Here's to the Teachers...Students...Parents...and Schools

I read Frustrated Educators Aim to Build Grassroots Movement, a post about the Save Our Schools March on Washington scheduled for July 28-31, 2011, and in the comments I found the links to the following spots. Each one is less than a minute...Well worth the time to watch...

Here's to the Teachers...



Here's to the Students...



Here's to the Parents...



Here's to the Schools...

Research Based Policies

I already wrote about the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science report on the value of test-based accountability and incentives, but there are some things in the report which need to be repeated.

Conclusion 2 on p. S-4 of the Summary publication states,

The evidence we have reviewed suggests that high school exit exam programs, as currently implemented in the United States, decrease the rate of high school graduation without increasing achievement. The best available estimate suggests a decrease of 2 percentage points when averaged over the population. In contrast, several experiments with providing incentives for graduation in the form of rewards, while keeping graduation standards constant, suggest that such incentives might be used to increase high school completion.

In other words, graduation tests have not done anything to improve achievement and, in fact, have had a negative effect on graduation rates. Fewer students graduate because of them. This logically implies that the drop out rate is caused, at least in part, because of high school exit exams.

In March 2010 President Obama and the US Department of Education announced Steps to Reduce Dropout Rate and Prepare Students for College and Careers. What were these steps?

They begin with the national effort to help turn around America's lowest performing schools and are:

• The school must replace the principal and at least half the school staff
• The school must close and reopen as a charter school
• The school must close and transfer the students to higher performing schools within the district

or

• The school must address four areas of reform, including (1) developing teacher and school leader effectiveness (and replacing the principal who led the school prior to commencement of the transformational model); (2) implementing comprehensive instructional reform strategies; (3) extending learning and teacher planning time and creating community-oriented schools; and (4) providing operating flexibility and sustained support.

The next step is to keep students on the track to graduation by:

• Personalized and individualized instruction and support to keep students engaged in their learning and focused on success.
• Multiple pathways and credit recovery programs, such as high-quality alternative high schools, transfer schools, or career- and work-based experiences to help students catch-up and keep-up academically, and to get back on track toward a high school diploma.
• Better use of data and information to identify and respond to students at risk of failure, and assist with important transitions to high school and college.

None of the parts of the DOE's plan include getting rid of the exit exams. Getting rid of the exit exams would have the added effect of saving money. For example, the exit exam in California costs the state about $700 million a year. The state could save money and improve graduation rates at the same time.

Diane Ravitch in her recent blog entry, On Treating Students and Educators 'Like Rats in a Maze', writes,

Here is a golden opportunity for corporate reformers to reconsider their belief in carrots and sticks. The National Research Council of the National Academies of Science just released a major report about the value of test-based accountability and incentives. It appeared right before the Memorial Day weekend. It says that the train is on the wrong track. It deserves careful attention. I hope that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan, members of Congress, and all the luminaries of corporate reform will read this report with care. So should every teacher and principal and parent who cares about the future of education in this country.

There was another report released the same day. Ravitch wrote about it...

In another report, released on the same day, Marc S. Tucker, writing for the National Center on Education and the Economy, surveyed the practices of the top-performing nations in the world. He said that "much of the current reform agenda in this country is irrelevant, a detour from the route we must follow if we are to match the performance of the best." These nations, he said, do not test every student every year; they do not judge teacher quality by student test scores; they do not rely on computer-scored tests; they have a national curriculum that goes "far beyond mathematics and the home language covering, as well, the sciences, the social sciences, the arts and music ..."; and they have built over time a coherent process for recruiting, educating, and supporting excellent teachers who make teaching their career. Tucker's report deserves more space than I can devote to it here. Please take the time to read it. It is yet another clear sign that our "reform" train is on the wrong track.

She ends her post with rhetorical questions which will, I'm afraid, go unanswered.

Will anyone listen? Will Secretary Duncan? Will Congress? Will the Gates Foundation? Will the D.C. think tanks?

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SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH AND NATIONAL CALL TO ACTION

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A Lifetime of Elementary Schools -- Part 6

Harlan Elementary School: 1955 - 2011

If you've been reading this particular series on this blog you'll notice that I've gone from A Lifetime of Elementary Schools -- Part 2, to A Lifetime of Elementary Schools -- Part 6. I hope the reason for the jump will be clear in a moment...

Our oldest daughter entered Harlan Elementary's kindergarten in the fall of 1977. From that date on, someone from our family was attending Harlan as either a student, a teacher or a volunteer for the next 34 years. All three of our children attended Harlan from grades K through 6, my wife and I both volunteered there at one point or another, and I taught there for the last 19 years of my career.

On June 10, 2011 Harlan students left for summer vacation for the last time. No students will be returning in the fall...no teachers will be coming in during the summer to get things ready or get a head start on their new curriculum. Students will be going to four different locations for the 2011-2012 school year depending on where they live and what grade they're in. Harlan Elementary School, along with 3 others in East Allen County Schools is closing forever because of a budget shortfall of about 8 million of dollars.

I started teaching at Harlan in August 1991. My first assignment at Harlan was 6th grade. Before coming to Harlan I had taught grades K through 4...never students as old as 6th grade. I had difficulty with 6th grade, but with a lot of help from other teachers and the principal (emotional support as well as pedagogical help) I had a successful year. My teaching partner in 6th grade, who retired this year after 34 years at Harlan, was a great help and likely worked as hard helping me adjust to teaching adolescents as he did teaching his own students.

I taught second grade for two years and then moved to a pull out program teaching students who were having difficulty in the general education classroom. My job included helping students with class work, planning programs for students who were not able to keep up, and testing students to see where their strengths and weaknesses were.

In 1998 my job became two jobs. I continued with the pull out program, and began a career as a Reading Recovery teacher. I enjoyed Reading Recovery...it was hard, gratifying work. I taught both my groups of students for seven years, after which the Reading Recovery program was canceled due to funding issues.

In 2005, the year after my Reading Recovery position was cut, I began teaching a half time kindergarten...a grade I had not taught for nearly 30 years. In the intervening years, kindergarten had changed dramatically. Once again the teachers I worked with provided assistance. This time I needed help with curriculum. Ironically, the teacher who helped me the most had been a 6th grade student in another classroom at Harlan the year I struggled in 6th grade.

The half time kindergarten position only lasted one year and I finished my career teaching half time...just the pull out program. I loved working with individuals and small groups. It gave me the opportunity to help students who were struggling in their classrooms, just as I had been when I was a student at Rogers School in Chicago.

As a parent I was more than satisfied with the quality of education my children received at Harlan. The teachers were caring and effective and all made it clear that they were willing to do what needed to be done to provide my children with the support and tools they needed to succeed.

As a teacher this opinion didn't change. Getting to know the staff I was able to see strengths in teachers I hadn't seen before. I was able to recognize the depth of dedication present in the classrooms.

It's hard to say good-bye to a school filled with so many memories of my own children as students, of my classrooms and students, and of staff members, many of whom I now count as close friends. A teaching career is filled with memories like those...as well as laughter, frustrations, successes and failures.

The success of Harlan Elementary was not in its location, facilities, playground or classrooms. Those things are important of course...the clean classrooms and rest rooms, the meals in the cafeteria, the safe playground and spacious gymnasium. Those are all important parts of a school and I don't intend to minimize the consequences of not providing a physically safe environment and an atmosphere conducive to learning. Adequate facilities, however, can (and should) be available everywhere a school building is constructed. Harlan's success, however, was built on more than its physical structure. It was built on the hard work and dedication of hundreds of professional educators and staff members who provided a rich, educational atmosphere in which students could grow and learn. It was built on the strength of parents who worked with the staff to provide their children with the education every child deserves. And it was built on the children themselves who brought their hope of a bright future into their classrooms and gave life to a structure of concrete and carpet.

When our oldest was in school each child would go to the office on their birthday and receive a small gift. She often told me that she was happy to get the "birthday pencil" on which was printed:

"Harlan Elementary: A Super School"

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SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH AND NATIONAL CALL TO ACTION

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Evaluating Teachers with Student Tests

Room for Debate in the NYTimes the other day was about Testing Students to Grade Teachers. It's not just in NY City. The Indiana Legislature passed a bill requiring schools to evaluate teachers using test scores. Does it matter if it doesn't work? Apparently not. Where are the "Local Control Republicans" now that we need them?

Here are some excerpts from the debate. Not only are the opinions interesting, but the comments are as well. By the way, there was one writer who was in favor of using tests to evaluate teachers. You can find his article here. If you read that you might also want to reread a little about the research showing that basing incentives (including evaluations) based on student test scores doesn't improve student achievement.

Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommon Professor of Education at Stanford University, where she is co-director of the Stanford Center on Opportunity Policy in Education. She was founding director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, and she led President Obama’s education policy transition team.

Recent research shows that test score gains are highly unstable and error-prone for measuring individual teachers, and that making high-stakes decisions based on these tests causes schools to reduce their teaching of important content and skills not measured by the tests. As a group of leading researchers warned last week before the New York Regents voted on such a scheme, we can expect teaching and curriculum to be narrowed further as teachers focus more intensely on these tests, and we can expect teachers to seek to avoid serving special education students, new English learners and others whose learning is poorly measured by the tests.

Paul Thomas is an associate professor of education at Furman University in Greenville, S.C. He is writing a book on poverty in the United States. You can follow his work at Radical Scholarship and on Twitter at @plthomasEdD.

Overwhelming evidence shows that student outcomes in education are connected to out-of-school factors -- from about 60 percent to as much as 86 percent. But admitting and accepting that student achievement and education quality are overwhelmed by cultural and social dynamics speaks against our idealized view of our culture and our enduring faith in rugged individualism. . .

. . . Focusing on tests, schools and teachers allows political discourse to keep our attention distracted from the social failures reflected in our schools, not caused by our schools.
Why do we cling to test scores and demonize our teachers and schools? To avoid facing the plight of poverty on our children and our schools.

Francesca Burns has taught at middle schools and elementary schools in New York City since 1989. She currently teaches literacy to third- and fourth-grade students.

This testing-students-to-grade-teachers initiative is not coming out of what people who actually work with children in schools know. It is not even research-based: reasonably intelligent outsiders to the field could still steer us in a sensible direction. Instead, the plans are based on politics and soundbites, corporate sleight of hand (who’s getting paid to design this flotilla of assessments and the materials districts, educators and parents will scramble to purchase to help children prepare for them?) and high talk. In short: nothing.

Molly Putnam has taught at the High School of Telecommunication Arts and Technology in Brooklyn for eight years. She currently teaches government and economics in the social studies department.

So, why would New York City fall back on testing to assess its teachers? Because the real answer is too difficult and time consuming, and because it would require a cultural shift — from one that lays blame to one that encourages cooperation and support. 

This “Race to the Top” money could be spent on methods that have been proven to improve teacher quality and retention rates — like intensive student teaching and training in lesson planning, instruction and classroom management. A culture change would also mean having principals and senior teachers become even more engaged in mentoring and guiding younger teachers.

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SAVE OUR SCHOOLS MARCH AND NATIONAL CALL TO ACTION

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