Schools A Symptom, Not A Cause

Nick Hanauer, a self-described plutocrat, understands well the old canard that doing the same thing again and again with the same unsatisfactory result is just insanity. After spending decades believing that improving education would lift all boats, and discovering that his vast sums of money made no difference, he stopped and thought about it. He concluded that improving education, by itself, cannot reduce economic inequality because poor education, by itself, did not cause economic inequality. "Better schools won't fix America."

Like many rich Americans, I used to think educational investment could heal the country’s ills—but I was wrong. Fighting inequality must come first. ... What I’ve realized, decades late, is that educationism is tragically misguided. American workers are struggling in large part because they are underpaid—and they are underpaid because 40 years of trickle-down policies have rigged the economy in favor of wealthy people like me. Americans are more highly educated than ever before, but despite that, and despite nearly record-low unemployment, most American workers—at all levels of educational attainment—have seen little if any wage growth since 2000. To be clear: We should do everything we can to improve our public schools. But our education system can’t compensate for the ways our economic system is failing Americans. Even the most thoughtful and well-intentioned school-reform program can’t improve educational outcomes if it ignores the single greatest driver of student achievement: household income. ... In short, great public schools are the product of a thriving middle class, not the other way around. Pay people enough to afford dignified middle-class lives, and high-quality public schools will follow. But allow economic inequality to grow, and educational inequality will inevitably grow with it.

Mr. Hanauer then gives a brief historical overview of education and the US economy.

All of which suggests that income inequality has exploded not because of our country’s educational failings but despite its educational progress. Make no mistake: Education is an unalloyed good. We should advocate for more of it, so long as it’s of high quality. But the longer we pretend that education is the answer to economic inequality, the harder it will be to escape our new Gilded Age. However justifiable their focus on curricula and innovation and institutional reform, people who see education as a cure-all have largely ignored the metric most predictive of a child’s educational success: household income. The scientific literature on this subject is robust, and the consensus overwhelming. The lower your parents’ income, the lower your likely level of educational attainment. Period.

Many of those who have seen educational quality and attainment as the solution put high hopes in charter schools. Students from the most disadvantaged circumstances and their parents have bought the hope, and thus today the majority of charter school students are minorities. The left spins this fact as proof that charter schools are an evil causing the re-segregation of America. The right spins the same fact as proof that minority parents value the blessing of choice that charter schools offer.

Indeed, multiple studies have found that only about 20 percent of student outcomes can be attributed to schooling, whereas about 60 percent are explained by family circumstances—most significantly, income. Now consider that, nationwide, just over half of today’s public-school students qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches, up from 38 percent in 2000. Surely if American students are lagging in the literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills our modern economy demands, household income deserves most of the blame—not teachers or their unions.

Here is a lovely money quote:

If we really want to give every American child an honest and equal opportunity to succeed, we must do much more than extend a ladder of opportunity—we must also narrow the distance between the ladder’s rungs (School Crossing's bold).

Mr. Hanauer implies that the rich like himself have already taken enough. He believes the solution is clear and obvious.

In fact, the most direct way to address rising economic inequality is to simply pay ordinary workers more, by increasing the minimum wage and the salary threshold for overtime exemption; by restoring bargaining power for labor; and by instating higher taxes—much higher taxes—on rich people like me and on our estates. ... We have confused a symptom—educational inequality—with the underlying disease: economic inequality. Schooling may boost the prospects of individual workers, but it doesn’t change the core problem, which is that the bottom 90 percent is divvying up a shrinking share of the national wealth. Fixing that problem will require wealthy people to not merely give more, but take less.

Elizabeth Warren has a plan for that.

Are Teachers Fast-Food Purveyors or Professionals?

I have been following an online discussion.  (Scratch that, what do you call it when one of the parties constantly responds with insults).  The topic is supposedly the public sector pensions of teachers.  “SP” is trying to argue that teachers are overpaid for the amount of work they do. The respondent never identifies himself as such,  but I would guess he probably is a teacher, so I’ll call him “Teacher.”*  If “SP” accurately reflects the public perception of the work teachers do, it is no wonder there is zero respect for teachers in our society.

SP: Teachers, as I pointed out, are paid a FULL year wage, for a part time job.

Teacher: As I have repeatedly pointed out, teaching is far from a part-time job. But you already know that. SP: The teaching contract proves my assertion.  Teachers work 37 weeks per year at a contracted 36 hour work week.

Teacher: Teachers work far in excess of their contracted hours and weeks.

SP:  All you do is make up lies about what hours teachers work, and it is 36 hours per week.  Truth can be painful for the trough feeder with entitlement mentality!

Teacher:  Regardless of the minimums that may be in a contract, no teacher limits themselves to the so called contract.  Teachers do not work part-time. In fact, one big reason new teachers quit in the first five years is they are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of out-of-class work that is necessary. What is true that they can save child care expenses because they have to do so much of the work at home.

SP:  Your incompetence is breathtaking! Nobody works more than their contracted hours.  The teachers union would never allow it.

Teacher: Teachers do not work part-time. That is the fact.  You are under some mistaken impression that the only time they work is during face-time with students? Such a misconception is prima facie ludicrous. SP:  Teachers work 6 hours per school day, even if they took home 2 hours of work they would still just be at 8 hours total. They do NOT take home 2 hours of work per day though.  Teachers work part time, that is a fact. Just keep making up the whoppers though, easy to shoot down.  36 hour work week, 37 week work year= part time job.

Teacher:  There is no way teachers can get all the work done they are responsible for during a six hour day. 

SP:  I know many teachers working 36 hours per week Some work even less. Teachers are NOT onsite at their schools for 8 hours per day unless you include the lunch break. They teach 5 hours per day plus a prep period of an hour, prep periods are used for grading papers and so forth.

Teacher (evidently losing patience):  If you think that one-hour prep period is sufficient for getting all the work done, you know nothing. That one hour  is a woefully insufficient amount of time.  Your anecdotal "I know many teachers..." is worthless. You really need to stop talking until you have spent a year getting some real-world experience. Try subbing for a year. Even volunteering as a classroom aide would change your tune.

SP:  No matter what you say, teachers work only part-time.

Teacher:  You would be screaming your head off if teachers actually worked a 36 hour work week for 37 weeks per year. They would do nothing but babysit kids. There would be no time for preparing lessons, making materials, previewing the audio-visuals, testing labs before kids do them, grading papers, calculating report cards, keeping up on professional literature, writing tests and so much more.  What do you think?  Should teachers work as long as it takes to complete all those listed tasks or should teachers work work the so-called "contracted" hours and no more?

SP:  You said, “There would be no time for preparing lessons, making materials, previewing the audio-visuals, testing labs before kids do them, grading papers, calculating report cards, keeping up on professional literature, writing tests and so much more.”  Lesson plans are prepared very infrequently, in fact you could use the same lesson plans throughout your entire career in many areas. Most school districts today have "lesson plan banks" that teachers use and share. You can also BUY lesson plans already made. Grading papers is done in the prep period. Calculating report cards should not be an issue and should also be done in the prep period. Keeping up on professional literature? That is not a job requirement and is also not mandated; it should be done on the teachers OWN time as it relates specifically to their job, it is basically optional "continuing education" required for the license. And professional development days, aka "minimum days", are given multiple times during the year at the expense of the student, so you lose that one. Writing "tests"?? Do you mean developing tests? They are part of lesson plans and curriculum, and again that is an issue that should not be repeated more than once every 2-3 years if that often.  The work load is a part-time 36 hour work week and a part time 37 week work year. Those are the contracted "work loads." I guess you just lost again.

Teacher: You clearly know nothing about being a teacher. Excellent teachers use off-the shelf stuff merely as a reference.  You would be even more unhappy with education outcomes if teacher used the off-the-shelf stuff in the manner you seem to believe they should.
Again I suggest you spend a year being a substitute teacher or even a classroom aide before you say another word about the work teachers do. Don't worry; I'll wait.

SP is evidently under the misconception that repeating a falsity often enough, through some sort of mysterious alchemy, will render that falsehood true. SP is also under the impression that a teaching job is more like a fast food job than anything else in the world of work.  How is it even possible to break through that wall of stubbornness against true facts?  Until our society decides whether teachers are professionals or hired laborers, it will be impossible to effect any meaningful education reform.

Teachers as professionals implies professional standards for entry into the profession, professional autonomy, professional judgment, professional salaries and the tenure to be free of whimsical termination.  Teachers as hired laborers implies strict conformity to the contracted hours, so-called “teacher-proof” curriculum, top-down job instructions and easy firing.  The strange hybrid status teachers have now is unsustainable.

*I camouflaged the user names of the parties.  I also cleaned up the grammar, and spelling of the comments and edited them a little bit for clarity.

What do Employers Really Want from College Grads?

The summer 2015 issue of the Phi Kappa Phi Forum featured an article summarizing a recent survey of 300 employers entitled “The Value of Student Agency.” It was an interesting article in light of the fact that so many people are lobbying for universities to be job training centers. On line forums are replete with comments like, “No one forced students to accept substantial loans to finance their educations, all too often in fields for which there were no jobs following graduation.” Or, “That person making your latte probably has a masters degree in something no employer finds useful.” Or, “There is a lot of slop that colleges pass off as "education."”

A typical university mission state reads as follows:

ABCU aims to graduate lifelong learners with the courage to challenge boundaries, ask questions and ignite knowledge with creativity. ABCU students take charge of their own intellectual and artistic development and integrate an active, independent, critical and reflective perspective into their lives as a whole.

I suppose to many ears, that sounds like “slop.” So the question is what do employers want from College graduates.” The survey sought to answer that question. According to the results, employers want that “slop.” 90+% employers say they want employees who think critically, communicate clearly, solve complex problems, promote innovation and that these qualities are more important than any specific undergraduate degree. In other words, employers say they want employees who went to college to get educated, not to get job training.

Traditionally, college has been the place to get an education, and employers provided the job training. If college is for education, then, for example, whatever your major, one thing all students should learn at college is how to formulate and defend ideas without resorting to the logical fallacies and ad hominem so prevalent in online forums. However, if college is for job training, then choosing a marketable major/job is the important thing. Given that 65% of incoming freshman need remediation in English and/or math, apparently college is truly the new high school. Right now society needs to decide what it truly wants of college, education or job training.

The second question is whether the employers interview in the survey answered honestly, or told the interver what they thought he wanted to hear. Employees who actually have the desirable qualities say they often find themselves actively discouraged from displaying just those qualities. Thinking critically and communicating clearly implies a contradiction with being a team player. And “being a team player” is usually code for going along to get along.

The biggest problem I see with college students is their lack of seriousness. t would be great if students took their K-12 education way more seriously and qualified themselves for some of the millions of dollars in scholarship money that goes unawarded every year. Instead, what we have are students who think K-12 means "doing time," and then choose their college based on its party-school ranking. Think not? Ask any high school guidance counselor.

Data-Driven Fallacy

“Data- driven” sounds like a great way to make decisions. It even sounds scientific. What could possibly go wrong?

When data drives decisions, stakeholders, especially stake holders under pressure, will find a way to influence the data in their favor. Therefore Well Fargo employees, pressured to meet sales quotas, open dummy accounts. HRBlock tax preparers, pressured to demonstrate the success of the Second Look program, begin regular tax returns as Second Look returns and convert them midway to a standard tax return without the client’s knowledge, and teachers change answer sheets for standardized tests.

When statistics become the most important consideration, employees will create the statistics they need. It is only human nature. Performance evaluations MUST be holistic, not only to prevent fraud, but also, and most importantly, to form a comprehensive evaluation of the employee including factors not easily quantified, yet crucial to student success. Noth8ing is a panacea, not even and maybe not especially “data driven” decisions.

BTW High Regard Correlates with High Achievement

Peter Gow argues that the one feature we commonly dismiss with an airy “by the way” is the one feature all the school systems we admire share---high regard for the teaching profession.

"If you have an entire nation that regards education--and learning--as respectable, as an end in itself and whose practitioners are doing something not just noble and worthy but truly valued (and compensated to reflect that), it's not a big surprise when students in that society perform well in school; they're doing what their whole society--from parents to peers to adults in all stations and walks of life--believes is important, something that really matters. No wonder so many other nations out-score the great mass of American students, living as ours do in a society where anti-intellectualism is a long understood cultural trend."

I bolded this quote because it implies that education reform can never be more than band-aid fads until the whole society reforms. It has been one of my recurring themes.

Our society does not really believe our kids can achieve (http://schoolcrossing.blogspot.com/2008/05/problem-of-gratuitous-self-esteem-in.html). In fact, our society, at its depths, disdains high achievers, no matter high much we say we want to raise achievement. Tamara Fisher has documented the lack of regard, nay ridicule, high achievers suffer from their classmates.

The US could create uniformly high quality schools for ALL children if we wanted to. But we do not want to. The US could nationalize the tax base (as Japan did), but we will not because wealthy parents complain that they will not finance the education of poor kids. There are a number of other steps we could take, but each one becomes a silly partisan political football in the US. It took decades for society to create the education system we have whether we like it or not. Society must find the will---and NOW.

Student Centered or Abdication?

Currently on the education forums there are some proponents of extreme student centered instruction. They insist all our education problems stem from the fact the we adults have the temerity to think we have the right, responsibility and authority to decide for kids what they need to learn. They insist if we adopt an extreme “student-centered” approach, the result will be a well-educated, critically-thinking populace. However, the extreme approach can degenerate the otherwise excellent idea of student-centered instruction into a rationale for transferring adult responsibility onto children.

At its core, student centered instruction focuses on the learning needs of students.

Student-centered teaching methods shift the focus of activity from the teacher to the learners. These methods include active learning, in which students solve problems, answer questions, formulate questions of their own, discuss, explain, debate, or brainstorm during class; cooperative learning, in which students work in teams on problems and projects under conditions that assure both positive interdependence and individual accountability; and inductive teaching and learning, in which students are first presented with challenges (questions or problems) and learn the course material in the context of addressing the challenges. Inductive methods include inquiry-based learning, case-based instruction, problem-based learning, project-based learning, discovery learning, and just-in-time teaching. Student-centered methods have repeatedly been shown to be superior to the traditional teacher-centered approach to instruction, a conclusion that applies whether the assessed outcome is short-term mastery, long-term retention, or depth of understanding of course material, acquisition of critical thinking or creative problem-solving skills, formation of positive attitudes toward the subject being taught, or level of confidence in knowledge or skills.

Student-centered means teachers listen carefully during instruction and throughout the day. They listen to find out what students are interested in, and they have the flexibility to modify lesson plans to take advantage of those teachable moments. Teachers listen in order to offer interesting and meaningful choices to students. At no point should student-centered instruction put kids completely in charge of their learning. Children simply are not qualified to decide what they need to learn. They do not have the requisite wisdom. Even college kids, who although since the Vietnam War are legally adults, do not have the wisdom. If they did, college math students would never complain, “We don't want to know why the math works. Just tell us how to get the answer.”

One proponent of extreme student centeredness maintains that because every child is unique, “the concept of a singular list of "what kids need to know" is an absurdity.” The conclusion does not follow from the premise. Maybe every child is unique, but the tasks they must be able to accomplish to get along in the world as adults are not unique. Would anyone seriously argue that kids do not need to know how to read, communicate effectively, add, subtract, multiply, divide, work with fractions, understand current events in light of past history, and make a living?

Where do we draw the line between what kids need to know and what is optional? And if we do not give kids a shot at all fields of knowledge (because we adults have abdicated responsibility), how will they ever discover their passion? The gospel of extreme student-centeredness is not feasible in the long term.

If given their head, too many kids would choose mediocrity. And what would the proponents of extreme student centeredness do about the poor choices of students? Do we write them off with a flippant platitude, “they made their bed; let them lie in it”? History tells us if students make bad choices, it is society (and taxpayers) who will bear the consequences. That is simply an unconscionable burden to put on a naive child.

Common Core—Cart Before Horse

“You know the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery are now extinct.” ----W. Somerset Maugham

Reading over most of the back and forth on common core feels like a massive waste of time. The subtext seems to be that we need common core to raise academic achievement. Those against common core point to poverty as the real issue, and lament handing out a lucrative opportunity to those poised to profit. Those for common core point out that high-achieving countries have common core. However, as we all know, correlation is not causation.

You might as well call for more chocolate in schools. After all, the higher a country's chocolate consumption, the more Nobel laureates it spawns per capita, according to a now famous study. I suggest that although it is true that high-performing countries have national standards, those standards are more a function of the political culture than a thoughtful education decision. The US education system was once upon a time world-class long before common core was a twinkle in someones' eye. I personally benefited from the education panic that ensued after Sputnik, when school districts all over the US implemented many wonderful curricular programs without bothering to worry about whether there were national standards.

The problem with common core is not the idea of a nationally agreed upon set of learning objectives. I have worked with so many predetermined sets of objectives, standards, curriculum, whatever, that long ago I learned quality teaching does not depend on them. So go ahead, approve and publish a common core. It will make no difference.

What irks me is that proponents seem to believe that teachers NEED a written set of standards in order to teach well. Or that administrators NEED a written set of standards to give orders to supposedly autonomous professional practitioners with professional judgment. The very push for common core is a national admission that either our teachers are not competent professionals (regardless of certification), or that we believe our teachers are not competent professionals.

Recent articles on Ed Week lend support to the notion that the real problem is not lack of standards, but teacher quality. One teacher writes that the standards improved her practice. Great, but she should not have needed the standards to chide her into implementing the improvements she writes about. She should have done it on her own long before.

And why do teachers “see interdisciplinary opportunities” in common core, as if they never saw them before? Good teachers make cross-curricular connections every day, like this teacher:

As an English teacher, I have taught units on Jacksonian Democracy, math vocabulary, map skills, Jane Goodall and her experience with apes, the Holocaust, the scientific revolution during the Victorian Era...I could go on and on. Each of these units tied to elements from my students' math, science, and social studies classes.

If common core will push mediocre teachers in the right direction, wonderful. Only let us not pretend that it is the common core that improved the teaching quality. The fact is common core is causing a number of teachers angst as they “grapple with” how to implement common core in an environment of little or no guidance. For example,

“In some states and districts, little or no guidance is being offered on the issue for teachers, leaving them to grapple with achieving the right balance of fiction and nonfiction on their own.

Are teachers really wringing their hands and waiting to be told how to put together a great program for their classroom? Apparently they are. They seem to need someone to rewrite the comprehension questions for their basal texts as if they cannot do it themselves.

Not long ago, we wrote about a project to revamp the teacher questions in the country's most popular basal readers. The idea, as you might recall, was to use the existing basal readers—since most districts and states can't cough up the cash for new ones just now—but rewrite the questions so they reflect the expectations of the Common Core State Standards. Many of the questions that the basals suggest for teachers, they noticed, don't actually require students to read the text passages. They solicit students' feelings, or their unsupported opinions. The aim of rewriting the questions was to make them "text dependent"—one of the biggest areas of emphasis in the English/language arts standards—so that students have to grapple with the text in order to supply a solid answer.

For heaven's sake, just simply be a great teacher, common core or no common core. If the questions in your basal text are poorly written, I hope you wrote your own questions long ago, common core or no common core. Good teachers already have. Personally, a road map for every year (we used to call it scope and sequence) is a good thing. I got so sick of my own children studying the Salem witch trials year in and year out. I make my own academic road map for every grade and every subject. I call it my year plan wherein I map the content I want to cover to a calendar. I may allot more time for one content area than another. I mean I do not mindlessly divide the number of book chapters by the number of school weeks. I actually think about content.

Sometimes I get tired of reinventing the wheel all the time. If the states adopt a multi-year plan (call it Common Core if you want), I would take it as my skeleton and modify it as I wish to provide my students with the best quality education I can provide. The US already has a sort of de facto common core. Just look at which textbooks have been widely adopted around the country. For many teachers, the curriculum IS the textbook the administration gives them. Standards generally beget curriculum, just as state standards have done. Depending on your viewpoint, this may or may not be a good thing. Curriculum begets textbook content. For many teachers, curriculum is nothing more than the table of contents in their textbook. Their curriculum was the table of contents before common core, and will be the table of contents after common core is adopted. I really do not expect there will be any changes in the classrooms. The table of contents have never had any power to encourage effective teaching.

Besides the prescriptive assumptions behind common core, a comment by one "MGN" succinctly stated the problem with standards

Standards, for the most part, are not the problem. The problems are a) confusing standards with curriculum; b) coercing states to adopt standards to get Federal funding; c) mandating high-stakes testing based on those standards; d) using test results to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers, principals, schools, or districts; and most especially e) awarding high-value contracts for testing, test grading, or textbooks to anyone who directly or indirectly helped to create those standards.

So, Fine, go ahead and publish a common core. Just do not expect it to make a difference in the absence of a cadre of highly qualified teachers.

In Case of Nothing to Do, Break Glass...

...and then sweep up broken glass.

Americans have hopes and ideals for public education. As David Sirota explains,

Here in the industrialized world’s most economically unequal nation, public education is still held up as the great equalizer — if not of outcome, then of opportunity. Schools are expected to be machines that overcome poverty, low wages, urban decay and budget cuts while somehow singlehandedly leveling the playing field for the next generation. And if they don’t fully level the playing field, they are at least supposed to act as a counter-force against both racial and economic inequality.

The American ideal is that public education is supposed to be not only the engine of the American Dream, but also the primary mechanism for overcoming the social-economic obstacles of birth. Meanwhile, public educators consistently cite the poverty of their students as the number one reason public education fails to perform its promise. So, public education is supposed to give poor students the tools they need to overcome poverty, but public education cannot give them these tools because the students are poor. Teachers say education reform proposals that fail to address poverty are doomed to fail. We are trapped in a vicious circle. In such an environment, no wonder policy-makers, most of whom lack education experience, feel pressured to do something---anything. Education policies thus tend to be a perpetual cycle of creating and cleaning up messes.

And no wonder. Policy makers lack expertise themselves, so they turn to advice from those who seem to have proper credentials. Who do they ask? Education professors. Sounds reasonable, but guess what? Many education professors lack significant in-the-trenches experience in the very places teachers must implement policies handed down from on high. American society does not trust teachers. The main reason for the lack of trust is the double-mindedness of society. Sometimes we consider teachers to be professionals, and then undermine their professional judgment when we consider them hired laborers subject to dismissal for insubordination. We steadfastly refuse to put teachers at the head of the policy table even though, as Nancy Flanagan puts it, the teachers know where the carts are.

If we want to invest in a highly skilled teaching force, perhaps it's time to stop positioning teachers as drop-in observers who should be grateful for the chance to "represent" their peers in important decision-making bodies...Teachers should be at the head of the table, calling the meeting. The more professional responsibilities we take off teachers' plates, to standardize and homogenize, the more teachers' professional judgment is weakened.

Teachers should not be the target of reform, but the drivers. Right now, teachers are lucky if they can stand outside the door and listen at the keyhole.

At the start of the Obama presidency, when the Department of Education had lots of openings, the administration solicited applications. Many teachers applied. It turned that the administration was only interested in perpetuating more of the same, not ushering the change we all hoped for. Any PhD, especially a well-published PhD, whether they have actual significant experience or not, trumped highly effective, veteran teachers every time. Perhaps the number one disappointment educators have with the Obama administration is the refusal to listen to real teachers. They do not listen because they do not trust. They do not trust because our present policies prevent recruitment from among the most academically able students.

Teaching is not a top job choice, but a last resort. I routinely ask my education students why they want to be teachers. The answers are underwhelming. My top two favorite answers because they indicate the status of teachers in America: “I flunked out of hotel management,” and “It is either teaching or the Army.” In such an environment, it is difficult for the American public to accord teachers the respect and esteem they enjoy in other countries. Meanwhile, administrators break the glass and expect teachers to clean up the mess.

Smart People (You and Me) are Stupid

A recent provocative article from the New Yorker begins:

Here’s a simple arithmetic question: A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? The vast majority of people respond quickly and confidently, insisting the ball costs ten cents. This answer is both obvious and wrong. (The correct answer is five cents for the ball and a dollar and five cents for the bat.)

Or try this one:

West and his colleagues began by giving four hundred and eighty-two undergraduates a questionnaire featuring a variety of classic bias problems. Here’s a example: In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? Your first response is probably to take a shortcut, and to divide the final answer by half. That leads you to twenty-four days. But that’s wrong. The correct solution is forty-seven days.

Our first mistake is to assume the human beings are rational. We should start from the premise that human beings are lazy (Yes, I am talking about you, and I am talking about me).

When people face an uncertain situation, they don’t carefully evaluate the information or look up relevant statistics. Instead, their decisions depend on a long list of mental shortcuts, which often lead them to make foolish decisions. These shortcuts aren’t a faster way of doing the math; they’re a way of skipping the math altogether. Asked about the bat and the ball, we forget our arithmetic lessons and instead default to the answer that requires the least mental effort.

My son calls it the “slacker syndrome.” The first step to learning to make good decisions is to humbly acknowledge that deep down we are all slackers. The smarter we are, the more stupidly we decide, like the super-smart guy who thinks everyone else is an idiot, but HE can time the stock market.

...smarter people are more vulnerable to these thinking errors...intelligence seems to make things worse. The scientists gave the students four measures of “cognitive sophistication.” As they report in the paper, all four of the measures showed positive correlations, “indicating that more cognitively sophisticated participants showed larger bias blind spots.”....

Okay, now that I know I am prone to this weakness (maybe the next time a job interviewer asks me about my number one weakness, I should admit that I am stupid....hmmm...maybe not), I can use this new-found self awareness to avoid it in the future. Think again.

...“people who were aware of their own biases were not better able to overcome them.”...

Even worse, we all tend to think of ourselves more highly than we ought.

Perhaps our most dangerous bias is that we naturally assume that everyone else is more susceptible to thinking errors, a tendency known as the “bias blind spot.” This “meta-bias” is rooted in our ability to spot systematic mistakes in the decisions of others—we excel at noticing the flaws of friends—and inability to spot those same mistakes in ourselves.

Wow, that sounds like a modern version of old advise from Jesus.

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:4)

Education and self-awareness do not work because the meta-cognition is not available.

The problem with this introspective approach is that the driving forces behind biases—the root causes of our irrationality—are largely unconscious, which means they remain invisible to self-analysis and impermeable to intelligence.

Therefore we are doomed to live in a Zen paradox.

The more we attempt to know ourselves, the less we actually understand.

Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel education and self-awareness of our biases must be better than ignorance. At least, we can learn to be more tolerant and forgiving of others.

Parents In Contempt

As long as schools hold the public (who pays their bills, by the way) and parents in utter contempt, I seriously doubt that they will be able to build the relational trust necessary to academic achievement. Even worse is the contempt demonstrated toward those parents and members of the public who are education colleagues who might actually have a message worth listening to. I am just going to tell the story. A friend's child brought home a math assignment on perimeter and area. One of the problems was unsolvable as presented. It looked something like this (I do not have the actual diagram since child already turned her homework in):

The problem is unsolvable because there is not enough information. There is no way to know whether the angles that “look” 90 degrees are in fact 90 degrees. There is also no way to know whether the vertical segment that “looks” like it bisects the base in fact does so. The child made these points in class, but the teacher shot her down. So thinking I was being helpful to a young teacher, I sent her an email. After some brief introductory remarks, I wrote,

... the last problem of a recent homework assignment on perimeter and area had insufficient data to solve the problem.  One of the principles of geometric diagrams is that we never go by appearance.  We solve using givens and proven facts.  Since that particular diagram gave no indicators of equivalent length, bisection, 90-degree angles, etc, no conclusions could be drawn regarding the length of the side opposite the one measuring 15 units, or any other non-given length, without making unsubstantiated assumptions.  We are miseducating children if we teach them, even indirectly, bad thinking habits.  One of the purposes of math instruction is the logical and critical thinking skills it cultivates. And if we are as worried about high-stakes tests as we say we are, we will teach students to think properly.  A favorite trick of bubble tests is to lead the students down a primrose path of faulty assumptions. If you would like discuss ways to help students learn to think, please let me know.  I spent a lifetime teaching math, first to junior high and high school, and later, college students.

The teacher sent a reply that seemed quite understanding, but showed that she somehow missed the point. She replied,

I completely understand what you are saying in the email. I also concur with what you said, however, I did verbally tell the students that angles that appear to be right are. ..However, if the student drew it out on the grid paper, then that student could find an area for the figure they drew. We are at an entry level with these problems, and so I looked at how the student drew the problem out, and determined if their area and perimeter matched that drawing.

Am I the only one who found the reply disturbing? So I wrote back,

Thank you for your reply. "I did verbally tell the students that angles that appear to be right are."  Angles that appear to be right are most decidedly not right just because of appearance.  I really think that if the student's math level is lower, then it is all the more critical to precisely teach thinking skills.  Drawing on grid paper does not really help, because it only pushes students harder to make unwarranted assumptions.

I closed by repeating my offer to help. Then I got this curt dismissal:

Hi again, Thank you for your response, it seems that on this particular problem I did not satisfy your criterion and I am sorry to have let you down. Have a nice day.

Okay, so she really does not want any help, I guess. And apparently she is happy to miseducate kids. I figured I would just move on, until....the school's guidance counselor contacted me, and let me know that she considers my communication with the teacher inappropriate and unprofessional. Seriously? She even challenged my right to have any conversation with the teacher by pretending that I was discussing a student, not a math problem. Now when I was teaching, the only time I passed communications on to administration was if it contained a personal insult of some kind, of course, a very rare occasion. Maybe it is unfair to extrapolate from one experience, but I assure you, schools routinely show contempt for parents, the public, and even the education-savvy members of the public. We must be careful that we as teachers refrain from thinking we get to define the terms of parental involvement. I know plenty of teachers who actually resent fully involved parents if those parents dare to challenge the teacher or the school. Then teachers vilify the parent as a "helicopter parent" in an ad hominem attempt to dismiss with contempt the parent's concerns. A lot of schools want to limit parent involvement to conferences and making cupcakes.

It's the Poverty, Stupid: Part 2

This is the second part of a two part series. The first part discusses poverty in general, especially as it applies to the Occupy Movement. The second part relates poverty to the link between academic achievement and the economy.

Let me say this very clearly. The 1% are pretty much irrelevant to the education of (most of) the 99%. There is a motivating myth in our society that hard work will pay off financially. True to human nature, people cannot seem to resist putting everything in pendulum-swinging, either-or terms. Get an education and get rich. Forego an education and be poor. As if 1% of the population is rich and the full 99% are not. The Occupy movement got the Gallup people to wondering, so they melded 61 surveys to come up with a demographic comparison of the 1% and the 99%. What they found is startling.

The official top 1% of American households in 2010 includes those with incomes of at least $516,633, according to data from the Tax Policy Center as reported in The Washington Post.

Unsurprisingly, 49% of the 1% have postgraduate degrees, compared with 16% of the 99%. We have all heard critics of the Occupy activists say that if they stopped occupying and worked as hard as the 1%, they too might have a chance at becoming the 1% (a mathematical impossibility, given the nature of percentages, but never mind).

This is not to say that college degrees guarantee vast wealth. To the contrary, only a small fraction of all Americans who report having a postgraduate education (1.5%) or an undergraduate degree but no postgraduate education (0.8%) fall into the top 1% category. However, the comparable rates are many times smaller -- no greater than 0.3% -- at all other educational levels.

Let's get this straight. Although nearly half of the 1% have postgraduate degrees, only 1.5% of postgraduate degree holders are members of the 1%. In other words, the 1% did not get there by virtue of their education; they were born into the 1%.

Maybe we should look at the median knowing full well that raising the median income will also move the median. There will always be an amount that 50% fall above and 50% fall below. The 2010 median income in the US is $49,445. Instead of obsessing on statistics, we should focus ensuring that all students have a fair shot at reaching their potential. Fact is, poverty dramatically reduces those chances. Fact is, Dad's socioeconomic status is the major predictor of children's socioeconomic attainment. Fact is, worthless either-or polarities aside, education is still the best route out of poverty.

More generally, college education is strongly correlated with household income. Nine percent of Americans earning less than $20,000 per year are college graduates; this rises to majorities of adults in all income groups above $100,000. Similarly, few adults in low-income households have postgraduate education, and this rises only into the teens among middle-income adults. But it sharply increases among those earning $100,000 or more, peaking at 49% among those earning between $250,000 and $499,000, and those earning at least half a million.

What the rich do for their children is put them on a different “trajectory” of wealth.

some high poverty schools that were also high performing. These schools were able to lift student achievement, close gaps, and set their students on a trajectory of success.

The different trajectory includes different frames of reference, work approaches and loci of focus. Rich kids “inherit” a different ability to compete and different access to opportunity. Even the family junk mail is different. We could begin by funding all schools equally, ignoring the protests of those who say they do not want their tax money paying for other children, or those who hesitate to donate if they cannot designate which school receives the donation.

In the United States, we actually fund poor schools less than other schools. The highest performing countries do the opposite. More than that, the highest performing countries have less poverty because they invest in infrastructure designed to expand the middle class. In the United States, we are killing the middle class, and our student achievement will pay a dear price.

We could stop pointing to achievement outliers as feasible role models. Just because Abe Lincoln did it does not mean everyone can (and the corollary: it's your own darn fault if you don't). Every field has outliers. Not every highly talented cellist can be Yo-Yo Ma. Not every great tenor can be Pavorotti. Not every terrific actor can be Meryl Streep. Not every highly skilled computer geek can be Steve Jobs. Most of us do not realistically have a chance at being the 10%, never mind the 1%. If you make more than $138,000, you already make more than 90% of the population. $138,000 puts you in the top10%.

In my experience, success at high poverty and high performing schools is not based on merit pay, high stakes testing, vouchers, bureaucratic personnel evaluations systems, alternative certification, or any other glitzy idea that politicians seem to embrace so easily.

In fact, what American education needs most of all is a blessing high performing schools enjoy on an individual basis, a blessing high performing education systems take as a societal given, relational trust. Another disturbing fact: too many powerful stakeholders in our society are well-satisfied with the education status quo for their own self-interested reasons.

Omnipresent Poverty and US Competitive Advantage

Using test-scores to hold teachers accountable for student education variables not under teacher control is clearly wrong-headed, but for some reason, it makes illogical sense to many education policy-makers. Similarly, using test-scores from international comparisons to hold teachers responsible for the nation's economic health makes even less sense. There are just too many variables outside teacher control.

“Although we cannot predict future economic trends, we do know that test-score rankings are a poor basis upon which to understand these trends or to know what to do about them. The reason is clear: Other variables, such as outsourcing to gain access to lower-wage employees, the climate and incentives for innovation, tax rates, health-care and retirement costs, the extent of government subsidies or partnerships, protectionism, intellectual-property enforcement, natural resources, and exchange rates overwhelm mathematics and science scores in predicting economic competitiveness...

“It is specifically the low-income populations... that are at the most severe disadvantage in competing for jobs in a global economy.”

For example, the children of a local county supervisor did not have to go looking for high school jobs. The shakers and movers CALLED HIM to offer his children great jobs. Nevertheless, "the adverse effects of poverty and concentrations of poverty in schools (affects) student performance in all countries." Even so, if international comparisons favored the US, we would be crowing, not attempting to explain them away.

First, our rhetoric has assumed that test-score rankings are linked to a country’s economic competitiveness, yet the data for industrialized countries consistently show this assumption to be unwarranted. For example, the World Economic Forum’s 2010-2011 global-competitiveness report
ranks the United States fourth, exceeded only by Switzerland, Sweden, and Singapore. Many of the countries that ranked high on test scores rank lower than the United States on competitiveness—for example, South Korea, No. 22, and Finland, No. 7.

The same report shows that the US has actually lost two places in the last year, dropping from No. 2 to No. 4, while Sweden, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands, all in the top ten have each gained two places. What we need to remember is that test-score rankings may be a leading indicator, that is, the significance of the rankings is that they may foreshadow future competitiveness (or lack thereof). The sheer size of the US economy may guarantee its competitiveness, at least in the near term.

Many observers worry about the future competitiveness of the U.S. The reason may be the increasing poverty of US students at a time when US income inequities are increasing at alarming rates.

The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall...Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today.

My local newspaper just reported that 50% more people fell below the poverty line this year. Poverty, especially chronic poverty, limits opportunity in ways the public does not fully understand. As a simple illustration, even junk mail is different. The poor get credit card offers, the rich get stock tips.

First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible

For example, a poor child is not going to be able to study violin to a proficiency sufficient to make a decent living. The instrument, lessons, books, sheet music, competitions, concert apparel, etc. all cost too much. Even a talented musician who works really hard to overcome the effects of poverty and persevered by his own tenaciousness may find the poverty disadvantage too overwhelming. Such an academically high achieving musician will likely be compelled to abandon music in favor of a career that will actually pay the bills, and relegate his superlative violin-playing to a “hobby.” Who knows how much talent has been lost?

America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels.

Schools do not lead society; they reflect society's priorities. Education is simply not a priority for US society.

“The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes...But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way.”

The same could be said for education.

The Lake Wobegone Effect Plagues Parent Surveys

THEN (not so then)

A 2008 poll from Education Next and the Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) at Harvard University found that Americans are increasingly disappointed with public schools, and that by a 3 to 2 ratio believe that Democrats have a better record on education than Republicans (Q18) and are more likely to improve schools (Q19). The other, a Phi Delta Kappa (PDK)/Gallup poll, found that most Americans believe President Barack Obama (46%) would be more likely than President John McCain (29%) to improve public schools.

As with surveys in other fields, respondents rate themselves higher than others.

As other surveys have shown, the public’s evaluations become somewhat more favorable when the subject turns to the public schools in their own communities (see Figure 1)... But teachers offer the schools systematically higher grades than the rest of the public. Thirty-four percent give the schools an A or a B, while only 14 percent give them one of the two lowest grades (Q.1).

The demographic at the losing end of the achievement gap ranked the nation's schools even lower. This group also depends most on public schools.

On the whole, survey respondents offered slightly lower evaluations of the nation’s schools in 2008 than they did in 2007, and some groups posted sharp declines. Twenty-seven percent of African Americans gave the public schools an A or a B in 2007, but in 2008, that figure fell to 20 percent. Meanwhile, the share of African Americans giving schools a D or an F rose from 20 percent to 31 percent. The share of Hispanics awarding schools a similarly poor grade doubled during the period, from 16 to 32 percent.

Although public school teachers (34% A or B) graded public schools significantly higher than the general public (20% A or B), nevertheless teacher opinion implies that a full 66% of teachers believe public schools are performing below expectations. For the education system of the richest, most powerful country in the world, a C or below is simply unacceptable.


40% of teachers gave schools nationally an A or B grade, but 61% gave their local schools an A or B grade. It seems obvious that teachers are essential to school reform, but if all politics is local, and by extension, all education reform is local, education reform must overcome teacher satisfaction and consequent inertia first.

Perhaps surprisingly, given union activism on the issue, somewhat more public school teachers (47%) favor the formation of charter schools (Q11) than the general public (42%). On the other hand, twice as many public school teachers (33%) oppose charter school compared to the general public (16%).

The survey concluded, among other things, "...while Americans retain an abiding commitment to public education, the grades that they assign the nation’s schools are increasingly mediocre."



AND NOW

The 2011 Gallup/PDK poll found 69% of Americans give high grades to their local teachers.

Perhaps the most significant finding was that more than 70 percent of Americans said that they have trust and confidence in the men and women who are teaching in public schools. The percentage of Americans who would grade their local schools as A’s or B’s continues to be at an all-time high. The percentage was even higher among people under the age of 40...

69 percent of Americans would grade teachers in their communities with an A or B – higher than their principals or school boards. This confidence also exists despite the fact that most Americans said that they hear more bad stories than good stories about teachers in the news media.

As usual, people graded their community schools higher than the nation's schools (page 18 and 19). 51% gave their their own children's schools an A or B, but 81% rated the nation as a whole C or below.

In Lake Wobegone, all children are above average. Most Americans seem to think their children go to Lake Wobegone schools.

The Teachers' Social Security Safety Net

Over at Justin Baeder's blog, there is a lively discussion of Social Security. I suspect I provoked some of it. Please read the original blog entry and its comments for the context of what I am about to write.

Justin says, “...but as a 30-year-old, I'd much rather just pay SS tax and never get anything back (to provide a societal safety net for others) than have additional money taken from me only to be given back later at a very poor rate of return.”

Kudos to you, Justin, if you are really fine with paying in and never getting anything back in order to provide a safety net for others. There are plenty of people who resent Social Security precisely because it is a safety net. They would rather think of it as an investment or an entitlement instead of the insurance program it was designed to be. Before the Baby Boomers came along (don't blame them, blame their parents:), the 1% premium was cheap insurance. In the 1980s, it was raised to 6.2% to save for the Baby Boomers. It would be nice if the premium could drop back once the Baby Boomers are gone, but I do not see this happening for at least three reasons.

1. The Boomer Echo-Baby Boomers had kids, and the Echo Generation is having kids, so the population is permanently higher than without the Baby Boomers.
2. Spoiled Government-The government has gotten used to having the extra funds to borrow for General Fund expenses.
3. Longevity-People are living longer, thus needing the safety net for longer periods of time.

As far as the 12X return is concerned, please remember that one dollar is not the same as another. If I bought, for example, Netflix stock a year ago for around $150 and sold at about $200 recently, those dollars are roughly the same dollars, so the 33% gain is an accurate perception. However, if I bought GE in the early 1970's for $1.00 and sold for $55, close to GE's historic high 30 years later, it appears to be a super impressive 5400% gain. But consider what $1.00 could buy in the 1970's versus what it could buy in 2000. Here is a sample: A $0.05 ice cream cone from Thrifty cost $2.79 now, a 56x or 5480% increase. Here's another: It used to cost $0.25 to go swimming for four hours in the community pool. Now it costs $5.00, a 20x or 3100% increase. I remember these figures because I used to ride my bike to the pool every Saturday and get an ice cream cone on the way home out of my dollar a week allowance. In terms of buying power, the $1.00 of 1970 and the $55 of 2000 are roughly the same.

Consider an index fund that tracks the DOW. From the 1970's to 2000, the index fund would have posted a gain of only 14x or about $1310%. If you retire now, you have had no additional gain due to the “lost decade.” Beloved Thirty-Somethings, this could happen to you. If the index fund is your retirement, regardless of the appearance of being a multi-bagger, it did not keep up with inflation, and will only lose ground to future inflation during retirement when the typical retiree converts it to a fixed-income stream.

The 12x return on Social Security only has the illusion of being huge. The fact is the 12x increase is potentially sustainable because past dollars, present dollars and future dollars are not the same. Even so, the nominal 12x return on Social Security payments will not even pay the rent.

So Justin is partially right. Individual investors have the potential to get a return greater than that of Social Security. The question is whether individual investors can actually achieve such a return, and more importantly, keep it. Statistics say that regardless of what the historical returns of the market may be, the typical individual investor gets a 1% return. And to get that paltry return, they have to break the first rule of investing: do not put money at risk you cannot afford to flush down the toilet. Retirement savings surely qualify as money most people cannot afford to lose.

People have learned the hard way they cannot count on their 401(k) plans, not only because of market risk, but also because studies have found that most 401(k) plans are actually pretty low quality. In my mind, maybe the best thing to do is buy a house when the rent vs. buy comparison is in your favor. Even if you end up spending twice the price of the house because you took the full 30 years to pay, you would have paid a similar amount anyway as rent and have nothing to show for the rent after 30 years. At least with a house, after 30 years you have secured a roof over your head. You can keep it for only the cost of the approximately 1% property tax and homeowners insurance, reducing your total retirement expenses by at least 25%-30%. Then your Social Security benefits, if you need the safety net, can go toward other expenses---like food.

Many, many people, even after a lifetime of hard work and doing everything right, are finding themselves looking over the edge of the abyss. Dear Thirty-Somethings, this could be you. And if you are a public school teacher, there are people out there going after your so-called exorbitant pension.

These Wings Don't Fly

“Some people see the glass half full. Others see it half empty. I see a glass that’s twice as big as it needs to be.” ~ George Carlin

The pervasive either-or dichotomy syndrome debilitates constructive debate in nearly every arena of societal concern. Like Dr. Dolittle's push-me-pull-me, framing issues as a choice of only either this or that halts progress and hampers solution making. Education is no exception.
Either-or dichotomies are a convenient rhetorical device. Present one choice in positive language, the other in negative language, and let human emotion take over. Very few issues can be analyzed as simple either-or options, least of all, an issue as complex as education with its more than a score of stakeholders, each with their own competing interests.

The main problem with the either/or dichotomy syndrome is that it prevents people from considering alternatives. It pushes otherwise moderate people into wings: right/left, whole language/phonics, vouchers/traditional funding, and so many more. Often alternatives do not even occur to people standing fully in the wings. “Thinking outside the box” frequently means nothing more than having the ability to reject either/or frames. Once rejected, the mind is free to conceive of alternatives.

As it is, complicated issues in education are dumbed down to a "right" and a "left" side. People end up emotionally offensive or defensive. The false dichotomies serve only as diversions. Each side spends all its time depicting their side as the positive one and the opposing side as negative. Therefore, arguing about dichotomies is counterproductive. The task is not to take sides, but to reject the dichotomies themselves.

The choice is NOT between:
either pro-union or anti-union
either pro-standardized testing or anti-standardized testing
either publics schools or private schools
either pro-charter or anti-charter
either phonics or whole language
either whole class novel/basal reader or individual student choice
either direct instruction or constructivism
either individual answers or choral response
either pro-calculators or anti-calculators
either teacher-directed or student-directed
either competition or cooperation
either lecture or hands-on
either "an autonomous professional entrusted with crafting engaging but occasionally idiosyncratic lessons" or "a standardized, curriculum-centered enterprise,...our practice is in turn videotaped to evaluate our use of the prescribed methods."
either vibrant creativity or stifling rigidity
either rote memorization or googling information
either teachers as professionals or teachers as hired laborers
either complete autonomy or micromanagement
either teacher-facilitated or teacher-delivered
...
At the risk of being cliché, the sooner we start thinking outside box by rejecting either/or formulations, the better.

Cultural Sacred Cows of American Education

As long as comparative studies show so many other countries outperforming American students, there will be those who dismiss the findings because of comparability concerns. The samples from other countries are more academically proficient, or societies in those countries value education more, or those education systems emphasize rote learning or.... The critics pull out the list anytime American students fare poorly, comparatively speaking. American students have been ranking low for a very long time now, so the list is pretty well memorized. The list has been repeated so often without dissent that its points are assumed to be true, whether they are or not.

The fact is there are comparability problems. In 1993, David C. Berliner tackled the topic in an article published by Phi Kappa Phi in their journal, National Forum. Significantly, he subtitled his article, “A False Guide for Reform.” Old stuff can be good stuff. Although Dr. Berliner wrote almost twenty years ago, he could have written yesterday.

To blame school failures on poor teachers, inadequate administrators, inappropriate curriculum, or uncaring parents is misleading. When children are poor, when they lack health care, when they come from dysfunctional families and dysfunctional neighborhoods, schools fail. When public schools do fail, it is because society has failed (bold added by S. Goya)....

International comparisons of achievement always will reveal differences because the economic support for schools in each nation, their curricula, the quality of the teachers, the health of their students, their administrative systems, the support for school by parents in each nation, the value of education in each nation, and job markets each nation prepares its children for all differ. Such variation in the national systems of education leads inexorably to variation in the performance of students in each nation.

In 1994, I wrote a short article, also published in the National Forum, addressing two differences between Japanese and American education that Americans generally accept as true. It is human nature to put superficially true statements through our cultural filters and end up with mistaken conclusions. First, because public schools do most of the educating in America, we automatically credit Japanese public schools for Japanese school achievement. If international studies intend to compare public school outcomes, then researchers will have a difficulty finding a comparable sample in Japan. Virtually every student in Japan has received substantial supplemental education from the ubiquitous private after-school schools (juku).

Second, we hear that the Japanese school calendar has 240 days. Our own American schooling leads us to assume Japanese students are “on-task” for 240 days. However, 100 days are only half days for one reason or another. Japanese annual public school instructional time measured in hours is actually quite similar to American instructional time, but because nearly all Japanese students also attend juku, they receive substantially more academic instruction than American students. Furthermore, there are some fundamental unquestioned cultural paradigms that influence the American view of what is possible and what is untouchable when it comes to education reform.

Attention Seeking

In America, there is an axiom that children of all ages crave attention. Therefore, Americans have unconsciously socialized their children to crave attention, similar to the unwitting differential treatment of boys and girls. Adults are generally unaware of the many ways they encourage even middle school and high school students to be attention seekers. Consequently, no one questions that part of every teacher's job is to give attention to every student. In fact, the main argument for reducing class size is smaller class sizes make it easier for teachers to give individual attention in an environment where the misbehavior of children is often interpreted as a bid for more attention from the teacher.

I did not question or even notice the unexamined attention seeking axiom until I taught in a society that does not socialize its children to be attention seekers. Teachers in these societies capably manage much larger classes even in preschool and the early grades. Most primary grades have an average of forty-five students per grade. Even more interesting, students from these societies generally outrank American students in comparative studies. While larger class sizes may not be a positive variable, it is at least not necessarily negative variable either. Of course, interpreting international comparisons is always a problem because of the complex interaction of variables. Even in the US, the research on class size is inconclusive and subject to confirmation bias.

For example, some Americans believe that societies with large class sizes post exemplary academic achievement because of an authoritarian school structure. One person wrote to me that they “knew” the Chinese government does not allow students to misbehave. While such a belief may be consoling, it is not true. Japanese education, especially in the elementary grades is very inquiring, active and hands-on. Furthermore, it does not occur to Japanese teachers that misbehaving students are seeking attention. They attribute misbehavior to other factors. If you have not created a room full of attention seekers, you can be a highly effective teacher with many more students in the classroom.

Contempt of High Achievers

American society is of two minds when it comes to high achievers. We say we value academic achievement, but what we say is betrayed by what we do. Our society routinely mocks and marginalizes high achievers. Tamara Fisher asked her gifted students to talk about how they felt about being high achievers. We did not need Ms. Fisher's class to tell us that while they were personally happy, they suffered socially. Nearly every American schoolchild has either been a victim or a perpetrator.

America says that one foundation of its education system is equal opportunity, that is, every child has a right to be educated to the extent of their potential. Then we undermine our grand values by charging high achievers with elitism. What exactly do we mean? That smart people can be smart as long as they hide it, so as not to hurt anybody's self esteem by their mere existence? There is an unresolved conflict between the values of meritocracy and egalitarianism.

Maltreatment of Substitute Teachers

One of the most appalling characteristics of American education is the routine poor treatment of substitute teachers and the commonplace administrative attitude that pranks and misbehavior come with the territory. Since when is it ever okay for students to mistreat another human being for a day. The substitute should be accorded the regard given to special guests for that is what they are. Nuff said.

Faculty Continuity

Everything about the American way encourages faculty longevity and discourages mobility. Teachers are certified at the state level. There are often silly, bureaucratic obstacles to re-certifying in another state. A teacher earning a Masters degree while teaching will receive a pay differential as long as they stay in the same district. Move to a new district and the Masters becomes an impediment to employment. Moving also turns experience into a disadvantage. Administrators are so adverse to paying for experience they will give credit for a maximum of only five years (in most districts). More often administrators simply pass over the experienced applicant in favor of the novice.

In Japan, for example, teachers are not only certified nationally, but they are also required to transfer schools every three years. Japanese administrators believes change keeps the staff fresh. The Japanese do not worry about the stability of school culture as Americans do. In fact, it could be argued that stability of school culture is actually a problem since the flip side of stability is resistance to improvements.

Instead of reflexively trotting out the tired list of reasons why international comparisons are flawed as if doing so somehow magically turns poor performance into acceptable performance, we should should be studying those reasons in detail to see what we can learn. It may be true that other societies value education more. Good for them. The lesson then is not to make an excuse, but to ponder what we could be doing to encourage American society to value education more, not only in word, but in deed.



Some Class Size Research Sources:

Counting Students Can Count http://nccic.acf.hhs.gov/node/28205

The Effect of Class Size on Student Learning http://livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit/31977

Class Size Research (List of Six Publications) http://www.bsd405.org/Default.aspx?tabid=5729

Class Size-Research Brief www.principalspartnership.com/classsize1110.pdf

Smaller Class Sizes: Pros and Cons http://www.publicschoolreview.com/articles/18

Making Enemies of ED Reform Allies

Alienating “ed reform” allies seems to be a counter-intuitive strategy, but one that “common-sense teachers” rely on more and more frequently. Anthony Cody summarizes the platforms of both “parties” in his biased Teacher Common Sense takes on Education "Reform" Nonsense. However, it is not like he did not give fair warning of his slant towards the “common sense teachers” party.

The past decade we have seen drastic changes affecting our schools, and many of these changes defy what we know as teachers and parents to be in the best interests of our children. We have allowed technocrats to drive our schools with data. It is high time for teachers and parents and students to challenge the reform nonsense that holds sway.

While he makes many valid points about poverty, teacher experience, tenure, test scores and data, I was hoping for an even-handed summary of the education reform conflict and the myriad ways the teachers' voices are ignored. What I see instead is subtle and not-so-subtle mocking of "ed reform" by using easy-to-demolish phrasing. The article also makes enemies of potential allies by redefining education reform as a political stance.

Plenty of experienced teachers and other stakeholders are passionate about education in America and want to see it reformed. If they make the mistake of calling themselves “education reformers”, by Mr. Cody's lights, they automatically oppose "common sense" teachers. We need to flee these sorts of useless and destructive either-or dichotomies when discussing issues as complicated and with as many self-interested stakeholders as education.

For example, ed reformers do not believe that “Class size does not matter.” It does matter in certain situations, but in most educational contexts, the research has not supported universally smaller classes. In fact, there are countries with normal class sizes of 45, even in the primary grades, where students consistently rank at the top of international standings. Even more telling, their below average students out perform our best students. Before someone rushes to defend American performance by discounting the achievement of these students, we must remember that like so much in education, international comparisons are complex.

It will not do to rely on tired defensive excuses. For example, claiming that our average kids have to compete against their superior kids obfuscates more than it clarifies. There are any number of opposing unexamined cultural assumptions operating within both the American education system and the systems of other countries that make it appear obvious that class size should be important. Appearances are deceiving. I will name just one American education axiom that may not necessarily be true: Children, by definition, seek attention from their teachers.

In another example, the statement "Large amounts of public funds should not be diverted to privately controlled institutions" promotes education partisanship and perpetuates charter school misconceptions. The premise ("So by the measure chosen by the reformers, (charter schools) fail") has merit, the implied conclusion does not follow. Charter schools are not "privately controlled institutions." They are a species of public school subject to most of the education code, and answerable to their public sponsor, generally a district or county education board.

The argument implies that by the "ed reformers" own criteria, charters are no better or worse than traditional public schools. Fair enough. Then let's do something about "bad" charters, instead of using them to excuse "bad" traditional public schools. Let "good" charters flourish alongside "good" traditional public schools. Furthermore, sponsoring public education entities actually profit by charter schools since they retain 15% of the charter's state funding. The charter school must meet its expenses with 85% of the funding. Some charters are cash cows for their public school sponsors, such as Hickman, which has hundreds more students in its charter school than in its sponsoring traditional public school.

We who are passionate about education must do more than reach across the aisle. We must rearrange the furniture, eliminate the aisle, and mingle.

The Agrarian Model Myth

The model of public education is not primarily agrarian, although the needs of a predominately rural population may have influenced the school calendar back in the beginning. It is not even predominately industrial, although the way factories were organized strongly influenced the organization of schooling.

The most salient model of public education is the model of the mind we inherited from the Age of Enlightenment.

Without further ado, I give you the animated illustration of an intriguing talk by Sir Ken Robinson.








Education reform is stuck in a rut because society has not confronted its most basic unexamined assumptions. I have often said we need a complete systematic overhaul. I was satisfied to mod the car, but no longer. Sir Ken goes further and says we need a new paradigm. He wants to throw the car out completely. Furthermore, he does not want to buy a new car. He wants to build something a completely different vehicle, perhaps one we have not imagined before.

Teach Tony Danza, Episode 2

In the second episode, Tony Danza gives his first quiz which half the class fails. When he hands back the quiz, a clash of expectations occurs. He expects the students to support their answers to the opinion questions. They complain that it is unfair for him to mark them off because opinion questions “do not have a right answer.” I do not blame the kids. Many years of lame critical thinking lessons have taught them that there is no wrong opinion, and that variations of the very popular “I think (fill in the blank) because I think (fill in the blank)” formulation is adequate support for an opinion.

Tony is sure they failed the quiz because they did not read the material; they insist they read it “five or six times.” He says out loud he does not believe it. Oops. But he knows they did not read because when he was in high school he did not read. One girl cries. Tony approaches her as if there is not another person in the room. If the class was inattentive before, they are all ears now. Tony has a lot to learn.

I am not impressed with Tony's instructional coach. He seems unwilling to give Tony any affirmations, is somewhat argumentative, and chooses to open emotional wounds, “Have you cried yet, Tony?” he asks. I am not impressed with the needlessly nasty assistant principal. I am not impressed with the overly harsh principal. Although they promised to support Tony, clearly their idea of what constitutes administrative support is far different from what teachers expect. The distinction is important because the number one reason teachers leave is lack of administrative support. “Mary,” a teacher quoted in the Chicago Studies, described what administrative support incarnate looked like.

I appreciate his early morning visibility and constant presence in the hallways every class period. He stands during all three lunches while we sit and enjoy our 30-minute meal. He writes personal notes when you do an excellent job on a project; he is open to suggestions that are results-oriented, and he chides negativity for negativity’s sake.

He keeps to the middle of the road and even if he has favorites, his choices are based on performance, not personality. In staff meetings, he does not preach, he shares. He has a sense of humor and attends most after-school functions.

He always greets you, and when he evaluates your instructional delivery, he stays the full 90 minutes. He actually reads over your plans to check for evidence of quality instruction, multiple tracks of learning, and assessment within your plans.

He learns the students’ names and jokes with them on their way to class or at lunch. At the same time he is firm and does not think twice about taking real troublemakers to our nearby town in handcuffs. He allows for flexibility some times in the teaching schedule to let kids display their talents, even in the midst of teachers complaining about instructional time lost. We are in a rural setting, so he realizes that for some students, school is the center of their total existence when it comes to cultural diversity and showcasing talents.

He reads a lot of different research and shares it with staff; he strives to establish some form of professional learning community in a school that knows very little about how it works. He meets with various groups repeatedly and has a 100% attendance rate except when he is at a workshop.

I have a different attitude about working for this principal because he actually notices how hard I work and lets me know that he sees what I do. He meets with every department to ask, what can I do to help you do a better job? What does your department need? How can we accomplish this or that?

In other words, supportive administrators act more like the teachers' servants than their overlords.

Reality Education: The Teach Tony Danza Show, Episode 1

Tony Danza, TV personality whose most memorable shows were probably Taxi and Who's the Boss, is only a couple years away from qualifying to draw his Social Security benefits. He says he always wanted to be a teacher, but boxing and acting derailed him. Quoting Robert Frost, Tony Danza is finally returning to the road not taken. He has become a 10th grade English teacher in an urban magnet school in Philadelphia. His road is a little different from most first year teachers. His first year is the subject of a reality TV show. He says he is terrified and he looks it.

We all know good and well that most reality shows are not really undirected slices of life. Real life is generally pretty uneventful, and in fact, we are shown less than twenty minutes of one week's class time. Although we abhor stress in our own lives, we love it other people's lives, even if the producers must create the conflict. Thus we have the scene starring the pointlessly nasty assistant principal. None of us knows what is going on “backstage” or what “stage directions” the students who volunteered to be in “Mr. Danza's” class have received.

Most viewers have never experienced the so-called reality of most reality TV. How many viewers have ever attended chef school, much less been stranded on an island? However, everybody has been to school. Everybody possesses a lens of personal experience, a frame of reference when it comes to education. Everybody's an expert. Funny thing is, we all have a different lens, and that makes the comments (on Hulu) about Tony Danza's show as interesting as the show itself. Furthermore, most people have a rather limited frame of reference, but that does not stop people from overgeneralizing, like the commenters who claim he should have picked a school more like their school if he really wanted to show what education in America is like. Nevertheless, as the show progresses, the comments should provide an interesting cross-section of society's attitudes toward education gathered together in one place. One thing I have already learned from the comments is that the general public does not know the difference between certification and an education degree.

When it comes to sheer numbers of frames of reference, I have more than most. I have taught in urban schools, suburban schools and rural schools, American schools overseas and in the good ole USA, Japanese schools, public and charter schools, religious schools and boarding schools, elementary, secondary, and post secondary schools. The show and Tony Danza have taken a lot of undeserved heat. I mean students do not usually sit around a cafeteria table and complain that they have not seen their teachers' resumes (as they did in this show). Every teacher has a first day, so whining about a teacher's lack of experience sounds specious. Students and Tony's colleagues complain about Tony talking too much, as if most classrooms are not dominated by teacher talk. When Tony is entertaining, students complain that it is not a teacher's job to entertain them, as if they have never complained about being bored to death by un-entertaining teachers.

Then there are those who resent the fact he is teaching without a state credential. A certified teacher sits in the back of the class every day, so it is more like an extended student-teaching placement . Did you know Tony is paying the school $3500/per class for the privilege? Mr. Danza's first day was no worse and no better than the first day of many, if not most, first year teachers. Many people seem invested in Tony's failure—but spoiler alert, the reviews are out, and his principal has gone on record saying she would hire him for real in a heartbeat because he proved to be a caring, gifted teacher. Apparently his on-the-job training was at least as effective as the course work for a state credential, maybe because the schools of education focus on the theoretical and neglect the practical aspects of teacher training. I am not willing to write off Mr. Danza. I am curious to see how he develops. He has the potential to do more for education in this country than all the PhDs put together.