and creating swarms that make it hard for the beautiful truth of reformster policy to be heard, and occasionally infecting real journalists with their mean propaganda. I'll give her credit-- she at least doesn't accuse all pro-public ed writers of being tools or paid shills of the teachers unions. You haven't really arrived in the pro-public ed writing world until you've been accused of being a union shill.
I always want to ask the paid reformsters mouthpieces like Bermudez-- just how much do you believe this stuff. If you were not a paid PR flack for this site, how much of your time and effort would you devote to your cause. Because I'm sitting here tapping one more blog post out for free in the morning hours before I head to work (all day rehearsal-- it's school musical season here). In a couple of months the Network for Public Education will have its third annual convention and some of us won't be there because we can't afford it and nobody pays us to go. Sometimes I just don't think that folks like Bermudez get that we are neither well-funded or well-organized-- we just believe that we see something that has to be called out and resisted. I have no idea how much Bermudez is paid to be Education Post's PR flack, and I don't know how much she got to write this particular article, but I'm responding to it for free.
Of course, Bermudez is not arguing against bloggers so much as decrying that a real paid journalist is picking on ed reform, but she tries to dismiss Denby by lumping him in with the rest of us, by treating all anti-reform writing as if it's one big piece of fluff. But at no point in her piece does she explain where she thinks Denby-Bryant-Strauss-Ravitch-Heilig get it wrong. Maybe coming up with the research and data to support such a view would just be too rigorous, or maybe such work has no place in a pro-reform screed. But if Bermudez knew more about teaching, maybe she'd remember that a good technique for teaching is to model the behavior you want to see.
Saturday, February 20, 2016
Friday, February 19, 2016
WI: Trying To Hide Charter Truth
One of the great lies of the charter-choice movement is that you can run multiple school districts for the price of one.
A school district of, say, 2,000 students can lose 75 students and with them about $750,000 dollars of revenue, and somehow that district of 1,925 students can operate for three quarter of a million dollars less. And how does the district deal with that loss of revenue? By closing a building-- because the more school buildings you operate, the more it costs.
The other common response of a school district to the loss of revenue to charters is to raise local taxes. If charters want to look at where some of their bad press is coming from, they might consider school boards like mine that regularly explain to the public, "Your local elementary is closing and your taxes are going up because we have to give money to the cyber charters."
We can run examples a dozen different ways. What is cheaper in the aggregate-- to house your ten person family in one house, or to house each family member is a separate building? Is it cheaper and more efficient to educate 2,000 students in one district with one set of administrators and special areas teachers, or in five school districts with five sets of administrators and special area teachers?
The inefficient, multiple provider model of charter schools creates greater expense, and the difference can only be made up one of two ways-- either taxpayers must fork over more money for education, or schools must cut services. If you are going to add charter-choice schools to a system, those are the only two options.
States have tried to fudge their way around with various systems of reimbursements to school districts for the students they lose to choice-charter. IOW, when that district loses the $750K, some states help make up the shortfall, either partially or completely. This is solidly in the Taxpayers Must Pay More category, but by funneling the money through the state, taxpayers might be kept unaware that they are paying more tax dollars so that a handful of students can go to a private school at public expense.
Which brings us to the morning news from Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is a happy land for school choice fans, with vouchers in play through three separate programs, robust choice advocacy groups, and a governor who tries to expand school choice every time the sun shines. So they have had plenty of opportunity to feel the effects of voucher prorgams sucking the life blood from public schools. Choice advocates have tried combating the bad PR with bad arguments ("it all just kind of evens out over time, somehow"). But now the legislature is trying to patch, or at least hide, the bleeding.
The 2015-2017 let local school districts draw on additional tax dollars, through state aid and through property taxes, to cover the money lost to vouchers, but Assembly Speaker Robin Vos didn't like that plan, feeling that local school districts could "pocket" the difference (schools would probably have squandered those tax dollars on books and programs and education stuff, and we can't have that). Vos's proposal would have dramatically reduced the amount of revenue that districts could call on to plug the gap, actually leaving districts in the hole.
Thursday the legislature passed a break-even compromise. If a school loses $750K in voucher money, they are authorized to gather some combination of additional state aid and local tax increases to raise exactly that $750K.
Which means that having vouchers in a Wisconsin school district raises the cost of educating students in that district by exactly the cost of the vouchers. The vouchers represent not a backpack of student money following students from school to school, but additional taxpayer dollars injected into the education system. The taxpayers will pay extra so that some students can go to a private school.
This is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. If you want to stand up in front of the taxpayers and sell the idea that they should pay higher taxes so that some students can go to a private school at public expense, go ahead and try to sell that idea. But if you are going to insist on lying about it and insist, for instance, that people's taxes are NOT going up to finance vouchers-- well, that sort of dishonesty doesn't benefit anybody.
Wisconsin is a fine example of a state that has successfully avoided having an honest discussion about what they are actually doing, which is increasing taxes in order to fund a new entitlement-- the entitlement of a handful of students to attend a private school at pubic expense. Such an entitlement may or may not be a good idea-- that's a separate discussion, but step one in having that discussion is to be honest about what you want to do.
A school district of, say, 2,000 students can lose 75 students and with them about $750,000 dollars of revenue, and somehow that district of 1,925 students can operate for three quarter of a million dollars less. And how does the district deal with that loss of revenue? By closing a building-- because the more school buildings you operate, the more it costs.
The other common response of a school district to the loss of revenue to charters is to raise local taxes. If charters want to look at where some of their bad press is coming from, they might consider school boards like mine that regularly explain to the public, "Your local elementary is closing and your taxes are going up because we have to give money to the cyber charters."
We can run examples a dozen different ways. What is cheaper in the aggregate-- to house your ten person family in one house, or to house each family member is a separate building? Is it cheaper and more efficient to educate 2,000 students in one district with one set of administrators and special areas teachers, or in five school districts with five sets of administrators and special area teachers?
The inefficient, multiple provider model of charter schools creates greater expense, and the difference can only be made up one of two ways-- either taxpayers must fork over more money for education, or schools must cut services. If you are going to add charter-choice schools to a system, those are the only two options.
States have tried to fudge their way around with various systems of reimbursements to school districts for the students they lose to choice-charter. IOW, when that district loses the $750K, some states help make up the shortfall, either partially or completely. This is solidly in the Taxpayers Must Pay More category, but by funneling the money through the state, taxpayers might be kept unaware that they are paying more tax dollars so that a handful of students can go to a private school at public expense.
Which brings us to the morning news from Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is a happy land for school choice fans, with vouchers in play through three separate programs, robust choice advocacy groups, and a governor who tries to expand school choice every time the sun shines. So they have had plenty of opportunity to feel the effects of voucher prorgams sucking the life blood from public schools. Choice advocates have tried combating the bad PR with bad arguments ("it all just kind of evens out over time, somehow"). But now the legislature is trying to patch, or at least hide, the bleeding.
The 2015-2017 let local school districts draw on additional tax dollars, through state aid and through property taxes, to cover the money lost to vouchers, but Assembly Speaker Robin Vos didn't like that plan, feeling that local school districts could "pocket" the difference (schools would probably have squandered those tax dollars on books and programs and education stuff, and we can't have that). Vos's proposal would have dramatically reduced the amount of revenue that districts could call on to plug the gap, actually leaving districts in the hole.
Thursday the legislature passed a break-even compromise. If a school loses $750K in voucher money, they are authorized to gather some combination of additional state aid and local tax increases to raise exactly that $750K.
Which means that having vouchers in a Wisconsin school district raises the cost of educating students in that district by exactly the cost of the vouchers. The vouchers represent not a backpack of student money following students from school to school, but additional taxpayer dollars injected into the education system. The taxpayers will pay extra so that some students can go to a private school.
This is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. If you want to stand up in front of the taxpayers and sell the idea that they should pay higher taxes so that some students can go to a private school at public expense, go ahead and try to sell that idea. But if you are going to insist on lying about it and insist, for instance, that people's taxes are NOT going up to finance vouchers-- well, that sort of dishonesty doesn't benefit anybody.
Wisconsin is a fine example of a state that has successfully avoided having an honest discussion about what they are actually doing, which is increasing taxes in order to fund a new entitlement-- the entitlement of a handful of students to attend a private school at pubic expense. Such an entitlement may or may not be a good idea-- that's a separate discussion, but step one in having that discussion is to be honest about what you want to do.
Thursday, February 18, 2016
PA: Philly School Commission Gets Spanked
Philly schools are, by any measure, a mess. And after almost two decades, they are a prime example of how badly state takeover districts fail.
In the nineties, the school gave up lost local control in exchange for enough funding to survive. In 2001, the state installed the School Reform Commission, a board created by the legislature and made out of politicians appointed at the state and city level. Of course, the advantage is that politically appointed boards know secrets to effectively running school districts that locally elected boards do not. Ha! Just kidding. Despite its insistence that it could do better, the SRC doesn't know a damn thing about running school systems-- but they have certainly learned a lot. And the states supreme court just delivered another lesson.
In the process of gaining an education, the SRC has managed to anger just about everybody on every side of the education debates. Their overwhelming concern became coming up with more money because, shockingly, it turns out you can't just reverse the effects of Pennsylvania's cockamamie inadequate funding system just by Tightening Your Belt and Being More Efficient. So the SRC went looking for money everywhere.
They angered teachers by finding money in staffing. They found this money by unilaterally declaring that they would honor neither their contract nor state law. They declared for themselves the power that reformsters like TNTP dream of-- the power to ignore seniority in staffing choices. This power allowed them to make staffing choices, including layoff choices, based on cost rather than seniority. They tried outsourcing substitute teachers to save money this year and-- well, fun fact: when you offer people less money to do a job that not many people want to do anyway, they do not turn out in droves for the chance.And they privatized like crazy, the Superintendent serving as chief charter conversion officer.
They could experiment with all these various techniques because the legislative act that created the SRC exempted them from huge chunks of the Pennsylvania School Code, the portion of state law that governs schools.
But the SRC learned one other thing-- Pennsylvania charter schools are financial vampires that suck the blood right out of public schools. And so the SRC started saying no to new schools, no to raising caps, no to letting charters grow. Some charters fought back by, well, just ignoring restrictions (one charter exceeded its cap of 675 students by 600-- probably not a clerical error). But the West Philadelphia Achievement charter decided to take their beef to court. The SRC said, the financial hardship no law law allows us to do this, because charters constitute a big fat financial hardship on our public school. And the case went to the state supreme court.
And the SRC lost.
What the State Supremes said was that the legislature was acting unconstitutionally when it gave the SRC powers that only belong to the legislature.
Is this good news or bad news? Well, it means that the days of the Philly SRC acting as if they don't have to answer to anybody are over, so that's not a bad thing. On the other hand, it means the day of Philly charter schools acting as if they don't have to answer to anybody are just beginning. Most importantly for the plaintiffs, in Pennsylvania a charter can expand as much as it wants, and the public school district to which it is attached, leechlike, must just keep forking over money (that's how the charters of Chester Uplands could end up actually taking more money from the district than the state gives in support). So now the district has to play by the rules even though, as the SRC has already noticed, some of the rules suck.
Philly schools now also have a tremendous mess to clean up from the years of disregarding seniority in job assignments and layoff callbacks. That's going to be a fun time.
Of course, there are other solutions. Periodically somebody floats the idea of installing an Achievement School District style state takeover district, and since most of the bottom schools in the state are in Philly, establishing an ASD would mean that the state could take over from, well, the state. That could prompt another fun rule rewrite.
Another solution would be for the state to finally fix its dementedly off-kilter finding system, but that's not going to happen any time soon. As I type this, we are on Day 233 without a state budget. The state capitol, currently occupied by the least competent legislature in the country, is currently the least likely place to find any sort of solution to anything. Good luck, SRC!
In the nineties, the school gave up lost local control in exchange for enough funding to survive. In 2001, the state installed the School Reform Commission, a board created by the legislature and made out of politicians appointed at the state and city level. Of course, the advantage is that politically appointed boards know secrets to effectively running school districts that locally elected boards do not. Ha! Just kidding. Despite its insistence that it could do better, the SRC doesn't know a damn thing about running school systems-- but they have certainly learned a lot. And the states supreme court just delivered another lesson.
In the process of gaining an education, the SRC has managed to anger just about everybody on every side of the education debates. Their overwhelming concern became coming up with more money because, shockingly, it turns out you can't just reverse the effects of Pennsylvania's cockamamie inadequate funding system just by Tightening Your Belt and Being More Efficient. So the SRC went looking for money everywhere.
They angered teachers by finding money in staffing. They found this money by unilaterally declaring that they would honor neither their contract nor state law. They declared for themselves the power that reformsters like TNTP dream of-- the power to ignore seniority in staffing choices. This power allowed them to make staffing choices, including layoff choices, based on cost rather than seniority. They tried outsourcing substitute teachers to save money this year and-- well, fun fact: when you offer people less money to do a job that not many people want to do anyway, they do not turn out in droves for the chance.And they privatized like crazy, the Superintendent serving as chief charter conversion officer.
They could experiment with all these various techniques because the legislative act that created the SRC exempted them from huge chunks of the Pennsylvania School Code, the portion of state law that governs schools.
But the SRC learned one other thing-- Pennsylvania charter schools are financial vampires that suck the blood right out of public schools. And so the SRC started saying no to new schools, no to raising caps, no to letting charters grow. Some charters fought back by, well, just ignoring restrictions (one charter exceeded its cap of 675 students by 600-- probably not a clerical error). But the West Philadelphia Achievement charter decided to take their beef to court. The SRC said, the financial hardship no law law allows us to do this, because charters constitute a big fat financial hardship on our public school. And the case went to the state supreme court.
And the SRC lost.
What the State Supremes said was that the legislature was acting unconstitutionally when it gave the SRC powers that only belong to the legislature.
Is this good news or bad news? Well, it means that the days of the Philly SRC acting as if they don't have to answer to anybody are over, so that's not a bad thing. On the other hand, it means the day of Philly charter schools acting as if they don't have to answer to anybody are just beginning. Most importantly for the plaintiffs, in Pennsylvania a charter can expand as much as it wants, and the public school district to which it is attached, leechlike, must just keep forking over money (that's how the charters of Chester Uplands could end up actually taking more money from the district than the state gives in support). So now the district has to play by the rules even though, as the SRC has already noticed, some of the rules suck.
Philly schools now also have a tremendous mess to clean up from the years of disregarding seniority in job assignments and layoff callbacks. That's going to be a fun time.
Of course, there are other solutions. Periodically somebody floats the idea of installing an Achievement School District style state takeover district, and since most of the bottom schools in the state are in Philly, establishing an ASD would mean that the state could take over from, well, the state. That could prompt another fun rule rewrite.
Another solution would be for the state to finally fix its dementedly off-kilter finding system, but that's not going to happen any time soon. As I type this, we are on Day 233 without a state budget. The state capitol, currently occupied by the least competent legislature in the country, is currently the least likely place to find any sort of solution to anything. Good luck, SRC!
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
School for School's Sake
Well, this is depressing, but worth the read.
Over at Inside Higher Education, John Warner shares a reflection on a recurring research project he performs with his own college students. If they could receive an A in the course in return for doing absolutely nothing except keeping the secret that they had done absolutely nothing (no assignments, no showing up for class, no nothing at all), would they take the deal.
Roughly 85% of Warner's students say yes, they would take the deal.
When they ask what the trick is, Warner points out that they would learn nothing. They're okay with that.
An “A” is an “A,” and “A’s” are good because they help their overall GPA. It would mean more time to dedicate to their other classes. They could sleep in later. They do not like English classes and would therefore dodge the unpleasantness of such a thing. They could check off a requirement without having to do any work. They could take 18 instead of 15 hours and be closer to graduation. They could pick up an extra shift at their job.
Warner's conclusion? Students are not coddled; they are defeated.
We have divorced school from learning, and this is the result.
For most of my students, the purpose of school is to do well in school so you can climb the ladder to the next part of school. I am giving them a free pass at school, so it would be silly not to grab at the opportunity.
And many of you who teach are nodding your heads, thinking, "Yes, that sounds about right."
I'm not going to blame this on reform. Students like these have always been around-- I went to college with a whole bunch of them.
But ed reform leans into this. Reformster philosophy is what education would look like if "reformed" by the same students who would take Warner's deal. Students attend K-12 to get "college and career ready," which just means they need to get A's in K-12 school so that they can get A's in college so that they can land a good job. That's literally our administration's plan for ending poverty. It is surrender. It is redesigning schools so that we can focus on getting a good grade so that we can get more good grades so that we can get a paycheck because that's what will help really rich people get more money which will raise their score in the success game.
Actually learning something? That's only useful if it will get you a good score on the Big Standardized Test, and while we are supposed to pretend that the BS Test score is "proof" that you are a Good Grade Machine and maybe learned something, the learning is not as important as the BS Test grade, and if anybody could get a high score on the BS Test without learning something, they would probably take that deal. Not only would they take that deal, but the reformsters would cheer the "success" of reform.
Meanwhile, reformsters are trying to align the ACT and SAT and college itself so that Warner's ladder to nowhere stays in place and the rungs are all Standards-aligned.
I don't know how we put learning in the center of education, just as I don't fully understand how we arrived at a place where trying "to put learning in the center of education" is even a thing that needs to be discussed. But boy do we need to figure it out.
Over at Inside Higher Education, John Warner shares a reflection on a recurring research project he performs with his own college students. If they could receive an A in the course in return for doing absolutely nothing except keeping the secret that they had done absolutely nothing (no assignments, no showing up for class, no nothing at all), would they take the deal.
Roughly 85% of Warner's students say yes, they would take the deal.
When they ask what the trick is, Warner points out that they would learn nothing. They're okay with that.
An “A” is an “A,” and “A’s” are good because they help their overall GPA. It would mean more time to dedicate to their other classes. They could sleep in later. They do not like English classes and would therefore dodge the unpleasantness of such a thing. They could check off a requirement without having to do any work. They could take 18 instead of 15 hours and be closer to graduation. They could pick up an extra shift at their job.
Warner's conclusion? Students are not coddled; they are defeated.
We have divorced school from learning, and this is the result.
For most of my students, the purpose of school is to do well in school so you can climb the ladder to the next part of school. I am giving them a free pass at school, so it would be silly not to grab at the opportunity.
And many of you who teach are nodding your heads, thinking, "Yes, that sounds about right."
I'm not going to blame this on reform. Students like these have always been around-- I went to college with a whole bunch of them.
But ed reform leans into this. Reformster philosophy is what education would look like if "reformed" by the same students who would take Warner's deal. Students attend K-12 to get "college and career ready," which just means they need to get A's in K-12 school so that they can get A's in college so that they can land a good job. That's literally our administration's plan for ending poverty. It is surrender. It is redesigning schools so that we can focus on getting a good grade so that we can get more good grades so that we can get a paycheck because that's what will help really rich people get more money which will raise their score in the success game.
Actually learning something? That's only useful if it will get you a good score on the Big Standardized Test, and while we are supposed to pretend that the BS Test score is "proof" that you are a Good Grade Machine and maybe learned something, the learning is not as important as the BS Test grade, and if anybody could get a high score on the BS Test without learning something, they would probably take that deal. Not only would they take that deal, but the reformsters would cheer the "success" of reform.
Meanwhile, reformsters are trying to align the ACT and SAT and college itself so that Warner's ladder to nowhere stays in place and the rungs are all Standards-aligned.
I don't know how we put learning in the center of education, just as I don't fully understand how we arrived at a place where trying "to put learning in the center of education" is even a thing that needs to be discussed. But boy do we need to figure it out.
One-to-One Tech Barriers
We leapt into the one-to-one world in the fall of 2010, when my district put a netbook in the hands of every single high school student.
I was excited. The process of trying to get a class into the single computer lab or, worse, use the traveling laptop labcart, was generally frustrating and lacked-- well, a certain spontaneity. I want a world where students always have computers handy, ready to be called into action at a moment's notice.
Some of us went and got us some training. Some of us already had some computer skills. Policies were created, the netbooks were rolled out and, ever since, we have been a technology-linked school where students romp happily through a field of modern educational tech-supported possibilities. Ha! Just kidding. We've wrestled with a bunch of obstacles to one-to-one tech.
I don't present the following as anything but our own specific story; I'm not sure whether we're an outlier or an exemplar. I'm inclined to think a bit of both. But here are the obstacles that stood (and in some cases still stand) in the way.
Student's Deeply Limited Grasp of Tech
When automobiles first became available, the average owner owned a set of tools and knew how to repair and maintain most parts of the vehicle. The steady development ever since has been in the direction of a car that anyone can own and use without even a rudimentary understanding of internal combustion. That's the usual trajectory of technology, and computers have followed it.
My digital natives for the most part understand how to use their favorite apps, and that's about it. A little over a decade ago, my students knew html and we built websites from scratch. Nowadays, when a question-- any question-- comes up in class, I frequently fall back on the same old refrain. "Gee, if only there were a tool that gave each of us quick and easy access to most of the accumulated information of mankind, where we could quickly locate an answer to that question."
I took computer courses in the seventies in which I learned how to program in BASIC on punch cards. My first home computer was a Commodore64. I am endlessly curious about a zillion things, and the fact that I live in an age where my curiosity can be instantly gratified by the small net-linked computer in my pocket is the third most miraculous thing for which I am thankful (the others would be my wife deciding to marry me and my grandson's existence).
My digital natives think they are carrying small Snapchat machines on which they can play games and watch videos. They literally forget that their computers have other useful capabilities. And when things stop working properly, they mostly don't know what to do about it.
And boy-- if I could just get them to absorb the two main rules of internet use: 1) Everything is forever and 2) Everything is public. That would be great.
Student Alarm That School and Computers Have Teamed Up
This has gotten better over time, but I'll never forget the initial alarm. I thought students would jump for joy that they could have computers at school, but instead the reacted as if they had come home to find school holding class in their kitchen. The intrusion of school on the cyberspace that they think of as their own did not go well.
In fact, to this day, we have students and families who simply refuse to pick up, use, or take possession of their school-issued chromebook (that's what we're using since netbooks died).
Infrastructure Limitations
I teach in a rural district. Many of my students go home to places that have no internet, either because their families don't care to have it and/or pay for it, or because they live in a place where the internet does not reach. Yes, there are such places in America, and many of my students live in them. That means that our chromebooks are mostly shiny paperweights when the students get home. It also means that one of the great advantages of tech-- to be able to extend school beyond the physical and temporal boundaries of the school day-- can't happen.
Equipment Limitations
In six years, there has never been a class period in which I could say, "Get out your computers and we'll do X" and have every student actually do that successfully. A netbook won't boot up. Another one won't connect to the network. Every year at least one student discovers a new sort of computer malfunction that I have never seen before.
Some of this is students generated. Many of my students treat their computers with the same love and care that they use for their textbooks. And these are teenagers, so even when they mean well, stuff just kind of happens.
Some of it is not the students' fault. Our IT people are pretty good, and they do a good job of keeping our network working. But we are also a public school district in a rural small town area and we surely aren't running out to buy top-of-the-line equipment any time soon.
Either way, my students become hugely frustrated and dismissive of the tech. When I tell them we'll be using the computers for the next unit of work, they are not happy about it. That's partly because of the transparency of technology-- when it works 100 times, you don't really notice, but when it fails on the 101st use, that sticks in your memory.
Nevertheless, I Would Not Go Back
I have tried to embrace many of the limitations. After all, paper is a fragile medium that requires special storage and maintenance and is very susceptible to all manner of malfunction, but we've just learned to adapt. And filters, firewalls, and constant monitoring are going to be part of my students' lives when they enter the workplace. Learning how to thwart those barriers coexist with limitations is a realistic, if depressing, life lesson.
And with all that, I can still send them on treasure hunts for obscure pieces of information or interesting images. We can pull a piece of writing up on the big screen and group edit it while the author makes changes in real time. We can create completely new types of research projects.
Yes, my students are still slightly tech-reluctant. They will compose an essay on the computer, but they still want to print it out on paper (and I prefer to grade it that way-- I have not yet found a piece of software that allows mark-up as simply and quickly as my pen). And book publishers need not worry; my students remain steadfastly uninterested in reading text in any sort of e-form.
There are things we did right. We didn't have a tight-bound batch of software in place, and we do not have a tightly-defined technology plan in place that tells each teacher exactly what to do with a classroom full of computerized students. That may seem like a mistake, and some teachers weren't happy about it, but it has turned out to be the right choice. Anything that we had adopted six years ago would be outdated and useless today, meaning we'd either be stuck with useless junk, or the school board would be repeatedly dumping funding into a money cyber-pit. Instead, classroom teachers (with the assistance of a district-hired tech coach) have been finding, developing, and honing the stuff that they need for their own teaching. Far better to figure out what tech support will aid you in your teaching than to be told how you must change your teaching to fit whatever tech tool the district bought.
That flexibility has been invaluable. If a teacher asked me about having their school go one-to-one, I'd say absolutely go for it, and do it with lots of resources and no plan. Expect it to be hard. But also expect to find new and interesting mountains to climb.
I was excited. The process of trying to get a class into the single computer lab or, worse, use the traveling laptop labcart, was generally frustrating and lacked-- well, a certain spontaneity. I want a world where students always have computers handy, ready to be called into action at a moment's notice.
Some of us went and got us some training. Some of us already had some computer skills. Policies were created, the netbooks were rolled out and, ever since, we have been a technology-linked school where students romp happily through a field of modern educational tech-supported possibilities. Ha! Just kidding. We've wrestled with a bunch of obstacles to one-to-one tech.
I don't present the following as anything but our own specific story; I'm not sure whether we're an outlier or an exemplar. I'm inclined to think a bit of both. But here are the obstacles that stood (and in some cases still stand) in the way.
Student's Deeply Limited Grasp of Tech
When automobiles first became available, the average owner owned a set of tools and knew how to repair and maintain most parts of the vehicle. The steady development ever since has been in the direction of a car that anyone can own and use without even a rudimentary understanding of internal combustion. That's the usual trajectory of technology, and computers have followed it.
My digital natives for the most part understand how to use their favorite apps, and that's about it. A little over a decade ago, my students knew html and we built websites from scratch. Nowadays, when a question-- any question-- comes up in class, I frequently fall back on the same old refrain. "Gee, if only there were a tool that gave each of us quick and easy access to most of the accumulated information of mankind, where we could quickly locate an answer to that question."
I took computer courses in the seventies in which I learned how to program in BASIC on punch cards. My first home computer was a Commodore64. I am endlessly curious about a zillion things, and the fact that I live in an age where my curiosity can be instantly gratified by the small net-linked computer in my pocket is the third most miraculous thing for which I am thankful (the others would be my wife deciding to marry me and my grandson's existence).
My digital natives think they are carrying small Snapchat machines on which they can play games and watch videos. They literally forget that their computers have other useful capabilities. And when things stop working properly, they mostly don't know what to do about it.
And boy-- if I could just get them to absorb the two main rules of internet use: 1) Everything is forever and 2) Everything is public. That would be great.
Student Alarm That School and Computers Have Teamed Up
This has gotten better over time, but I'll never forget the initial alarm. I thought students would jump for joy that they could have computers at school, but instead the reacted as if they had come home to find school holding class in their kitchen. The intrusion of school on the cyberspace that they think of as their own did not go well.
In fact, to this day, we have students and families who simply refuse to pick up, use, or take possession of their school-issued chromebook (that's what we're using since netbooks died).
Infrastructure Limitations
I teach in a rural district. Many of my students go home to places that have no internet, either because their families don't care to have it and/or pay for it, or because they live in a place where the internet does not reach. Yes, there are such places in America, and many of my students live in them. That means that our chromebooks are mostly shiny paperweights when the students get home. It also means that one of the great advantages of tech-- to be able to extend school beyond the physical and temporal boundaries of the school day-- can't happen.
Equipment Limitations
In six years, there has never been a class period in which I could say, "Get out your computers and we'll do X" and have every student actually do that successfully. A netbook won't boot up. Another one won't connect to the network. Every year at least one student discovers a new sort of computer malfunction that I have never seen before.
Some of this is students generated. Many of my students treat their computers with the same love and care that they use for their textbooks. And these are teenagers, so even when they mean well, stuff just kind of happens.
Some of it is not the students' fault. Our IT people are pretty good, and they do a good job of keeping our network working. But we are also a public school district in a rural small town area and we surely aren't running out to buy top-of-the-line equipment any time soon.
Either way, my students become hugely frustrated and dismissive of the tech. When I tell them we'll be using the computers for the next unit of work, they are not happy about it. That's partly because of the transparency of technology-- when it works 100 times, you don't really notice, but when it fails on the 101st use, that sticks in your memory.
Nevertheless, I Would Not Go Back
I have tried to embrace many of the limitations. After all, paper is a fragile medium that requires special storage and maintenance and is very susceptible to all manner of malfunction, but we've just learned to adapt. And filters, firewalls, and constant monitoring are going to be part of my students' lives when they enter the workplace. Learning how to
And with all that, I can still send them on treasure hunts for obscure pieces of information or interesting images. We can pull a piece of writing up on the big screen and group edit it while the author makes changes in real time. We can create completely new types of research projects.
Yes, my students are still slightly tech-reluctant. They will compose an essay on the computer, but they still want to print it out on paper (and I prefer to grade it that way-- I have not yet found a piece of software that allows mark-up as simply and quickly as my pen). And book publishers need not worry; my students remain steadfastly uninterested in reading text in any sort of e-form.
There are things we did right. We didn't have a tight-bound batch of software in place, and we do not have a tightly-defined technology plan in place that tells each teacher exactly what to do with a classroom full of computerized students. That may seem like a mistake, and some teachers weren't happy about it, but it has turned out to be the right choice. Anything that we had adopted six years ago would be outdated and useless today, meaning we'd either be stuck with useless junk, or the school board would be repeatedly dumping funding into a money cyber-pit. Instead, classroom teachers (with the assistance of a district-hired tech coach) have been finding, developing, and honing the stuff that they need for their own teaching. Far better to figure out what tech support will aid you in your teaching than to be told how you must change your teaching to fit whatever tech tool the district bought.
That flexibility has been invaluable. If a teacher asked me about having their school go one-to-one, I'd say absolutely go for it, and do it with lots of resources and no plan. Expect it to be hard. But also expect to find new and interesting mountains to climb.
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Leadership and Taking Risks
Nancy Flanagan had a great piece last week at EdWeek. "Defining Teacher Leadership" kicks off with her reaction to this handy meme:
She finds the first part is right on point. But the second part?
Most of the school leaders I encountered in 30 years in the classroom were good people, but the overwhelming majority were cautious rule-followers and cheerleaders for incremental change. The principals followed the superintendent's directives and the folks at Central Office looked to the state for guidance. Most recently, everyone has experienced the heavy hand of the feds--for standards, assessments and "aligned" materials. "Successful" leaders hit benchmarks set far from actual classrooms.
That sounds about right. As does this:
If I had waited for my school leaders to be risk-takers before feeling comfortable with change in my classroom, decades could have gone by.
I'm not sure we need school leaders who are risk takers; it's not the modeling that is most important. The biggest power that principals and superintendents have is not the power to demonstrate risk, but the power to define it.
School leaders get to decide two key aspects of risk-- what constitutes going outside the lines, and what possible consequences go with it. Principal A may run a school where getting caught with students up out of their seats in your classroom may win you a chance to stand in the principal's office while you're screamed at. Principal B may run a school where you can take students outside for an unscheduled sit on the lawn session and all that happens is you hear a, "Hey, shoot me an email before you do that the next time." Principal C, unfortunately, may run a school in which I'd better be on the scheduled scripted lesson at 10:36 on Tuesday, or there will be a letter in my file.
School leaders also get to decide how much they will protect their people. If you're teaching a controversial novel or running a project that may bring blowback form the community or from administrators at a higher level, will your principal help protect you from the heat, or throw you under the bus?
In other words, school leaders don't have to take risks -- they just have to create an environment where it is safe for teachers to take risks.
And teachers do share some responsibility in this risk-taking relationship. I have always had a pretty simple rule (like many rules, I figured it out by breaking it early in my career)-- if I'm about to do anything that could conceivably lead to my principal getting a phone call, I let him know what's going on, and why, and how, ahead of time. He can't support me if he doesn't know what I'm up to.
And of course, risk definition has been partially removed form local hands. Teachers now have personal ratings and school ratings and a host of other reformy accountability consequences riding on teacher choices. It makes leaders more risk averse, and that means clamping down on teacher risk taking as well. The last decade has not exactly fostered a risk-taking atmosphere.
The reformy movement has muddied the water on the other element of risk-- what, exactly, we are risking. Reformsters have tried to move us from , "Oh, no! That lesson didn't actually help my students master the concept I was teaching, meaning we lost a period of school and will have to try this again tomorrow" to "Oh no! We have low scores on a standardized test and must now lose money or be closed or fire somebody." Accountability and new standards and the Big Standardized Test have convinced too many administrators that teachers that take risks are now taking huge risks for enormous stakes and maybe we had all better just take it really, really easy and play it super, super safe and get back to those nice new test prep materials we just bought.
So I don't need my school leaders to model risk-taking for me. I just need them to provide me with a workplace where it's okay safe for me to try a few things and see if I can find interesting new paths for success. Which, ironically, is exactly what I am supposed to be providing for my students. If doing my teaching job is like changing a flat tire in the rain, I don't need an administrator who is changing another one of the tires on the car. I need someone who will make sure my tools are handy while they hold an umbrella over my head to keep the rain off me.
She finds the first part is right on point. But the second part?
Most of the school leaders I encountered in 30 years in the classroom were good people, but the overwhelming majority were cautious rule-followers and cheerleaders for incremental change. The principals followed the superintendent's directives and the folks at Central Office looked to the state for guidance. Most recently, everyone has experienced the heavy hand of the feds--for standards, assessments and "aligned" materials. "Successful" leaders hit benchmarks set far from actual classrooms.
That sounds about right. As does this:
If I had waited for my school leaders to be risk-takers before feeling comfortable with change in my classroom, decades could have gone by.
I'm not sure we need school leaders who are risk takers; it's not the modeling that is most important. The biggest power that principals and superintendents have is not the power to demonstrate risk, but the power to define it.
School leaders get to decide two key aspects of risk-- what constitutes going outside the lines, and what possible consequences go with it. Principal A may run a school where getting caught with students up out of their seats in your classroom may win you a chance to stand in the principal's office while you're screamed at. Principal B may run a school where you can take students outside for an unscheduled sit on the lawn session and all that happens is you hear a, "Hey, shoot me an email before you do that the next time." Principal C, unfortunately, may run a school in which I'd better be on the scheduled scripted lesson at 10:36 on Tuesday, or there will be a letter in my file.
School leaders also get to decide how much they will protect their people. If you're teaching a controversial novel or running a project that may bring blowback form the community or from administrators at a higher level, will your principal help protect you from the heat, or throw you under the bus?
In other words, school leaders don't have to take risks -- they just have to create an environment where it is safe for teachers to take risks.
And teachers do share some responsibility in this risk-taking relationship. I have always had a pretty simple rule (like many rules, I figured it out by breaking it early in my career)-- if I'm about to do anything that could conceivably lead to my principal getting a phone call, I let him know what's going on, and why, and how, ahead of time. He can't support me if he doesn't know what I'm up to.
And of course, risk definition has been partially removed form local hands. Teachers now have personal ratings and school ratings and a host of other reformy accountability consequences riding on teacher choices. It makes leaders more risk averse, and that means clamping down on teacher risk taking as well. The last decade has not exactly fostered a risk-taking atmosphere.
The reformy movement has muddied the water on the other element of risk-- what, exactly, we are risking. Reformsters have tried to move us from , "Oh, no! That lesson didn't actually help my students master the concept I was teaching, meaning we lost a period of school and will have to try this again tomorrow" to "Oh no! We have low scores on a standardized test and must now lose money or be closed or fire somebody." Accountability and new standards and the Big Standardized Test have convinced too many administrators that teachers that take risks are now taking huge risks for enormous stakes and maybe we had all better just take it really, really easy and play it super, super safe and get back to those nice new test prep materials we just bought.
So I don't need my school leaders to model risk-taking for me. I just need them to provide me with a workplace where it's okay safe for me to try a few things and see if I can find interesting new paths for success. Which, ironically, is exactly what I am supposed to be providing for my students. If doing my teaching job is like changing a flat tire in the rain, I don't need an administrator who is changing another one of the tires on the car. I need someone who will make sure my tools are handy while they hold an umbrella over my head to keep the rain off me.
Monotune
If you haven't seen this yet, see it now:
One size does not fit all. Making everything or everyone to the same standard does not produce beautiful music. Variety, difference, deviation from the same single standard is a good thing, not a problem.
One size does not fit all. Making everything or everyone to the same standard does not produce beautiful music. Variety, difference, deviation from the same single standard is a good thing, not a problem.
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