We're Doing It Wrong

We need to take the education of poor children as seriously as we take the education of the rich, and we need to create systems that guarantee all of the elements of educational investment routinely to all children.

That's how Linda Darling-Hammond, former Education advisor to candidate Barack Obama, begins her plea for rationality and reason in public education in the United States.

In Diversity, Equity, and Education in a Globalized World, published in the summer edition of the Kappa Delta Pi Record*, Darling-Hammond describes how "reformers" in America are taking us backwards...doing exactly the opposite of what high achieving nations have done to improve their education systems. We...

• allow huge numbers of our children -- nearly 25% -- to live in poverty without adequate housing and medical care.

• allow the impact of economic stratification to manifest itself in education where more money, sometimes twice the amount, is spent on the education of the wealthy than on the poor.

• allow racial and economic segregation in education.

• spend more money on incarceration than on education. With 5% of the world's population we have 25% of the world's prison inmates at a cost of $50 billion a year.

States that would not spend $10,000 a year to ensure adequate education for young children of color in under-resourced schools later spend more than $50,000 a year to keep them in jail.

• invest in standards, testing and sanctions for "failing" schools instead of in a "highly trained, well-supported teaching force for all communities..."

WHAT HIGH ACHIEVERS DO

Using the examples of Finland, South Korea and Singapore, Darling-Hammond analyzes the reasons for their success...

• adequate and equitable funding for all children and schools

• competitive salaries and productive working conditions in all communities

• curriculum focusing on "higher-order thinking skills, inquiry, and problem solving"

• professional educators with time to collaborate on curriculum, assessment and lessons

• elimination of examination systems for tracking students

• a high investment in strong teacher education programs, recruiting top students, and subsidizing their extensive training

• support for educators through mentors, collaboration time, study, research

All three nations enable and expect teachers to engage in research on practice, and all three fund ongoing professional development opportunities in collaboration with universities and other schools.

• systematic implementation of these national behaviors rather than "a blizzard of unconnected 'reforms' and then changing course every few years..."

Unlike high achieving nations we don't provide adequate or equitable funding for all of our children. Instead we use the test and punish approach for "failing schools" which translates into students in high poverty schools getting fewer resources -- from libraries, to experienced teachers -- than their wealthier peers, and subsequently "punishing" those same students and their schools for not achieving.

Our schools, especially those with high levels of student poverty, are forced to adopt a "teach to the test" attitude, rather than a focus on learning skills such as problem solving and inquiry skills. Drill and kill -- aka test prep -- is the norm, not the exception in most schools, except for those reserved for the ultra-wealthy...schools like the Lab School in Chicago, or Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C. These schools don't subject their students to mind-numbing drill or massive testing programs which measure their economic background rather than their achievement.

Our public school teachers are over-worked allowing little time for collaboration. Massive amounts of paperwork -- "data gathering" -- takes up time which would be better used for meaningful preparation of lessons, analysis of curriculum, and professional collaboration with colleagues.

Instead of improving our teacher training many states have lowered the requirements needed to teach in the public schools. Untrained college graduates and subject area specialists with no education backgrounds are being allowed to teach in some states. Administrators with little or no professional education background are being allowed to run schools as if they were qualified. Indeed, the nation's highest education professional, the current Secretary of Education, has never taught school, never had any training in education. Would this happen in any other profession?

WHAT WE NEED TO DO

Darling-Hammond lists what we must do. As a nation we need to

• invest in adequate health care, housing and food security for all children

• provide high quality preschool

• support "equitably funded schools that routinely provide the central resources for learning—quality educators and learning materials..."

• invest in well-prepared and supported professionals in every community

• focus on learning goals, not tests

• organize "for in-depth student and teacher learning and for integrated student supports"

Billionaire "reformers" interested in increasing their wealth and power or driven by anti-public education ideology, along with their less-wealthy lackeys hoping to cash in, prattle on about providing a "world-class" education for the new century. Yet they and their minions in legislatures and executive offices do everything in their power to lower the quality of our schools...lessen the requirements needed for entry into the profession of education...and punish the neediest and most expensive to educate students and their teachers for society's failure to provide adequate resources.

The focus on privatization only exacerbates the problem of providing equity in public education. Tax money which should be used for the benefit of all in an open, well-supported and well-resourced public education system is being drained away into corporate bank accounts.

Schools, communities, teachers, parents, policy makers...need to work together to support and grow America's public education system, not privatize it and shut it down. We must end the inequity in funding and resources and allow all students to have the opportunity to reach their full potential...so our nation can reach its full potential.

For Further Reading

The Schools Chicago's Students:Research-based Proposals To Strengthen Elementary And Secondary Education In The Chicago Public Schools, by Chicago Teachers Union
Standardized Testing: Separating Wheat Children from Chaff Children by Alfie Kohn
The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future by Linda Darling-Hammond
Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? by Pasi Sahlberg

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*Linda Darling-Hammond (2013) Diversity, Equity, and Education in a Globalized World, Kappa Delta Pi Record, 49:3, 113-115, DOI: 10.1080/00228958.2013.819186

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

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Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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Make a Positive Impact on Students

At the end of this post is a link to a video of Dr. Rita Pierson's Ted Talk on teacher-student relationships. It's a perfect spirit raiser for the beginning of the school year. I urge you to take the 8 minutes needed to watch it.

ESSENTIAL TO LEARNING

I recently read Relationships play primary role in boys’ learning in the Kappan (subscription required. Read the abstract here).

...relationship does not merely contribute to or enhance teaching and learning; relationship is the very medium through which successful teaching and learning occurs. [emphasis added]

Relationships are essential to every classroom, every teacher, and every student. Children who develop good relationships with teachers learn better. As the adult in the classroom, it's up to the teacher to turn negative relationships into positive ones.

Successful teachers could operate independently of boys’ negativity or personal rejection, ultimately transforming the relationship from a negative to a positive one.

Relationships are not just built on personality, though. In a study reported in the article the authors wrote

Teachers and boys alike attributed the greatest number of relational successes to teachers’ efforts to meet their individual needs...In both their written narratives and in their personal interviews, boys stressed their appreciation and admiration for teachers who established clear expectations, held them to high (but attainable) standards and, through various affective gestures, convinced them that they could succeed in meeting them. [emphasis added]

Teachers who have difficulty relating to students can learn to do these things. The authors list eight...

...specific relational gestures that helped create the supportive relationships. In those accounts, teachers:

• Reach out, often improvising measures to meet a particular student’s need.
• Demonstrate mastery of their subjects.
• Maintain admirable standards
• Respond to a student's personal interest or talent.
• Share a common interest with a student.
• Share a common characteristic with a student.
• Accommodate a measure of opposition
• Reveal vulnerability

The bottom line is for the teacher to recognize and make an honest effort to meet a student's academic needs with authentic interest and caring.

RITA PIERSON

On the same topic, I also recently watched a short TED talk by the late Dr. Rita Pierson. In it she discussed the importance of building good relationships with your students. She said,

...one of the things we never discuss or rarely discuss is the value and importance of human connection. Relationships.

James Comer says that no significant learning can occur without a significant relationship. George Washington Carver says all learning is understanding relationships...

...kids don't learn from people they don't like. [emphasis added]

You know what it's like to work for a boss who reacts as if nothing you do is good enough. You try to do the best you can, but the criticism eventually takes its toll and you either quit, or stop trying. Students can't quit, at least not till they're 16, so they shut down. The writers of the Kappan article tell us,

...the teacher followed him and continued to berate him, concluding with “You are such a punk.” And, we asked, how did that make you feel? The boy said with conviction, “I hate him.” But, we persisted, you are still in the class, you have to work for him, right? The boy said, “I’m not doing anything in that class. He can flunk me. They can kick me out. I’m not doing anything.”

It's clear: Bad relationships destroy learning.

Speaking of her mother, who was also an educator, Dr. Pierson said,

...years later after she retired I watched some of those same kids come through and say to her, "You know, Ms. Walker, you made a difference in my life. You made it work for me. You made me feel like I was somebody when I knew at the bottom I wasn't. I want you to just see what I've become."

...she left a legacy of relationships that could never disappear.

Easy to say...but sometimes hard to do when you have difficult students.

...you know your toughest kids are never absent...and the tough ones show up for a reason. It's the connection. It's the relationships...

...How powerful would our world be if we had kids who were not afraid to take risks, who were not afraid to think and who had a champion.

Every child deserves a champion -- an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connections and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.

Developing relationships with students isn't a panacea for curing "education in America." It is however an important facet of teaching and learning. So-called education "reformers" in legislatures and governor's offices may be able to mandate testing, promote charter schools, give tax money to support religious and other private schools, starve struggling public schools instead of helping them, take away the professional authority of teachers, blame teachers and their unions for the "reformers" own failure to solve America's economic problems, and a host of other anti-public education behaviors...but they can't stop teachers from developing positive teaching-learning relationships with their students.

The late teacher-astronaut Christa McAuliffe said,

I touch the future. I teach.

Teachers touch the future by relating to their students. Our students will learn from us and remember us for the kind of people we are, not for the homework we assign, the lectures we give, or the standardized tests we administer. Content knowledge, pedagogy and assessment are important, of course, but in order to make a positive impact on students' lives, which is after all the main reason we are in this profession, teachers must build positive relationships with them.

Here's Dr. Pierson's Ted Talk -- 8 minutes -- watch it.

FOR FURTHER READING

Improving Students' Relationships with Teachers to Provide Essential Supports for Learning

Improving students' relationships with teachers has important, positive and long-lasting implications for students' academic and social development. Solely improving students' relationships with their teachers will not produce gains in achievement. However, those students who have close, positive and supportive relationships with their teachers will attain higher levels of achievement than those students with more conflictual relationships.

Forming Positive Student-Teacher Relationships Relationships

Many cognitive theorists argue that learning is a social event, and studies have proven that both teachers and students will pay the price if teachers neglect to form emotionally warm, supportive relationships with and among their students. To improve students’ chances for academic success, educators must strive to form meaningful personal relationships with students.

Chapter 1. Developing Positive Teacher-Student Relations

We all want to feel cared for and valued by the significant people in our world. Students are no different. This knowledge is a powerful tool in the arsenal available to you as you form your classroom discipline plan...When students feel that you value and care for them as individuals, they are more willing to comply with your wishes.

The Power of Personal Relationships

Teachers and administrators are often directed to distance themselves from the children in their charge. Despite the land mines that accompany personal relationships with students the authors argue that educators can still learn to build warm
and loving communities of learners.

Schools That Engage Children

...[conducted and analyzed] a survey of the member districts’ secondary school students that included more than 40,000 participants. The results indicated that student success depends on three qualities of teaching: content knowledge, pedagogy, and strong relationships with students.

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words - August 2013

Here are some pictures, graphic images and cartoons from around the net -- plus my own 2 cents worth of comments. Click on any image to see the full sized version.

They're All In It Together.

Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, the Broad Foundation, Jeb Bush, Michelle Rhee, and more...It's interesting how they all work together.

Pundits and Politicians Need to Get in the Trenches

This picture is a paragraph from Tony Danza's book, I'd Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Have Ever Had: My Year as a Rookie Teacher at Northeast High.

The important sentence in the quote is

It's so much easier for pundits and politicians to point out figures and blame the people who are in the trenches every day than it is to get in there with them, or even to find out what actually goes on in those trenches.

Experts for America

Here's a response to Danza's comment. Let those experts who are destroying public education...the so-called "reformers"...staff our schools for a nice long time.

Experts for America: Like Teach for America, only Better!

“With the aid of the Selective Service and approval from President Obama,” Mann said, “a new kind of draft will be instituted. All education experts between the ages of 23-60, all writers of books about education, all executives of companies profiting from the public schools, will be subject to call to active duty.” (Gasps from audience.)

“Some of you should expect notices this week.

“We know this may come as a shock. Each of you will be committing to work for ten years—minimum—in the toughest public schools. None of that sissy two-year stuff like ‘Teach for America.’” Mann added with a smile....I mean…you are committed to saving kids? Am I right?

Doctors for America

Is five weeks of training enough to prepare a teacher to work with the nation's most difficult to educate students?

We Need Smarter Reformers

I apologize for the poor contrast on this graphic. Click to see the larger, more readable original. Blogger John Viall, in his post titled, Finland Has Smarter Teachers! made the point that it's not the teachers in Finland who are smarter...it's Finnish society.

How would we compare if we had the same low poverty rate as Finland, a rate of between 3% and 4% as opposed to our 23%? Our schools with less than 10% of their students in poverty seem to stack up pretty well internationally. The problem is not with our teachers...or their unions...or our schools...it's with the level of child poverty in America, the so-called richest nation in the world. Testing and privatization isn't going to cure it.

Lessons Learned From the World's Highest-Performing School Systems

Where Are Your Votes Going?

I still don't understand how Glenda Ritz received more votes than the governor yet the people who pushed Tony Bennett's agenda through the legislature held on to their seats.

Ritz campaigned against the flow of public funds into private and privately run schools, yet those legislators who were elected or reelected the same night she defeated Tony Bennett have passed legislation giving more money than ever to private schools through vouchers, to private corporations running charter schools, and to virtual schools.

The people who passed Indiana's education laws are working against Superintendent Ritz. The Governor has increased the power the State Board of Education (filled will political appointees) to prevent Ritz from undoing the damage that Tony Bennett brought to Indiana.

Hoosier voters overwhelmingly elected a Superintendent of Public Instruction who promised to undo the damage caused by the Bennett DOE, and simultaneously elected people who would prevent her from fulfilling that mandate.

It makes no sense.

Where is Your Money Going?

Money for tests, tests and more tests...

What a Coincidence

"Reformers" have about as much understanding of what goes on inside schools as the student in this cartoon, yet politicians, billionaires, basketball players, and florists are making decisions which have a negative impact on public school classrooms with little or no input from the professionals who spend their days with students.

Don't Waste More Money on Tests

The Chicago Teachers Union in their publication, The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve, have it right...

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.

This isn't just good for Chicago's students...it's good for students all over the country. Give the neediest students the most support. It will cost money, of course, but which American child isn't worth it? Those who argue against "throwing money at the schools" are usually the ones who send their children to expensive private schools where they...throw money at them.

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Sign An Education Declaration to Rebuild America

All who envision a more just, progressive and fair society cannot ignore the battle for our nation’s educational future. Principals fighting for better schools, teachers fighting for better classrooms, students fighting for greater opportunities, parents fighting for a future worthy of their child’s promise: their fight is our fight. We must all join in.

~~~

Stop the Testing Insanity!

Sign the National Resolution on High Stakes Testing!

~~~

Where's Tony?

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