Chancellor Rhee's Rock and Hard Place

When it comes right down to it, a lot of education stakeholders have an interest in preserving the status quo. Witness turf wars like the acrimonious debate about charter schools where one camp actually accuses the other of willfully intending to destroy public schools. All kinds of band-aid approaches have been tried and abandoned. Fads have come and gone. The window of opportunity for educating young children is quite small, and routinely squandered by partisan reformers. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that 58% of Americans do not like Democrats and 68% do not like Republicans. Obviously partisanship is a lose-lose proposition. So is framing every issue as an either-or dichotomy.

The public constantly seeks to attach a label even to nonpartisan educators. Those whose views are clearly not partisan, usually because they regularly and alternately offend one side or the other, get painted as wishy-washy wimps. I know because critical emails I receive fall into one of three categories: You Closet Liberal, You Closet Conservative, or You Fence-Sitter. Rarely are my positions critiqued on their merits, pro or con.

Education issues are systemic, and systemic overhaul requires someone with knowledge of the interrelationships between system components. Chancellor Michelle Rhee may not have many years experience as a teacher, but she has as much as many principals and administrators. In the partisanship climate of education today, whoever is serious about education will make bitter enemies in one camp or another. Guaranteed. They, like Rhee, will be damned if they do and damned if they don't. They will likely make many mistakes along the way. It is difficult to be your best self in the adversarial climate of education reform. Entrenched interests fight tooth and nail.

I have my own Rhee-like experience. More than ten years ago, in a county where there were serious problems with special education, the county superintendent of education approached me. He wanted to appoint me the county administrator of special education. I described my plan for reforming the county's special education programs. He loved it. Then I warned him to expect a political firestorm because what I was proposing would upset a lot of complacent and comfortable apple carts. I might not only rock a few boats, but capsize them. Unlike Rhee's boss when she similarly warned him, my prospective boss backed down. With an election coming up the next year, he decided he did not want to imperil the chances of his hand-picked successor. His designated successor won the election and decided he did not want to upset apple carts either.

Effective education reform requires a comprehensive overhaul of the system on a foundation of relational trust. Rhee pretty much admits she did not develop sufficient levels of relational trust. Ten years ago, if that superintendent had appointed me, I might have made the same mistake in my good-intentioned zeal to get things done yesterday with a minimum of schmoozing. I do agree with Rhee's critics that reform should not be something done to teachers. Teachers should be leading reform, but their efforts, and even their access, is blocked every day by administrators and researchers with minimal, even zero substantial, in-the-trenches responsibility for the academic achievement of students.

Reform is dangerous stuff. Teachers who drive small-scale reform in individual schools often become targets of not only the students and administrators, but even other teachers. Most schools have one or more teachers who are too busy being under-appreciated great teachers to be politically active. Some of them do not even have the time to write the multiple essays, arrange video-taping of their classes, and take time off to attend interviews in order to compete to be named Teacher of the Year. Teachers of the Year cannot simply be excellent teachers day in and day out, and be recognized. I admire Chancellor Rhee for stepping into fray. In the current political climate, it is not possible to be both serious about reform and harmonious with all stakeholders.

Obama's Speech Riles Educators

I read and listened to President Obama's speech to the Urban League defending RTTT. As "Master Educator" observed in the ensuing comments to an EdWeek blog post, “It is painstakingly clear that extraordinary measures need to be put in place to greatly improve classroom learning, strengthen school infrastructures and increase student achievement.”

The first part of the speech to rile some people is this:

“Part of (RTTT opposition), I believe, reflects a general resistance to change.  We get comfortable with the status quo even when the status quo isn’t good.  We make excuses for why things have to be the way they are.  And when you try to shake things up, some people aren’t happy.”

I have some grave misgivings about RTTT. That being said, when President Obama talks about a general resistance to change and being comfortable with the status quo, he is practically quoting from any Psychology 101 textbook. People do resist change and cling to the status quo, and surely some of those people are teachers. By no means is he indicting all teachers who oppose RTTT. There are legitimate criticisms. What concerns me is that Mr. Duncan, and by extension, the administration, seems to give lip service to listening to teachers, but teachers report that they do not feel heard, never mind agreed with.

After spending several paragraphs on the importance of teachers and the need for societal support and esteem of teachers, Obama said,

So I am 110 percent behind our teachers. But all I’m asking in return -- as a President, as a parent, and as a citizen -- is some measure of accountability. So even as we applaud teachers for their hard work, we’ve got to make sure we’re seeing results in the classroom.  If we’re not seeing results in the classroom, then let’s work with teachers to help them become more effective.  If that doesn’t work, let’s find the right teacher for that classroom.”

Accountability is always a reliable hot button. But as long as accountability is based on student test scores, there will be legitimate opposition, as expressed in the following EdWeek comments:

from Curiousidle:
1) Teachers have no voice in the system as it pertains to curriculum, materials, scheduling, educational philosophy, class size, etc. So, while we might have some "expertise" to bring to the mix, our input is not asked for or required by local, state or federal administrations. It's the ultimate catch22: literally no say in how schools function combined with all political responsibility for the effects of poverty on educational success.

2) The two goals of the education system: education and social engineering can and do conflict with one another at times... that is to say, not every policy decision feeds both priorities equally well. The public system tend to err on the side of social engineering... examples include requiring everyone to meet the same bar and dumbing down the curriculum so it can happen, removing important subject area skills that are necessary building blocks for later instruction so that students that don't have those blocks in place are able to remain at grade level, grade inflation, credit recovery, social promotion and other disreputable practices, heterogeneous grouping during the day for social development remediated by funded homogeneous grouping after school.

3) What happens OUTSIDE of school has a far more pervasive influence on preparation, willingness and academic success than what happens INSIDE the classroom. IF we don't address failure at the root, we're just playing politics and avoiding the really hard conversations.


From DDKona: We just don't agree with his administration's definitions of these ideas. Hold me accountable for planning and implementing lessons that engage students at their different levels. Hold me accountable for what I do as a professional. But the minute you define accountability as how my students do on a standardized test, that is the minute you ignite my opposition.

From MarkAHarris: What I find comical is that people love using the word "accountability" with teaching. Yet, no one uses it the way it should be: you hold teachers responsible for what they do. Testing does not do this.

From CEB: (Obama) dismisses legitimate concerns about his administration’s agenda as resistance to change or defense of the status quo. He is so insultingly wrong. Critics of RttT want to improve education just as much or more as he and the tycoons who pull Duncan’s strings.

Mr. Obama attempts to address testing:

When we talk about testing, parents worry that it means more teaching to the test.  Some worry that tests are culturally biased. Teachers worry that they’ll be evaluated solely on the basis of a single standardized test.  Everybody thinks that’s unfair.  It is unfair.
 
But that’s not what Race to the Top is about.  What Race to the Top says is, there’s nothing wrong with testing -– we just need better tests applied in a way that helps teachers and students, instead of stifling what teachers and students do in the classroom.  Tests that don’t dictate what’s taught, but tell us what has been learned.  Tests that measure how well our children are mastering essential skills and answering complex questions.  And tests that track how well our students are growing academically, so we can catch when they’re falling behind and help them before they just get passed along. 

I am pretty sure that if testing showed that American students were actually outperforming the world, no one would object to testing. A major impetus to RTTT is the poor comparative performance of American students. If students master what I teach as demonstrated by, AMONG OTHER MEASURES, the test scores on tests I write, then I am teaching successfully even in the face of outside influences I do not control. Of course, that assumes I am not gaming my tests as some teachers have done by handing out "study guides" that are nothing more than the test itself.

There is quite a small range of quality in the standards of different states. Furthermore, regardless of what individual state standards say, most teachers teach the curriculum as expressed by the textbook, not the state standards. Teachers tend to write their lesson plans based on the textbook, and then code those plans to the state standards. Very few teachers start their planning with the state standards, and very few teachers use the textbook as just one resource among many. My high quality lessons have sometimes been criticized as too textbook-independent. Students, parents and administrators do not believe that teachers have their own knowledge apart from the textbook.

In Japan, because the national standards drive the curriculum and the textbook material, Japanese teachers do not explicitly teach to the test. Testing and curriculum are automatically aligned. In fact, students' classroom tests are often written by someone other than their teacher. It works like this: There are six tests per subject in a Japanese academic year. The teachers take turns writing the tests. For example, there are three grades in junior high, so eighteen math tests will be written in an academic year. If there are ten teachers in a junior high math department, during the year each teacher will write one test for all math sections of a particular grade and most will write two.

The real problem, the one that goes unnamed, is anxiety. The number one reason teachers, many of them good teachers, leave teaching is lack of administrative support. There is simply no relational trust between teachers and administration that would reassure teachers of fair application of policy. Teachers have no reason to believe that

(RTTT's goal) isn’t to fire or admonish teachers; our goal is accountability.  It’s to provide teachers with the support they need to be as effective as they can be, and to create a better environment for teachers and students alike.

I once taught in a private school that was forced to shake things up. In its twenty-five year history, it had never sought accreditation. The headmaster decided to pursue WASC accreditation, but it was up to the teachers to do the boatload of extra work. They groused---loudly. It turned out I was the only one among them who had actually ever been through the WASC process, so I became the de facto leader. The very process of completing the self study forced the teachers to deeply examine themselves and their methods for the first time. Without spending an extra dime (although I think some overpay would have been in order), in less than one year, the teachers transformed the school from the lowest achieving school in the area to one on par with the best schools.

Nothing Personal, Just Money and Politics

In an article headlined, A Popular Principal, Wounded by Government’s Good Intentions, the New York Times tells the appalling story of a highly effective principal dismissed from her position so that her school could qualify for millions of Federal dollars.

Ms. Irvine's job woes serve as a cautionary tale of the perils of top-down, one-size solutions in a country without a tradition of nationally centralized education oversight. By all accounts, Ms. Irvine is a great principal. Her accomplishments at the school are legion: she rolled out many enrichment programs, developed a new arts curriculum, created community partnerships, and reinvented the school as an arts magnet. None of it counts in the face of the school's low test scores. What is more, it is not like her raw material started out with advantages.

The New York Times used the wrong adjective in their headline. It should read, “A Highly Effective Principal, Wounded by Government's Good Intentions.” That she is also popular is beside the point.

At the heart of things is whether the testing system under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 can fairly assess schools full of middle-class children, as well as a school like Wheeler, with a 97 percent poverty rate and large numbers of refugees, many with little previous education.

...snip...

About half the 230 students are foreign-born, collectively speaking 30 languages. Many have been traumatized; a third see one of the school’s three caseworkers. During Ms. Irvine’s tenure, suspensions were reduced to 7 last year, from 100.

Japan's education system must surely be one of the most rigid of nationally centralized systems. The Ministry of Education has policies for everything. It has been said every student, no matter where in the country, is on the same page of the textbook on any particular school day. That assertion only slightly overstates the case. Every teacher in every school hews closely to the national curriculum, using one of a handful of nationally approved textbooks. For example, only six textbooks are approved for use in middle school English classes. Nevertheless, Japanese administrators may make discretionary judgments on a “ke-subaike-su” (case-by-case) basis. How did the supposedly more creative and individualistic American officials respond?

Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for the United States Department of Education, noted that districts don’t have to apply for the grants, that the rules are clear and that federal officials do not remove principals.

A school with as many immigrants as Ms. Irvine's requires a customized assessment. By definition, a standardized test normed to an American population will be unable to capture the knowledge and experience of immigrants. I have a true story about an American boy born to middle-class parents living in Japan. He went to Japanese pre-school and kindergarten. His mother wanted to enroll him into first grade at an American school. The first grade teacher gave the boy a readiness “test” which consisted of asking him questions about an American fairy tale.

The boy “failed” because he did not know who Rumpelstiltskin was. Never mind that the teacher had never heard of Momotaro, a famous character from a Japanese fairy tale. Never mind the boy was reading and doing math at higher levels than his peers. Because the Japanese and American academic calendars are very different, there was only two months left to the American school year. She admitted the boy conditionally into the first grade with the caveat that he would probably be starting first grade over in September. Imagine her surprise when this same boy scored in the 99th percentile on every section of the first grade Stanford 9 test just a month later.

So often reading tests can become experience tests when given to students outside the intended population -- like immigrants.

Students take the reading test after one year in the country. Ms. Irvine tells a story about Mr. Mudasigana’s son Oscar and the fifth-grade test.
Oscar needed 20 minutes to read a passage on Neil Armstrong landing his Eagle spacecraft on the moon; it should have taken 5 minutes, she said, but Oscar was determined, reading out loud to himself.

The first question asked whether the passage was fact or fiction. “He said, ‘Oh, Mrs. Irvine, man don’t go on the moon, man don’t go on the back of eagles, this is not true,’ ” she recalled. “So he got the five follow-up questions wrong — penalized for a lack of experience.”

Meanwhile, the community is deeply impressed with the school, regardless of its test scores. Many middle class parents have enrolled their children, so many that half the children in the early grades will be middle class. Even if the school does nothing more, when these kids take the standardized test, the results will show dramatic improvement. Will Ms. Irvine get her job back then? Does she have a job now?

The district has replaced Ms. Irvine with an interim principal and will conduct a search for a replacement.

And Ms. Irvine, who hoped to finish her career on the front lines, working with children, will be Burlington’s new school improvement administrator.

On the other hand, if Ms. Irvine has successfully set her school on a sustainable growth path, perhaps she should go and work the same magic on other schools in dire need of her skills. Furthermore, she should spare not a moment's thought about the opinions of some segments of education society who seem bent on belittling achievement.

Storming Educational Barricades

On June 22, 2010, the well-respected educator and sought-out Washington DC dinner party guest, Diane Ravitch, wrote, "Even privately managed charter schools are affected negatively by high-stakes testing; to claim ever-rising test scores, they are prompted to avoid low-performing students, thus bypassing the very students that charters were originally intended to serve."

A comment to her blog asked, “Have you ever managed to come up with any evidence for this claim?”

The very next comment pounced, “You have the whole Internet at your disposal. Surely you know that DR doesn't have to provide footnotes on what is now common knowledge for most literate people?”

Is the notion that charter schools are avoiding low-performing students a common knowledge fact? A perusal of the “whole Internet” suggests that what is common knowledge is that charter schools have long been accused of creaming the crop and pushing out low achievers in order to artificially raise their academic achievement when compared to regular public schools. Whether the accusation has research merit is not so clear.

A Mathematica study commissioned by the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools examined twenty-two KIPP schools and found no basis for the accusation. I am well aware that the study will be heralded by charter school supporters and dismissed by charter school detractors. The grounds for dismissal will be the perceived conflict of interest in KIPP commissioning a flattering study of itself. Charter school detractors would love it if the study were damning and would be quick to generalize the results to all charter schools. As it stands, charter school supporters will be happy to likewise generalize the study's conclusions.

Which brings me to my point. As long as those of us seeking education reform continue to cherish one position or another, we will fail to come to the consensus society so desperately needs before the forward trail can be blazed. Large swaths of American society either do not care about education or feel they have too little power or influence to make any difference. It is a true pity so many of those who feel “unempowered” are in fact, teachers and parents. Anthony Cody is one teacher who has been trying hard to be heard.

Among those who deeply care, many of the most vociferous can absolutely be classified along political lines: the right who love charter schools and the left who hate them. The constant bickering between them neutralizes any positive effects. The KIPP study is a case in point. Supporters of charters rush to embrace and extend its conclusions while opponents focus on finding flaws. I say, go ahead and enumerate flaws. But do not stop there. Let us have better designed studies that take previous flaws into account. And let us not be so foolish or short-sighted to think that if we and our friends believe we have debunked a study that we can ignore it because its merits are inconvenient to our politics.

I completely understand the conflict of interest question. Many years ago a marine biologist friend of mine was hired by Suntory Whiskey to conduct research on the environmental impact of their distilleries upon the ocean where they dump the waste. My friend wrote a most uncomplimentary report. She was fired and the report never saw the light of day. Would KIPP have suppressed the study if it did not like the conclusions? I do not know. I remember when early studies of charter schools consistently found that the academic achievement of charter school students surpassed that of public school students. The most recent studies show regression to the mean. In the early, heady days of charters, some people made the question political and immediately erected defensive barricades. The favorite barricade has been the accusation that charters cream the crop.

In my work with both charter schools and regular public schools, I have observed that charter schools do not cream the crop or push out low achievers. In fact, parents of cream and parents of low achievers both flock to charter schools. Parents of high achievers believe that charter schools are better than regular public schools and therefore their high achieving child will be challenged and rise to even greater heights. The parents of low achievers flock to charter schools because they often believe their child is a bored underachiever who needs the extra competence and challenge they expect their child will find in the charter school to turn from being a low achiever to a high achiever. For their part, charter schools take students from both groups because, just like regular public schools, their state funding depends on enrollment numbers. Besides, self-study is not inherently bad. The school accreditation process depends on schools studying themselves and writing up what they find.

I am aware that both sides collect anecdotes as if the matter will be decided by a sort of vote, that is, the side with more anecdotes wins. Reasonable people would reject such a method of decision making as ridiculous, but in reality we act like tallying up anecdotes is exactly the way to make big decisions. The health care debate was replete with anecdotes. It did not work. The pro health care reform camp and the anti heath care reform camp simply ignored each others anecdotes.

Data supporting the so-called common knowledge that charters cream the crop is inconclusive. More importantly, we should be looking for data to inform our opinions, not to confirm ourselves in our prejudgments. We need to detach ourselves from partisan political positions on education and study the issue, if not dispassionately, at least with a conscious effort to identify our own cherished opinions and set them aside for the time being.

How Narratives Impede Education Reform

Patrick McGuinn is right. There are two narratives, and that is part of the problem. It sets up yet another dangerous either-or dichotomy where every fact and opinion must be squeezed through one sieve or another.

Meanwhile, all over the country, in individual local schools, effective education reform takes place apart from public awareness. Typically, the these local reformers are responding to the internal culture and politics of their school, making scalability a challenge, if not impossible.

Perhaps it is time to put aside partisan politics and narratives, and think hard about what we as a society want for the future of American education, because, as Deborah Meier points out, we are deciding on our shared future. The key word is “shared.” As it stands, we are divided, playing an evenly matched tug-of-war. No wonder nothing moves. Many education stakeholders are ambivalent about involvement. They want to be deeply involved, but distrust the process because important stakeholders, like teachers and parents, are shut out. Stakeholders do not esteem and trust each other.

So while stakeholders say they want to be empowered, normally the empowerment is worthless, consisting of false choices, like whether to have chocolate or vanilla ice cream. Early charter schools showed us what empowerment could look like. Early studies of charter schools found many local instances of excellence. These days there are too many operators with, shall we say, impure motives. The charter school movement has experienced serious regression toward the mean. Trust has been lost.

In-the-trenches educators have a lot to offer, but policy makers do not listen. We need to avoid over-simplified narratives that can be summed up in a couple a phrases, and begin to wrestle with the complexity of the issue. We got where we are today through a series of smaller actions taken beyond their usefulness. For example, I remember when education defined as the ability to locate information took hold. At the time, I was all for it. No body can know everything, but knowing how to find what you do not know is essential. It was not long though before I started getting students in my classes who did not have enough basic memorized knowledge to use as a foundation for an information search.

We do this all the time---create dichotomies and then swing from one to the other. Education decisions have been made locally for a very long time. I believe education reform must start with local initiative and relational trust. Supposedly, the purpose of the Race to the Top was to give local schools the ability to design their own reform and win funding to implement it. I was part of a local successful reform that did not have a technology piece, a merit pay piece or a community buy-in piece. We teachers just did it. I think the dynamic of how our efforts succeeded in the absence of left-right divisiveness is worth considering and perhaps applying to other local, yet different circumstances.

Mathematica Study Undermines Teacher Merit Pay

So often when I read what passes for news in education, I find myself thinking, “No surprise there.” I am thinking of starting a No Surprise There watch. A case in point is the latest news out of Chicago.

According to the study from Mathmatica:

Preliminary results from a Chicago program containing performance-based compensation for teachers show no evidence that it has boosted student achievement on math and reading tests, compared with a group of similar, nonparticipating schools, an analysis released today concludes.

The program also failed to improve teacher retention rates. Over the two years of the study, achievement gains from the first year evaporated in the second year. Researchers and commentators speculate at least three factors account for the disappointing outcomes:

1. Reform takes time. It is unreasonable to expect stable achievement gains after only two years.
2. Schools did not adhere to a standardized implementation of the plan. Since not everybody did it the same way, the averages may be washing out positive effects in some schools.
3. The basic design of the plan needs tweaking. Perhaps higher or “more meaningfully differentiated” payouts.

It is impossible to generalize from the mere handful of studies on the efficacy of merit-based or performance-based incentives. However, many researchers have studied extrinsic versus intrinsic rewards.* The meta-conclusion is that extrinsic rewards actually undermine achievement. What works is intrinsic, not extrinsic rewards.

Hardly anyone but teachers mention what may be the most salient factor. Merit pay did not lead to achievement gains as measured by higher test scores because teachers simply do not have control over the myriad of variables that affect student achievement.

*Results of Google search on “research extrinsic rewards”

College the New High School?

Long, long ago, American society decided that high school graduation represented the minimum amount of education to get a decent job. It used to be a person could graduate from high school and make a living. My childhood milkman (anyone remember those) graduated from high school and got a job with Foremost where he worked until he retired. He lived comfortably, bought (and paid off) a house two blocks from the nicest neighborhood in town, and saved enough to create a trust fund for his disabled daughter. He successfully kept his family smack dab within the middle class, all on “just” a milkman's salary, with just a high school education. His wife never worked outside the home.

Today, statistics show that a student with only a high school education has a slim chance of being able to support a family within the middle class. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) recently released a report which says, among other things, that California needs educated workers and the high schools are not producing them. PPIC is calling for updates to California's Master Plan for Higher Education.

Currently the master plan establishes the top 12.5 percent of the state's high school graduates as eligible to attend the 10-campus University of California system, and the top 33 percent as eligible for the 23-campus California State University system. The PPIC projects a shortage of educated workers by 2025. High schools are not keeping up, but we have known that for a long time. Parents, teachers and guidance counselors have been advising students forever that if they want a decent job, one that will accomplish for their lives what my milkman's job accomplished for his, they had better graduate from college. High school has been insufficient for a long time.

So the PPIC proposes changing the Master Plan.

Eligibility goals for the CSU and UC systems should be gradually increased to new levels by
2025. The share of the state’s high school graduates eligible for UC should grow from the
top 12.5 percent to the top 15 percent of high school graduates. The share eligible for CSU
should grow from the top 33.3 percent to the top 40 percent.

Of course, California should expand college eligibility. In fact, PPIC”s recommendations may not go far enough. What with college being the new high school, everyone needs to go to college. If only it were so simple. Keeping students in school another four years effectively postpones childhood, an untenable position. Even now, since the age of majority was reduced to 18 (mostly in order to classify Vietnam war soldiers as adults), college from age 18 to 23 is a strange limbo where unready children are treated as adults.

Because any decent job requires college graduation just as decent jobs used to require high school education, college must be part of public education. We, as a society, have been down this road before. There was a time when an eighth grade education was sufficient, but when the necessity for high school was recognized, high school became publicly funded. College occupies the same place now.

What happens when college graduation cannot get you a decent job, say around the year 2075? Perhaps we need to get serious about upgrading high school---and junior high---and elementary school. We need to stop doing it wrong: adopting faddish bandaid reforms, testing to the moon, or shoving curriculum down the grades.

We need to begin with recognizing that crucial academic foundations are laid in the early grades in an atmosphere of relational trust.

Meanwhile, far from increasing enrollment, UC and CSU have cut courses, laid off faculty, and raised fees. The once nearly free public universities today charge upwards of $5000/term in “fees” because they do not charge “tuition,” doncha know.

Stand and Deliver? No, Sit Down and Shut Up

The movie, Stand and Deliver, told the inspirational story of one teacher's success in using Advanced Placement (AP) calculus with his demoralized students. The students complained, worked hard, fought back, bought in, and eventually passed the AP calculus test. Test administrators thought the students had cheated and canceled their scores. The students retook—and passed---the test. Garfield High in Los Angeles would never be the same. Or would it?

Texas hopes to replicate Jaime Escalante's resounding success. More and more schools are offering more and more AP courses to more and more students. But Texas school officials do not like the results. At least they do not like the statistics. More and more students are failing.

But the latest data show Texas high school students fail more than half of the college-level exams, and their performance trails national averages.

School officials wring their hands and wonder what could be going wrong. The students who are expected to fail are failing, and surprise, students from elite schools, the top tier, are failing in increasing numbers, too.

But high failure rates from some of the Dallas area's elite campuses raise questions about whether our most advantaged high school students are prepared for college work.

What is the problem?

For one, you can not just “helicopter-drop” AP courses into a school and expect instant education reform.

Because, two, the teachers may not be qualified to teach AP courses.

So, three, the teachers tend to fail to cover the material and properly prepare the students.

Besides, four, too many students enroll without adequate academic foundation for the courses.

The problem with looking to a movie for direction in education reform is that Garfield High's AP calculus program was just a bit little different than the movie version. Mr. Escalante spent years preparing the students, requiring them to take summer courses and come to school from 7:00 am- noon on Saturdays.

Even Garfield High did not sustain their own success. Please read that link. Mr. Escalante's experience is emblematic in terms of reform obstructionism, professional jealousy, and society's lack of respect for teachers.

The Difference Between High Expectations and Harsh Mandates

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about my role in raising academic achievement in one school. I had had a discouraging day and I wanted to encourage myself by reliving an accomplishment. So I was gratified to find I had prefigured Joann Yatvin's understanding of the Pygmalion effect. Well said, Ms. Yatvin.

The discrepancy between the Pygmalion researchers’ concept of high expectations and that of today’s reformers stems from the multiple meanings of the word “expectation.” To the researchers, it meant the power of belief to influence the behavior of others. To the reformers, it means the power of authority to exact compliance from underlings.

I did not announce to any of the students, “You WILL be studying algebra in the eighth grade.” Those kinds of so-called high expectations back fire.

What I did everyday is communicate to my students in a myriad of subtle ways that I believed in them, I believed in their abilities and I believed in their worthiness. My entire education philosophy could probably be summed up by a version of the Golden Rule. I thought, “If these were my kids, what would I do?” One parent reported to me that her daughter told her, “My teacher is so smart. If she thinks I'm smart, too, then I must be.”

That said, I raise a hearty amen to this comment:

As a lifelong educator, I am not so starry-eyed as to think that believing in students is all that teachers and schools have to do to enable them to succeed. Every school needs a strong curriculum, high-quality materials, well-planned instruction, extra-help options, and meaningful assessments.

Effective education is about meeting the needs of the students, not the needs of pundits, politicians or even educators.

schools must appeal to and support the strengths of students, not play on their fears and weaknesses.

Schools are meant to be wellsprings of vigor, interest, exploration, growth, and illumination. Rigor, the word so often used by reformers to describe what schools should emphasize, is more properly the companion of harshness, inflexibility, and oppression. It is time to change the current conception of high expectations back to its original meaning.

Any former student of mine who happens to read what Ms. Yatvin says about rigor will chuckle. They will remember the many times I said that rigorous does not mean studying “hard;” it means studying right.

Closing the Achievement Gap: One Modest Story

If you are an American overseas with a family, apart from homeschooling, there are generally three ways you can see to your kids' education. One, The Department of Defense Dependent Schools (DODDS) on a military base, but maybe you are not active-duty military and you cannot afford the $17,000 (last I heard) annual tuition. Two, the local schools which may or may not be free, but your kids likely do not speak the local language. Three, an English-language international school. The tuition will be much more reasonable than DODDS, but the quality varies widely.

I was once a DODDS teacher, but I left when I found out that even though I was a teacher, I would be required to pay the exorbitant tuition. I left DODDS and went to work for a local international school for less pay, but then again, since tuition for faculty children was free, I had more take-home pay than with DODDS. Problem was the school had a reputation for being a low achieving school. When I left DODDS, my principal berated me for going to work for that “rinky-dinky school.”

Teachers and students alike muffled their answer when asked what school they taught at/went to. There was a serious achievement gap between DODDS students/local students and the students of this K-8 international school. When I came aboard, they were thrilled to get what they considered a real live genuine DODDS teacher. I taught middle school math and science, and that first year I was given the seventh grade homeroom.

Within two years, I closed the three-decades-old achievement gap. I did not set out to raise achievement. I do not tell this story to brag. My only intention was to do the best I could for the students I had. How did it happen? First, I'll tell you what I did not do.

1.I did not lay on the mandates. I did not tell them, for example, that they would be required to take algebra in the eighth grade. Right now some states have decided that they can raise math achievement by requiring algebra in the eighth grade. It is a laudable goal, but a requirement is the wrong way to go about it.
2.I did not lay on a high-stakes test for the students to pass or else. 'Nuff said.
3.I did not ask for more funding.

Most students want to achieve unless the goal seems unreachable. My students complained that they could never be, in their words, as good as DODDS students. I told them that there was nothing wrong with them. If they followed my guidance, they would be able to stand head and shoulders with DODDS students. They believed me, or at least, they were willing to give me a chance.

So here's what I did.

First, I decided to teach math individually. Individualized lessons are really hard work. I mean really hard work, often too hard to sustain for any length of time. I went a whole year. To start, I needed to find out where they were. I paid a visit to each of the lower grade teachers and got a copy of the textbook publisher's year-end test. I gave everyone the sixth grade test. I did not tell them, but in my own mind, they had to score 70% or better for me to consider them ready for seventh grade math. I did tell them I would be giving tests until I found their level. The nice thing about the tests is there is no obvious grade level designation. You have to know the code. To those that “failed,” I gave the fifth grade test, and so on until I had found the level of each student, and then that is where I began them. One student did not get 70% right until she took the second grade test.

On the first day of school, the parents of two students came to see me after school. They said their daughters, each other's "bestest" friend, were ready for algebra right now and would I teach them algebra while the rest of the class did the regular seventh grade math.

I said, “Sure, here's the seventh grade book. On the last day of my placement testing, I'll give the girls the seventh grade end-of-year test. If they score better than 80%, I will put them straight into algebra. Here, take the books. They are welcome to review all week, during math period and at home. On Friday, I'll test them.” Both girls did very poorly on the test.

On the following Monday, I laid the ground rules. I would teach each lesson individually. Students were responsible for the homework on the lesson. Only the “seventh graders' had textbooks. Everyone else studied from material I gave them. If they had a textbook, the homework was in the book. Otherwise I provided the homework. Students studying at third through sixth grade levels were not burdened with carrying around materials that obviously identified them at the lower levels.

I had found three extra spiral-bound seventh grade teachers books in the book room. I set up a table in the back of the classroom with three chairs. Students were responsible for checking their own homework. They were amazed and thrilled with the trust and responsibility. If they got an answer wrong, they were to rework the problem themselves. If they still could not get the answer, they should ask a classmate who got it right to show them. If they still did not understand, they asked me. Sometimes so many students needed my help at once (and this was a big disadvantage with individualized instruction) it was like, take a number. When they thought they were ready, they could ask me for the test on whatever chapter they were working on. If they got 80% or better, they went on to the next chapter. Otherwise, I would spend more time with them and give them more work until they could get 80% or better.

I discovered the students at so-called lower levels were plagued with early math misconceptions that no one had ever cleared up for them. Partly it was because they had been unable to verbalize their questions, so the questions went unanswered and interfered with later learning. As we dealt with these lingering misconceptions, the students began accelerating through their materials. Soon they had all caught up to the on-level classmates. Because the only acceptable grades were 80%+, every student had As and Bs on their report cards. By the end of the academic year, all but two students had mastered the entire seventh grade textbook.

Shortly after summer vacation began, those two students visited me at home. “Will we have to finish the seventh grade book next year, before you teach us algebra?” they asked. “Of course,” I answered. “We thought so. Can we study with you during the summer so we can start algebra with the rest of our class?” I was delighted. What teacher in their right mind would say no to motivated students like that? It only took a couple of weeks and they were done. The principal said he had his own version of “Stand and Deliver.” I was just happy I would not need to individualize instruction anymore.

The following year I was thrilled to keep this group as their eighth grade homeroom teacher. It was the only time in my career I ever had the same homeroom a second year. Based on my experience with the benefits of continuity, I recommend keeping homerooms together throughout middle school and perhaps high school. As I said earlier, I was also their science teacher. When they were seventh graders, I spent extra time on the foundational basics of scientific thinking until they mastered it. Therefore I could skip this part when they were eighth graders. We ended up finishing the eighth grade science book early and spent the last weeks of school doing all kinds of independent inquiry.

While they were still seventh graders, I had the whole middle school do an in-school science fair, the first ever for this school. The following year, per teacher requests, I oversaw a school-wide science fair for all the grades. Grades K-2 did class projects. Grades 3-8 did individual projects. I trained their teachers to help their own students. Later I trained parents to be judges. I got permission to enter four of the projects in the regional DODDS science fair. At the DODDS science fair, all students were required to stand next to their projects during judging, take questions and defend their projects. All four projects took ribbons and I do not mean participation ribbons.

When they came back to school, they said, “We remember you promised we would stand head and shoulders with DODDS students and we did.” I reminded them that they did the work. Nothing would have happened if they had been unwilling to try.

At the same time all this was going on, I designed an ESL program for a group of non-English speaking middle schoolers from the local schools. Their parents had suddenly withdrawn their students from their own schools and enrolled them in our school. Within a year, all were successfully mainstreamed into the regular program. Right away I put them into PE, art and music. Second quarter they picked up math and science (with me). I had them sit in on history fourth quarter. They had a full regular schedule, including English, the next school year. I was grateful the school gave me a native-speaking teacher's aide for this ad hoc ESL program.

I cannot say I had any particular expertise or philosophy or reform ideology or anything of that sort going in. I was merely bumbling along, just trying to meet the needs in front of me. Looking back, I think I may have discovered some secrets to closing the achievement gap. These are also areas where many modern reform efforts fall short.

1.Meet the students where they are.
2.Design a program to meet their needs, and no one else's.
3.Make the program one that does not imply blame on the students.
4.Believe in the students.
5.Find ways to add continuity to students' lives.
6.Give them a reasonable goal to shoot for. For math, it was to qualify for algebra. For science, it was to do a science fair project. The DODDS science fair was a bonus. For the ESL group, it was to work me out of a job as their program director.
7.Aim for mastery of instruction.
8.Do it on a localized basis. Do not expect to scale it up because students in other schools have different problems, needs and resources.

After those two years, students and teachers no longer muffled their answers when asked about their school, but proudly announced their affiliation.

5 Reasons Why Education Reforms Fail

Veteran teachers have been there, done that, seen multiple attempts at educational reform turn out to be just another failed fad. Worse, superintendents and principals sometimes order teachers around as if teachers were incapable of independent analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. These administrators even have the nerve to order highly successful teachers to replace a Best Practice with something else. Any teacher with the temerity to disobey orders and continue doing what works risks termination, or at least a bad performance evaluation for insubordination.

All that happened to a first-grade teacher I knew in California. She refused an order to cease teaching phonics and start teaching whole language exclusively. She never stopped teaching phonics, and each year every child went from her class to the second grade a capable reader. She could not be fired, but the superintendent rated her “unsatisfactory performance due to insubordination” several years running. When reading tests placed California first graders 49th in the nation, shocked administrators ordered teachers to resume teaching phonics. Her superintendent did the same.

But did her superintendent revise her evaluations? No, because, (so the logic went), she had been insubordinate at that time. So much for the value of critical thinking in our schools.

Whole language, properly implemented in conjunction with phonics, is actually quite effective. How did this promising reform turn into yet another failed fad?

To begin with, hardly any teachers got accurate professional development training in whole language. Here is a typical professional development sequence using whole language as the example: (1) First, at the very beginning, just a few teachers either read the original research or learn about it from the original researchers in a seminar where we could ask clarifying questions. I was a member of the second group.

(2)Then, education writers (like me) start writing about whole language. (3)Other education writers (citing me and others) continue writing about whole language. (4)The process goes on for a while, gradually “simplifying,” that is to say, diluting the concept with each iteration. (5)At some point, school districts begin commissioning professional development for their teachers. In other words, school districts hire outsiders to come into the district and teach the teachers how to do a diluted version of whole language.

These school districts often contact universities. I was part of a university professional development provider team. The school district would call my director and place an order. “I'd like five workshop presenters delivered in two weeks. And make it fun and interactive.” No, seriously. My director would call five of us and say, “Go online, look up whole language, and prepare a 90-minute presentation.” We five would carpool to wherever, deliver our presentations at five different schools in the same 90-minute period. We would take questions as if we really knew anything. After our respective presentations, we would meet up for lunch somewhere. If teachers did their own on-line research it would not count, while our expensive second-hand version was worth PD credit.

To be fair, my director tried to match expertise somewhat. My areas were literacy, math, science and foreign language instruction. She never asked me to deliver, for example, a social studies or special education workshop. (But the chair of the department of education once asked me to teach the social studies methods course. I demurred, “I've never even taught social studies.” “That's okay. Just read up on it at the library.” I refused the course, a dangerous thing for an adjunct professor to do).

What happened to whole language in California was that there was a professional development blitz, presenting a diluted version by people who may or may not know what they are talking about. No wonder whole language was poorly implemented.

1. The first reason (classroom-based) education reform efforts fail is that those tasked with implementing the reform are often implementing something else under the reform's name. After that, Jeanne Century's comments come into play.

I have told the story of a failed reform effort. Ms. Century is talking about successful efforts that fail anyway.

Unfortunately for education, the interest in getting improvements to spread has been accompanied by a failure to give warranted attention to a second question: How do we get improvements to last? The phrase “scale up and sustain” is also part of our vernacular, but the “sustain” part often gets short shrift. While it is important to understand spread, it is endurance that separates the tipping of fads from meaningful change. Unless the investments we make in innovations have lasting impact, in the end, we have wasted our time and resources and, most importantly, squandered students’ opportunities to learn.

Her reasons for fad failure:

2.False view of sustainability.

Our research suggests that individuals think about sustainability in one of two ways—as establishing practices and programs that last and stay the same, or as establishing practices and programs that last and change. While it is a seeming contradiction, the second perspective should frame our efforts if we want to bring about improvements that endure. In order to last, innovations must themselves adapt and evolve. Thus, in addition to identifying strategies that work now, we need to invest in mechanisms for improving and adapting those strategies so that they will work in the future.

3.False view of fidelity.

Reformers often choose interventions because they have been proved to be effective, which is good. But then they make two false assumptions. First, they assume that because reforms have been shown to work, people will actually use them; and second, they believe that when people do use them, maintaining fidelity to the original idea is of the utmost importance. The literature suggests otherwise.

While fidelity of implementation has its place and time, many make the case that adaptation doesn’t reduce effectiveness, but rather increases it...Effectiveness is important, but adaptability is key.

4.False view of future usability.

Just as market conditions always shift, so do the circumstances surrounding educational change. This assures that a program put in place today will not likely meet our students’ needs 10 years from now.

5.False view of tolerability of change.

The challenge, then, is finding the “sweet spot” of change, where the new practice or program doesn’t challenge risk tolerance too much, yet is sufficiently different from current practice to move the change trajectory in a positive direction.

It might be fun for the teachers (or even nonteachers) among us to analyze past educational fads in terms of the extent to which each fad possessed the characteristics of accurate training, fidelity, sustainability, future usability and tolerability. We need to raise the bar of expectations for classroom reforms.

Then we will leave the educators of the future with more than a collection of “best practices”; we will also leave them with the knowledge of how to make those practices work for the students of the future.

All Politics---and Education—is Local. Well, Maybe

According to a commentary in the September 10, 2009 online issue of EdWeek, U.S. Rep. John Kline (R-MN), the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, the public outcry over the President's speech to students was not about indoctrinating our children with socialist philosophy. Mr. Kline believes a more fundamental issue was at stake. More fundamental than socialism? What the president learned this week was that all education, just like all politics, is local.

President Obama delivered a positive, uplifting message to students this week. The fact that many Americans were rubbed the wrong way by what amounted to a federal recommendation about what to teach, and how to teach it, is a signal that no matter how well-intentioned, education reforms simply cannot be dictated from Washington

In Japan, where the national Ministry of Education dictates all sorts of education policies, even in Japan, the nagging and unspoken noise that education is primarily a local issue constantly plays in the background. It is all too true that if the Ministry of Education is for it, then the Japanese teachers union is against it. Japanese teachers spend enormous amounts of time discussing, demonstrating and otherwise agitating against Ministry of Education policies.

If socialist-leaning, group-oriented Japan with its highly centralized education system where every class in the country in any given grade is on the same page of the textbook on any given day finds centrally-dictated policy so onerous, of course, those highly individualistic Americans would be in near revolt over the prospect of education reform dictated from on high.

Mr. Kline suggests the response to the president's speech was symbolic of growing powerless frustration.

...many local communities are growing frustrated as they perceive a more active, intrusive federal government making more and more decisions about how their children are taught.

Maybe you were thinking No Child Left Behind is Exhibit A of an “active, intrusive federal government.” For Mr. Kline, Exhibit A would be the lesson plans the White House provided as a supplement to the speech.

...the nagging fact remains that the federal government—not local teachers or school boards—developed a very specific lesson plan for implementation in classrooms all across the country.

Except... The federal government, as well as many other governmental bodies, have been providing lesson plans for years and years without public protest. One comment to the citation lists a few:

A short list of federal government developed lesson plans:

The National Archives Lesson Plans
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/

National Institute of Health Curriculum Supplements
http://science.education.nih.gov/customers.nsf/WebPages/CSHome

U.S. Department of Agriculture Lesson Plans
http://soils.usda.gov/education/resources/K_12/lessons/

National Park Service Lesson Plans
http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/descrip.htm

U.S. Department of Energy Lesson Plans
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/education/lessonplans/

U.S. Department of State Lesson Plans
http://future.state.gov/educators/lessons/

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Teacher Lesson Plans
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/teachers.html

NASA for Educators
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/index.html

FBI for Kindergarten - 5th Grade
http://www.fbi.gov/fbikids.htm

CIA for Parents and Teachers
https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/parents-teachers/index.html

All kinds of entities provide optional lesson plans. It might be as laudable as a public utility promoting energy conservation. It might be construed as inappropriate commercialism exploiting impressionable (and captive) children. All of these publicly available lesson plans are optional. I agree with Mr. Kline that “something else is at play.” However, that something else is not fear of indoctrination, and it is not the optional lesson plans.

Related Post at School Crossing,When a President Speaks:6 Reasons to Object to Objectors.

Whole-System Reform

Yeah, that's what we need for education in America—whole system reform. But it sounds daunting and overwhelming. Is whole system reform even possible? Opposing ideologies argue themselves into stalemate, and the upshot is nothing changes. Teachers ride the roller coaster of one educational fad after another. A few schools here and there may garner media attention for their success in raising the academic of achievement of their students, but their results seem immune to wholesale transfer. A great strategy with proven results in one school fails dismally in another.

Actually, America has experienced a form of whole-system change. “Reform” is the wrong word. The change has been gradual and insidious, taking decades to get where we are today. Decades ago, a strong liberal arts education was the objective of any student dreaming of a bright future and social mobility. Now the university is a job-training center, and some people think "liberal arts" is a political term.

Wasn't whole-system reform the goal of No Child Left Behind? Is whole-system reform even a reasonable goal?

Ontario, Canada thinks it is. In fact, they say they have accomplished whole-system reform.

We have done (whole-system reform) in Ontario, Canada, where we have had the opportunity since 2003 to implement new policies and practices across the system-all 4,000 elementary schools, 900 secondary schools, and the 72 districts that serve 2 million students. Following five years of stagnation and low morale, from 1998 to 2003, the impact of the new strategies has been dramatic: Higher-order literacy and numeracy have increased by 10 percentage points across the system; the high school graduation rate has risen 9 percentage points, from 68 percent to 77 percent; the morale of teachers and principals has improved; and the public's confidence in the system is up.

For the Canadians in Ontario, whole-system reform does not mean taking on every single issue. It means diligently accomplishing a set of “core policies and strategies.”

Whole-system reform is possible, but it must be tackled directly. There are no single-factor solutions. By implementing a core of fundamental components, system leaders can get results in fairly short order, and build on those results for sustainable futures.

Ontario worked on six “fundamental components.”

1.The entire teaching profession.
2.A small number of ambitious priorities-literacy, numeracy, and high school graduation.
3.The two-way street between instruction and assessment.
4.Distributive coordinated leadership at all levels of the system.
5.Focused, mostly nonpunitive, comprehensive, relentless intervention strategy.
6.Use money to drive reform only in the service of the previous five fundamentals.

Those six fundamentals seem pretty comprehensive and the report lacks specific details. What exactly did everyone do to accomplish the fundamentals?

The only way to get whole-system reform is by motivating and mobilizing the vast majority of people in the system.

There we are, the crux of the problem—motivating and mobilizing the vast majority of people in the system. Did the leaders simply order mobilization by fiat or did they motivate individual buy-in?

One major piece is the student success program. Instead of restricting curriculum as we have so often done here in the US, Ontario believes expanding the curriculum is the way to go. Ontario students can choose a specialist major in a number of fields.

Specialist High Skills Majors are now available in:
Agriculture
Arts and Culture
Aviation/Aerospace
Business
Community Safety and Emergency Services
Construction
Energy
The Environment
Forestry
Health and Wellness
Hospitality and Tourism
Horticulture and Landscaping
Information and Communications Technology
Manufacturing
Mining
Transportation

Students can choose a work coop situation. Back in the day, my own high school in California offered work coops. Maybe it's time to bring them back.

Our students are plugged in anyway. What about offering high school students online courses? Ontario offers fifty of them.

How about this idea? Dual credits.

Students participate in apprenticeship training and postsecondary courses, earning dual credits that count towards both their high school diploma and their postsecondary diploma, degree or apprenticeship certification.

Clearly, Ontario's main strategy for motivating success is to give students a rich variety of choices. Meanwhile, many American schools have been eliminating choices and electives. American universities have been following suit, so that students must strictly follow a curricular flow chart if they expect to graduate, and the number of available electives has been reduced as more and more classes become required in order to ensure, as one example, exposure to multicultural information. Breadth is no longer built into a liberal arts education. With the emphasis on meeting the market demand for job training in the university, liberal arts may be a dying concept.

“Education... From Cradle Through a Career”

I appreciate that the President talks so often about the importance of education, most recently at the Centennial of the NAACP.

All of us can agree that we need to offer every child in this country -- every child --
...every child in this country the best education the world has to offer from cradle through a career.

No argument there. The debate centers around how to do it while still allowing competing interests to perpetuate and prosper. There are reasons society has settled for the current education system. One other thing we can agree on is the value of excellent teachers.

the job of a teacher is too important for us to accept anything less than the best. 

It may surprise you to learn that many, maybe most, school districts have a pernicious policy of rejecting the best school teachers. If a teacher moves from one community to another, that teacher has become what is called an “out-of-district” teacher. These teachers are proven successes with demonstrated competence and experience. They face a good chance of being rejected when they apply for teaching position in their new district. Most districts have a policy of rejecting applicants with more than around five years of teaching experience. And even if they hire the applicant, they will start the teacher on the pay scale at no higher than the five-year-experience level.

If America adopts nothing else from the Japanese education system, America needs, NEEDS, to adopt the idea that teachers are among the most esteemed members of society and teaching is among the most prestigious of professions, a profession capable of attracting our best students.

We need to walk back from the increasingly prevalent idea in American society that teachers are mere technicians. The Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO) recently held a conference. One of the workshop presenters, Susan Ohanian, addressed the trend toward making teachers technicians. From a description of her workshop:

19. Teacher Professionalism At Risk
Presenter: Susan Ohanian
Description:
Teacher professionalism is at risk, under bombardment by Democratic and Republican corporate-politicos. When a teacher becomes a technician whose existence is dependent on directives from the State, then the very term 'teacher professionalism' becomes an oxymoron. This jeopardizes alternative schools as well as public schools. We are all At Risk.

 
What Ms. Ohanian is referring to is the increasing desire of schools to have their teachers become “facilitators” who manage computer-based courses, or deliver prepackaged curriculum. Schools have begun making teachers into technicians as a way to overcome the problem with teacher quality. Every teacher hates these scripted packages precisely because using them infringes on teacher autonomy and professionalism. Schools feel they have no choice. Schools feel that entrusting teachers (autonomy) is too risky because too many teachers lack quality (professionalism). Allowing the trend toward teachers as technicians to continue will only debilitate our education system further by making what some believe to be true to become really true, that anyone can be a teacher.
Any parent is witness to the learning power of babies and toddlers. Another thing we can agree on is that the earliest years are the foundational years.

And we should raise the bar when it comes to early learning programs.  It's not enough just to have a babysitter.  We need our young people stimulated and engaged and involved. .. some (early learning programs) are wasting what studies show are by far a child's most formative years.

But we cannot rely on the government. Nor should we.

Government programs alone won't get our children to the Promised Land.  We need a new mind set, a new set of attitudes -- because one of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way we've internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little from the world and from themselves.

That's a description of one mindset. I encountered that mindset in the person of a junior high boy at an urban school. He was in my science class. I was constantly encouraging students to use education as the way out of the ghetto. This boy said, “Why bother? My father is a janitor and that's all I'll ever get to be.”

But there's another mindset he did not mention, a competing mindset no less debilitating. That is the mindset of entitlement manifested by students who believe that they do not need an education, their future as members of a privileged group is assured, and school is for meeting friends, playing around, and messing with the teacher. They think they are rich, but do not perceive their poverty.

The key to students with a positive attitude towards school is parents.

You can't just contract out parenting.  For our kids to excel, we have to accept our responsibility to help them learn...  And by the way, it means we need to be there for our neighbor's sons and daughters... That's the meaning of community.

With the support of parents, children can aspire to their potential.

It also means pushing our children to set their sights a little bit higher... I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers -- (applause) -- doctors and teachers -- (applause) -- not just ballers and rappers.  I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court Justice.  (Applause.)  I want them aspiring to be the President of the United States of America.  (Applause.)

America needs an attitude makeover. Society needs to respect and esteem teachers. The colleges of education need to turn out teachers worthy of esteem and respect. Many disruptive students yearn to have a teacher who is worthy of their respect. Oftentimes their disruption is a search for someone, please, anyone to earn that respect. Schools need to pay teachers a salary befitting a professional. Once the esteem of society is the norm, colleges of education will have no difficulty attracting a full cohort of the the best and the brightest.

kids are smarter than we give them credit for

Kids ARE smarter than we give them credit for. In America, we really do not believe in our children. By an interesting turn of circumstances, I once found myself teaching high school biology to a multi-age group of students from second grade through high school. I found the youngest children could responsibly handle the equipment, record data, and discuss the implications of their data as well as the oldest students. Where the older students excelled was in writing the lab report. The children loved learning biology. It was fun, challenging and built real self-esteem, not the specious self-esteem so common in schools.

At the conclusion of his speech, the President waxed poetic:

One hundred years from now,
on the 200th anniversary of the NAACP,
let it be said that this generation did its part;
that we too ran the race;

that full of the faith that our dark past has taught us,
full of the hope that the present has brought us,
we faced, in our own lives and all across this nation,
the rising sun of a new day begun.

“The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens.”

President Obama gave another stirring speech about education. Is it just a lot of yadayada?

America will not remain true to its highest ideal... unless we give them the knowledge and skills they need in this new and changing world.

For we know that economic progress and educational achievement have always gone hand in hand in America...

The source of America's prosperity has never been merely how ably we accumulate wealth, but how well we educate our people...

So let there be no doubt: The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens -- and my fellow Americans, we have everything we need to be that nation...

The relative decline of American education is untenable for our economy, it's unsustainable for our democracy, it's unacceptable for our children -- and we can't afford to let it continue...with the right education, a child of any race, any faith, any station, can overcome whatever barriers stand in their way and fulfill their God-given potential.

(bold added)

But the president is not blinded by his own dazzling rhetoric. He knows what all veteran educators know.

Of course, we've heard all this year after year after year after year -- and far too little has changed.

It is easy to lose optimism and fervor.

Certainly it hasn't changed in too many overcrowded Latino schools; it hasn't changed in too many inner-city schools that are seeing dropout rates of over 50 percent.

Even more maddening, the problem with education in America is not scarcity of ideas and resources.

It's not changing not because we're lacking sound ideas or sensible plans -- in pockets of excellence across this country, we're seeing what children from all walks of life can and will achieve when we set high standards, have high expectations, when we do a good job of preparing them.

So what is our problem?

Instead, it's because politics and ideology have too often trumped our progress that we're in the situation that we're in.

A good example is the kneejerk opposition to charter schools on the left, and the equally kneejerk opposition to teachers unions on the right. While adults engage in turf wars, America falls further and further behind. We must set aside ego and listen to each other with open hearts.

Secretary Duncan will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It's not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works.

But in the meantime, it would not hurt to unify behind the President's top three priorities for education:

1.Early Education—It is essential that foundations for future academic achievement be solidly laid in early childhood. The attitudes children acquire at a very young age can propel or hinder academic achievement.
2.World Class Standards—American do not give their children enough credit. It is possible to have much higher expectations and standards without destroying childhood. In fact, higher standards, well done, have the potential to enhance childhood.

Several years ago I began facilitating biology and chemistry laboratory experiences for homeschooled junior high and high school students. Moms tried to occupy the younger siblings with other work, but the younger siblings were curious about the fascinating experiments of their older brothers and sisters. Soon I allowed the little kids to participate.

I discovered children as young as eight years old could use the equipment just as capably and responsibly as the older kids. The little kids could record data just as accurately. They could form conclusions and discuss their results as intelligently. What they could not do as well as the older kids was write the lab report. And that was fine, no problem.

A wonderful side effect was the increase in inter-age respect. Multi-age interaction is more like the real world than self-contained groups of same-age peers.

I'm calling on our nation's governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.

3. Quality Teachers---Recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers

From the moment students enter a school, the most important factor in their success is not the color of their skin or the income of their parents, it's the person standing at the front of the classroom. That's why our Recovery Act will ensure that hundreds of thousands of teachers and school personnel are not laid off -- because those Americans are not only doing jobs they can't afford to lose, they're rendering a service our nation cannot afford to lose, either...

And if you do your part, then we'll do ours. That's why we're taking steps to prepare teachers for their difficult responsibilities, and encourage them to stay in the profession. That's why we're creating new pathways to teaching and new incentives to bring teachers to schools where they're needed most. That's why we support offering extra pay to Americans who teach math and science to end a teacher shortage in those subjects.

Schools should not only work harder to keep their best teachers, schools should also seek out the veteran non-practicing teachers in their communities. Schools should eliminate the arbitrary obstacles that block out-of-district teachers and offer incentives to attract them back to the classroom.

There are many great teachers in America who moved from one district to another, for whatever reason, to find themselves virtually unemployable. Some of them, like me, are math and/or science teachers. A few of them taught in our Department of Defense Dependent Schools overseas, and now back home, they find, like I did, that they are out-of-district in every single district in America.

Now, here's what that commitment means: It means treating teachers like the professionals they are while also holding them more accountable -– in up to 150 more school districts. New teachers will be mentored by experienced ones. Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools. Teachers throughout a school will benefit from guidance and support to help them improve

Money cannot be allowed to remain an excuse for blocking veteran teachers from returning to the classroom.

We can afford nothing but the best when it comes to our children's teachers and the schools where they teach.

4. Innovation and Excellence—even if innovation and excellence is found in a charter school. Learn from the best charter schools, adopt their best practices in public schools, and follow John Wooden's advice, “Don't whine, don't complain, and don't make excuses. Just get out there and do your best.”


5.Higher education---College is the new high school.
6.The Bottom Line---Personal Accountability

Of course, no matter how innovative our schools or how effective our teachers, America cannot succeed unless our students take responsibility for their own education. That means showing up for school on time, paying attention in class, seeking out extra tutoring if it's needed, staying out of trouble. To any student who's watching, I say this: Don't even think about dropping out of school. Don't even think about it...

No government policy will make any difference unless we also hold ourselves more accountable as parents -- because government, no matter how wise or efficient, cannot turn off the TV or put away the video games. Teachers, no matter how dedicated or effective, cannot make sure your child leaves for school on time and does their homework when they get back at night. These are things only a parent can do. These are things that our parents must do...

So today, I'm issuing a challenge to educators and lawmakers, parents and teachers alike: Let us all make turning around our schools our collective responsibility as Americans. (my bold)

Reactions to the President's Speech.

Good News for Education? Or Not?

MetLife's first survey was done in 1984. How have things changed in 25 years? If the survey is to be believed, things have significantly improved. At least the 1000 teachers they asked say so.

The percentage of teachers reporting high satisfaction with their careers has increased from 40 in 1984 to 62 in 2008, while more teachers today (66 percent) feel respected by society than did their counterparts in 1984 (47 percent).

Perhaps even more provocatively, the percentage of teachers agreeing that they can earn a “decent salary” has nearly doubled since 1984, to 66 percent, and far more teachers today (75 percent, compared to 45 percent in 1984) say they would recommend a career in teaching to a young person.

In addition, two thirds of today’s teachers affirm that they were well-prepared for the profession, compared to 46 percent in 1984. Teachers also feel better equipped today than in past years when it comes to addressing student-learning challenges such as poverty, limited English language proficiency, and lack of parental support, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the number of teachers who rate the academic standards in their schools as excellent has doubled from 26 percent in 1984 to 53 percent today, and 89 percent of teachers say their school’s curriculum is excellent or good, compared to 81 percent in 1984.
Even regarding the availability of materials and supplies in schools—a notoriously sore subject among teachers—the numbers have improved: The percentage of teachers rating their access to such resources as excellent, while still not reaching a majority, has doubled to 44 percent since 1984.

What about all that bad news we hear all the time? Well, I guess that is just the mainstream media missing the message yet again... except it is teachers themselves who report so much of the bad news. It's a conundrum...

...however, MetLife’s data does also underscore persistent disparities among schools and mounting challenges facing the country’s public education system.

If schools are a mirror of society, MetLife's data polishes the reflection. Economically, the middle class is being gutted, resulting in a growing chasm between the rich and the poor in America. The same chasm is widening in American education.

For example, teachers in urban and secondary schools, especially those with high concentrations of low-income students, are significantly less likely to rate the academic standards in their schools as excellent, according to the report. Urban teachers are also considerably less positive than their suburban counterparts on the availability of teaching materials in their schools and the degree of parental support their students receive.
Pointing to significant demographic shifts,the percentage of teachers responding that limited English proficiency hinders learning for a quarter or more of their students has doubled since 1992, from 11 to 22 percent, with the level reaching 30 percent for urban teachers. In addition, nearly half of today’s teachers (up from 41 percent in 1992) say that poverty limits the day-to-day capabilities of at least a quarter of their students.
The number of teachers saying that students’ learning abilities in their classes are so varied that they cannot teach effectively has also jumped, according to the report, from 39 percent in 1988 to 43 percent today.

There is an achievement gap between students, and there is a corresponding achievement gap between schools. More surprising, it looks like our students lose abilities as they get older.

The teachers' responses also reveal some potentially major cracks in the overall quality of U.S. students’ education. While the majority of teachers say their students’ skills in reading, writing, and math are excellent or good, for example, significantly smaller percentages of secondary school teachers than elementary-level teacher feel that way.

Of course, since Americans believe all roads lead to America, preparation for success in a global environment has low priority.

In an increasingly global economy, nearly two-thirds of teachers rate their students as only fair or poor in their knowledge of other nations and cultures, and more than half rate their students as fair or poor in foreign languages.

In fact, some schools have returned to teaching Latin, but refuse to teach languages such as Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic and more. Our schools do not have language teachers, and they do not want language teachers anyway.

Furthermore, this survey echoes many other other surveys in reporting the pervasiveness of the one problem, which more than any other, drives teachers out of teaching.

The report also highlights apparent communication problems between teachers and principals and discrepancies in the groups’ views on a number of issues, including school-disciplinary policies, parent-involvement levels, and the use of teachers’ time.

An example of divergent views appeared in the comments to a previous post. A school administrator discourages teachers sending unruly students out of class because the class will see the teacher as weak. Teachers consider the ability to send out unruly students as a way to maintain effective instruction for the students who remain.

President Obama said, ”But I also know that every American who is sitting here tonight loves this country and wants it to succeed.  That must be the starting point for every debate we have in the coming months, and where we return after those debates are done.

Teachers and administrators have to stop being adversaries.

Here are the Department of Education provisions from American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Honestly, there is not much in the way of education reform in this new legislation. I am not seeing “new incentives for teacher performance; pathways for advancement, and rewards for success.” I did not expect much reform. America still has not had the wide open debate it needs on education. For example, certain groups dislike charter schools on principle; other groups dislike the teachers unions on principle. All groups need to set aside ideological rigidity, and systematically examine education from every angle. Americans need to decide whether they want a world-class education system, and what they want the education system to look like.

Educators like John Taylor Gatto argue that the system is not broken. He believes the system is doing what it was designed to do—produce compliant workers. Somewhere I read you cannot expect a Ford to be a Cadillac, and you cannot fix (read: reform) a Ford to be a Cadillac. Until Americans are ready to talk about a total overhaul, a complete redesign, it be impossible to reform.

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Education for the Disadvantaged
For an additional amount for ‘Education for the Disadvantaged’ to carry out title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (‘ESEA’), $13,000,000,000: Provided, That $5,000,000,000 shall be available for targeted grants under section 1125 of the ESEA: Provided further, That $5,000,000,000 shall be available for education finance incentive grants under section 1125A of the ESEA: Provided further, That $3,000,000,000 shall be for school improvement grants under section 1003(g) of the ESEA: Provided further, That each local educational agency receiving funds available under this paragraph shall be required to file with the State educational agency, no later than December 1, 2009, a school-by-school listing of per-pupil educational expenditures from State and local sources during the 2008-2009 academic year: Provided further, That each State educational agency shall report that information to the Secretary of Education by March 31, 2010.

Impact Aid
For an additional amount for ‘Impact Aid’ to carry out section 8007 of title VIII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, $100,000,000, which shall be expended pursuant to the requirements of section 805.

School Improvement Programs
For an additional amount for ‘School Improvement Programs’ to carry out subpart 1, part D of title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (‘ESEA’), and subtitle B of title VII of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, $720,000,000: Provided, That $650,000,000 shall be available for subpart 1, part D of title II of the ESEA: Provided further, That the Secretary shall allot $70,000,000 for grants under McKinney-Vento to each State in proportion to the number of homeless students identified by the State during the 2007-2008 school year relative to the number of such children identified nationally during that school year: Provided further, That State educational agencies shall subgrant the McKinney-Vento funds to local educational agencies on a competitive basis or according to a formula based on the number of homeless students identified by the local educational agencies in the State: Provided further, That the Secretary shall distribute the McKinney-Vento funds to the States not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act: Provided further, That each State shall subgrant the McKinney-Vento funds to local educational agencies not later than 120 days after receiving its grant from the Secretary.

Innovation and Improvement
For an additional amount for ‘Innovation and Improvement’ to carry out subpart 1, part D of title V of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (‘ESEA’), $200,000,000: Provided, That these funds shall be expended as directed in the fifth, sixth, and seventh provisos under the heading ‘Innovation and Improvement’ in the Department of Education Appropriations Act, 2008: Provided further, That a portion of these funds shall also be used for a rigorous national evaluation by the Institute of Education Sciences, utilizing randomized controlled methodology to the extent feasible, that assesses the impact of performance-based teacher and principal compensation systems supported by the funds provided in this Act on teacher and principal recruitment and retention in high-need schools and subjects: Provided further, That the Secretary may reserve up to 1 percent of the amount made available under this heading for management and oversight of the activities supported with those funds.

Special Education
For an additional amount for ‘Special Education’ for carrying out parts B and C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (‘IDEA’), $12,200,000,000, of which $11,300,000,000 shall be available for section 611 of the IDEA: Provided, That if every State, as defined by section 602(31) of the IDEA, reaches its maximum allocation under section 611(d)(3)(B)(iii) of the IDEA, and there are remaining funds, such funds shall be proportionally allocated to each State subject to the maximum amounts contained in section 611(a)(2) of the IDEA: Provided further, That by July 1, 2009, the Secretary of Education shall reserve the amount needed for grants under section 643(e) of the IDEA, with any remaining funds to be allocated in accordance with section 643(c) of the IDEA: Provided further, That the total amount for each of sections 611(b)(2) and 643(b)(1) of the IDEA, under this and all other Acts, for fiscal year 2009, whenever enacted, shall be equal to the amounts respectively available for these activities under these sections during fiscal year 2008 increased by the amount of inflation as specified in section 619(d)(2)(B) of the IDEA: Provided further, That $400,000,000 shall be available for section 619 of the IDEA and $500,000,000 shall be available for part C of the IDEA.

Rehabilitation Services and Disability Research
For an additional amount for ‘Rehabilitation Services and Disability Research’ for providing grants to States to carry out the Vocational Rehabilitation Services program under part B of title I and parts B and C of chapter 1 and chapter 2 of title VII of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, $680,000,000: Provided, That $540,000,000 shall be available for part B of title I of the Rehabilitation Act: Provided further, That funds provided herein shall not be considered in determining the amount required to be appropriated under section 100(b)(1) of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 in any fiscal year: Provided further, That, notwithstanding section 7(14)(A), the Federal share of the costs of vocational rehabilitation services provided with the funds provided herein shall be 100 percent: Provided further, That $140,000,000 shall be available for parts B and C of chapter 1 and chapter 2 of title VII of the Rehabilitation Act: Provided further, That $18,200,000 shall be for State Grants, $87,500,000 shall be for independent living centers, and $34,300,000 shall be for services for older blind individuals.

Student Financial Assistance
For an additional amount for ‘Student Financial Assistance’ to carry out subpart 1 of part A and part C of title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (‘HEA’), $15,840,000,000, which shall remain available through September 30, 2011: Provided, That $15,640,000,000 shall be available for subpart 1 of part A of title IV of the HEA: Provided further, That $200,000,000 shall be available for part C of title IV of the HEA.

The maximum Pell Grant for which a student shall be eligible during award year 2009-2010 shall be $4,860.

Student Aid Administration
For an additional amount for ‘Student Aid Administration’ to carry out part D of title I, and subparts 1, 3, and 4 of part A, and parts B, C, D, and E of title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, $60,000,000.

Higher Education
For an additional amount for ‘Higher Education’ to carry out part A of title II of the Higher Education Act of 1965, $100,000,000.
Institute of Education Sciences
For an additional amount for ‘Institute of Education Sciences’ to carry out section 208 of the Educational Technical Assistance Act, $250,000,000, which may be used for Statewide data systems that include postsecondary and workforce information, of which up to $5,000,000 may be used for State data coordinators and for awards to public or private organizations or agencies to improve data coordination.

Departmental Management
office of the inspector general
For an additional amount for the ‘Office of the Inspector General’, $14,000,000, which shall remain available through September 30, 2012, for salaries and expenses necessary for oversight and audit of programs, grants, and projects funded in this Act.

RELATED AGENCIES
Corporation for National and Community Service
OPERATING EXPENSES
(including transfer of funds)
For an additional amount for ‘Operating Expenses’ to carry out the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973 (‘1973 Act’) and the National and Community Service Act of 1990 (‘1990 Act’), $160,000,000: Provided, That $89,000,000 of the funds made available in this paragraph shall be used to make additional awards to existing AmeriCorps grantees and may be used to provide adjustments to awards under subtitle C of title I of the 1990 Act made prior to September 30, 2010 for which the Chief Executive Officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service (‘CEO’) determines that a waiver of the Federal share limitation is warranted under section 2521.70 of title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations: Provided further, That of the amount made available in this paragraph, not less than $6,000,000 shall be transferred to ‘Salaries and Expenses’ for necessary expenses relating to information technology upgrades, of which up to $800,000 may be used to administer the funds provided in this paragraph: Provided further, That of the amount provided in this paragraph, not less than $65,000,000 shall be for programs under title I, part A of the 1973 Act: Provided further, That funds provided in the previous proviso shall not be made available in connection with cost-share agreements authorized under section 192A(g)(10) of the 1990 Act: Provided further, That of the funds available under this heading, up to 20 percent of funds allocated to grants authorized under section 124(b) of title I, subtitle C of the 1990 Act may be used to administer, reimburse, or support any national service program under section 129(d)(2) of the 1990 Act: Provided further, That, except as provided herein and in addition to requirements identified herein, funds provided in this paragraph shall be subject to the terms and conditions under which funds were appropriated in fiscal year 2008: Provided further, That the CEO shall provide the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate a fiscal year 2009 operating plan for the funds appropriated in this paragraph prior to making any Federal obligations of such funds in fiscal year 2009, but not later than 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, and a fiscal year 2010 operating plan for such funds prior to making any Federal obligations of such funds in fiscal year 2010, but not later than November 1, 2009, that detail the allocation of resources and the increased number of members supported by the AmeriCorps programs: Provided further, That the CEO shall provide to the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate a report on the actual obligations, expenditures, and unobligated balances for each activity funded under this heading not later than November 1, 2009, and every 6 months thereafter as long as funding provided under this heading is available for obligation or expenditure.

Office of Inspector General
For an additional amount for the ‘Office of Inspector General’, $1,000,000, which shall remain available until September 30, 2012.

National Service Trust
(including transfer of funds)
For an additional amount for ‘National Service Trust’ established under subtitle D of title I of the National and Community Service Act of 1990 (‘1990 Act’), $40,000,000, which shall remain available until expended: Provided, That the Corporation for National and Community Service may transfer additional funds from the amount provided within ‘Operating Expenses’ for grants made under subtitle C of title I of the 1990 Act to this appropriation upon determination that such transfer is necessary to support the activities of national service participants and after notice is transmitted to the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate: Provided further, That the amount appropriated for or transferred to the National Service Trust may be invested under section 145(b) of the 1990 Act without regard to the requirement to apportion funds under.