Garden Interlude

Our family gardner found this visitor in the bergenia (pigsqueak) this morning (click for larger image)...

(Photo taken with my little Nikon Coolpix S8100)

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Who Takes Responsibility for Classroom Conditions?

Education "reformers" are consistent in at least one thing. The "failure" of American schools is the fault of bad teachers.

You might remember the cover of Time Magazine featuring Michelle Rhee with her broom...ready to sweep away the bad teachers -- and the cheating scandal in D.C. schools uncovered after she was "swept" out of office hasn't seemed to stop her...

...or the Newsweek cover article which claimed that the "key to saving American education" was to "fire bad teachers."

Some "reformers" focus their blame on the evil teachers unions rather than the teachers themselves...and the fact that it's impossible to fire bad teachers because they have jobs for life (despite the fact that only about 50% of teachers make it past five years in the profession).

One current focus of "reformers" is to evaluate teachers by using test scores. Forget that it doesn't work..."we need to do something" to identify those bad teachers and get rid of them. We can improve teaching by putting more untrained teachers into classrooms, or lowering standards for entrance into the teaching force. (Yes, you read that right. Check out the push by Indiana's State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tony Bennett to lower the standards for entrance into the teaching force in Indiana.)

"Reformers" seem to believe that teachers have 100% control over student achievement.

The fact is that, while teacher quality is the greatest "in-school" factor for student achievement, out of school factors account for a much greater impact on students success in school.

Of course we want only good teachers in classrooms...and we need to identify and remove or retrain teachers who are incompetent or burned out. However, like most professions, the number of "bad" teachers is small (most of them get weeded out in the first five years) and getting rid of them, while desirable, won't "save" American education.

The vast majority of public school teachers are competent professionals who work hard every day and provide the best education they can for their students. But are teachers responsible for the so-called failure of public education in America? How much control does the average classroom teacher have over what gets taught (and how) in their classroom? The answer to that is a resounding "not much." "Reformers" are blaming teachers for variables that are out of their control inside the classroom...as well as outside (see The Blueberry Story).

• Teachers don't choose the standards taught in their classrooms and often don't get to choose the materials used to teach those standards.
• Teachers don't choose the standardized tests being used to evaluate their students, themselves and their schools.
• Teachers are often told that they must spend a certain number of minutes doing test prep.
• Teachers don't choose how much money is available for supplies (though teachers as a group spend hundreds, sometimes thousands, of their own dollars each year to supply America's public school classrooms).
• Teachers don't make laws governing public education.
• Teachers don't often get to choose what equipment is provided in their classrooms.
• (Feel free to add your own)

Often new technology is dumped into classrooms by administrations or school boards without input from teachers. Smart Boards and iPads might be helpful teaching tools when used correctly, but teachers are often bypassed in discussions of what technology should be purchased for their classrooms. In The Paradox of Teachers and Technology in the U.S., Larry Cuban explains the impact on schools of keeping teachers out of the decision making process.

[Teachers], professionals with advanced degrees, have little say in determining access or use of hardware and software in their classrooms. Policymakers decide, not teachers, to buy and deploy new technologies for classroom use.

School boards buy iPads for kindergarten teachers. Superintendents contract with companies to supply every classroom with interactive whiteboards. Sure, maybe a few teachers show up on a district-wide committee that advises the school board and superintendent but decisions to spend and distribute machines are seldom made by teachers, the foot soldiers of reform who are expected to use them in lessons.

As is so often the case, teachers are treated differently than other professionals.

Doctors, lawyers, engineers, and accountants working either as solo practitioners or in small groups decide which new technologies they will buy and use. In most public and private organizations that pay salaries to professionals, in hospitals, top decision-makers often meet and confer with doctors. Ditto for engineers and architects in big companies, and senior lawyers in firms. But not in school districts.

...Treating teachers as undeserving to be at the table when decisions are made about the buying and deploying of hardware and software reflects the low esteem that policymakers have for teachers.

Teachers are not afraid of accountability...but they have little control over that for which they're held accountable. Teachers should be accountable for their work, but policy makers must also accept some of the responsibility for the conditions under which teachers work.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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The Schools All Students Deserve

The Chicago Teachers Union has published a report itemizing what needs to be done to help improve the city's schools. To those who keep saying that critics of the "reform" movement never provide any ideas on how to "fix" the schools here's a good starting place. There's a 48 page report...and a 1 page summary all available at, The schools Chicago students deserve

Here is the one-page summary. You can download a pdf version here.

1. Recognize That Class Size Matters: Drastically reduce class size. We currently have one of the largest class sizes in the state. This greatly inhibits the ability of our students to learn and thrive.
2. Educate The Whole Child: Invest to ensure that all schools have recess and physical education equipment, healthy food offerings, and classes in art, theater, dance, and music in every school. Offer world languages and a variety of  subject choices. Provide every school with a library and assign the commensurate number of librarians to staff them.
3. Create More Robust Wrap-around Services: The Chicago Public Schools system (CPS) is far behind recommended staffing levels suggested by national professional associations. The number of school counselors, nurses, social workers, and psychologists must increase dramatically to serve Chicago’s population of low-income students. Additionally, students who cannot afford transportation costs need free fares.
4. Address Inequities In Our System: Students and their families recognize the apartheid-like system managed by CPS. It denies resources to the neediest schools, uses discipline policies with a disproportionate harm on students of color, and enacts policies that increase the concentrations of students in high poverty and racially segregated schools.
5. Help Students Get Off To A Good Start: We need to provide age-appropriate (not test-driven) education in the early grades. All students should have access to pre-kindergarten and to full-day kindergarten.
6. Respect And Develop The Professionals: Teachers need salaries comparable to others with their education and experience. They need time to adequately plan their lessons and collaborate with colleagues, as well as the autonomy and shared decision-making to encourage professional judgment. CPS needs to hire more teaching assistants so that no students fall through the cracks.
7. Teach All Students: We need stronger commitments to address the disparities that exist due to our lack of robust programs for emergent bilingual students and services for students faced with a variety of special needs.
8. Provide Quality School Facilities: No more leaky roofs, asbestos-lined bathrooms, or windows that refuse to shut. Students need to be taught in facilities that are well-maintained and show respect for those who work and go to school there.
9. Partner With Parents: Parents are an integral part of a child’s education. They need to be encouraged and helped in that role.
10. Fully Fund Education: A country and city that can afford to take care of its affluent citizens can afford to take care of those on the other end of the income scale. There is no excuse for denying students the essential services they deserve.

I don't know about you, but I think those are things that are appropriate for all public schools, in any city, in any state.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Desire to Learn or Need to Achieve?

When I was growing up my parents assured me that it didn't matter what career I chose, as long as it was something I wanted to do. In high school I focused on music and was convinced that I was destined for a musical career. I entered college as a music major, and quickly learned the difference between talent and ability (I had the latter, but not the former). I needed a change of direction.

After floundering in the College of Arts and Sciences for a while I graduated with a bachelors degree in Religious Studies which, like a degree in Philosophy, Sociology, History or any one of a dozen other "Liberal Arts" degrees, didn't prepare me for any "job" or career. So after graduation I gravitated back to music, something I knew and loved, and began working at retail music stores.

When my oldest child was born I became interested in child development. I returned to school and got my teaching certificate and a Masters degree in elementary education.

After teaching primary grades for 17 of my first 19 years as an educator I had the opportunity to work with students who were having difficulty learning. Like most teachers I spent extra hours focused on the students who were having difficulty in my class. When I had the opportunity to work with those students in a pull out program I took it. During the last 16 years of my career I worked with students who needed help in (mostly) reading and for 7 of those years I was a Reading Recovery teacher.

Throughout my own childhood and even into college I had difficulty with reading, so when I began teaching I worked hard to analyze where students were having difficulty. I became a passionate supporter of struggling students. It's clear that the interest I showed for those students was, at least in part, because of my own difficulties.

At each step in my adult life I focused on my interests -- music, religious studies, child development, elementary education, and finally teaching struggling readers. I didn't direct my attention towards a high paying career. I didn't consider what the "lifelong earnings" would be. I didn't spend time analyzing the future prospects for advancement in the job paths I chose. I followed my interests and my passions.

I felt no competition as an educator other than with myself. I compared myself to others only for the purpose of self-evaluation and deciding whether or not I was doing well. Perhaps because I had never been a high achiever I valued passion over practicality. I favored understanding over achievement -- interest over monetary gain. As an educator I was competing with the problems I faced, not other professionals. I focused on what I could do to be a better teacher and how I could reach students who were hard to reach.

Are today's students given the same opportunity to follow their interests?

High stakes assessments direct a child's attention to facts, details, and quick responses. There's little time for the higher level thinking skills of Bloom's Taxonomy -- creativity, evaluation, analysis.

In some places parents are very competitive -- often because the system forces them into it -- and push their children into a single minded quest for high achievement, high status schools and high paying careers.

The competitive, data driven madness of the current "race to the top" mentality of education, is robbing today's students of the joy of learning. Children are born with the desire to learn. They are natural wonderers...explorers...analysts. Our society's obsessive focus on "data" crushes the wonder and destroys the internal thirst for understanding. The desire to learn is replaced with the need to achieve.

The competition for grades, schools and achievement is often pursued at the expense of personal development. We're educating students to achieve but not to be well rounded human beings...and then we wonder why cheating is such a problem -- in education and in financial circles. Walt Gardner writes that Students Pay a Price For 'Success'.

We see this disconnect in Wall Street and in the legal profession, where elite credentials have failed to instill a modicum of integrity in so many. Their actions have hurt the country in a way not seen since the Gilded Age. Yet the obscene wealth they've amassed is glorified. Little is said about their achievements as human beings. Is self-service the only thing that matters? "For the super-elite, a sense of meritocratic achievement can inspire high self-regard, and that self-regard - especially when compounded by their isolation among like-minded peers - can lead to obliviousness and indifference to the suffering of others".

That's why I question the direction of the reform movement in the U.S. If schools are judged solely on data that are easily quantifiable, values are overlooked. Don't these count as much or more than test scores? The cheating exposés that took place at Stuyvesant High School in New York City and at Great Neck North High School on Long Island serve as evidence. It's well to remember what Oscar Wilde wrote in 1891 in The Picture of Dorian Gray: "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." It's too bad that students are not taught this lesson.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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