Some sort of reform position from the union

According to the New York Times, the National Education Association has an official policy on student evaluation outcomes in teacher evaluations: Use them, but only if they're good tests.  The article does a good job of sampling the union's position and laying out some of the big picture of what this means.  (Full disclosure: I am a proud member of a local affiliate of the NEA.  While I'm not a union shill, the casual observer would be forgiven for thinking I was.)  From my perspective, the union's new policy feels like sense, and it resonates with my thinking on the matter. 

We need data to drive effective instruction.  We need good data about educational outcomes for students, and we need good data for educational outcomes for teachers.  (Someday we'll get to have the conversation about data for educational outcomes for administrators and school boards.  But in the meantime, teachers are the proxy for all those levels of the education machine.  And that's to put entirely aside the effects of poverty, parent responsibility, and all the other smoke screens we teachers like to release when people try to look at us too hard.)  This need for data means that we're going to have to include student testing in decision-making at some level; if data-driven decision making is going to be used to improve education, we need good data.

There are two key phrases: the more immediate concern is "good data."  Neither I nor any of my colleagues I've talked to about this (a pitifully small sample size; even if you count my former colleagues at my last posting, the total number of professional educators I've worked with adds up to less than 50, and the ones I've talked to add up to less than 15) trust any of the current assessments.  The disconnect between the assessments and educational reality is simply too great, for a lot of reasons, and it isn't necessarily because the ACT is "too hard."  It's not.  The reality is that assessments sample such a small number of learning goals, and do so in such a cursory manner, that drawing meaningful conclusions is tough.  Equally importantly, the current assessments are not really designed to evaluate the skill of instruction.  The good standardized tests assess really big ideas--critical thinking, drawing conclusions from data, things like that.  But they don't do it in a way that means a great deal.  Colleges have been de-emphasizing their focus on standardized test scores as an admission requirement, even as everybody else ramps it up.  The union's director of teacher quality makes a valid point: the Common Core curriculum might be a starting place for getting better standardized tests.

The second, long-term consideration about data is longer-term political.  I said, "if we're going to use data to improve education".  That wasn't a rhetorical flourish.  As trained professionals, many of us see the value in data (even if we lack the know-how, the resources, or the time to do anything about it).  But I for one don't trust the motivations of many of the people pushing "testing testing testing" as the new standard for teacher (and by extension public education) efficacy.  Many of them have a track record of being distinctly anti-public-education.  These are all the usual boogeymen for this blog: the Mackinac Foundation, private charter school management companies, people who think that a lack of officially-sanctioned prayer in school is de facto a reason to be against public education.  For many of these organizations (cue the "straw man" arguments, and I see your point), data-driven instruction may simply be another weapon to attack public education with.

Conversely, critics of the NEA (and, in this particular instance, I don't count myself among them) could argue a similar thing: In name, the union has accepted testing as part of teacher evaluations, while in practice rejecting any existing tests.  It will be at least a decade before the kind of tests the union wants are available, by which time this argument will likely be moot.  Good practice will show that high-stakes testing doesn't produce notably better education outcomes, and opponents of public education will move on to some other angle of attack.

So what's to be done?  Well, I can't do a whole lot about public policy right now.  Thanks to a recent vote in the Michigan Senate, my local union has less power than ever to do anything about teacher evaluations.  What I can do is this: use the (pretty crappy) data we have to make decisions about what's good for my students.  Make sure my learning goals are crystal clear in my head, and make sure my formative assessments are as good as they can possibly be.  Get the data that I need myself.  Make sure my class is so hard, when someone throws a standardized test at my students, they don't think twice about knocking it out of the park.  Make sure my support structures are so strong, that all of them get it.  Ray, I think you have the right idea:  What do you want students to know?  How are you going to help them learn it?  How are you going to know if they got it?  What are you going to do about it?  The key questions are the only ones that matter.

(Edited to fix spelling error in the title.  Thanks, Jamie.  Who's the English teacher around here again?)

Duncan on "Face the Nation"

Secretary of State Arne Duncan spoke to Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation on Sunday.



He gets a lot of it dead right, I think, and says a lot of the things that a Secretary of Education ought to say.  I like particularly that he made a point of praising the national union heads for their efforts in education reform.  As always, the charter school thing is niggling at me.  He likes them, I don't understand them.  He explains them thus: "I'm not a fan of charter schools, I'm a fan of good charter schools."  What does that mean?  Schieffer says that charter schools don't have some of the restrictions of other public schools.  Really?

But from the premise that charter schools drive innovation, a premise that I think is at best unfounded, he says a lot of things that sound really familiar to me.  And I like the idea of a government official helping other people to do what everybody knows works.

It's all about the students

This blog post is directed at my students, but it's part of a broader conversation that all of us should spend a lot of time on. It's a continuation of some conversations we've had about school rules, why we have specific school rules, and how, when, and why to work to change them. Students, this post turned out a lot longer than I meant. If you want to skip the essay and just leave your thoughts about our school's rules, policies, and expectations, just go straight to the comments. Please remember to be respectful; I don't want to have to delete comments for inappropriate language. (Imagine you're, maybe not in school, but at least in the parking lot outside with our principal standing nearby.)

Our school board sets the school rules; these are the things that are included in your planners that we go over at the beginning of each school year, and that the school-based adults should be reinforcing all year long. This includes the school cell-phone policy (you don't have one on school; if a teacher needs you to have one for a project, give it to that teacher before school starts and pick it up after school ends), the dress code (nothing distracting; no sleeveless shirts for men, no shoulder straps thinner than 3 inches for women, no shorts or skirts that come up higher than the fingers), the tardy policy, the graduation requirements, etc. The school board consists of people who have a stake in the performance of the school. In our case, it's mostly your parents, but it can also include local business officials, education professionals (usually ones who don't work for the school), and others. Their motivation in setting the rules is to keep you safe in school, and to provide you with the best education possible. They usually work with the schools' administration to make the rules.

We also have a set of school behavior expectations--Be Safe, Be Respectful, Be Responsible. (If you poke around in the archives, you'll find out more about how these came to be than you ever wanted to.) The Bobcat Code is another way of repeating the same basic ideals. Every community has rules about appropriate behavior, and these expectations are intended to tell us all what those are for our community. It's not just to tell students how to behave. It's also to tell teachers and staff how to behave, what to celebrate, who our good citizens are, things like that.

Each teacher has their own set of guidelines, too: rules, behavior expectations, and classroom procedures. The purpose of these guidelines is to codify how teachers and students interact. You can tell a lot about a teacher by their classroom guidelines.

All of these different levels of "rules" and "expectations" have one objective: to make school the best learning environment for you possible. In order for that to be true, the following things have to happen:

1. The rules have to be directed towards improving your learning experience. (That's why we don't have a "Buy American" clause in the policies--it's got nothing to do with your learning.)
2. You, the student, as well as we, the teachers, have to know what the rules are, what they're for, and what the consequences of following and not following them will be.
3. The staff has to apply those rules consistently, re-teach them regularly, and be prepared to explain (in an appropriate time and place) what the educational value of a rule is.

Changing rules isn't easy, especially at the "school-board" level. I think the best way to do that is to work through the student senate, or failing that, through the administration. The school-wide behavior expectations are a little more flexible. Talk to me or send me an e-mail for more information about changing those. At the classroom level, the teacher has a fair amount of discretion with her own expectations. She still has to enforce school rules and support school-wide behavior expectations, but "good citizenship" is a little bit different in each class, for each teacher. If you think a teacher has expectations that are detrimental to your learning, talk to her. There are ways of getting REALLY harmful classroom policies rescinded, but we all want you to be in the best learning environment possible. Try talking to us first.

In any case, with any rules change, be prepared to justify how the change will help your education. Once, I asked students what they thought about school policies. One student responded, "There should be a boxing ring where students who aren't getting along can beat each other up." We asked how it would help their education to get into fights. The response: "It wouldn't. But it would be fun." Whether it would be fun or not, it would be at the expense of the safety of the students, it would take away from learning, and it wouldn't work as well as more productive, non-violent means of problem-solving. So that's an example of a bad policy change.

SO....after all that, what do you think about our school policy? What works, what doesn't? What could work better?

Brown / Brookings

I got an article from the Brookings Institute, reviewing the 2008 Brown Center Report on American Education, from my principal a couple of weeks ago. It's been sitting on my "to deal with soon" pile since then. (The "to deal with soon" pile is actually more of a metaphor, than an actual pile. It's spread across desks, counters, tabletops, boxes, and filing cabinets in 2 counties.) I've just now finished reading it. It looks at 3 issues: Comparing states' standard assessments to an international standard called PISA and their relative abilities to show educational efficacy; mandatory 8th-grade algebra programs; and an analysis of big-city student achievements compared to the suburban and rural school districts surrounding them.

Part 1:) Brown Center says that supporters say that PISA can offer policymakers evidence on what works and what doesn't around the world. Brown Center says not so fast, and states some problems with that idea. I don't know anything about the specifics, and until I start working on my doctorate in International Curriculum Alignment and Benchmarking, I'm unlikely to do so. But I'm pretty sure that we don't have any kind of standard curriculum around the world, we don't have any aggreement (and no plans to get one) with Europe on what our students should know, how well they should know it, and when. So to look at the standardized tests of Europe without any curriculum context is like comparing apples to, oh, I don't know, front-lawn sod. This is sharply different from the International Baccalaureate program, which does include some curriculum content. (Not saying IB is the answer to all questions. Just saying.)

Part 2:) California and Minnesota have passed laws that mandate algebra for all 8th graders by 2011. Brown Center says that we shouldn't have all 8th graders taking algebra, at least until we figure out how better to teach lagging math students. In other news, eating too much fat causes people to gain weight. Of course we shouldn't mandate algebra for 8th graders. High exptectations are one thing, but algebra involves a certain amount of neurological development that not all developing people have achieved by the age of 12-14. We should DEFINITELY have the option of 8th grade algebra available to those who are ready--heck, 7th (or 6th) grade algebra should be OK. We should DEFINITELY work towards having preK-7th grade math instruction strong enough to prepare 8th-grade students for algebra. But to require it seems like an awful idea.

Part 3:) Big-city schools are improving on standardized tests as compared to the suburbs and rural schools surrounding them. Brown Center says the progress is slow but steady, and is not prepared to say why this is. NCLB? Maybe. Mayoral control of schools? Not sure. I have no opinion of this. I'm happy for the big schools that have achieved good results. Nowhere near enough data to do any better than that.

Obama's speech on education

I'm not exactly liveblogging this, because the speech happened hours ago. But I'm typing as I watch the video replay-at least the edited version on CNN. I'll try to slap some coherence on at the end.

1.) "Show me a plan to improve early childhood education to prepare students for grade school, get grant money (pending Congress approval)." Probably there's no systemic change that would help education more than a high-quality pre-K education program. All in favor of it. Education spending in the US (and probably everywhere else) is backwards--we should be spending huge amounts on pre-K--2 education. It would push the standards of the rest of the grades forward to sprint off the line.

2.) Encourage better standards and assessments. "Children can, and they must, and they will meet higher standards in our time." For a second, it sounded like he was talking about national education standards. But no, he just meant that states need to be doing a better job about setting their own. (Did he say something about an interstate education consortium? An organization for planning standards across state lines?) Not sure entrepreneurship is a 21st-century skill. High expectations across the board--no excuses--along with teachers equipped to teach them, would go a long way towards effective instruction. If everyone buys into it.

"...by not only making sure that schools and principals are getting the money they need, but that the money is tied to results." This sounds EXACTLY like the original intent of NCLB--do well, get money. Don't do well, don't get money. It was precisely this aspect of NCLB that got it in such trouble with teachers in the first place. The only way this isn't a return to the worst aspect of NCLB is if he means that some sort of federal "blueprint for success" or some such comes free with every million dollars' grant money. Money to invest in innovation in the school district.

"Provide teachers and prinicpals the information they need...." I thought this was going to talk about a "blueprint for success," again. But it seems to be a call for a central database for keeping track of students' progress. It sounds like a pretty good idea, and sheds some light on my "information-gathering" post from weeks ago (or is that the one that Blogger ate?) (He cites Huston and Long Beach; Florida's state tracking) "Major investment to cultivate a new culture of accountability."

3.) Democrats are guilty of opposing "rewarding excellence"; Republicans are guilty of opposing "investments in early education". So, we're going to throw money at both. "Time to start rewarding good students." "New pathways to teaching and new incentives" to get teachers where we need them. Teacher pay; more supports to teachers; "move bad teachers out of the classroom."

"I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences."--The unions are going to have a field day with this. This sort of sounds like a head-on assault on teachers' unions; it sounds like a right-wing talking point against teachers' unions. I don't work in a big school district, where an administrator can shuffle an underperforming teacher from school to school for years before anything bad happens.


4.) Changing the calendar: I am entirely in favor of increasing the length of the school calendar. In my particular school district, it would be expensive. Teachers cannot and should not increase their calendar time without due increases in compensation--indeed, it's the only thing we have to bargain with. There's no money for raises, so student-contact time (to the extent admissible by state law) is the only thing left to talk about. However, we clearly need the modifications he calls for here. More school time, after-school programs, longer school days into the summer, etc. All good. Now, and I say this in the least petty way possible, show me the money. I truly can't afford to do it for free. And if it's worth doing, certainly it's worth paying for. (This is going to lead to a discussion of education finance reform, very quickly. So I'll back away from the precipice slowly.)

And for sheep's sake, can we please disconnect sports from schools? Can we please stop acting like a 2-hour-long basketball practice is more important than getting homework done? (More about homework some other time. Baaack awaaaaay slooooooowly....)

According to the White House Blog, this is where he talked about charter schools. But I didn't hear anything about them. I know Obama supports them, though, so here's my piece. I agree that schools need major reform. But I reject the premise that charter schools are anything but a short-term fix. Nobody's ever explained to me what charter schools are supposed to do that public schools aren't already doing. If someone can do that, maybe I'll stop believing that they're union-busting techniques in the guise of improving student achievement. Let me put it this way--if you're in a sinking ship, you'll hop onto any dinghy, sailboat, inflatable life raft, or chunk of flotsam that passes by. But you don't want to sail across the sea in it, you want another ship that isn't going to sink. The way I see this, public schools are the ships. Charter schools are the life rafts. Probably better than nothing, but not much, and not for long.

5.) Student responsibility--I'm reminded of a quote from the director of New Teacher Academy, quiting from somebody else. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. But you can salt the oats." I think if schools were doing a better job, students would be more likely to stay in. If education were perceived as more valuable, students would be less likely to drop out. This is one of those "rising sea raises all ships" things for me. Better schools make for better students, etc. It ties into the "higher standards" thing he was talking about, too. On the other hand, I can't get my students out of bed on time to catch the bus for them. So he has a point here, too.

All in all, it sounds like Obama's listing pretty hard to what is traditionally the right side of this argument, except he's talking about throwing a lot of (or at least some) federal dollars behind it. I worry about what would happen to all of these great ideas the next time we elect a deficit hawk, anti-federal-government-spending president. I can only hope that the reforms prove so valuable that cutting their funding would be laughable, and there would be no political will for it.