tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67286099288082824692024-02-19T04:12:13.812-08:00Education PolicyAdminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.comBlogger501125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-62116706657804015402011-06-02T07:50:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.117-07:00War on Teachers?Cross-posted from JDS <a href="http://deweycsi.blogspot.com">Social Issues</a>:<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri; "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri; ">From my inbox almost two months ago:</span><div> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">So, where did this war on teachers, and other public employees come from? I certainly didn't see that coming. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">A former colleague (a faculty member in a humanities department) was responding directly to word that Pennsylvania was cutting P-12 funding and slashing state support for public higher education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But her consciousness was framed by events in Wisconsin and elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">So I have been paying attention to the news in a new way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Is my colleague right?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Is there a “war on teachers”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I think she may right that there is a “war” going on but I’m having a little more difficulty determining just what it is we are fighting about and fighting for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Are teachers the target?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Or are teachers collateral damage in a larger struggle –because teachers (and their students) don’t fight back and because everybody feels entitled to an “expert” opinion about educational matters generally?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica">I hope to think more about this over the summer and invite any readers to join in with news items, anecdotes and analyses that help us all figure out where we want to stand in what is clearly a struggle for the social, economic, political and educational terrain within our own communities and our nation.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin">Here are a couple for starters:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin">Randy Turner, commenting on the Huffington Post about new education legislation in Missouri, asks whether public school teachers are an “endangered species”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>His question is motivated by regulatory proposals that seem to suggest that all teachers are lazy perverts.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randy-turner/public-school-teachers-ar_b_861407.html">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randy-turner/public-school-teachers-ar_b_861407.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family:Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin">Paul Mucci, a fifth grade NBPTS certified teacher, asks <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin"><a href="http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/may/16/paul-mucci-since-when-did-teachers-become-the/">http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/may/16/paul-mucci-since-when-did-teachers-become-the/</a><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin">“since when did teachers become the bad guys?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Mucci is in Florida where education is rapidly being “reformed” on the backs of teachers: “</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">elimination of teacher tenure, teacher pay based on student performance, increasing teacher contributions to the Florida Retirement System, raising the retirement age/years of service, increasing student testing and reducing the number of "core" classes to name a few.”</span><span style="font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:-.05in"><span style="font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin">He conveys his demoralization clearly:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:-.05in"><span style="font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top:0in;margin-right:-.05in;margin-bottom: 24.0pt;margin-left:0in;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">“More important, gone is the respect teachers once had. The steady erosion of respect is palpable in parent conferences, in line at the grocery store and in politicians' statements in the media.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:-.05in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">As one legislator said to me, ‘The public deserves accountability they deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent.’ In one respect, he is right, but what good are numbers and test results if we lose our integrity, our compassion, our humanity along the way?”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:-.05in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:-.05in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">Mucci notes that it is ironic that the rhetoric is all about “good teachers” but in the process they are destroying any chance of respect [for teachers].<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right:-.05in"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 16.0pt;font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoListParagraph" style="text-indent:-.25in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Symbol;mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;mso-bidi-font-family:Symbol"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">·<span style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman""> </span></span></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial">Bill Haslam, Governor of my new home state of Tennessee apparently hasn’t met any Paul Mucci type teachers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Last week he rejected the Tennessee Education Association’s claim that “teacher morale is flagging,” despite passing measures that limit collective bargaining and proposing others that would end any licensure for educational professionals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>(More on events in Tennessee in the days to come.)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><a href="http://www.dnj.com/article/20110527/NEWS01/110526017/Haslam-rejects-claims-teacher-morale-flagging">http://www.dnj.com/article/20110527/NEWS01/110526017/Haslam-rejects-claims-teacher-morale-flagging</a><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">As someone who spends a fair amount of time cultivating partnerships with public schools so that we can jointly<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>(university/school) provide substantive and challenging but guided practical experience for teacher candidates, my sense is that teacher morale is fragile at best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Neither principals nor teachers – no matter how accomplished --generally feel free to take on novice teacher candidates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Even when they can identify the value of teaching collaboratively with a young person with energy and ideas, they are hesitant, even fearful, about jeopardizing their compensation and even their jobs (based largely on student test scores).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Everybody is looking over both shoulders at once.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">What do these snippets suggest?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">Whether or not there is a war on teachers, teachers are feeling under siege.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And the march of legislation that targets the teaching profession is undeniable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But the point of the legislation is harder to tease out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Limiting collective bargaining might be a cost-cutting measure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It might be an undercut-the-unions measure (my favorite theory with thanks to Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The undercut-the-unions theory is supported by proposals in Tennessee to get rid of teacher licensure all together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Put this together with the appointment of a new Commissioner of Education with a Teach for America and charter school background and it does appear that the war is not on “teachers” per se but on the public school “establishment”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>(whatever that is).<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">The point then is an utterly free market for education?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>(Odd that we would seek a free market for the development of human capital when we have no such truly free market for any other commodity – oil subsidies, farm subsidies, interstate highway systems anyone?)<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial">But this is a kaleidoscopic phenomenon, I think, and this particular ideological interpretation is just today’s turn of the barrel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What does it look like to you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What will it look like tomorrow?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size:16.0pt;font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment--> </div></div>Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-28155186100768868442011-05-20T21:33:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.117-07:00Scholarship winners, life's winners(cross posted from my dean's blog)<br /><br />Forty-seven percent. Within that statistic is news both wonderful and sobering.<br /><br />Nearly half of all of the graduate students who received College of Education scholarships for 2011-12 are the first in their families to go to college. That’s the wonderful part. Those future educators are realizing the American dream of self-improvement. But the number also speaks to the need for financial support, which is especially acute for first-generation students and their families.<br /><br />This spring, faculty and staff volunteers reviewed the scholarship applications. They weighed the students’ accomplishments and goals and stretched the contributions of our generous donors to award 96 scholarships totaling $171,150. The average per student was $1,782.<br /><br />Amy Cox of our development team, who coordinates the scholarship selection effort, provided those statistics. Others that might interest you:<br /><br />In all, 98 graduate students and 453 undergraduates applied for scholarship assistance.<br />Scholarships were awarded to 24 juniors, 31 seniors, and 41 master’s and doctoral degree candidates.<br />Twenty-eight percent of the scholarship winners are minority students. The largest groups represented were Hispanic/Latin America (seven) and Asian Pacific American (five).<br />Seventy percent of scholarship winners are women.<br />Seventy-six are enrolled in Pullman, six in Vancouver, eight in Tri-Cities.<br /><br />More compelling than the numbers, of course, are the people they represent. Here are two examples:<br /><br />Israel Martinez of Walla Walla starts our Master in Teaching program this summer. Israel, the first in his family to get a college degree, wrote in his application: “It has taken a lot of hard work and dedication, such as working two part-time jobs while being a full-time student, working overtime in the orchards during the summers to save enough money to stay in school.”<br /><br />Kelly Frio’s home town is Brush Prairie, Washington. That’s near Vancouver, where she is working on an undergraduate teaching degree. She has a perfect 4.0 grade point average. One of her goals, she wrote, is to instill an appreciation of the elderly in her own children and those she works with. “The wealth and skills and knowledge that our senior citizens possess is often not only unappreciated, but dismissed.”<br /><br />My congratulations to all of our scholarship winners and my thanks to those who support our scholarships. We only wish we could do more, for more. If you would like to help, look here for information.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-86012725618065982812011-04-29T08:14:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.117-07:00When Engagement is Not EnoughOne of my goals as a dean of a school of education has been to expand the notion of what teacher preparation includes. To that end, I have been strongly pushing for the development of community engagement courses and academic programs in my own school and across the college. This is grounded in my ongoing academic research and in my belief that one cannot be a good teacher, administrator or staff in a PreK-12 school without realizing (on academic, experiential, and conceptual levels) that schools are deeply embedded within and an important part of their local communities. To that end, I have been working on series of pieces that expands on the notion of community engagement as much more than just service, service-learning, or experiential education. This is the first part of this series.<br /><div style="text-align: center;">***<br /></div>The community engagement movement – after a generation of activism and research and immense energy and effort – has reached an “engagement ceiling.” It is now time to plot the second wave.<br /><br />This movement – composed of a loosely inter-related set of programs, practices, and philosophies such as service-learning, civic and community engagement, public scholarship, and community-based research – has become an assumed and expected part of the higher education landscape. More than half of all faculty, according to UCLA’s ongoing <a href="http://www.heri.ucla.edu/pr-display.php?prQry=40">American College Teacher</a> surveys, believe that instilling a commitment to community service is a very important or essential aspect of undergraduate education; <a href="http://nsse.iub.edu/_/?cid=70">NSSE data</a> suggest that service-learning is one of very few “high impact practices” that deepen undergraduates’ learning; and the Carnegie Foundation recently released its third round of colleges and universities selected as worthy of the “<a href="http://classifications.carnegiefoundation.org/descriptions/community_engagement.php?key=1213">community engagement” classification</a>, whose membership now numbers over three hundred such institutions.<br /><br />Yet even as the public face of community engagement becomes ever more embraced, there are troubling signs of its internal malaise. Key groups and scholars have begun to openly talk of a movement that has “<a href="http://futureofengagement.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/democratic-engagement-white-paper-2_13_09.pdf">stalled</a>.” Strong <a href="http://www.bonner.org/resources/assessment/EngagingWithDifference.pdf">research </a>suggests that co-curricular engagement continues to be a more meaningful variable than singular curricular service-learning courses in fostering a range of key student outcomes. And the plethora of programs, centers, and practices that intermix community service, service-learning, and civic engagement contributes to frustratingly opaque notions of even basic definitions, categories, and hoped-for outcomes in the field.<br /><br />The trouble is not that service-learning and its ilk have not been successful enough. The problem, <a href="http://www.servicelearning.org/library/resource/9106">I suggest</a>, is that they have been too successful. Too successful, that is, at positioning themselves as a social movement for the transformation of higher education to reclaim and rediscover its civic purpose and meaningful engagement with, for, and in their local communities. But in so doing, in becoming a movement that attempted to reach everyone across the academy, the community engagement movement has become unmoored from some basic precepts. There is neither a core vision nor an overarching network able to guide or link the disparate centers, groups, scholarly communities, national organizations and activists all attempting to, ironically enough, foster an engaged campus and community. The gap between the rhetoric and reality of the “engaged campus” is ever increasing.<br /><br />The reasons for this are complex, intertwined, and not easily changeable given the long-term economic retrenchment sweeping across the academy: the expanding demographics of “non-traditional” part-time commuting students; the outsourcing of labor to contingent and adjunct faculty; and the “wickedly” complex and contested problem of engaging with (much less solving) community issues enmeshed within multiple racial, political, economic, social, and historical realities. If the goal of the first generation of scholars and activists was to transform higher education, the real issue is who is transforming whom. <br /><br />I am not suggesting that we wipe our hands, shut the classroom door, and walk away from the pressing societal problems that colleges and universities must indeed be a part of solving. Rather, we must reframe how we think about the engaged campus: namely, community engagement must become an <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/servicelearningintheoryandpractice">intellectual movement</a>. If the next generation of scholars, students, and community members are to have a chance in fostering a deep, sustained, and ultimately powerful campus and community collaborations, then we must embrace a second wave of criticality towards civic and community engagement in the academy.<br /><br />By this I mean what other movements, such as Women’s Studies and Black Studies, have accomplished in the last thirty years. They have created, through majors and minors and interdisciplinary concentrations and research centers, a means to influence and impact the knowledge production and dissemination of their respective areas of study. They have succeeded in the impressive accomplishment that it is no longer possible to speak simply or “obviously” about what feminism or blackness “is,” either within their respective fields, across the academy, or, for that matter, in the larger world.<br /><br />Interestingly enough, academic programs (such as majors and minors) focused on community engagement have indeed begun to spring up helter skelter across the academy. I helped organize a research institute this past summer for academics interested in developing or expanding such academic programs. We expected twenty or thirty people to show up. Instead, we had to stop registration at ninety, as scholars, administrators, and doctoral students poured in from across the country, as well as a few from Canada, Mexico, and even Ireland. We have now documented over sixty academic programs at varying stages of development across the United States and will be hosting <a href="http://www.merrimack.edu/academics/education/Pages/CommunityEngagement.aspx">another institute</a> this summer to continue to deepen this dialogue and support such program development.<br /><br />There are longstanding and deeply impressive programs, such as Providence College’s major in Public and Community Service Studies and UC-Santa Cruz’s department of Community Studies. There is the newly developed Civic Engagement minor at Mary Baldwin College, and the Department of Justice and Policy Studies at Guilford College. In each case, there are dedicated faculty members attached to each program, doing the deliberate, careful, and critical work that is necessary for any successful academic program: advising students, creating introductory courses, questioning the quality of the capstone experience, reaching out to colleagues across the institution and community members outside of it for perspective and feedback and collaboration, advocating for additional tenure-track lines, and questioning whether what they do is ultimately of value and relevance to its critical stakeholders.<br /><br />This, then, is the face of the next generation of the scholarship of engagement. It is the critical work that cannot take for granted the practice and philosophy of community engagement. For community engagement is a complex and contested practice that claims to engage in “border crossing” and as such engages issues of power, race, and class. It is a practice that has real-world ethical, legal, and political implications as to what our undergraduates actually do out in the world. And it is a philosophy of practice that is seemingly at the heart of a liberal arts education. As such, what we do with, for, and in the community must be open to the same type of scrutiny as any other legitimate academic practice. It needs to be done in academic spaces that foster and strengthen the very qualities we are looking for in the community partnerships we espouse: deep, sustained, and impactful reflection, engagement, and action. That is an intellectual movement.<br /><br />In the end, of course, this is not an either/or proposition. The academy must embrace both the community engagement and the critical academic spaces. To have engagement without the criticality is to succumb ultimately to a cheerleading mentality of a social movement with thin skin unable to withstand the critique of the academy. To have disciplined academic inquiry without a deep and sustained experiential community-based component is to succumb to an ineffectual model of “hallway activists” where theory and practice are disjoined and disjointed and where the thick skin of academic debate cannot feel or see the needs of the community all around it. But without the next stage, without the second wave of critique within academic spaces, the next generation of the engaged campus will be ever more imperiled.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-87278612313789809642011-04-28T21:26:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.118-07:00"Quite a Lot, Really . . ."Been meaning to write something substantive, but then I found this as part of a review of a book on Wittgenstein and couldn't resist:<br /><blockquote>Then there is the question of the role of the endnotes in Klagge's study: some are simply references, some elucidations, and yet others mini-essays almost. They constitute some two-fifths of the book, which seems quite a lot really, as Monty Python put it with respect to the amount of rat in the tart.<br /></blockquote><br />Now <span style="font-style:italic;">that's</span> what academic writing should aspire to. :)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCAQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.h-net.org%2Freviews%2Fshowrev.php%3Fid%3D32492&ei=5D66Tc3VEdOatweD4-S5AQ&usg=AFQjCNFyCOMgaJ3r0o0YPkBnyKv__UhBXg&sig2=pnWMBj3CsVqbVbr2Td1YqQ">From H-Net.</a>Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-1099728395481444182011-04-19T09:41:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.118-07:00No Child Left Behind: What Lies Ahead?(Crossposted from my dean's blog)<br /><br />In March, the Obama administration announced its plans to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The last time the act was reauthorized, in 2001, it was called No Child Left Behind and became the cornerstone of the Bush administration’s education efforts. NCLB brought with it an increased focus upon testing and accountability in schools.<br /><br />What have we learned from the act during the past decade? What changes would improve it? In my own search for answers, I asked faculty members from various education specialties for their views, which I share here.<br /><br />Professor David Slavit on accountability<br /><br />Right now Secretary Duncan talks about NCLB as being too punitive and prescriptive because of its accountability measures. Why do we have accountability? Because we don’t trust people to do their jobs.<br /><br />Surveys show that most people think their own children’s teachers are quite good, but that teachers in general are not. This says a great deal about the kind of negative messaging people receive in this country about teachers, and the political harm this has been doing to teachers for the past decades. The basis of any reauthorization needs to assume one thing: Teachers are professionals deserving of trust and respect. The many teachers whom I visit on a regular basis are some of the hardest working people I know. And certainly some of the most caring.<br /><br />Associate Professor Judy Morrison on science education<br /><br />Under the NCLB, science education has not received the same attention that reading and mathematics have, because the law did not require yearly science assessments.<br /><br />Though not necessarily advocating for yearly assessments, science educators would like to see students taking more science courses and being exposed to the reality of science in their science courses. There also needs to be an ongoing conversation about which important scientific knowledge and skills our students should be exposed to so that they become scientifically literate citizens. We need to open their eyes to the development, meaning, value, and limitations of scientific knowledge. As students engage in more authentic science in their K-12 science courses, they will be exposed to the creativity and innovation that science involves, strengthening their passion and causing them to consider careers in science.<br /><br />If higher standards and more assessments can produce more opportunities for students to receive quality science instruction, then these certainly should be a part of the ESEA revisions involving science education.<br /><br />Clinical Associate Professor Gay Selby on support for teachers, leaders<br /><br />There is much about No Child Left Behind that I personally support—most important to me is that it requires schools to examine data, including student achievement data, high school graduation rates, and the qualifications of teachers as to teaching assignments. These areas of examination have “shined a light” on important areas that all too often prior to NCLB were not well examined.<br /><br />I believe most teachers and principals today are intentional in their efforts to address the learning needs of all students and to improve high school graduation rates. Many teachers have changed how they work together and many innovative programs have emerged to provide the needed support to students. The role of principals also has changed from one of manager to leader—an instructional leader focused on assisting teachers with their classroom practice and student needs.<br /><br />The downsides of NCLB are the heavy reliance on standardized tests data to determine how well a school is doing and the use of test results to punish teachers and principals as a means of motivating them. It is my hope that a reauthorized NCLB will focus on targeted support for teachers and principals.<br /><br />The public and policy makers have every right to expect high performance from their schools and every right to hold teachers and principals accountable, but should be realistic about the challenges schools face and recognize that schools need authentic support in their efforts to improve. Only after such efforts should punitive measures be taken.<br /><br />Assistant Professor Janet Frost on the intent of the law<br /><br />I greet reauthorization of the act with mixed feelings. The intentions of actually meeting the educational needs of all children were noble, and the federal funding provided the opportunity for extensive professional development work my colleagues and I do that seems to be making a difference for teachers and students. However, the means of accountability and implementation of NCLB seemed misguided.<br /><br />Most teachers and administrators with whom I have worked have felt that this legislation forced them to take steps that seemed educationally bizarre and the opposite of the legislation’s intent. They learned to focus their efforts on those students whose scores were just below passing, cutting back attention for lower or higher students. Schools reduced or eliminated time for science, social studies, the arts, and physical education — all areas of study that engage students who may be less interested or successful in mathematics or literacy learning. Teachers’ emotional energy became so focused on meeting Adequate Yearly Progress that they were less aware or considerate of their impact on students. I learned of students who couldn’t sleep the night before the high-stakes tests because their teachers had told them they were responsible for the school’s score and future. Some principals couldn’t be bothered with improving grade 11-12 students’ preparation for college success because yearly progress was focused on grade 10 scores.<br /><br />Associate Professor Brian French on achievement testing<br /><br />The attention given to achievement testing will not wane with reauthorization. It will only increase as common standards are applied to schools nationwide. First, there is the challenge of producing high quality assessments. The timeline and budget may not be sufficient to ensure proper development and implementation of tests.<br /><br />Second, the magnitude of the common core project is almost overwhelming to the states and organizations charged with implementing the assessment system. For example, changing from paper-and-pencil tests to computer adaptive assessments sounds simple. However, having enough adequate working computers is a major barrier to implementation. Plus, there is a heavy bet being placed on technology for success for this system–technology that may not yet exist.<br /><br />Third, achievement tests are designed for measuring individual student progress. However, the scores are put to many other uses (such as promotion, grades, teacher effectiveness, program accountability) with no assurance that they are valid measurements for those purposes.<br /><br />Fourth, teachers will be asked, if not required, to make use of assessment scores to modify instruction, see and understand individual student mistakes, and convey student progress to parents. The challenge is to ensure they are prepared to do so.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-74586344977140789572011-04-17T07:41:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.118-07:00Miracle schools, vouchers and all that educational flim-flamis the title of <a href="http://tinyurl.com/4xyyege">this piece by Diane Ravitch</a>. It appeared at the website of Nieman Watchdog of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, as part of the "Ask This" which is subtitled "Questions the Press Should Ask." Oh if only reporters and writers on education were knowledgeable enough about education to ask questions such as those posed by Ravitch, perhaps we could cut through all the misleading and inaccurate information, the attempts to manipulate the public discourse on education to exclude the voices of those - including both Ravitch (a personal friend) and myself - who say that our supposed pattern of educational "reform" is like the emperor's new clothes - there is no there there, as Gertrude Stein once opined of Oakland.<br /><br />You should read Ravitch's piece. To whet your appetite, let me offer Diane's first paragraph here, and then explore a bit more below the fold: <blockquote>Be skeptical of miracle schools. Sometimes their dramatic gains disappear in a year or two or three. Most such claims rely on cheating or gaming the system or on intensive test prep that involves teaching children how to answer test questions. These same children, having learned to take tests, may actually be very poorly educated, even in the subjects where their scores were rising.</blockquote><br /><br />Please keep reading.<br /><br />Diane offers some very tough questions to consider. Understand that as an educational historian and as someone very involved in policy questions, the questions she poses are derived from the record, from extensive reading/research into the information that is actually available. For example: <blockquote>When a charter school reports miraculous results, be sure to ask about the attrition rate. Some highly successful charters push out low-performing kids and their enrollment falls over the years (and the departing students are not replaced). Recently Arne Duncan hailed a “miracle” school in Chicago—<a href="http://www.urbanprep.org/">Urban Prep</a>—where all the students who graduated were accepted into college. But 150 students started and only 107 graduated. The 107 graduates had much lower test scores than the average for Chicago public school students. The school did a good job of getting the students into college (perhaps that was a miracle) but they were not better educated than students in the regular public schools.<br /><br />In another instance, one of the “amazing” schools singled out by the 2010 documentary “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/">Waiting for Superman</a>” admits 140 students, but only 34 graduated. That’s a 75 per cent attrition rate. Some miracle. </blockquote><br /><br /><br />Or try the brief paragraph before what I just quoted: <blockquote>Whenever a district has a dramatic increase in test scores, look for cheating, gaming the system, intensive investment in test prep. Testing is NOT instruction. It is meant to assess instruction, not to substitute for it. </blockquote> Take this points one at a time<br /><br />cheating - explore the recent USA Today examination of test results in DC public schools under Michelle Rhee<br /><br />gaming - the so-called Texas miracle on their state tests, given in tenth grade, was accomplished by holding back lower performing kids in 9th grade. Some were held back several times until they dropped out, and if they said they MIGHT get a GED, they were listed at having transferred to an alternative educational program, not as dropouts. Or perhaps after having been held back one year they were skipped to 11th on the grounds they had made so much progress. In either case, they were not tested. All this was documented BEFORE No Child Left Behind was passed into law, and people in Congress cannot say they were unaware. Walt Haney of Lynch College of Education at Boston College wrote about it, as did others, and a number of us passed on the literature to key people in Congress. Yet somehow Rod Paige won a superintendent's award and got promoted to Secretary of Education, in part because of a claimed 90% graduation rate in Houston schools, when in reality only a bit over 40% of those entering 7th grade graduated with their cohorts.<br /><br />intensive investment in test prep - these seems to be the pattern in a number of charter schools and some public schools claiming significant gains. But what evidence there is that the "gains" on tests are not maintained in subsequent grades, and students as they ascend the educational grades arrive less and less prepared to do the kind of work necessary to be successful even in a high school course of students, to say nothing of what is necessary in colleges, which is why post-secondary institutions have had to expand the number of places in remediation courses.<br /><br />Ravitch remind us - at least those of us who have been paying attention - that improving pass rates on state tests may mean merely that states are manipulating their cut scores. It is possible to pass some state tests with less than half the questions answered correctly. Since all that are published are scaled scores, converted from raw scores, unless one can see the conversion formula, the scaled scores are subject to manipulation for all kinds of reasons, including the state (or school district for district wide tests) wanting to be able to show "success" or to avoid the politically unacceptable prospect of large numbers of students not being promoted or not graduating from high school.<br /><br />Not all "studies" are peer-reviewed by independent scholars. Some are not even rigorous, as Ravitch points out about the claim by Carolyn Hoxby that students who spent 9 years in a NYC charter could close the achievement gap differential between, say, Harlem in inner city NY and Scarsdale, perhaps the wealthiest of the New York suburbs. As Ravitch writes: <blockquote> The press gave that study huge attention and credibility, but no one noticed that there were very few students who had attended a charter in NYC for nine years or that Hoxby did not provide a number for the students who had closed the gap. It appears that her study was an extrapolation, and it was an extrapolation based on NYC and NY state’s inflated and unreliable test scores (see above). When NYC’s charter scores are reported, they range widely from very abysmal (a six per cent pass rate) to exceptional (100 per cent pass rate).</blockquote><br /><br />Ravitch also reminds us of the wisdom of the words spoken by Hal Holbrook in "All the President's Men" - <b>Follow the Money</b>. In the case of education, we have the likes of Philip Anschutz, a billionaire who advocates for free market solutions (and for whom, I might mention, Michael Bennet worked before becoming Superintendent in Denver, and then a US Senator, and now apparently the successor in waiting to Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education). He was a funder of "Waiting for Superman" as was a man "previously CEO of a string of for-profit postsecondary institutions." Similarly, the so-called <a href="http://www.dfer.org/">Democrats for Education Reform</a> has a board full of Wall St. hedge fund managers and big real estate moguls. Ravitch suggests asking why they are so interested in charters, and how they are connected with other 'reform' groups such as" Education Reform Now, Stand for Children, the state CAN organizations (e.g., ConnCAN), and a host of other groups promoting privatization and de-professionalization?" She also reminds us, as she did in her book, about the influence of the 'billionaire boys' club" of foundations such as Gates, Broad and Walton. <br /><br />No high performing nations, as Ravitch reminds us, are pursuing the kinds of approaches we are seeing advocated by such groups and foundations, and unfortunately by the Obama administration. She challenges the administration with a number of questions, on continuing Bush administration accountability problems, on school choice, on merit pay (which lacks any supportive research base in education or in industry, and has clearly been shown to have no effect on test scores, which of course are the measurement of choice of the so-called reformers). Given the President's recent remarks at Bell Multicultural High School in the District, in response to a question from a student, it is worth noting this question from Ravitch: <blockquote>Why does the president publicly say he is against standardized testing at the same time that his administration is demanding more emphasis on standardized testing?</blockquote><br /><br />Read Ravitch. Perhaps pass on the article to the editors, editorialists, and reporters dealing with education at your publication of choice.<br /><br />Ravitch concludes her piece with simple statement: <blockquote>Principles for reporters: Be skeptical; don’t believe in miracles; follow the money.</blockquote><br /><br />Perhaps were these principles followed, we might actually be able to have a meaningful public discussion on how to address the real needs and issues confronting our schools and our students.<br /><br /><br />Perhaps were these principles followed, we might actually be able to have a meaningful public discussion on how to address the real needs and issues confronting our schools and our students.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-78751975238414821182011-04-10T16:36:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.118-07:00If What Happens in Education is a Symptom of Social Breakdown: What Happens When This is the Cause? or Welcome to the Recovery<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid29z8EdnjazOWrvFXkmY4rJP2loiT1gRe6R834Xn0rC33RyTW9fUEasHuqlWrYR2nYlsRiUKsh-EHGWNGhUXcInMfN_qZ5tMTwxZ-rNKEus10UQJU7VGD_VbyyUX0nuAQOUKdEaJueGXH/s1600/food-stamps-monthly.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 183px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid29z8EdnjazOWrvFXkmY4rJP2loiT1gRe6R834Xn0rC33RyTW9fUEasHuqlWrYR2nYlsRiUKsh-EHGWNGhUXcInMfN_qZ5tMTwxZ-rNKEus10UQJU7VGD_VbyyUX0nuAQOUKdEaJueGXH/s320/food-stamps-monthly.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594103367034384034" /></a><br /><br />Via <a href="http://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/graph-of-the-week-number-of-americans-receiving-food-stamps/">Real World Economics Blog</a>Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-30693343522616615212011-04-05T15:53:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.119-07:00Film Shows Other Side of Education Divide(Crossposted from my dean's blog)<br /><br />The documentary “Race to Nowhere,” the April 14 finale to our Rethinking Education film series, is very different than “Waiting for Superman” and “The Lottery.”<br /><br />Those first two films deal with mostly low-income students in sub-standard public schools who are looking for a way out. Their goal is admission to successful charter schools. “Race to Nowhere” deals with the opposite end of the socioeconomic spectrum, where parents and students are frustrated with education for other reasons.<br /><br />These families live in places where, by any measure, there are excellent public schools. Lafayette, California, where the “The Race to Nowhere” was mostly filmed, is an affluent East Bay suburb where the median family income is $150,000 and the average home price is $1.2M. The film’s director/producer drives a Lexus SUV. These students aim for elite selective colleges and universities. They work constantly at homework, squeezing it in with other activities deemed necessary to success. They are pressured to the point of illness or desperation by the high expectations of their parents and the community.<br /><br />As an admissions officer for a selective college early in my career, I was aware of the kinds of pressures that students endured in order to be admitted to a selective institution. I also have worked for less selective institutions where many students get an excellent education and have never worried to the point of insomnia or anorexia about their life choices. I think the anxiety over college and career choices portrayed in this film may be lost on many families. As blogger Jay Mathews points out in the Washington Post, a bigger problem for students may be the low expectations of parents and schools.<br /><br />The pressure that most college-bound families and students do feel is financial, especially if they want to attend state-supported institutions where programs are being cut and tuition raised. They may worry that they are being pushed aside in favor of out-of-state students who are willing to pay higher tuition. They may be faced with taking out large loans to complete their degrees.<br /><br />“Race to Nowhere” might have a selective message, but I think it will inspire some important conversation about social pressure to succeed and what’s most important about life and school. I’ll be there to watch the film, and moderate a panel discussion afterward. If you’re in Pullman next Thursday, please join us for the free presentation at 6 p.m. in the Compton Union Building auditorium.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-7680114207936243122011-03-31T03:12:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.119-07:00Education: two important proposalsEducation is not listed among the enumerated powers of Article I Section 8 of the Constitution. Yet the national governments of the United States have maintained an interest in education going back to the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, which in the Land Ordinance of 1785 established that the 16th of the 36 square miles of the territory in the Northwest being surveyed under the authority of the Congress was reserved for the maintenance of free public schools. <br /><br />The major current Federal involvement in K-12 education, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, was part of LBJ's great society and was intended to provide "Financial Assistance To Local Educational Agencies For The Education Of Children Of Low-Income Families." This was a recognition that some districts lacked the tax base to provide an equitable education, and in other districts children of poverty were provided with lesser resources than those from more well-off circumstances. This especially affected minorities, especially blacks in inner cities and in some rural parts of the South, thus undercutting the promise made in Brown v Board.<br /><br />This morning, two pieces of legislation intended to address some of the inequities of current federal educational funding will be introduced by Rep. Chaka Fattah, D- PA02. These are the Fiscal Fairness Act and the Student Bill of Rights Act, tomorrow both of which are designed to amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). <br /><br />Rep. Fattah is not currently on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which is the authorizing committee for legislation affecting schools. He left that committee when he joined Appropriations, which as an "exclusive" committee (as is, for example, Ways and Means), requires that the Members serve on no other committees absent a waiver. Yet education has remained his primary interest throughout his Congressional service, now in its 9th term. <br /><br />Recently one of our own, <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/user/spedwybabs">spedwybabs</a>, was meeting with one of his staffers and when she heard about the Representative's initiatives, suggested connecting the office with me because of my interest in matters educational. As one of his staff noted during our exchanges, <blockquote>Our country was predicated on the fundamental idea of equality, yet in every state in the country there continue to be poor children receiving less of everything we know they need to experience a quality education. Our ongoing attempts at closing the proverbial achievement gap through various policies and practices, while necessary and generally well intentioned, have not adequately addressed vast gaps in opportunity and funding. Left unaddressed, these gaps will continue the disparate academic outcomes we witness along racial, economic, language, and ability lines. </blockquote><br /><br />I cannot in one posting thoroughly explore all of the legislative language. The office was kind enough to send me the text being introduced, along with some background and explanatory material, from which I am heavily borrowing. Today I want to give some background on both initiatives and offer a few comments of my own. I hope in the near future to go into greater depth on the issues these legislative initiatives are intended to address.<br /><br />The Student Bill of Rights (SBOR) is something the Congressman has been pursuing for several Congresses. The current iteration is based on the <a href="http://www.schottfoundation.org/publications/otl-arra.pdf">Opportunity to Learn</a> framework of the <a href="http://www.schottfoundation.org/">Schott Foundation</a>, and is supported by among other the National Education Association. As a key adviser to the Congressman wrote me, it <blockquote>addresses the centuries-old injustice of dramatic inadequacy and inequity of resources between school districts. While we have made significant strides in recent years in measuring the difference in educational outcomes between schools and districts, there has not been nearly as much attention paid towards the resources that encourage, allow, or promote student learning. We do not fully know to what extent all children have a meaningful opportunity to learn.<br /> <br />SBOR defines opportunity to learn indicators as:<br />• Highly effective teachers<br />• Early childhood education<br />• College preparatory curricula; and <br />• Equitable instructional resources<br /> <br />The bill requires that States provide ideal or adequate (as defined by the State) access to each of these resources. The bill also requires States to comply with substantive Federal or State court orders regarding the adequacy or equity of the State’s public school system.<br /> <br />Similar to improvement plans required under existing law, SBOR requires States to provide a remediation plan to address any disparity or inadequacy in the opportunity to learn indicators available to the lowest and highest performing school districts.</blockquote><br /><br />Here let me offer some observations, or if you will, editorializing. Let's look at the first of the opportunity ot learn indicators listed above, "Highly effective teachers." The current 2001 iteration of the ESEA, commonly known as No Child Left Behind, has a provision that all children are supposed to be instructed by "highly qualified teachers." Recently the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that teachers from programs such as Teach for America, which provide minimal training before placing their candidates in the classroom (in TFA, only 5 weeks), did not meet the qualifications of the law, and the parents of such children had to be notified. TFA is heavily politically connected, and as a result Sen. Harkin (chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions that previously was led by the late Ted Kennedy), inserted language into a Continuing Resolution to change the definition of "highly qualified" so that those from TFA were so considered and parents would not have to be notified. It is not clear to me how this benefits the students taught by those reclassified. In my mind, the change was more to benefit TFA and similar programs without regard for the impact of the effect upon the students.<br /><br />This should be of concern. Let me quote from the legislative language of the bill a portion which quotes from the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan: <blockquote> (9) According to the Secretary of Education, as stated in a letter (with enclosures) dated January 19, 2002, from the Secretary to States—<br /><br />(A) racial and ethnic minorities continue to suffer from lack of access to educational re- sources, including ‘‘experienced and qualified teachers, adequate facilities, and instructional programs and support, including technology, as well as . . . the funding necessary to secure these resources’’; and<br />(B) these inadequacies are ‘‘particularly acute in high-poverty schools, including urban schools, where many students of color are isolated and where the effect of the resource gaps may be cumulative. In other words, students who need the most may often receive the least, and these students often are students of color’’.</blockquote><br /><br />Whatever our national approach to education, if it continues to exacerbate the inequality of opportunity for children of lesser means, who are disproportionally found among minority communities (especially Black, Hispanic and Native American), we will continue a pattern of disparity that Brown v Board at least in theory was supposed to address, as were many other court rulings and legislative initiatives. Absent equity we will be leaving children behind, no matter how nobly we may label some laws.<br /><br />As to the Fiscal Fairness Act, allow me to quote the brief summary offered on <a href="http://fattah.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=18§iontree=2,18">the Congressman's Congressional web page</a>: <blockquote>The ESEA Fiscal Fairness Act – amends the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is up for reauthorization this year, and a takes giant step toward achieving the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal segregation in schools but has left unfulfilled the promise of equal opportunity in all our schools. The measure requires school districts to equalize the real dollars spent among all schools within its jurisdiction – with the imperative to raise the resources allotted to schools in the poorest neighborhoods to meet those in well-off schools – before receiving federal aid.</blockquote> Let me add language from the summary sent out by the Congressman's office: <blockquote>The original purpose of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA)was to provides supplemental funding to districts and schools to cover some of the additional costs of educating low-income students. Inherent in the law was the recognition that, because of the realities of povert, these students would need resources <i>in addition to</i> those available to their peers. More than any other provision in that law, the comparability requirement seeks to ensure that federal funds are used to support existing, equitable State and local efforts, rather than to compensate for State and district inequities. Because of loopholes in the Statute, Departmental regulations, and a lack of meaningful enforcement, this provision has never truly lived up to its intended purpose. The ESEA Fiscal Fairness Act seeks to correct this historic oversight and to restore the original intent of the ESEA. The bill addresses problems with the current statute and its implementation, as well as updates the law to accommodate current school improvement strategies and the use of Title I funds.</blockquote><br /><br /><br />If one reads through the legislative language of the two proposal, one cannot escape the realization that our ongoing approaches to educational reform are still failing too many of our young people, and thus our society as whole. Looking at the larger picture, which is often necessary to persuade legislators whose districts are not heavily affected by the issues these bills seek to address, or who philosophically or for economic reasons oppose spending federal funds for public education, we find arguments about the impact upon our economic interests as a nation and the high proportion of our young people who cannot meet the standards required for military service, thereby posing a potential threat to national security. I acknowledge these are important.<br /><br />For me, perhaps because I am a classroom teacher, my focus is the individual students. We have students who transfer to the school in which I teach from elsewhere. Some arrive without having had the opportunities necessary to develop educationally. Some come from schools that are resource poor, from districts that lack resources or distribute them in an unfair manner that tends to disproportionally hurt those who already begin with lesser opportunity. I believe that a public school should provide every student the opportunities that mean s/he can develop fully as an individual. Circumstances of birth and geography should not be allowed to limit one's potential. In part that is why I continue to teach in a PUBLIC school, despite the difficulties (overcrowded classrooms, financial stresses on the system, some disciplinary issues) concomitant with such a setting (although our school is far better off than many with respect to these and similar issues).<br /><br />I have no idea what chance Rep. Fattah has of getting his proposals enacted into law. With the Republicans controlling the House, and with some of the members of the relevant authorizing committee not particularly in favor of a major federal role in education, I am not sanguine about the changes of success in these initiatives. Still, I believe the Congressman is to be commended for raising the issues he does, because we need to consider the impact of what is currently happening to our young people, in large part because what we do in educational policy has the effect, intended or otherwise, of perpetuating and even exacerbating the lack of educational equity that has been such an unfortunate part of our heritage.<br /><br />If nothing else, perhaps these issues can become a part of the conversation. In my mind they should be more significant than the latest round of test scores.<br /><br />Unfortunately, there is a school of thought that thinks we should spend LESS on public education, that has no trouble with expanding class size - here I note that high scoring Finland committed to keeping class sizes significantly smaller than most American public schools, at a level round 20. One cannot help but wonder about that impact, even if Bill Gates argues that a highly skilled teacher with a larger class is better than two smaller classes one of which has a less skilled teacher. That may be true, but then should not the response be to provide more highly skilled teachers rather than overburdening those we already have? I am going to remember that when today I look out at my three Advanced Placement classes containing respectively 36, 38, and 38!<br /><br />I intend to remain in contact with the Congressman's office. I may even have a dialog with him. I am committed to helping people understand the issues around education. These are interesting proposals, worthy of full discussion and exploration. I fear that in the current climate they might receive neither. Part of my writing about them is to try to raise their visibility.<br /><br />Thanks for reading.<br /><br />Peace.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-20893010120568704422011-03-27T06:17:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.119-07:00The Finland Phenomenon - a film on schoolsOn Thursday night I saw the premiere of "The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System." This is the latest film by Robert Compton, who perhaps best known for "Two Million Minutes." <br /><br />Let me simply list the key takeaways from the film:<br />1. Finland does not have high stakes tests<br />2. Finland worked to develop a national consensus about its public schools<br />3. Having made a commitment to its public schools, Finland has few private schools.<br />4. When asked about accountability, Finns point out that they not only do not have tests, they do not have an inspectorate. They find that trusting people leads to them being accountable for themselves.<br />5. Finland does not have incredibly thick collections of national standards. They have small collections of broadly defined standards, and allow local implementation.<br />6. Qualifying to become a teacher is difficult.<br />7. Teachers are well trained, well supported, and given time to reflect about what they are doing, including during the school day.<br />8. Finns start school later in life than we do<br />9. Finnish students do little homework.<br />10. There is meaningful technical education in Finnish Schools<br /><br /><br />The premiere was introduced by the Ambassador of Finland to the US, and followed by a panel discussion. I will provide some comments about the panel discussion, but I want to focus mainly on the takeaways.<br /><br />The premiere was by invitation only, held in the auditorium of the National Press Club in Washington DC. After he was introduced by Bob Compton, the Ambassador offered a few remarks about the importance of education in Finland. We then saw the film, which was followed by a panel discussion led by Dr. Tony Wagner of Harvard U, who is the narrator of and featured in the film. Then came the panel discussion, about which more anon.<br /><br />Some commentary on the takeaways with which I began.<br /><br /><br /><br /><b>No high stakes tests</b> - Finland does have one test for college admissions. It does not have high stakes tests for high school graduation. Teachers and schools are not evaluated on the basis of student scores on such tests. And yet when nations are compared on the basis of scores on international tests such as PISA and TIMSS, Finland has been consistently at the top. Keep that in mind. Also understand that absent such tests with high stakes, Finland is not taking instructional time way from meaningful learning in order to prepare students for such tests. That leads to a more efficient use of instructional time for real student learning. There are entrance exams for tertiary education, which are used for student selection. There are no exit exams from high school, and no use of student performance on external exams as part of the evaluation of teachers or schools.<br /><br /><b>National Consensus</b> - The film points out that Finland is not rich in natural resou��rces, other than timber. They understood the need to develop creativity, to develop the minds of students to be creative people for the economy and the society. Much of what occurs in Finland is derived from this national commitment, which was developed over a number of years, and was very much the process of a bottom-up study rather than imposed from above legislatively or administratively. Here I might not that we do NOT have such a consensus. Insofar as there is a conventional wisdom right now in the US, it is that everyone is supposed to be college/career ready upon graduation from high school, which an increasing emphasis on STEM - science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I would also note that the Finns seem to understand the importance of educating the whole child, something that our current focus on STEM seems to ignore<br /><br /><b>Having made a commitment to its public schools, Finland has few private schools.</b> This of course is not possible in the United States - we have private schools with a history older than the US as an independent nation. That Finland went this route indicates how different our cultures are. Still, it is worth noting because of the emphasis on a common educational approach across the entire nation. It is also worth noting that the Council of State must approve the opening of a new private school, and that school is provided funding on the same basis as the local public schools, cannot charge tuition, and must admit students non-selectively. This makes private schools far less attractive than many in our country, which are deliberately established as elite institutions. <br /><br /><b>When asked about accountability, Finns point out that they not only do not have tests, they do not have an inspectorate. They find that trusting people leads to them being accountable for themselves.</b> - our emphasis on "accountability" for schools and those that work in them (although for some reason we do not seem willing to apply the same metric to those who almost destroyed our economic system) is often destructive real learning. When those of us who are professional educators try to point this out we have thrown back at us an accusation that we don't want to be accountable. We are accountable, first and foremost to the students before us, in ways that often cannot be measured by the poor quality tests upon which we have been relying. We are accountable to one another, since most of us recognize that we do not teach our students in isolation from the other adults responsible for their education, starting with their families, but including every adult within the school system. <br /><br /><b> Finland does not have incredibly thick collections of national standards. They have small collections of broadly defined standards, and allow local implementation.</b> - By contrast, our direction in the US has been to cram more and more in, even though it is not possible to meaningfully test all of the mandated content. As a result, in many subjects our approach to education is coverage of material but with superficial understanding. Assessments such as PISA which require a deeper understanding and application of material demonstrate that the emphasis we have been making is not improving real learning, even if the scores on our various state tests may have been going up. Local implementation allows for greater flexibility in meeting the students where they are, rather than being forced to move at an artificial speed to ensure coverage of material that will be assessed by external tests. We use tests to drive instruction to the detriment of real learning, no matter how good the performance on those tests might be.<br /><br /><b>Qualifying to become a teacher is difficult.</b> We have institutions in the US that take all comers. In Finland, as those paying attention already know, one has to have demonstrated superior academic performance at a post-secondary level in order to be eligible for teacher training. That is the greatest barrier. Then the training is far more extensive, with all teachers expected to earn the equivalent of a masters degree. <br /><br /><b>Teachers are well trained, well supported, and given time to reflect about what they are doing, including during the school day.</b> - The training and support are part of the preparation and qualification. New teachers do not simply walk into a classroom with responsibility for a full load of teaching. They are inducted gradually, with greater support, more opportunity to learn from experienced teachers. Of equal importance, even after they are experienced, they are expected to cooperate, collaborate, and most of all reflect, and they are given time within the school day. I know as a teacher how valuable it is to have to think about what just happened in a class. That is rare. There are times when I have had 4 classes back to back, covering 3 different preparations. I have 5 minutes between classes, some of which time I have to use for administrative tasks in order to maximize the amount of time available for instruction and learning.<br /><br /><b> Finns start school later in life than we do.</b> - in Finland schools start at age 7. In the US, 1st grade is normally age 6, but we have near universal Kindergarten at 5, and an increasing emphasis upon preschool even earlier. In someways what we are doing in these earlier programs is contrary to our best understanding of human growth and development, especially as we push elements of academic learning to ever earlier ages. We now obsess on having children reading "on grade level" in third grade, even though many of our young people are not developmentally ready for what we throw at them, and as a result get turned off to reading, a skill that is essential for much of what we later demand of them. I wonder if our approach is not more to provide mass child care to allow parents to earn greater incomes at the same time as providing business and industry with a larger work force that enables them to depress wages. But then, that is my cynical side showing. On this I think we keep children in school for too long - in terms of number of years, even in terms of number of hours. And then we ask even more of them. Which leads to the next immediate takeaway:<br /><br /><b>Finnish students do little homework.</b> - at the high school level, it might be an average of 30 minutes a night. We insist on so much more, to the point where some of our students are in theory supposedly doing 4-6 hours of homework. Of course they don't do it all, and what they do they often rush through. I want to come back to this point, and not just because I pay attention to what Alfie Kohn offers, and he has been critical of our insistence upon homework for many years.<br /><br />Finally, <b>There is meaningful technical education in Finnish Schools</b> - that is, it involves real world task with real world people. The Finns do not have our obsession with trying to prepare everyone to be college ready - or as we now phrase it, college or career ready - upon graduation from high school. Too much of our technical education is becoming focused on STEM, and does not recognize the real world skills that can enable one to earn a good living with other skills. I have written about this in the past, which is perhaps why this part of the film caught my attention.<br /><br />What also caught my attention was seeing students work in groups to solve real world problems. It was finding out that they have much more freedom in choosing the projects they do to demonstrate competence. I will also return to this point.<br /><br /><b>Homework</b> - Let me focus on my Advanced Placement class. It is supposed to be a college level class in American Government and politics. It meets 45 minutes a day for the entire year. While we have in theory 180 instructional days, the AP test is in early May, which cuts the time for instruction before that to around 150, although it is less with mandated testing, assemblies, shortened periods due to weather or administrative functions. If it met for 45 minutes for 5 periods a week, that would be 225 minutes. A college class that meets 3 times a week does so for 150 minutes. We are already devoting more instructional time than students would have in college. Of course, in college I would expect students to do 2 hours of work for each hour of class. That would be a total of 450 minutes between instruction and independent work. To equal that, students would be doing 45 minutes a night for my class outside of school, right? Except consider this: in college a full load of classes is usually 4, occasionally only 3. In our school students take 7 courses, occasionally 8. A similar commitment of outside time is simply not possible. <br /><br />Of course, related to this is our increasing emphasis on AP courses. We have students who as high school juniors are taking 6 such courses. That is 1.5 times the class load of a college student, when they are not yet in college. That concerns me. It concerns me that they do not have time to reflect about what they are learning.<br /><br />In the film we discover that older high school students in Finland often take only 3 or 4 courses at a time. That seems so much more sensible. We could do that with course that met for two periods for half a year, except what we do with AP makes that impossible - if you do it in 1st semester, the students are not in the course at the time of the AP exam, and if you do it in 2nd semester, the amount of time before the AP exam - or for non-AP courses any external state exams - means you have less instructional time than you would in first semester.<br /><br />Let me turn briefly to the panel discussion. It was led by led by Dr. Tony Wagner of Harvard U, who is the narrator of and featured in the film. It included Annmarie Neal, Chief Talent Officer from Cisco Systems; Gene Wilhoit, Executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers; John Wilson, Executive Director of the National Education Association; and Tom Friedman, author and columnist for the New York Times. I am going to ignore most of what Friedman said, other than to note that he seemed to want to prove that he was cleverer than anyone else and that he could coin the most memorable phrases. I got little of value from his remarks. Wilhoit and Wilson spoke at times bluntly, both representing the point of view of the organizations they direct. There was actually a fair amount of agreement.<br /><br />It was the remarks of MS Neal that caught my attention. She was very impressed by what she saw of students staying 26 hours in a school working together on a common project within broad outlines to come up with a real world solution. She related that to how Cisco puts groups of people together to brainstorm future business endeavors. And she related it to one of her real passions, which is Montessori education - she is a mom as well as a high-ranking business executive. In the Montessori approach one key emphasis is on the interest of the student. The role of the teacher is far less "sage on the stage" than it is of facilitator and to some degree of co-learner with the students. The kinds of people she is seeking for Cisco are far better prepared by that kind of approach that by the kinds of instruction far too common in our schools.<br /><br />Further, even though she works for a technology company, and needs engineers, she values the learning how to think that is a product of a liberal arts education. She expressed some concern that our focus on STEM is too narrow. <br /><br />I had a chance to chat with MS Neal briefly afterward, and she repeated those points. Remember her title - "Chief Talent Officer." She goes all over the world seeking out the best people for one of the more productive high tech companies in the US. I told her that her approach reminded me of something I had encountered when I worked in a data processing placement company many years ago. The old Philadelphia Railroad did not want mathematicians to train as computer programmers, it wanted musicians. I also noted that the 2nd best orchestra in the Boston area has traditionally not been found at Harvard or the New England Conservatory, but at MIT. <br /><br />There are things we can learn from Finland, as the film makes clear. It is not that we can simply transfer their approach to the US. If nothing else, we by now should have learned that taking a model out of its context and imposing it in a different situation often leads to failure, as many of our attempts at whole school reform demonstrated in the past couple of decades. <br /><br />What we can learn is that the direction we are going with our national policy on education is diametrically opposed to what Finland did to totally reform their educational system over a period of several decades. The Finns began in the 1970s. Our current round of reforms can arguably be dated to A Nation at Risk in 1983. While the Finns have made major improvements in their public education, we have perhaps not even tread water for too many of our students.<br /><br />We do have some superb public schools. We also have inequitable distribution of resources, and not just within schools. We lack a consistency of approach on how we are going to address our problems. We attempt to do much of what we do from the top down, whereas much of what happened successfully in Finland was because of a deliberate decision to do as much as possible from the bottom up. <br /><br />There are other things I could note. All students in primary and secondary schools get free meals. Students grow up learning Swedish and English as well as Finnish. There is health care in the schools. Oh yes, Finland's teaching force is 100% unionized. Administrators function in support of teachers, not in opposition.<br /><br />Some of this I knew before seeing the film. Not all of it is addressed in the film, nor was it addressed in the panel discussion.<br /><br />Can we learn from Finland? I believe we can. Too often Americans seem to want to ignore what we can take from other nations. Yet there is much we have already taken from other nations in education. After all, the original concept of kindergarten was German, as the name itself demonstrates (too bad that it is decreasingly a garden and much more of a regimen). We have in some places learned what Maria Montessori developed. It might be helpful for those wanting to understand what is possible in educating young children to also examine Reggio Emelia - I note that when I have asked some major politicians who are often considered committed to education what they know about the last, I have yet to find anyone who has any knowledge beyond perhaps having heard the name. Of course, the same is unfortunately true of most in the media who write about education and schools. Few politicians or education journalists are familiar either with Simpson's paradox or Campbell's Law, both of which are basic to truly understand much of the data upon which we are now basing major policy decisions. <br /><br />If I could offer one overall sense of what I derived from seeing the film, it was this - education in Finland is much more conducive to producing the citizenry necessary for the sustaining of a democratic government than what we are currently doing in the United States. <br /><br />That does not mean we should copy the Finns. In many ways we cannot. it is not merely that they have less than 6 million people, have far less poverty or economic disparity than we do. There are major cultural differences that can require differences in approach. <br /><br />But surely we can learn from them.<br /><br />Surely we can learn the importance of giving students the opportunity to explore their own interests.<br /><br />Perhaps we can learn from them that excellence in education can be achieved without mandating sameness from the top down, with no need for a punitive approach based on a test-based accountability system. <br /><br />We should learn from them the importance of properly selecting and preparing teachers. Yet for all our verbiage on the importance of teachers, somehow the policies we implement seem to work contrary to that stated goal.<br /><br />Is what Finland has accomplished really all that surprising? It shouldn't be. That the word "surprising" is part of the title of the film speaks more to what is wrong in our approach to education than it does to what is outstanding in Finland.<br /><br />Thursday night I saw the film, I talked with some people from the panel both before and after seeing it. I talked with the producer both before and after viewing it. <br /><br />I pondered until Saturday morning, when i began drafting this piece, to which i returned several times, finally finishing it in mid-evening.<br /><br />Were I to see the film again, I might have different takeaways. <br /><br />I offer this as a starting point, to let you know about it, and about my experience on Thursday.<br /><br />If you are interested in education and have a chance to see the film, I suggest you do. I found it worth the time spent viewing it. <br /><br />Peace.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-24483108233496850522011-03-23T14:32:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.120-07:00An incredibly important piece on teaching and educationSometimes one encounters something that needs no commentary from me - it is complete in itself. I want to share something like that about teaching and education.<br /><br />People who follow the blog Valerie Strauss runs at the Washington Post, the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet">Answer Sheet</a>, experienced that. Valerie often cross-posts things written elsewhere. Occasionally she posts something written directly for her. This morning she posted a piece by Linda Darling-Hammond, who is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University and was Founding Director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. Linda - who is a friend - now directs the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. <br /><br />When I read it I asked for - and received - Linda's permission to crosspost it here and at some other sites to give it more visibility. Let me offer just a few words of introduction, then let Linda's words speak without further commentary from me.<br /><br />Linda Darling-Hammond is one of the most important figures researching and writing about education. I ahve written about her work before, most notably <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/1/24/829576/-An-important-book-about-educational-equity-and-our-national-future">this review</a> of her book <a href="http://store.tcpress.com/0807749621.shtml">The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future</a> <br /><br />Linda Darling-Hammond was a close adviser on education to then Senator Obama during his presidential campaign. Many of my compatriots had hoped she would be named Secretary of Education. But she had published some research which made people associated with Teach for America unhappy, and there was organized pushback against her. I suspect that some from my perspective on educational issues would be far happier to have seen her at the Department rather than Arne Duncan.<br /><br />So be it. Darling-Hammond remains an important voice on issue of education. The piece you are about to read should speak for itself.<br /><br />Please read it carefully.<br /><br />And I thank you in advance for doing so, and ask that you also make sure it gets widely distributed.<br /><br />Peace.<br /><br /><blockquote>The first ever International Summit on Teaching, convened last week in New York City, showed perhaps more clearly than ever that the United States has been pursuing an approach to teaching almost diametrically opposed to that pursued by the highest-achieving nations. <br /><br />In a statement rarely heard these days in the United States, the Finnish Minister of Education launched the first session of last week’s with the words: “We are very proud of our teachers.” Her statement was so appreciative of teachers’ knowledge, skills, and commitment that one of the U.S. participants later confessed that he thought she was the teacher union president, who, it turned out, was sitting beside her agreeing with her account of their jointly-constructed profession.<br /><br />There were many “firsts” in this remarkable Summit. It was the first time the United States invited other nations to our shores to learn from them about how to improve schools, taking a first step beyond the parochialism that has held us back while others have surged ahead educationally. <br /> <br />It was the first time that government officials and union leaders from 16 nations met together in candid conversations that found substantial consensus about how to create a well-prepared and accountable teaching profession. <br />And it was, perhaps, the first time that the growing de-professionalization of teaching in America was recognized as out of step with the strategies pursued by the world’s educational leaders. <br /><br /><a href="http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/internationaled/background.pdf">Evidence</a> presented at the Summit showed that, with dwindling supports, most teachers in the U.S must go into debt in order to prepare for an occupation that pays them, on average, 60% of the salaries earned by other college graduates. Those who work in poor districts will not only earn less than their colleagues in wealthy schools, but they will pay for many of their students’ books and supplies themselve<br /> <br />And with states’ willingness to lower standards rather than raise salaries for the teachers of the poor, a growing number of recruits enter with little prior training, trying to learn on-the-job with the uneven mentoring provided by cash-strapped districts. It is no wonder that a third of U.S. beginners leave within the first five years, and those with the least training leave at more than twice the rate of those who are well-prepared. <br /><br />Those who stay are likely to work in egg-crate classrooms with few opportunities to collaborate with one another. In many districts, they will have little more than <a href="http://srnleads.org/resources/publications/teacher_pd/teacher_pd_2010-08_tech_report.pdf">“drive-by” workshops for professional development</a> , and – if they can find good learning opportunities, they will pay for most of it out of their own pockets. Meanwhile, some policymakers argue that we should eliminate requirements for teacher training, stop paying teachers for gaining more education, let anyone enter teaching, and fire those later who fail to raise student test scores. And efforts like those in Wisconsin to eliminate collective bargaining create the prospect that salaries and working conditions will sink even lower, making teaching an unattractive career for anyone with other professional options. <br /><br />The contrasts to the American attitude toward teachers and teaching could not have been more stark. Officials from countries like Finland and Singapore described how they have built a high-performing teaching profession by enabling all of their teachers to enter high-quality preparation programs, generally at the masters’ degree level, where they receive a salary while they prepare. There they learn research-based teaching strategies and train with experts in model schools attached to their universities. They enter a well-paid profession – in Singapore earning as much as beginning doctors -- where they are supported by mentor teachers and have 15 or more hours a week to work and learn together – engaging in shared planning, action research, lesson study, and observations in each other’s classrooms. And they work in schools that are equitably funded and well-resourced with the latest technology and materials. <br /><br />In Singapore, based on their talents and interests, many teachers are encouraged to pursue career ladders to become master teachers, curriculum specialists, and principals, expanding their opportunities and their earnings with still more training paid for by the government. Teacher union members in these countries talked about how they work closely with their governments to further enrich teachers’ and school leaders’ learning opportunities and to strengthen their skills. <br /><br />In these Summit discussions, there was no teacher-bashing, no discussion of removing collective bargaining rights, no proposals for reducing preparation for teaching, no discussion of closing schools or firing bad teachers, and no proposals for ranking teachers based on their students’ test scores. The Singaporean Minister explicitly noted that his country’s well-developed teacher evaluation system does not “digitally rank or calibrate teachers,” and focuses instead on how well teachers develop the whole child and contribute to each others’ efforts and to the welfare of the whole school.<br />Perhaps most stunning was the detailed statement of the Chinese Minister of Education who described how – in the poor states which lag behind the star provinces of Hong Kong and Shanghai – billions of yuen are being spent on a fast-paced plan to improve millions of teachers’ preparation and professional development, salaries, working conditions and living conditions (including building special teachers’ housing) The initial efforts to improve teachers’ knowledge and skills and stem attrition are being rapidly scaled up as their success is proved. <br /><br />How poignant for Americans to listen to this account while nearly every successful program developed to support teachers’ learning in the United States is proposed for termination by the Administration or the Congress: Among these, the TEACH Grants that subsidize preparation for those who will teach in high-need schools; the Teacher Quality Partnership grants that support innovative pre-service programs in high-need communities; the National Writing Project and the Striving Readers programs that have supported professional development for the teaching of reading and writing all across the country, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which certifies accomplished teachers and provides what teachers have long called some of the most powerful professional development they ever experience in their careers. <br /> <br />These small programs total less than $1 billion dollars annually, the cost of half a week in Afghanistan. They are not nearly enough to constitute a national policy; yet they are among the few supports America now provides to improve the quality of teaching. <br />Clearly, another first is called for if we are ever to regain our educational standing in the world: A first step toward finally taking teaching seriously in America. Will our leaders be willing to take that step? Or will we devolve into a third class power because we have neglected our most important resource for creating a first-class system of education?</blockquote>Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-29357105349449135992011-03-22T02:13:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.120-07:00I am a proud union member<div style="text-align: center;"><a title="edusolidarityIMAGE by OutsideTheCave, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/outsidethecave/5527497133/"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5052/5527497133_bd1b4f98bd.jpg" alt="edusolidarityIMAGE" width="250" height="250" align="middle" /></a></div><br /><br />I stand with my unionized sisters and brothers, especially in Wisconsin, but everywhere where teachers and unions are under attack.<br /><br />I am the lead union representative for more than 100 teachers in my school.<br /><br />Today, all across the country, teachers are blogging their support for our unionized sisters and brothers in Wisconsin, and you can follow some of the results of that at <a href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_207762892567061">EDUSolidarity</a><br /><br />Today I want to tell you why I am proud to be a union member as well as a teacher.<br /><br />I teach my students one period a day. We have 9, since some students take a zero period at 7:15 in the morning to squeeze in an extra course. Most of my students are sophomores, with at least 6 courses besides mine. I am only one of those responsible for helping them learn.<br /><br />For me teaching is a collaborative effort. It includes not only those of us formally designated as educators, but all of the support staff as well.<br /><br />Why are teachers unionized? Why do we insist on seniority being a major part of decision making about who stays and who goes?<br /><br />Let's go back. Why are any workers unionized? Because without cooperation, without the support of a union, an individual worker is at a huge disadvantage in negotiating with an employer - that applies to working conditions, to compensation, to benefits. As an individual, one is negotiating from a position of weakness. As part of a larger group, there is more leverage, and thus less capriciousness and even maliciousness in how those in positions of authority can deal with one who lacks the protection of a union.<br /><br />Nowadays we hear all kinds of statements about how seniority is keeping bad teachers and forcing good teachers out. Baloney. As a union rep I have helped move out bad teachers, teachers who were not good for the students. I ensured it was done fairly, that they had due process. That protects me and all the other teachers.<br /><br />How do we determine an "effective" teacher anyhow? If we make it all about test scores we will cheat the students of a real education.<br /><br />That's not the real issue. That is the rhetorical cover to replace more experienced teachers with noobies, largely over money. That's right. Over money.<br /><br />Put all the pieces together.<br /><br />We have Bill Gates saying that teachers don't really improve after their 3rd year. He says that additional degrees don't benefit the students by improving the teaching. Oh, and he wants to stop paying for years of service.<br /><br />My base pay is twice that of a beginning teacher. Absent protections of seniority, how hard would it be for an administrator pushed financially to find an occasion to find me, and other more experienced teachers, less than effective so that s/he could replace me with two bodies, thereby saving money on the budget.<br /><br />The workman of any kind is worthy of his hire. Some apparently don't believe that. They opposed raising the minimum wage, which is still far below what one needs to live. They want to pay less than minimum for teen-aged part-time workers. <br /><br />If the mentality is only about saving upfront costs, then we may be penny wise and very pound foolish. In engineering, whether a nuclear reactor near Sendai or levees near New Orleans, failure to put enough resources in up front can lead to catastrophic failure.<br /><br />The unwillingness to pay for the experience and quality of senior teachers leads to a constant turnover of younger, inexperienced teachers who are still trying to learn how to teach. While there may not be a catastrophe of the magnitude of Katrina, the loss of learning opportunities for our students is often irrecoverable.<br /><br />I want to quote a dear friend, with her permission. Renee Moore is one of the most distinguished educators in the US. She is a former Mississippi State Teacher of the Year. She has sat on the boards of a number of key organizations, including the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. She is a superb writer and speaker about education. She recently included the following words in an email a number of us received: <blockquote>The seniority system was put in place in an attempt to end capricious, retaliatory firings and various shades of nepotism. Given the current status of our evaluation system, if administrators are going to use "keeping the most effective teachers" as justification for who goes and who stays, teachers and parents should unite to demand they be very transparent.</blockquote><br /><br /><b>capricious</b> - what did the principal have for lunch, or who from the Central office yelled at him today<br /><br /><b>retaliatory</b> - Speak up, point out that this latest educational emperor is naked, and one might well be dismissed. Or if not dismissed, experience a retaliatory transfer, as happened to an outspoken teacher in DC who criticized the wrong-doings of one of Michelle Rhee's hand-picked principals. Even Jay Mathews, in general a supporter of Rhee, criticized her on this.<br /><br /><b>nepotism</b> - too many people forget when school boards would hire people who were related to them by blood or political affiliation even if they were unqualified. Absent protections, qualified people would be forced out for the nephews and the political contributors.<br /><br /><b>Due Process</b> - and <b>transparency</b> - things that unions can demand on behalf of their members, that individual teachers cannot.<br /><br />On Thursday I have been invited to the premier of a film. It is titled <i>“The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System”</I> and the viewing will be introduced by the Ambassador of Finland. 25 Years ago Finland did not do well on international comparisons. Now their schools are acknowledged as among the very best in the world. They take time to train their teachers, insisting on the equivalent of a masters degree. Oh, and their teaching corps is 100% unionized.<br /><br />The current highest scoring state is Massachusetts. As my friend Diane Ravitch points out, it also has a unionized teaching corps.<br /><br />Some want to take away collective bargaining rights completely. Others want to limit the rights severely, excluding working conditions and issue of assignments. These steps would deprofessionalize teaching, and then allow opponents to further demean those who teach, and justify further slashing their compensation and benefits.<br /><br />My periods are 45 minutes each. For some of my students, that 3/4 of an hour is more time than they spend with their parents each day. Do you want that 45 minutes to be with a trained, caring adult, who is not constantly fretting over how to pay basic bills? Do you want the teacher able to concentrate on the task of teaching our young people, or do you want to force her to take a second job in order to make ends meet?<br /><br />Teaching should be an honorable profession. For all the rhetoric that some offer about great teachers and the importance of teachers, their actions with respect to policy provide those paying attention a very different picture. They claim it is important to hold teachers "accountable" in many cases for things they do not fully control, but scream bloody murder at accountability for the criminal offenses of the financial sector that have helped create the financial crises that are being used as justification for attacking the unions and the benefits and the compensation of public employees, including teachers. They rant about bad teachers having tenure but say nothing about promoting generals who violate international and US law in their treatment of those detained under their custody. They want to examine everything about teachers to try to find an excuse to bash them further, to delegitimize them, but God forbid there be an honest investigation of the wrongdoings and dishonesties that involved us in conflicts abroad that by the time they are done will, according to Nobel winning economist Joe Stiglitz, cost this nation at least 2 TRILLION - maybe even 3 TRILLION - dollars. <br /><br />We shift wealth to the already wealthy, who then balk at paying for public services, perhaps because they have become so wealthy and powerful they have the ability to purchase whatever they need - including the occasional judges, senators, congressmen and governors. And more. But teachers are greedy because we want to keep the pensions to which we agreed as a form of deferred compensation, for our willingness to be paid less than people with comparable educational background.<br /><br />I am a teacher. I am by choice. I came to it late, but it is what I should do.<br /><br />I am willing to make some sacrifices. We do not have children of our own, in part because I could not commit myself to teaching as I do with the attention I give my students, were I to have the responsibilities of a caring parent. I make less than I did when I worked with computers, and my hours are far longer. <br /><br />Yet now some would want you to believe that my experience is not worth more compensation, that I should not be paid for the additional professional education I obtained AT MY OWN EXPENSE, and would be happy to see me replaced by two brand new teachers, in some cases with only 5 weeks of training and who are not committed to stay beyond two years, a period at the end of which they MIGHT be becoming good teachers.<br /><br />I have worked in Maryland, which is unionized in its schools, and in Virginia, which as a right to work state BANS collective bargaining by public employees, although Arlington, where I live and for one year taught, sort of gets around that. Which might be why they maintain a strong teaching force, without that much turnover. Which increases my real estate taxes because the good schools are something that draws families, along with our closeness to DC and the superb access to public transportation. My taxes go up because the value of my home goes up. The schools are a large part of that.<br /><br />What is happening in Wisconsin and other states, if it goes unchecked, will destroy much of value in this country. It will start with schools, already a target. It will affect other public service employees. It will bleed into the private sector as well, depressing wages for everyone, and exacerbating the increasing economic inequity in this nation.<br /><br />I am a union rep because I understand this, because I can speak - and write - to it.<br /><br />I am a union rep because my fellow teachers trust me to keep them informed, to make sure their interests are represented fairly, both within the building and within the very large (over 130,000 students) school district.<br /><br />I stand with my sisters and brothers in Wisconsin, in Indiana, in Florida, in Michigan, in all the places they are under attack.<br /><br />Today many of us are speaking out. We are writing. We are wearing red.<br /><br />Today we express our solidarity. <br /><br />It is not YET too late to take back our country, to save our public institutions, and thereby save the middle class.<br /><br />Not YET. But time is running out.<br /><br />Stand with us.<br /><br />Make a difference.<br /><br />And remember, if you could read this, thank a teacher.<br /><br />Solidarity! The only true form of Peace.<br /><br /><i><b>PS</b></i> <i>to read more posts on this theme, please go to <a href="http://www.edusolidarity.us/">EDUSolidarity</a></i>Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-31120422556143542452011-03-20T04:21:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.120-07:00What's Worth Teaching<i> this is a cross-posting of a review of <a href="http://tinyurl.com/4k5d6tv">this book</a>. The review original appeared at <a href="http://www.edrev.info/reviews/rev1057.pdf">Education Review</a></i><br /><br />Marion Brady is a retired educator. He has taught in K-12 and at the university level. He has written columns for Knight-Ridder Newspapers and guest-blogs for the Washington Post. He has authored textbooks. He wants to change American education far more radically than do those normally identified as “reformers.”<br /><br />This new book is the culmination of many years of thought and work. In it, Brady focuses on what he believes is key to reforming our educational institutions, and that is the construction of our curricula. As he has done for many years, he reminds us that the current framework of school curricula into four main domains of Language, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies is a product of the Committee of Ten in 1892, of which he notes <blockquote>The curriculum now in near-universal use in America’s classrooms was poor when it was adopted, and has become more dysfunctional with each passing year. About the only thing it has going for it is familiarity and the comforts of ritual. It’s accepted not because it’s good, but because, like most rituals, it’s unexamined. Its problems are myriad and serious. (p. 5)</blockquote><br /><br />In the opening chapter, from which those words are taken, Brady identifies six specific problems and then offers what he considers the biggest problem of all. The six are, in order of appearance, criticisms of the “traditional curriculum because it<br />1. has no Agreed-upon overarching aim<br />2. disregards the brain’s need for order and organization<br />3. fails to exploit the teaching potential of the real, everyday world<br />4. lacks criteria for determining what new knowledge to teach, and what old knowledge<br /> to discard to make room for the new<br />5. ignores important fields of knowledge<br />6. fails to capitalize on human variability<br /><br />For each of these Brady provides illustrations, before coming to what he considers the most serious issue he can identify: <blockquote>One problem, however, stands above all the rest in seriousness - the familiar curriculum’s failure to model the fundamental nature of knowledge. In the real world, the world an education is supposed to help learners understand, everything relates to everything. It’s a systematically-integrated whole, the parts of which are mutually supportive. The curriculum should model that whole, should help learners discover or create a corresponding conceptual framework or structure of knowledge, and it doesn’t. Instead, it breaks reality into myriad small pieces and studies each piece in isolation, with hardly a hint either of how the individual pieces related to each other or how they fit together. (p. 11)</blockquote><br /><br />By now you should have a clear sense of Brady’s intention. He wants to present an entirely different way of thinking about and organizing instruction, by rethinking and redesigning how we do curriculum, for it is the curriculum that should determine what is taught and how we teach it. <br /><br />Perhaps a key to understanding Brady’s approach to how we should organized curriculum can be found in one sentence at the beginning of Part Two, which is titled “A Solution.” On Page 15 we encounter the following: <blockquote>We take our systems of organizing for granted, but it’s no exaggeration to say that systems of organization make civilization possible.</blockquote><br /><br />It is not that we do not have a system of organization currently. Brady acknowledges that we do, but argues that it is dysfunctional, based on the outline of learning established in the 1890s by the Committee of Ten that approaches knowledge in a fragmented fashion, and which does not match how we naturally organize material in our brains. One can best grasp Brady’s thrust from two paragraphs (separated by one omitted sentence represented by the ellipsis) found on page 19: <blockquote><i>Systems </i>are what learners must understand, and that understanding comes from learners themselves investigating many different systems, looking for general principles. This requires (1) noting significant parts of the system being studied, (2) identifying important relationships among those parts, (3) deciding what forces are making the systems operate, (4) noting the interactions between the system and its environment, and (5) tracking changes to the system over time. . . .<br /><br />If learners apply these five general analytical categories, over and over, to systems of all sorts, the categories will give them a mental framework - a way of organizing what is learned. That framework will, of course, be enhanced by the addition of appropriate analytical sub-categories expanding the learner’s mental “filing system.”</blockquote><br /><br />Brady argues that the most important systems to study and learn are those that involve people as the main components. He suggest phrasing the elements of this systems architecture as being based on Something and defined by Time, Where in Space, Actor(s), Action, and Cause and the to Integrate. If one examines those five key elements, it should be reminiscent of basic journalism, albeit in a different order than the traditional presentation. Brady clear acknowledges this: <blockquote>As most readers will already have noted, the Model is just an elaborated version of what middle school newspaper staffs are told by their supervisors in their first meeting, that a proper news story include the relevant information about who, what, when, where, and why. (p. 27)</blockquote><br /><br />Only ultimately Brady’s model is a bit more complex, containing six elements. He chooses to phrase it as Time, Environment, Actors, Action, Shared Ideas, and Relationships, the last being part of how we apply what we learn from using the model to expand and deepen our understanding. Part II consists of an elaboration of this model, illustrated using several different examples from material students might learn in school, and amply supported by graphic representation. In a sense this is the heart of the book, as Brady tries to demonstrate how broadly applicable his model is. He explores how humans tends to explain, noting reliance upon either physical causes or human action, and our tendency to ignore the impact of anything we cannot fit into those two causes. He uses this as an illustration of shared ideas, a topic heavily explored in the section, which of course shapes our understanding of the world in which we live. <br /><br />This extensive section, pp. 15-70, is followed by a briefer third part in which Brady explores The Model and the Traditional Curriculum. He begins by noting limitations of the traditional approach, and then offers a few comments about possible uses of the Model within the current structure of curriculum. Thus we will see its application in History, The Social Sciences, The Humanities, Language, The Natural Sciences, and Mathematics. He also addresses what he calls Special Classes, such as teaching non-native students. <br /><br />After this exploration of the application of the Model within the various disciplines encountered in school, Brady devotes some time to discussing its limitations. Two often we are presented ways of thinking and organizing - and teaching - that are too rigid. Brady offers this caution:<blockquote>Although new models of the real world liberate and expand thinking, they also eventually begin to have negative effects. What begins as a way of modeling reality in order to make it intellectually manageable tends to increasingly become the way of doing so. Instead of checking our models against reality to see how they should be changed to make them more accurate, we tend to accept only information that fits with or reinforces the one we’ve come to find comfortable and useful. The longer we use a particular model, the harder it becomes to change or discard it. (pp 87-88)</blockquote><br /><br />For Brady, these words not only serve as recognition that if applied his model may need to be adjusted over time as it is applied. It is also implicitly a criticism of our continuing to rely upon a model of thinking more than a century old he thinks serves us poorly. He does not want to make the same mistake in his approach, even as he strongly argues that his model is much more usable, relates to how we tend to organize naturally, and thus can improve our learning far beyond what is too often the learning of facts and concepts too much isolated and unconnected to the real world. <br /><br />The third section covers 18 pages. The fourth and final section, Notes on Teaching, is only 16, from 89 to 104. In it Brady offers some broader thoughts about schools in general. He tells us that he began playing with these ideas more than four decades ago. He offers some anecdotes from his own experience. He strongly criticizes common aspects of what students encounter in schools. For example, under Roles he begins <blockquote>One of the messages transmitted by the arrangement of the typical classroom is that the teacher is an expert on the subject at hand and her or his role is to distribute information. (p. 92)</blockquote><br /><br />Similarly, under TEXTBOOKS we read <blockquote>To suggest that traditional textbooks are a major, perhaps the major obstacle to the achievement of educational excellence will seem to many to be nothing less than heresy. (p. 97)</blockquote><br /><br />Brady criticizes much of what we see in education as Theory T - that the purpose of instruction is the transfer of information from those designated as knowledgeable - teachers, creators of textbooks, curriculum and standards writers - to the captive audience of students. This implies a particular understanding of the purpose of school and how and what is to be learned. While Brady does not reference it, readers might see this as parallel to the banking model so heavily criticized by Paolo Freire. <br /><br />Against this Brady offers what he calls Theory R, one of relationship. He argues that much of what we learned and remember <blockquote>... we learned on our own as we discovered real-world patterns and relationships - new knowledge that caused us to constantly rethink, reorganized, reconstruct, and replace earlier knowledge. (p. 104)</blockquote><br /><br />I think it fair to say that what Brady is attempting to do with his model is to formalize how students learn naturally. He wants us to understand that the paradigm for how our schools and our learning is currently organized is outmoded - that is, if in fact it ever served a useful purpose. He believes strongly, as one involved with education for more than 6 decades, that we ill-serve our students and our society by remaining tied to a paradigm that does not support - and may hinder - real learning and understanding, that is contrary to how our minds work naturally. <br /><br />Brady is explicitly critical of the current approaches to ‘reform’ that dominate our educational policy discussions. He things we need a radically different approach.<br /><br />Like Brady was, I am a social studies teacher. Much of what he offers makes sense, based on my far shorter (16 years) tenure as a professional educator. I have seen bits and pieces of what he suggests in approaches such as History Alive! I have seen teachers do part of what he suggests. Where possible, I have implemented some similar approaches in my own pedagogy, which may be why when I first got to know Brady and his work almost a decade ago I found myself drawn to his approach. <br /><br />Drawn to it, but not completely convinced. Given my druthers, I would completely redesign our entire public education system. I simply do not see that happening. Like Brady, I am highly critical of much of the thrust of our current efforts at “reform.” Yet absent a broader reform of our society on many levels, the best we seem able to do is to try to ameliorate the worst effects of that ‘reform.”<br /><br />Nevertheless, I think this book is quite useful. It may not be possible to totally restructure our schools and our curriculum, but even within the current structure it is possible for schools, individual departments, individual teachers, to take what Brady offers and make major modifications to how they organize learning, to how they teach. In fact, many of our best teachers already do this. It is one of the stressors of being an educator that we are bound by rules and structures imposed from above and outside by people who do not fully understand either learning or teaching, we must seem to be abiding by them, yet our real fealty is to our students and to our discipline. I think it is possible for individual teachers to implement much of what Brady offers.<br /><br />Would it be possible to totally redesign public education along the lines of his model? In theory, yes, although I do not see it happening. Perhaps we will see some private schools, or some charter schools, as well as the occasionally very brave individual school attempt to follow what Brady suggests. The problem is this - so long as those in public schools are going to be measured by the kinds of tests and measure we currently use - something that will not be changed that much by the efforts of the two multi-state consortia now underway - the validity of Brady’s approach will not be fairly assessed. Those who try it run the risk of being found “wanting” by how we currently assess learning, even if in the long run students participating in such an approach will be far better educated in the best sense of that word.<br /><br />I said I was not convinced. I am not convinced it is possible to do as it needs to be done.<br /><br />I am convinced that there is much wisdom and insight in what Brady has presented. <br /><br />Those thinking about how to make what happens in our schools connect more effectively with our students will find this book useful for expanding their thinking, even if they decide they cannot fully implement all Brady suggests.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-64169594228408178892011-03-19T06:29:00.000-07:002011-07-05T04:52:14.120-07:00The Influence of Teachers<blockquote>Teachers can never declare "Missions Accomplished," because they are a bridge, not an endpoint, for all the boys and girls (and men and women) who come into their lives . . . . the teacher's job is to help students build a self, to create the entity that will be constant company for life. That's why the best teachers listen to students and draw out their thinking, but don't try to solve every problem. That's why the best teachers empathize and care deeply about students as individuals, but never lower standards or expectations.</blockquote><br /><br />The words above appear on p. 21 of a new book by John Merrow, who is probably best known as the correspondent on education for The PBS News Hour. The full title of the book is <a href="http://tinyurl.com/47ur7cd"><em>The Influence of Teachers: Reflections on Teaching and Leadership</em></a>. Merrow comes to this book with more than four decades of commitment to and interest in education: when he could not serve in the Peace Corp for physical reasons, he spent two years teaching high school, later taught at a traditional black college in Virginia while teaching evenings in the local penitentiary. Along the way he obtained a doctorate in education from Harvard and has served on the board of Teachers College Columbia, He has covered education for PBS and NPR since 1974. <br /><br />As a teacher and as one involved in education I found the book well worth the time spent reading and pondering it. I invite you to explore it with me further.<br /><br /> Merrow, who is devoting all proceed of this book to <a href="http://learningmatters.tv/">Learning Matters</a>, the production company he heads which actually published the book. Learning Matters was founded in 1995, and is an independent, non-profit, 501(c)(3) production company focused on education.<br /><br />The book begins with a brief preface titled "Fighting the Last War," which is followed by the preface. The bulk of the book is in two main sections. The first, Follow the Teacher, has 8 chapters including such subjects as evaluation, pay, training, retention, recruitment, and tenure. The second, Follow the Leader, has six chapters focusing on issues beyond the scope of individual teachers, such as Charter Schools, school safety, the revolving door of school and system leadership, and turnaround specialists. This examination is important because how a teacher functions is often a product of forces beyond her control, such as the context in which she teaches.<br /><br />Merrow ends with a brief conclusion, about which I will offer more later, but which I will note now was for me the heart of the book.<br /><br />Teaching is, and should be, a reflective process. In that sense this book is the product of a teacher's mind, even if Merrow has not himself for many years been a classroom teacher. He, and the members of his production team, have spent countless hours in schools and in classrooms, observing, filming, talking with adults but also talking with children. <br /><br />Much of the material in this book has appeared previously, and has been reworked to provide a more coherent overall approach. Teachers often recycle and rework material from one lesson into another: for one thing, we do not have enough time to create every lesson anew, for another, we are learning what works and what needs to be modified, and finally, what we should do should reflect our learning from our students. In that sense, what Merrow is doing in this book is functioning as a teacher, with his tv audience and his readers being the students in his classroom. Thus even though some of the material is not new, it is reexamined and represented in light of the overall goal of the slim but effective volume.<br /><br />In the preface, Fighting the Last War, Merrow presents three historical purposes of school: providing access to knowledge, socialization, and custodial care. He argues that much of the first two now occurs outside of or independently of what goes on in schools, and if custodial care is all that remains - and if technology is not made available equitably to all, we will continue to see students walk away from schools, leading to an annual drop-out rate of more than a million. He argues that many of the battles on education policy is that adults are fighting old wars and ignoring the real needs of the young people in their care. The two paragraphs that end this preface are important, because they help the reader understand how Merrow has, over time, come to view his role as an education correspondent, so allow me to quote them completely from page 8: <blockquote> Our young people should be learning how to deal with the flood of information that surrounds them. They need guidance separating wheat from chaff. They need help formulating questions, and they need to develop the habit of seeking answers, not regurgitating them. They should be going to schools where they are expected and encouraged to discover, build, and cooperate.<br /> Instead, most of them endure what I call "regurgitation education" and are stuck in institutions that expect them to memorize the periodic table, the names of 50 state capitals and the major rivers of the United States.</blockquote><br /><br />There are two additional points I think are necessary to understanding Merrow. First, he tries to let people speak for themselves. Whether he agrees or disagrees, he offers extensive observations of and words from the people we encounter. Usually he will allow diverse points of view to dialog with one another. That does not mean he does not offer an opinion. He does, often forcefully. But he allows the reader to process the materially independently before offering his own thoughts. That strikes me as the approach of an effective and caring teacher who does not attempt to impose upon his students his own opinion, but also does not pretend to be without a point of view. That allows the freedom for continued conversation and disagreement. <br /><br />The second is simply this, in words printed in bold on a page by themselves, before the book begins:<br /><br /><b>Dedicated to outstanding teachers everywhere</b><br /><br />As Merrow notes at the end of the introduction, the material on "Follow the Teacher" is "generally optimistic in tone and content." That is because he wants to trust the dedication of those committed to the teaching profession. Thus one perhaps should view the book in that light - the reflection of someone who wants to help those dedicated to the learning of our young people, who offers the observations of a lifetime of covering education, of trying to help those outside of the school context understand the issues that confront those working to further the learning of our young people, be they teachers, administrators, or policy makers. <br /><br />Merrow tries to be as sympathetic as possible to those about whom he writes, but is not afraid to criticize them when he thinks they are wrong. Thus even though he thinks highly of the commitment of someone like Paul Vallas, who has run school systems in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans, when that gentleman tries to justify why some of the charters in New Orleans are able to cherry pick students and avoid the harder to educate, Merrow writes bluntly, and includes the words of a parent advocate who is opposed to what Vallas is doing: <blockquote>Vallas is splitting hairs here, because a parent is entitled by law to enroll a child at the school of his or her choice and the school is then obligated to provide the necessary services. Is that blatant discrimination? Parent advocate Karran Harper Royal doesn't mince words: "That's discrimination. You can dress it up however you'd like, but it's really discrimination." (p. 129)</blockquote><br /><br />Some who are in what they have claimed is the reform camp will be unhappy with criticisms like this. Similarly, those opposed to many of the reforms will find Merrow's positive words about people like Vallas - and Michelle Rhee, another person he extensively covered - more than irritating. Yet they should read more carefully than merely reacting to Rhee's name. Merrow offers the criticisms of others, such as the union president in DC, George Parker, who pointed out that if you find half your staff deficient perhaps you have a responsibility to offer assistance to overcome that deficiency. Merrow also notes that principals with ineffective teachers already had an effective procedure to remove them before Rhee took over the schools, had they only followed it. <br /><br />I do not agree with all that Merrow writes. For example, he credits Rhee with changing the frame about how teachers are paid, writing on p. 132 "Largely because of her, it's no longer possible to argue convincingly that teachers, whether effective or not, should be paid based on their years on the job and graduate credits earned. Largely because of her, it's impossible not to recognize the absurdity of the current system." And yet, there were efforts well before Rhee's tenure in DC to reexamine the structure of teacher compensation, but that discussion is not yet fully defined. This is an ongoing discussion, one not yet fully defined. It might more accurate to say compensating teachers SOLELY on degrees and experience is no longer acceptable, both continuing education and experience may well be part of how teacher compensation is redefined. That is an ongoing discussion, one not as narrowly constricted as the words I just quoted might suggest.<br /><br />As I look through my markings and marginal notes, I find places I agree and places I disagree. The book often made me stop and think, and I would suggest that is a major part of Merrow's intent. In the section on teaching I found far more that I agreed with. For example, Merrow is blunt that it is time to stop fighting the reading wars, that students do not need more drills in decoding. In an examination of the coverage he did of Teach for America teachers, he notes criticisms by others about the emphasis on control before noting simply (p. 34) "Control was not an issue, ever. It never is when kids are engaged." He admires the dedication and idealism of TFA teachers, but responds to his own question of what's not to like with these words: <blockquote>Well, to be honest, sometimes their <i>teaching</i> is not to like. After all, they are first-year teachers who have had just five or six weeks of summer training and a short orientation in their assigned cities. They make all sorts of rookie mistakes. Occasionally I recognized in them that smug attitude I once exhibited towards veterans. (p. 34)</blockquote><br /><br />Regardless of how one reacts as one reads through the bulk of the book, I urge continuing to the end, to the conclusions. In four and half pages Merrow really brings it all together. This is the real reflection, and it is where he challenges much of our discussion about education. Since this is a book on teaching, one paragraph on the first page (177) of the Conclusion is worth noting, since it frames the rest of his discussion: <blockquote> That's the dilemma, and the ongoing battle: <i>Are mediocre teachers the heart of education's problems? Or is it the job itself, with its low pay and even lower prestige?</i> Those two very different analyses of education's problems are competing for domination, and whoever gets to define the problem is likely to control education policy for many years.</blockquote> So far, the so-called 'reformers" have dominated the discussion, because they have dominated the framing, and the media has largely gone along with them. As a teacher and a writer, I often find myself frustrated in attempting to get a differing point of view even considered. <br /><br />Merrow examines many of the key points of the reform agenda in his conclusion and offers important cautions, such and the unlikelihood of Teach for America teachers to remain in the classroom after their minimum 2-year commitment. He recognizes that we need to redefine what a "better job" would like for teachers. That may include changing the current structure of union contracts. He wants to give principals more authority over their staff, but frames it differently than do many "reformers:" <blockquote>Teaching will be a <i>better job</i> when principals have the authority over hiring their staff but are savvy about bringing trusted veteran teachers into the process</blockquote> Similarly, he wants to recognize the importance of teachers in evaluating how students are doing: <blockquote>It will be a <i>better job</i> when teacher evaluations of students count at least as much as the score on a one-time standardized test.</blockquote><br /><br />Both of the above are from the penultimate page of the Conclusion. <br /><br />The final two paragraphs, from p. 181, make clear how much Merrow values teachers, and how his coverage of education has helped frame his analysis.<br /><br />Let me take these paragraphs one at a time. The penultimate will sound familiar, since you will encounter words I have already quoted from earlier in the book: <blockquote>Teaching will be a <i>better job</i> when we recognize that the world has changed, and the job of a teacher is to help young people learn to ask good questions, not regurgitate answers. With the flood of information around them, young people need help separating wheat from chaff. And it's no longer the teacher's job to tell them the difference, but to give them the skills to inquire, to dig deeper.</blockquote> Here I have to note that if our primary way of assessing student learning is by multiple choice standardized tests often of dubious quality (which is why the Obama administration is putting $350 million into two consortia trying to create better tests) our instruction is going to be driven <b>away</b> from the kinds of inquiry about which Merrow writes, because it will not be valued by the tests used to measure "learning" and to evaluate teachers and schools. That is one reason why we cannot eliminate other forms of assessment, including teacher created tests and performance tasks. <br /><br />In order to truly focus on students, we do need to focus on teachers. And here Merrow's final paragraph is quite apt: <blockquote>When teaching becomes the <i>better job</I>. as described above, the brain drain will no longer be a problem - and we will likely discover that many teachers <i>now</i> in the classroom have been <i>better people</i> themselves all along.</blockquote><br /><br />Teachers operate within a context they do not control. Absent the appropriate context and support, we often do not truly know how good those teachers are, or can be. <br /><br />We will not improve our schools and how we educate our students without an <b>APPROPRIATE</b> focus on the quality of our teachers. Note that bolded word. <br /><br />This book helps provide that larger context. Remember the subtitle: "Reflections on Teaching and Leadership." The Leadership provided teachers can make a huge difference in how effective teachers are. Merrow recognizes that. He also recognizes that we cannot deal with what happens in the classroom in isolation from things like teacher turnover, the training and support given teachers, and many issues not within the control of teachers, individually or collectively. At least, largely not in the current climate.<br /><br />I look forward to Merrow's continued coverage of education. I hope he will expand his coverage to include examples of teacher leadership, such as the increasing numbers of teacher led schools which address some of the issues he thinks necessary to make teaching a <i>better job</i>.<br /><br />In the mean time, this book is useful, well worth the time to read. I think it lives up to those words at the very beginning, so let me remind you of them as I conclude. This book is <b>Dedicated to outstanding teachers everywhere</b>.<br /><br /><br />Peace.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-51666562645879575542011-03-04T16:04:00.000-08:002011-07-05T04:52:14.121-07:00Free speech, flabby thinking and multiculturalism<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">Cross-posted from <a href="http://smartandgood.blogspot.com/2011/03/free-speech-flabby-thinking-and.html">Smart and Good:</a></p><p class="MsoNormal">The Supreme Court has confirmed that the odious Westboro Baptist Church members may disturb military funerals in the name of free speech and folks in Orange County are <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/03/03/orange_county_muslim_protest">screaming indignities, obscenities</a> and blasphemies at Muslim American citizens as they enter a fundraiser for a women’s center. (Thanks to <a href="http://www.salon.com/">Salon</a> for this video.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have always considered myself a near-radical free speecher (believing that open discourse, even if testy, is better than hidden resentment –- and anyway “Sticks and stones …”) ,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>but maybe I’m just not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Or maybe there are once unthinkable lines that have now been crossed.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Either way, I am rendered speechless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I have no idea what to say about this issue, these actions.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But I am not speechless about a claim made by Ed Royce, one of the (Republican) local politicians who spoke at the Orange County rally before the protest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In fact, I share his worry though not his view of the cause and implications of it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Royce said that kids in American schools are being taught that “every idea is right, that no one should criticize any other position no matter how odious” and this, I fear, has a ring of truth to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It is a stance I encounter among the highly intelligent, accomplished and caring undergraduate students at my prestigious university; it is a stance that l too often hear articulated by the teachers with whom I work;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>it is a stance I see in evidence among students in the local public schools I visit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Royce blames it on “multiculturalism.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I think he and we have conflated flabby thinking and multiculturalism (or at least Royce and others have), making the oh-too-common error of confusing correlation with causality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Yes, we have multiculturalism (a good thing in that it simply <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">is</i> a human reality and also good in that it provides the difference that is the prompt for new thinking).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And yes, there is flabby thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Flabby thinking is a failure to interrogate (freely but with respect) any other position until (so that) the community (of knowers and actors) can move toward an assessment of which claims are defensible (and therefore warranted) and which are not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>There <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">may </i>be more than one position that we can live with, but this does not mean that “anything goes.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Mr. Royce’s brand of flabby thinking can be detected in his automatic dichotomizing (my way or the highway, right or wrong, Christian or Muslim).</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Educators should be about rooting out flabby thinking of all kinds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And, it seems, rooting out flabby thinking might also be the route to clarifying the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">value</i> of multiculturalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And maybe too, the demise of flabby thinking might replace the fear that underlay screaming at funerals and fundraisers with the kind of thoughtful confidence that makes dialogue possible and fruitful.</p> <!--EndFragment-->Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-22141723292949099442011-03-04T05:19:00.000-08:002011-07-05T04:52:14.121-07:00The Job Mismatch MythThe Obama administration has continued the fantasy of education as a solution to economic problems. Yet more evidence of this in a recent report refuting the idea that we need a whole slew of people trained in science and math and etc. Most of the actual jobs that are available are in the lowest paying and lowest skilled areas of the economy.<br /><br />From <a href="http://rwer.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/u-s-job-gains-concentrated-in-low-wage-industries/">the Real World Economics Review Blog</a>:<br /><blockquote>About 3.5 million of the jobs lost in the downturn were in high-wage industries, but fewer than 200,000 of the jobs created in the last year were in those same industries. Over half of the jobs created since the economy bottomed out were in the lowest-paying industries. . . .<br /><br />“[T]he job opportunities currently available to workers have deteriorated compared to what was available before the recession.” The NELP data flatly contradict the idea that the economy is currently facing a structural “mismatch” where workers don’t have the skills that employers are demanding. The recession-related job losses were concentrated in high-wage industries and the new jobs have been in low-wage industries, leaving millions of workers from middle- and high-wage industries high and dry.</blockquote>See also an <a href="http://educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/does-education-create-jobs-difference.html">earlier post</a> about why education does not create jobs.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-25840729850717080272011-02-28T06:17:00.000-08:002011-07-05T04:52:14.121-07:00To Succeed, Principals Need Support<em>Reposted from my dean's blog, originally published 2/18/11</em><br /><br />A.G. Rud<br /><br />A New York Times article about the shortage of people prepared to lead our schools reminded me of the value of the College of Education’s principal certification program and Ed.D. degree in educational leadership. Our colleagues in WSU’s Department of Human Development also offer a graduate certificate in early childhood leadership and administration.<br /><br />But solid university programs are only part of the solution to inadequate school leadership. For a faculty perspective, I turned to Assistant Professor Chad Lochmiller of our Tri-Cities faculty, whose research interests include support for school leadership. The comments that follow are Chad’s.<br /><br />The Obama administration’s emphasis on removing principals from failing schools rests on the assumption that principals alone drive student learning improvement. Yet we know from extensive research that there are many other factors, including ineffective instructional practices, lack of accountability, and absence of meaningful student supports.<br /><br />In some cases, changing a principal can disrupt reforms already under way and cause the school’s best teachers to leave. As research in Washington state has shown, classroom teachers cite support from their school principals as one of the most important factors influencing their decision to stay in their buildings. If the goal is to stabilize the school and refocus its efforts on instruction, then removing a principal may not only prolong that effort but derail it altogether.<br /><br />The administration’s approach also assumes that the problem is inadequate principals, not inadequate support for those educators. Principals will tell you that they are in desperate need of support given the plethora of new initiatives and reforms being thrust upon them. They need supervisors who understand and advocate for the specific needs of their buildings. They need access to data, instructional strategies, and other professional development to help them acquire the skills needed to support classroom teachers. They need opportunities to reflect on their practice, identify areas of growth, and target ways in which their leadership can best help students.<br /><br />The administration’s focus on school leadership challenges universities to make a stronger investment in preparing principal certification candidates. We must provide principals with the knowledge and skills to effectively improve classroom instruction starting in their first year on the job. This may require prep programs such as WSU’s to develop a much tighter relationship with K-12 educators. We must take shared responsibility with school district efforts to improve failing or under-performing schools.<br /><br />While I have several concerns about the administration’s approach, I do credit federal officials for their willingness to be creative. I’m hopeful that they will see the professional development of all educators—teachers, principals, and superintendents—as part of the solution to improving the nation’s schools.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-12558790034722112882011-02-28T06:13:00.000-08:002011-07-05T04:52:14.121-07:00A Super Start to Our Film Series<em>reposted from my dean's blog, originally published 1/31/11</em><br /><br />A.G. Rud<br /><br />Sponsoring a film series is a bit of an experiment for our college. Based on the first presentation, I predict it will be a success. Our goal is to address educational issues affecting children, families, schools and communities.<br /><br />“Waiting for Superman” was screened Sunday at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre in Moscow, launching the three-part series, Rethinking Education, that we’re co-sponsoring with our colleagues at the University of Idaho College of Education. We had a large crowd, filling the first floor of the theater and part of the balcony. A special thanks to Amy Cox of our development staff and UI faculty member Melissa Saul for organizing the Sunday program.<br /><br />“Waiting for Superman” revolves around five children whose futures depend upon winning a lottery to attend a charter school. The discussion that followed Sunday’s showing was led by Cori Mantle-Bromley, dean of the University of Idaho’s College of Education. The eight panelists included WSU faculty members Kristin Huggins, who came over from Vancouver, Paula Groves Price, and Xyanthe Neider. Cori asked them to consider some of the ironies of the film as well as their reactions to the portrayals.<br /><br /><br />Our film series opened in Moscow<br />Kristin, who has conducted research on professional learning communities, noted shortcomings in the film, such as a focus upon elementary and middle schools but not high schools, no mention of special needs students, and a concentration on only the good news about charter schools. For example, there was no mention of the corporate funding that helps support many of these schools, money that isn’t available to other public schools. Xyan spoke about her son and his struggles with schooling and how some parts of the film resonated with her experiences. Paula said that her reaction to the film was powerful and unexpected. While calling it overly simplistic, she noted that she is the parent of a young child and wants the best for her daughter as do the parents in “Superman.” (You can see Paula’s response in this YouTube clip.)<br /><br />My own reaction<br /><br />I found the film powerful, disturbing, and frankly a mishmash of many narratives and explanations. The recounting of recent school reforms, such as No Child Left Behind and the embattled tenure of Washington, D.C., school chief Michelle Rhee, was fascinating. The tale of the triumphs of charter schools ignored studies that point to less stellar achievement and to some of the colossal failures of charters over the past decade. We cannot say unequivocally that public schools are doing a weak job of educating students or charters are one of the best solutions, as was implied by this film.<br /><br />I was also struck by the sheer insensitivity of the charter selection process, the famous “lottery” held in a public setting as if it were a game show, with triumphant “winners” and many more disconsolate “losers.” This is perhaps the most poignant part of the film – you see the children whose stories you have followed for the past 90 minutes wait expectantly for the roll of the dice. It is profoundly saddening to think that education is reduced to such a spectacle.<br /><br />Finally, I was dismayed by the drumbeat of emphasis put upon a college education by many in the film. It was not even any post secondary path they trumpeted, it was a “four-year college.”<br /><br />Certainly many of our children are ill equipped for college, and for those who seek such an education we must do better. But to assert that a bachelor’s degree is necessary for a good life is foolish and biased. I did well in school, and hence became college educated, and now work in a university. But I don’t know much at all about how to take apart a motor, or build a house, or service a broken furnace. I admire those who have these skills, and I know I value them when my car won’t start. Why engage in idolatry about a college education? It is not for everyone, and it is particularly galling to see this emphasized in the film when President Obama is supporting community college degrees and post-secondary training.<br /><br />More to come<br /><br />The films and panel discussions in our series are free and open to the public. The other two documentaries will be shown on the WSU campus. “The Lottery” will be screened at 7 p.m. March 9 in Todd Hall 116. In the words of its creators, the film “uncovers the failures of the traditional public school system and reveals that hundreds of thousands of parents attempt to flee the system every year.” Kelly Ward, the interim chair of our Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling Psychology, will moderate that panel.<br /><br />I will lead the discussion after “The Race to Nowhere,” set for 6 p.m. April 14 in the CUB auditorium. The film features “the heartbreaking stories of young people across the country who have been pushed to the brink, educators who are burned out and worried that students aren’t developing the skills they need, and parents who are trying to do what’s best for their kids.”<br /><br />We look forward to seeing you there!Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-68709573429098299912011-02-05T07:45:00.000-08:002011-07-05T04:52:14.122-07:00Teaching 2030: an important book on teaching by teachers<i>this is slightly modified from the original which appeared at <a href="http://www.edrev.info/reviews/rev1037.pdf">Education Review</a></i><br /><br />Berry, Barnett, and the Teacher Solutions Team (2011). <a href="http://store.tcpress.com/0807751545.shtml"><i>Teaching 2030: What We Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools — Now and in the Future.</i></a><br /><br />In all of the public discourse of what we need to do to fix public schools and educate our young people for the future, one set of voices has until now been conspicuously absent. It is the voices of teachers.<br /><br />This new book, put together under the auspices of the Center for Teaching Quality established by lead author Barnett Berry, and with generous funding from the MetLife Foundation, is an important attempt to include the voices of teachers in helping frame the discussion of how we address our educational needs.<br /><br />Those of us in classrooms, unless we choose to be oblivious, recognize that our profession needs to be redefined. We lose too many good teachers from classrooms because too often the only path for professional and financial advancement is through administration. In the meantime, we see the students arriving in our classrooms changing as society changes. Often we are prevented from changing what we do in order to meet them where they are. We know this has to change.<br /><br />This book is the product of an extensive discussion among professional educators. Much of it was conducted online. The final product list 12 authors besides Berry, all themselves notable classroom teachers. They are the ones who sat down with him to put together the book as we have it. But that final product also included material offered by others in online discussions through the various arms of the Center for Teaching Quality, especially its Teacher Leaders Network, of which I am member. Thus while I was not part of the actual author group, I appear 3 times in the work. I do not think that disqualifies me from examining the work and encouraging others to read it.<br /><br />The teachers participating in this endeavor collective bring a diverse set of experiences to it. Renee Moore taught English high school students in the Mississippi Delta, where she now teaches at a community college. Ariel Sacks and Jose Vilson teach in New York City middle schools. Laurie Wasserman has almost 30 years as a teacher of special education. After a distinguished career in a classroom, Shannon C’de Baca has spent a number of years doing online education. Jennifer Barnett now functions as school-based technology integration specialist in rural Alabama. Kilian Betlach is a Teach for America alumnus who was well-known as a blogger and is now an elementary school assistant principal. Carrie Kamm is a mentor-resident coach for an urban teacher residency program in Chicago. Among these and others in authoring group are winners of State Teacher of the Year (including one finalist for National Teacher of the Year), Milken award winners, Lilly Award winners, and so on. All have experience in trying to improve the teaching profession beyond the reach of their own classrooms. One finds a similar range of diversity and an equal amount of accomplishment in the 33 teachers who are also thanked for their contributions in the online discussions in which we took part.<br /><br />In addition, those functioning as authors were able to participate in webinars with a number of outstanding experts from across the nation, including on expert from Australia.<br /><br />The result is a book rich in insight, analysis, and suggestions for the future, one that has already received praise from many notables associated with education and teaching. Of greater importance, it is a book that will speak to a wide range of audiences: those who prepare our new teachers, those who administer our schools, those who make policy, and most of all, to those of us who teach now or may teach in the future.<br /><br />In his Prologue, Barnett Berry makes a couple of key points that help a reader understand the thrust of the book. The authors <blockquote>...have come together, in harmony if not always in lock-step, about an expanded vision for student learning in the 21st century and for the teaching profession that will, in myriad ways, continue to accelerate that learning. (p. xiii)</blockquote><br /><br />They get to this point by examining what works now in order to describe what will likely work and be needed in the schooling of the future. The vision “emerges from a student centered vision” that takes advantage of new tools, organizations and ideas. It is based on four “emergent realities”:<br />1. a transformed learning ecology for students and teacher <br />2. seamless connections in and out of cyberspace <br />3. differentiated paths and careers<br />4. “teacherpreneurs” who will foster innovation locally and globally<br /><br />These rely on six levers for changes: 1. engaging the public in provocative ways <br />2. overhauling school finance systems <br />3. creating transformative systems of preparation and licensure <br />4. ensuring school working conditions that they know promote effective teaching <br />5. reframing accountability for transformative results<br />6. continuing to evolve teacher unions into professional guilds<br /><br />Each of these levers and each of the realities could be a separate volume. Thus the authors cannot fully explore the dimensions of each, yet they provide more than enough to lay out a vision that is clearly possible. In part that is because of the experience they collectively bring to the task, and what they have absorb from the webinars and from the exchanges with each other and with those who participated in online discussion.<br /><br />The aforementioned Prologue is titled “We Cannot Create What We Cannot Imagine.” It is followed by two chapters that can be considered introductory:<br />1. The Teachers of 2030 and a Hopeful Vision <br />2. A Very Brief History of Teaching in America.<br /><br />The next four chapters explore the four Emergent Realities, each in some specificity. For example, Chapter 5 explores the 3rd of these Emergent Realities, Differentiated Pathways and Careers for a 21st-Century Profession. In just over 30 pages the authors explore four subthemes:<br />1. Outgrowing a One-Size-Fits-All Professions <br />2. Redefining the Professions for Results-Oriented<br />Teaching <br />3. Teacher Education for a Differentiated, Results-Oriented Profession <br />4. Professional Compensation for Differentiated Profession<br /><br />After these four chapters the book spends almost 40 pages exploring the six policy levers of change before concluding with Taking Action for a Hopeful Future, with a subsection on “What You Can Do to Build a 21st- Century Teaching Profession.”<br /><br />Perhaps the power of the book can best be understood through the notion of “Teacherprenuerism” as it is explored in Chapter 6. The term first appears near the beginning, with the idea of teacher entrepreneurs serving in hybrid positions that don’t easily fit the normal way we classify teachers. Allow me to offer the paragraph from p. 7 which first presents the idea in some detail, after setting the stage by reminding us how already teachers, many National Board Certified and comfortable with using the tools of the web, are de-isolating teaching and offering cost-effective ways of propagating exemplary teaching practices: <blockquote>The fruits of those labors have been realized in 2030. About 15% of the nation’s teachers - more than 600,000 - have been prepared in customized residency programs designed to fully train them in the cognitive science of teaching and to also equip them for new leadership roles. Most now serve in hybrid positions as teacherpreneuers, teaching students part of the day or week, and also have dedicated time lead as student support specialists, teacher educators, community organizers, and virtual mentors in teacher networks. Some spend some of their nonteaching time working closely university- and think tank-based researchers on studies of teaching and learning - or conducting policy analyses that are grounded in their everyday pedagogical experiences. In some school district, teachers in these hybrid roles earn salaries comparable to, if not higher than, the highest paid administrators.</blockquote><br /><br />Lest one think that a pie in the sky belief about the future, several members of the team that wrote this book - and several of those who like me served as additional resources - already partially function in this fashion. The book posits a day where such teachers would not only be known to wider audiences of parents, community and business leaders and policy makers, but would be respected and listened to. Some of those participating in this process already have that kind of respect, for example, Renee Moore, who has served on the boards of both the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and as the first educator still in the classroom on the board of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (California). John Holland has served as a classroom teacher, a blogger for the Pew Charitable Trust blog Inside Pre-K and moderates an online community of accomplished teachers. Others have similar experiences of attempting to create hybrid roles where they can leverage their expertise and knowledge while remaining at least partially classroom based. They use their experience to project to the future they envision. The process has begun already, but the authors are talking about something more than selling one’s good lesson plans on E-bay. As John Holland notes in Chapter 6, <blockquote>The combination of self-publishing and the use of the internet as a platform for communication has already given rise to the “communities of practice” around topics ranging from lessons in how to teach fractions to using brain research to perform the teaching act as the highest levels. Teacherpreneurs will increasingly be leaders in these communities, which will stretch far beyond the confines of their school or district - a virtual domain where they are able to impact the profession on a large scale. (p. 143)</blockquote><br /><br />As more teacherpreneurs appear they will serve as a primary agents in developing connected learning. As we get more teachers who have greater facility in using the power of the web, not only will teachers be less isolated, but the nature of teaching will begin to change, and radically, as Emily Vickers notes <blockquote>Teachers will, in fact, be orchestrators of learning - a concept we talk about today, but one that will force itself upon most everyone who expects to be a teacher in 2030. (p. 145)</blockquote><br /><br />In part this will be because students will be accustomed to different ways of obtaining information. We are already seeing this among our current students. They know how to quickly obtain information, although we may still have to guide them in how to evaluate the information they obtain. They are comfortable building websites and increasingly also putting together wikis. It is incumbent upon the educational professionals to adapt what we do not only to meet our students where they are now, but also to anticipate how much this will change the nature of what we do. Teacherpreneurs will be key to a successful transition to a new approach to education.<br /><br />We still have a way to travel to even come close to such a radical rethinking of the teaching profession. The book points out how much we already know, and how we can begin to move in such a direction, even if the path may change over the next several decades from what even the most imaginative of our current teachers can foresee. A key to this is that others with whom teachers interact will need to rethink how they do their jobs. Administrators will need to spend more time in classrooms, even teaching, and most certainly embrace the idea of teacher leadership. Unions will need to rethink how they serve the teachers who are their members, being more open to diverse roles and with those diverse roles different models of compensation. Policy makers will have to be willing to support and invest in the development of the kinds of hybrid roles necessary to implement the kind of teaching we will need. University-based teacher education will have to change, being more connected with what is happening in classrooms, and working together with community-based organizations, as education moves to be more firmly integrated in the communities in which are schools are located.<br /><br />There are the first five points listed in the concluding chapter. By themselves they represent a major rethinking of how we have been approaching education and teaching. There are examples of these kinds of changes. I teach in a school that serves as a professional development school for a local state university, and we have had an increasingly close relationship between those who serve as mentor teachers and the university faculty. The next step is for more of those who are skilled mentors moving into a hybrid role where they not only mentor within their own classroom, but perhaps serve as adjunct instructors in the university environment, overcoming the artificial divide between learning about teaching and learning how to teach.<br /><br />For this to work requires three additional points, also covered in the final chapter. The communities must become more involved, helping encourage the new roles of teacher-leaders even as administrations and unions have to redefine their relationship with one another. Parents and students must be willing to advocate on behalf of the effective teachers, providing the support that will enable teacher leaders to help redefine the conversation about teaching.<br /><br />Most of all, teachers will have to step out of the isolation of their individual classrooms. They will <blockquote>... need to band together to document their professional practice and assemble both empirical evidence and compelling stories about what works in their classrooms and their communities - and, therefore what matters most for public policy. (p. 210)</blockquote><br /><br />The book is intended as a starting point for ongoing conversations. The authors do not presume that they have imagined every possibility. They want to encourage further discussion. They encourage people to visit them at either of two websites, that of the <a href="http://www.teaching2030.org">Teaching 2030 social networking site</a> and by connecting with other teachers from <a href="http://www.teachingquality.org">the Center for Teaching Quality’s New Millennium Institute</a>.<br /><br />I am as I write this in my 16th year of teaching. I have been a participant in the discussions of the Teacher Leaders Network for the past few years. I have gotten to know electronically a number of the authors of this book, and have been fortunate enough to meet both Barnett Berry and John Holland. I know how seriously all of the authors take the profession of teaching, and how much they already give of themselves to try to make the teaching profession a more effective way of serving our students, which is ultimately the goal.<br /><br />For too long the voices of teachers have been systematically excluded from the public discourse about education. In part this book serves as an important corrective, or at least the start of one.<br /><br />I am not only a teacher, but also one who engages in policy. Like the authors, I wear several hats besides that of classroom teacher. Here you encounter me as one who regularly writes about books on education in order to encourage others to read them. Like many of those who authored the book, I regular write online about education. We are bloggers; it is part of how we connect with one another.<br />Our expert teachers are a resource that we should value beyond what they accomplish in the classroom, as important as that is. We need to tap their expertise and insight, we need to hear their voices.<br /><br />If you read this book, you should get a sense of not only how important the teacher voice is, but also how much we all gain from including it in the discussions.<br /><br />What the authors have proposed is in some ways radical. It has the promise of moving us in a far more productive direction in how we approach the future of teaching. Since I am in my mid 60s, it is unlikely I will still be teaching in 2030. Several of the authors will be. They are helping reshape the profession to which they are dedicating their lives.<br /><br />I feel as if I should end with the voice of one of the authors. Each offers some closing words at the end of the final chapter. The last are offered by Renee Moore, whose work I greatly respect. It seems appropriate to end this review as the book ends, with the words she offers on p. 214: <blockquote>We stand on the cusp of a great opportunity to end generations of educational discrimination and inequity, finally to fulfill the promises of our democratic republic. I believe the noblest teachers, students, and leaders of 2030 will be remembered by future generations as those who surged over the barriers to true public education and a fully realized teaching profession - while myopic former gatekeepers staggered to the sidelines of history.</blockquote><br /><br />I too am dedicated to improving the teaching profession for the benefit of the students entrusted to our care. It is because I am that I fervently hope Renee Moore is right. Read this book.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-15676794209154590322011-01-30T03:43:00.000-08:002011-07-05T04:52:14.122-07:00Save Our Schools March - who we are, part 1.Last Sunday, January 23, I introduced you to <a href="http://educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/save-our-schools-march-and-national.html">Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action</a>, where I told you that <br /><br /><i>For the future of our children, <br /> we demand the following . . . </i><b><br /><br /> * Equitable funding for all public school communities<br /><br /> * An end to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation<br /><br /> * Teacher and community leadership in forming public education policies</b><br /><br />and that the date of the event was July 28-31, 2011.<br /><br />Starting today, I will begin to introduce you to some of the key people organizing the event, and explain why we are committing our time and energy to this important effort to save our schools.<br /><br />Today I would like you to meet Katherine Cox.<br /><br />From <a href="http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/aboutus.php">our About page</a> you can learn that <br /><br /><blockquote><i><b>Katherine McBride Cox</b></i>, who grew up in Louisiana, initially began her career as a college English instructor. She recently retired after 35 years as an educator in Arizona where she was a classroom teacher, an elementary principal, and a high school principal. She developed a nationally recognized career education program for 5th and 6th graders called Window on the World. She taught self-contained gifted students for eight years and later worked with at-risk middle school students. She also served as an instructional coach, coaching other teachers. She serves on the Information Coordination Committee and the Blogging/Social Networking Sub-Committee. </blockquote><br /><br />I asked Katherine why she was volunteering in this effort. She told me the following:<br /><br /><blockquote>When No Child Left Behind was passed, I was not as wise as others. <br /><br />Arizona is one of the most poorly funded states in the nation as far as K-12 education goes. I was glad that we would be getting additional monies.<br /><br />It took me awhile to see that we had made a pact with the devil. Standards actually were lowered because the state had to make the new state tests easier year after year in order to get enough students to graduate. The tests became meaningless, yet schools were ranked according to their test scores.<br /><br />In order to get the excelling label, principals were telling teachers to drill and kill on the subjects tested – reading, math and writing – and to neglect science, social studies, p.e. and the arts. In the past, at least 75% of our students were on grade level or better. Now I could see that the top 75% of our students were getting a worse education than these students had received before NCLB. <br /><br />As a high school principal, I could see a train wreck heading down the track. If freshmen had not had 4th grade geology – the rock cycle, including sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rock or 5th grade human body systems -- were we supposed to introduce these concepts for the first time to freshmen in biology and physical science classes?<br /><br />Learning became tedious for students and teachers alike. No longer were we attempting to ignite fires in the minds of our students. I ended up retiring in December of 2009 and set up my website, <a href="http://www.inthetrencheswithschoolreform.com">In the Trenches with School Reform</a>. <br /><br />I began following teacherken on Daily Kos, as well as bloggers such as Anthony Cody, Nancy Flanagan, and Valerie Strauss. I continually said in my blog – <em>I’m tired of talk. Others like me have been talking and explaining for years. It’s time to take action.</em> <br /><br />Anthony Cody and Victoria Young made contact with me and eventually I was asked to join this group. I was delighted to be asked to help. <br /><br />I had spent 35 years as a teacher and principal trying to make our schools better and better. For a long time, I believe I succeeded. After NCLB came along, it seemed that my life’s work had been for nothing. Everything I had helped build was dismantled. For what? I knew that we had fallen into the rabbit hole where everything is upside down and nothing makes sense. <br /><br />I’m in this battle to take our schools back and make them better. But first we must wrestle them away from the likes of the Michelle Rhees and Bill Gates of the world – and the grip of the federal government.</blockquote><br /><br />Katherine is just one those dedicated to the well-being our our students and health of our public schools who has stepped up to the challenges we face.<br /><br />We ask that you join us in supporting <a href="http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org">Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action</a>, July 28-31.<br /><br />You can see <a href="http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/endorsements.php">who has endorsed us</a> (and there you can find out how YOU can endorse us)<br /><br />You can <a href="http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/donate.php">contribute to help us</a>.<br /><br />See how <a href="http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/volunteer.php">YOU can help us</a> in this effort.<br /><br /><br />Thanks for reading.<br /><br />Please consider helping let others know about this effort.<br /><br />Help us <b>Save Our Schools</b>.<br /><br />Peace.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-80939830195577883532011-01-23T03:12:00.000-08:002011-07-05T04:52:14.122-07:00Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action<b>Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action</b><br /><br /><i> For the future of our children,<br /> we demand the following . .</i> .<br /><b><br /> * Equitable funding for all public school communities<br /><br /> * An end to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation<br /><br /> * Teacher and community leadership in forming public education policies<br /><br /> * Curricula developed by and for local school communities</b><br /><br />Those the four key demands of an important initiative on public education.<br /><br />It is geared towards a gathering in our nation's capital, <br />It is geared towards a gathering in our nation's capital, July 28-31 <b> sorry - I had wrong dates before</b>.<br /><br />We want your help and support.<br /><br />Here's <a href="http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/">our website</a> <br /><br />Let me tell you more, including why I am involved, and you should be as well.<br /><br />This is an outgrowth of efforts by many educators to have our voices heard in the discussions over education policy over the past few years. When Anthony Cody established the movement of Teachers Letters To Obama, we got the support of thousands, but in conversations with the Department of Education, including with Secretary of Education Duncan, somehow we were not listened to, but rather talked at.<br /><br />Let me share from the About Us page of our website: <blockquote>Getting to this point has been a long journey. For the last few years, thousands of teachers and parents have been calling for action against No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and, more recently, questioning Race to the Top (RTTT).<br /><br />Teachers, students, and parents from across the country have staged protests, started blogs, written op-eds, and called and written the White House and the U.S. Department of Education to try to halt the destruction of their local schools.<br /><br />Numerous efforts have been made to get U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama to listen to US – the teachers, parents, and students who experience the effects of these disastrous policies every day. WE know that NCLB is not working. Unfortunately, it has been almost impossible to make our voices heard. Although we have the knowledge, the expertise, and the relationships with students that make education possible, we have been shut out of the conversation about school reform.<br /><br />We, like all teachers and parents, want better schools. For our children’s sake, we are organizing to improve our schools – but not through the vehicle known as NCLB. It has been a disaster. Although there are various opinions about the many issues involved with school reform, it is now time to speak with ONE VOICE – that is, No Child Left Behind must not be reauthorized. We reclaim our right to determine how our children will be educated. We are organizing to revitalize an educational system that for too many children focuses more on test preparation than meaningful learning.We demand a humane, empowering education for every child in America.<br /><br />Where we are today is due to the efforts of many people. Diane Ravitch had the integrity and the courage to speak up when she saw first-hand the unintended consequences of No Child Left Behind. Jesse Turner (Children are More than Test Scores) walked from Connecticut to Washington, D.C. in support of public schools. The list of those who have inspired us goes on and on.<br /><br />Ken Bernstein (teacherken), Nancy Flanagan, Anthony Cody, Rita Solnet – so many people began to step up, saying, “It’s time to do something.” And here we are in January 2011. With thousands and thousands of voices shouting, “No, no, no” to NCLB and RTTT, and with few policymakers listening, we say, IT IS TIME TO TAKE ACTION.</blockquote><br /><br />I am honored to be a part of this group, although there are others doing far more than am I. They include university professors, retired principals, teachers, parents, educational advocates.<br /><br />Our list of endorsers can be seen <a href="http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/endorsements.php">here</a>, although it is hard for us to stay up to date, as more and more people involved with education, well known and ordinary people, step up to support us.<br /><br />We are planning a four-day event. It will include a gathering near the White House. It will include workshops and addresses based at American University. Diane Ravitch has already agreed to speak to us. <br /><br />Those of us involved in doing the work to prepare for this are doing it on top of our other responsibilities, because we believe in its importance. We are working with a professional organizer who has previously helped organize similar events in DC for non-profits. We understand what we have to do for permits, we have reserved space for both the demonstration and for the conference.<br /><br />But now we need more.<br /><br />We need support.<br /><br />We need endorsements.<br /><br />We need more volunteers.<br /><br />We can surely use contributions.<br /><br />Look again at some of the major names in education who have endorse this<br /><br />Diane Ravitch<br /><br />Deborah Meier<br /><br />Alfie Kohn<br /><br />David Berliner, past president of American Educational Research Association <br /><br />Yong Zhao of Michigan State University<br /><br />Kenneth Goodman, emeritus at U of Arizona<br /><br />Sam Meisels, President of the Erickson Institute in Chicago - an expert on early childhood education<br /><br />Note the leaders of parent groups:<br /><br />Julie Woestehoff of PURE in Chicago<br /><br />Rita Solnet of Parents Across America<br /><br />Mona David of New York Parents Charter Association<br /><br />we have former state teachers of the year<br /><br />we have university professors<br /><br />we have film makers<br /><br />we have ordinary teachers and principals<br /><br />We have much of the leadership of Rethinking Schools<br /><br />we have ordinary folks who care deeply about what is happening to public education<br /><br /><br />We are not being funded by the Gates or Broad Foundations. <br /><br />We do not have the access to media of Davis Guggenheim with Waiting for Superman, or Michele Rhee being on the covers of Time and Newsweek<br /><br />We have something far more important. We have the voices of those most committed to public education and the student in all of our schools, including charters.<br /><br />We need more.<br /><br />We need you.<br /><br />Please consider how you can help.<br /><br />You can <a href="http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/donate.php">contribute</a><br /><br />You can <a href="http://www.saveourschoolsmarch.org/join.php">sign up</a> to stay informed.<br /><br />You can volunteer by emailing our volunteer coordinator at elwaingortji at cbe dot ab dot ca<br /><br />You can pass on the information about Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action to others - via email, Twitter, Facebook or other means.<br /><br />Thank you in advance for anything you can do.<br /><br />Remember: <br /><br />July 28-31, 2011<br /><br /><b>Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action</b><br /><br />Peace.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-45861827697019465702011-01-20T07:25:00.000-08:002011-07-05T04:52:14.122-07:00Why Great Teachers Quit: And How We Might Stop the Exodus<blockquote>If teachers, parents, school boards, administrators, community members, and lawmakers can listen to each other and work on this problem together, we can lessen the tide of teacher attrition, ultimately improving the learning and working environment in schools for everyone. (p. 156)</blockquote><br /><br />Those are the final words of this new book by Katy Farber. Depending on what statistics you use, we lose up to 30% of new teachers in the first three years, up to 50% in the first five. Some clearly should not have been teachers in the first place. But others bring the passion, knowledge and, at least potentially, the skill we need for all of our students. Some of those we lose early in their career are already great teachers, others are potentially so. The reasons that cost us these teachers also cost us those later in their careers, who all recognize are great.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.corwin.com/books/Book233554">This book</a> can help us begin to address the problem.<br /><br />Katy Farber was mentoring another teacher at her school in Vermont when that teacher quit after only two years. She was stunned. Her mentee was enthusiastic, creative, and the kids loved her. Farber decided to study the issue of teacher attrition, why we lose so many so early, and in the process began hearing consistent messages from teachers across the country. This was also at a point in her own professional career that potentially represented a cross-roads for her: <blockquote>A perfect storm of difficult parents, a new principal, and a new teaching partner brought many of these issues to the forefront for me (p. xiii)</blockquote><br /><br />This book is something you can choose to sit down and read through, but the design makes it clear that there are other approaches you can take. After the various introductory materials, there are eight chapters, followed by a brief set of Final Thoughts by the author, a list of references, and an index. Each of the eight chapters focuses on a specific area that is a source of tension and possible disillusionment for teachers. In order, these are<br /><br /> 1. Standardized Testing <br /> 2. Working Conditions in Today's Schools <br /> 3. Ever-Higher Expectations <br /> 4. Bureaucracy <br /> 5. Respect and Compensation <br /> 6. Parents <br /> 7. Administrators <br /> 8. School Boards<br /><br />Each chapter presents a real-life scenario, drawn from Farber's contacts with teachers through conversations, posts on blogs, emails, and other forms of communication. The scenarios are followed by discussions containing thoughts from additional teachers, as well as a list of suggestions Farber describes as "practicable, applicable recommendations for administrators and teacher leaders" (p. xvi).<br /><br />It is fair to say that while there is no one single reason causing teachers to leave the profession, a large number of the reasons that influence them, and which Farber explores in this book, could be generally classified as experiencing a lack of respect. That lack of respect applies to skill, knowledge, work conditions, salary, treatment by administrators, and treatment by parents.<br /><br />Let's focus on working conditions for a moment. Teachers have far less flexibility for things like bodily functions and meals than do most menial workers. There are also issues with unhealthy buildings, use of toxic substances to clean. There are real issues of safety. Imagine you have a college degree. Now imagine you may have to go three hours without being able to take a bathroom break, or that you may have a lunch period as short as 15-20 minutes to yourself. That is the real world of conditions for many teachers.<br /><br />Or consider this. A significant proportion of teachers, particularly at the elementary level, are female. If they are starting families, and wish to breast feed an infant, is there any provision for a teacher to express milk during the school day? Or is our solution going to be that we are going to exclude nursing mothers from being in the classroom, even though we might thereby diminish the pool of highly qualified and effective teachers?<br /><br />Farber offers thoughtful comments from teachers on all the topics she covers. Because the impact of testing is perhaps the most covered of these, I will not explore the valuable material she offers on that topic. But we should not avoid exploring the related topic of ever-higher expectations. Even without the imposition of such higher expectations, responsible teachers already feel crushed by the demands on the time they have. Increasingly, the demands “are not directly related to teaching students” which as Farber notes, is often the main motivation for teachers to be in the classroom. She also writes: <blockquote>This state of affairs is exhausting and dispiriting. Many teachers shared that they simply don’t have enough time to do everything that they feel they should be doing. And it is eroding their personal and professional lives. (p. 44)</blockquote><br /><br />The advice offered by veteran teachers is to set limits, as one experience suggests to no more than 9 hours of school-related work daily. Yet this can create conflicts for those really dedicated to their students. If, for example, I were to limit my workday to 9 hours, of which 7.5 were in school, how could I conceivably read and correct papers from the vast majority of my 192 students in order for those corrections to be part of a meaningful learning experience? Do I limit the amount of work I assign in order to keep up with it? Do I shortchange the feedback to which my students are entitled? Do I allow the responsibilities of effective teaching to consume time that should be available for things outside of my school responsibilities? None of the three choices is truly acceptable, yet in reality for many teachers such are the options from which they can choose. Choices like this are just one example of the pressures that many good teachers experience, and that can help drive them from the profession.<br /><br />Hopefully by now you have a sense that that book will connect you with the real experience of real teachers. The structure provides not merely their reactions, but a context from which those reactions flow, as well as material that can help ameliorate some of the problems that are contributing to our losing some of the teachers we really want to keep.<br /><br />Just that justifies purchasing the book as a valuable reference tool. But that is not all one gets from this book. The final four pages of text, 153-156, are under the title of “Afterward: Final Thoughts” and these pages bring together final conclusions from the wealth of material Farber has provided. There are three sections, titled respectively, Why Teachers Teach,: To Educational Leaders, Policy Makers and Politicians; and To Teachers. In the first, Farber tells that most teachers look beyond the challenges discussed in the book.<br /><br /><blockquote>They tend to be idealists. They strive constantly to improve their teaching, public education, and the lives of their students. It is our responsibility as citizens, educational leaders, parents, and politicians to support them in doing so. (p. 153)</blockquote><br /><br />In the 2nd, directed to those who are not teachers but have a great influence on education, Farber offers 4 points, the last of which is this:<blockquote>Elevate the dialogue about public education by infusing your comments, thoughts, and ideas about education with respect for the hard work that teachers are doing in America. As you may have noticed from this book and several others like it, teaching is no easy task. Before making broad and sweeping pronouncements about education, think how your comments will forward the goals of educating children and supporting teachers. (p. 155)</blockquote><br /><br />Speaking as a teacher, were the public dialogue about education more respectful about teachers, we would likely be less resentful of others who do not understand the task of teaching and seek to impose “solutions” without regard to the real welfare of the students who are our primary concern.<br /><br />Farber concludes with words directed towards teachers. You have already read, at the very beginning of this review, her final words. In this final portion of the book she refers to words by Jonathan Kozol about making the classroom “a better and more joyful place than when [the students] entered it” (from his <em>Letters to a Young Teacher</em>). Kozol also reminds us that we cannot let our concern for professional decorum overwhelm and suppress our very human need to reach out to and comfort our students. Farber concludes her quoting of Kozol with words from p. 208 of that book directed to teachers: “A battle is beginning for the soul of education, and they must be its ultimate defenders.”<br /><br />Farber wants teachers to remember why we got into education, to reconnect with our beliefs, use those to fuel our energy. Or as she puts in the final sentence of her penultimate paragraph on p. 156: “Remember your core beliefs about life, learning, and teaching, and then let them guide and refresh you.”<br /><br />For public education to properly serve our students and our society, we must focus on quality teachers. They are the most important in-school factor. We certainly do not want to discourage the best of them, to continue to see them leave the profession out of frustration.<br /><br />This is a book by a teacher, with words of teachers, about teachers, and about the challenges they face. It can remind those of us who do teach why we do so, not only to reconnect us with our core beliefs, but also to motivate us to speak up beyond our individual classrooms on behalf of the well-being of our students and the ultimate success of public schools.<br /><br />The book is also something that others concerned with education should read with care, if for no other reason that no meaningful improvement in public education can occur without a solid and continuing cadre of dedicated and committed and highly skilled teachers. Insofar as politicians, policy makers and others ignore that, they will undermine the possibilities of any meaningful reform.<br /><br />We can no longer continue the ongoing loss of skilled teachers. It costs too much financially. It costs even more in lost learning and benefits to our society.<br /><br />I highly recommend that anyone concerned about the future of public education read and absorb this book. That would be a good start towards turning our discussions about educational policy in directions less destructive of the core of skilled teachers we have but we are losing.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-34972735370481595712011-01-16T15:00:00.000-08:002011-07-05T04:52:14.123-07:00Mario Small Responds<blockquote>Dear all,<br /><br />Considering the visibility of the Boston Review piece---and given its numerous distortions and misrepresentations---I think it's important for people to read the original paper themselves and arrive at their own conclusions. The Boston Review piece is threatening to set the discussion back 30 years. The Introduction to the issue (Small, Harding, and Lamont 2010) is available for free here: http://ann.sagepub.com/content/629/1/6.full.pdf+html . I believe the full issue is available for free, too: http://ann.sagepub.com/content/629/1.toc . Inspired by Wikileaks, I believe people should have the opportunity to read the sources.<br /><br />There might be a place at some point for a full rebuttal of the Boston Review piece, but a few especially pernicious misrepresentations are worth noting.<br /><br />1. On the claim that the Annals piece is trying to resurrect "the culture of poverty." This is completely untrue. The Introduction explicitly rejects the Lewis "culture of poverty" model for its theoretical inconsistencies and its failure to stand up to empirical scrutiny. A NYT reporter may have titled her column, "Culture of Poverty Makes a Comeback," but journalism is not scholarship, that column largely cites scholars who were not part of the Annals volume, and the Annals piece makes no such claim. For what it's worth, the title of our piece is "Reconsidering [that is, *rethinking*] Culture and Poverty."<br /><br />2. On the claim that the Annals piece is arguing that we should favor cultural explanations over structural ones. This is untrue (and rather ridiculous, for anyone familiar with Harding's or Small's work on neighborhood effects, organizational conditions, etc.). Instead, the Introduction explicitly argues that (a) decades of research have made clear the significance of structural conditions, and (b) we should evaluate cultural explanations *empirically*, not *politically*. If such explanations find no support, they should be dropped, which is the way scientific knowledge grows.<br /><br />3. On the implication that the Annals piece is arguing (as represented in the A&L Daily's lead to the Boston Review piece) that "black culture causes black poverty." This is not only untrue (and, again, preposterous to anyone familiar with our empirical research); it is precisely the opposite of our argument. We specifically reject the idea that there is a homogeneous black culture and, separately, report and cite the dozens of studies that have debunked the notion that the values of the poor are the cause of their poverty. Only Steinberg---and others in the media---seem to believe that anyone is still having that debate, which has been settled by the scholarship long ago. (I also find it disturbing that the Boston Review piece seems to use "black" and "poor" interchangeably when discussing cultural models, another tendency of 1960s research. Our review is not about African Americans, most of whom [as I have also argued elsewhere] are not poor, even in metropolitan areas.)<br /><br />There are many other distortions, but I should at least point out what we do argue. First, our core argument is that scholarship in poverty has been stuck in old models of culture (including the ideas that culture=values and that culture causes poverty) that have long been abandoned by sociologists of culture. The sociology of culture over the last 30 years has developed a long literature---on cultural capital, scripts, frames, institutions, and other models of culture---that have been fruitful in education, social movements, and other fields, and---we argue---would be useful in poverty research as well. This argument seems so elementary and non-controversial that one would have to be either blinded by an agenda or fully unaware of the recent sociological literature to find much to disagree with. Still, we argue that this task is important for three reasons (pg 9-11): (a) to understand why people, e.g., in the same poor neighborhoods, differ in their ability to cope with poverty; (b) to debunk the existing popular myths about the culture of the poor (yes, this is *our* argument, not Steinberg's); and (c) to clarify a rather messy literature on the definition of "culture." (We also show that ignoring culture can lead to bad policy.) Again, I urge you to read the works on your own, rather than rely on the representations of others.<br /><br />For what it's worth, readers will notice that Steinberg uses the Annals piece as a foil to have a one-on-one debate with Wilson that he's been having for decades. I'll let the principals speak to that. However, the fact that most of Steinberg's citations are dated before 1980 provides a hint that the review, superficial representations aside, is really not about our Annals piece.<br /><br />Steinberg's piece is devoted to angrily denouncing that cultural values among blacks are not the cause of their poverty. No kidding. We have known that for years, and no one was arguing otherwise. What we do not yet know, for example, is why poor children who equally value education differ in their possession of the cultural knowledge required to apply to college. Or how the cultural assumptions of policy makers and legislators are affecting anti-poverty policy. Both of these issues, among many others, are the subject of our volume, not the rehashed material that the Boston Review piece misleadingly implies. Steinberg's rhetorical trick is to resurrect a debate that no one was having and to declare himself the winner by adopting a long-settled position. Unfortunately, anger is no excuse to not keep up with the literature.<br /><br /> Mario</blockquote><br /><br />Postscript<br /><br />For some reason the system is not allowing me to post responses to my own post.<br /><br />Let me say that I put my earlier response up much too quickly, and that, in fact, I sent the Lamont and Small article to my entire faculty months ago because I was impressed with it. I should have made this clear.<br /><br />Wilson is a different issue--whether he means to be or not. And Steinberg's larger concerns are legitimate, whether the details of his issue with this book are completely on target. <br /><br />This is a danger of quick posts. Nonetheless I take full responsibility for the earlier post.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-21559779495193944172011-01-15T18:33:00.000-08:002011-07-05T04:52:14.123-07:00The Poverty of Culture of Poverty ArgumentsNote: See Mario Small's Response <a href="http://educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/mario-small-responds.html">here</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.1/steinberg.php">Poor Reason: Culture Still Doesn’t Explain Poverty</a>, by Stephen Steinberg <br /><br /><blockquote>Indeed, the comeback of the culture of poverty, albeit in new rhetorical guise, signifies a reversion to the status quo ante: to the discourses and concomitant policy agenda that existed before the black protest movement forced the nation to confront its collective guilt and responsibility for two centuries of slavery and a century of Jim Crow—racism that pervaded all major institutions of our society, North and South. Such momentous issues are brushed away as a new generation of sociologists delves into deliberately myopic examinations of a small sphere where culture makes some measurable difference—to prove that “culture matters.” . . .<br /><br />While he routinely violates his own axiom about the integral relationship between culture and social structure, Wilson injects what might be called the “culturalist caveat.” In a section on “the relative importance of structure and culture,” he concedes, “Structural factors are likely to play a far greater role than cultural factors in bringing about rapid neighborhood change.” But what structural changes does he have in mind? Despite the fact that Wilson’s signature issue for many years was jobs, jobs, jobs, since his cultural turn there has been nigh any mention of jobs. Affirmative action is apparently off the table, and there is no policy redress for the nation’s four million “disconnected youth” who are out of school and out of work. </blockquote><br />A few years ago I was preparing a section of a course to examine the current research on the causes of urban poverty. What I found was disheartening. William Julius Wilson has always been on the edge of "blaming the victim" arguments (if not over it). The description in the article linked above of the resiliency of "culture of poverty" arguments, despite their lack of much explanatory power, even among "progressive" scholars is extremely destructive. I have enormous respect for the authors in the <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=hV8A1Ptk8xcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Reconsidering+Culture+and+Poverty&source=bl&ots=E8NZPjcVHY&sig=MHt_A0seIq0UeRdErVnfS1GIh7E&hl=en&ei=mw8uTYWvDY2usAOXlvWIBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false">book</a> that this article focuses on. Mario Small and Michele Lamont are two of the best scholars we have. But I worry that because their focus is culture that they may end up inadvertently strengthening the culture of poverty issue. Their academic interest is culture, and so they seem to stress the importance of culture even when culture is not really that important. (I've made a similar argument before about the obsession of educators with pedagogy even when pedagogy is not the core issue.) <br /><br />Let's be clear. There is NO robust evidence that there is a durable "culture of poverty" in the central city or elsewhere that independently prevents people from succeeding. There IS extensive evidence that people develop a range of strategies designed to respond to the specific realities of their context. (I make this argument in more detail <a href="http://rer.sagepub.com/content/76/4/691.abstract">here</a>.)<br /><br />A fascinating study of an Indian reservation before and after the coming of a casino found that children of parents who had been poor prior to the casino acted in ways indistinguishable from children who had always been middle-class after the casino brought new income to their families.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6728609928808282469.post-48605588971272865802011-01-11T13:35:00.000-08:002011-07-05T04:52:14.123-07:00Faculty at WSU College of Education Weigh in on WA Governor's ProposalWhen Gov. Chris Gregoire proposed a <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013850318_edfunding06m.html">major overhaul of the state’s education programs</a> last week, I needed some expert input in order to have an informed opinion. I’m still learning what I can. So far, most educators I’ve asked agree on the need for change, but have reservations about the governor’s approach. Or they like her proposal, but doubt it will get past the political hurdles.<br /><br />Here are some of the comments I’ve received from my best source of information, the College of Education faculty:<br /><br /><a href="http://education.wsu.edu/directory/faculty/millerd">Darcy Miller</a>: It is a long overdue change. Folks involved with education from preschool to graduate school need to work together. As it is, their efforts are fragmented and disjointed. One group requires one thing, and another group mandates something else. While the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) sees its job as working only with K-12 schools, we in college teacher education programs must work with OSPI. It is involved with our accreditation, impacts the quality of our programs, and influences many aspects of teacher education. We need that office to view colleges of education as partners in preparing teachers.<br /><br /><a href="http://education.wsu.edu/directory/faculty/lochmiller">Chad Lochmiller</a>: There are two elements in the proposal that could, if implemented and funded, result in serious reforms. First, the governor’s idea of consolidation is good, except that she’s consolidating the wrong elements of the system. It makes more sense to consolidate the Department of Early Learning, OSPI, and the State Board for Community & Technical Colleges into one seamless system while leaving the university system independent. This would mean that the state is responsible for early learning through an associate’s degree. My belief is that we need to think in terms of a P-14 public education system. Every child should graduate with the skills and knowledge that comes with an associate’s degree and have access to the job market that the associate’s degree creates. Second, I like the creation of launch year for high school seniors — a concept that could work if OSPI and SBCTC were consolidated. Allowing students to begin exploring their professional interests in high school makes sense. We’re making a big mistake to route every child onto a college/university path. For some kids, that’s not what they want to do.<br /><br /><a href="http://education.wsu.edu/directory/faculty/ldhall">Leslie Hall</a>: A new Department of Education is a great idea for several reasons. First, the state’s biggest expense after personnel is education. As the executive officer of the state, the governor needs to know what is going on in all areas of education. In addition, the current bureaucracy does not make it easy for K-12 educators, OSPI, or higher ed and their multiple committees to talk about the common goal of educating students. My hope is that a Secretary of Education would facilitate conversations so that efforts would not be duplicated and a common vision for P-20+ students would inform all who work in Washington’s education arenas.<br /><br /><a href="http://education.wsu.edu/directory/faculty/frostj">Janet Frost</a>: In my experiences related to the Riverpoint Advanced Mathematics Project, I strongly agree that the educational system is fractured. For example, although a uniform college mathematics placement test was developed for use by all institutions of higher education, it is not being enacted because of those very divisions. Likewise, education funding is often split up in a way that limits projects like ours. For example, we cannot be funded to provide professional development for college math faculty, only for high school math teachers, thereby losing an opportunity to strengthen teaching at both levels so that students can make the transition successfully.<br /><br /><a href="http://education.wsu.edu/directory/faculty/sharrattg">Gene Sharatt</a>: There is no question that overlapping and conflicting commissions, committees and boards of directors often impede improvements in educational attainment for our students. However, it is unclear how one secretary of education would streamline the efficiencies of these organizations, because it would be essential for the new secretary to form advisory committees for sound counsel. More importantly, maintaining public accountability is critical and the highest form of public accountability is the general election. Maintaining independent bodies to ensure checks and balances is preferable to appointed leadership under one party.Adminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743171371453887844noreply@blogger.com0