Teachable Moment

The End

2010-07-02T07:08:00.003-04:00

After over two and a half years of blogging on this site, I'm hanging up my laptop. This is going to be my last post, at least for the forseeable future.

When I first started blogging, I didn't have any real goal in mind. Mainly, I thought it would be fun and I wanted to get my voice and my ideas out there. After 30 months, I feel like I've done that. And it has been fun. But there comes a point where I don't really think that I have anything new to say. Rather, I'm just finding new ways to say the same old things. Not that that's necessarily bad. But it's just not what I want to be doing.

So what am I trying to say with all this? Well, after giving it some thought, I think I can lay it out as a couple of big ideas.

1. It's never either/or
Despite all the claims that there's one way to do reform or that someone has found the right way to do anything and everyone who does it differently is wrong, it's a big mistake to start looking at the world as either/or. It's not curriculum vs. accountability or small class sizes vs. merit pay. When we start looking at things that way we're really limiting what we can accomplish. Most of the dichotomies are false and we need to keep that in mind. The problems we face in education are too big to be reduced to a single solution.

2. We need to look beyond schools
Ultimately, the problems in education require solutions that are bigger than can be implemented just in schools. To be sure, the schools themselves can use the work, but they're not alone. If we don't ensure that kids have safe neighborhoods, safe homes, good nutrition, proper health care, and more, how are we going to expect them to be able to learn to their full capacity? I'm not saying that kids can't learn unless their home lives are perfect. Obviously, that's not true. I am saying that if we want to make it easier for ourselves and truly invest in allowing all kids to achieve their potential, you aren't going to be able to do that in six hours a day, 180 days a year.

3. Focus on the schools and neighborhoods that need help
For al the talk about how broken the U.S. education system is, we actually do pretty well on the whole. Most kids get a pretty good education and we still lead the world economy in many of the areas that would be impossible if our whole system was a failure. However, there are schools and neighborhoods who are being failed spectacularly by the system. Those are the schools and neighborhoods that need our attention. Rather than spend all of our time trying to find ways to fix a giant system that, honestly, doesn't need fixing, let's look at where the problem is and fix it there. That might require that we change the whole system, but let's cross that bridge when we come to it. We need to target our solutions to where the problems really are.

4. Words matter
One thing that never fails to infuriate me is the incredible amount of hype and spin that takes place in education and the nearly uncritical reporting of that hype and spin. In the end, words matter because they shape perception and perception shapes how we approach issues. Too many of the words about education are sloppy or outright inaccurate. That leads to a skewed perception and all sorts of craziness. If we want to correct the educational problems in our country, we need to have a serious discussion about them and I don't know if that's possible in the current state of things. I don't know, but I haven't given up hoping.

It's with very mixed feelings that I bring this blog to a close. It has always been a lot of fun to write. I hope that you've also enjoyed reading it.

Thanks for reading and maybe we'll meet again somewhere down the trail.

A Great Day for Education

2010-06-30T07:13:00.004-04:00

You have to figure that June 28, 2010 is not going to go down as one of the all time great days in the history of American education. That's the day, after all, that the DOE and UFT celebrated the end of another school year by sniping at each other about whose fault it is that there's going to be a wacky start to the next school year with one day on, four days off, and then back to school.

Let's set aside - at least for the purposes of this post - whose fault it actually is. The DOE says that they want to make the change, but that the UFT won't let them. The UFT says that DOE has the power to do it without UFT approval, so they can't be blamed. So we've got plenty of finger pointing going on. Check that off the old to do list. All you really need to know at this point is that they're blaming each other for not being able to solve a problem.

Actually, all you really need to know is that the problem is not solved. That's right. The combined forces of the DOE and UFT can't even agree on how to solve something that they both say is a problem. That's insane!

I can't help but look at this situation and wonder where the grown ups are. Where's the person who's going to come in, look past the silliness, and get things done.

Let's be clear. In the grand scheme of things, this really isn't that big a deal. It's annoying and weird, but it's manageable. The fact that the DOE and UFT can't even get their act together to solve the little stuff doesn't fill me with confidence that they'll be able to solve the big stuff.

I blame both sides for this. This is just a silly squabble to try to score cheap points and in the end, it doesn't help anyone.

Beyond School

2010-06-28T07:10:00.003-04:00

I've been seeing stories about cyberbullying popping up in the media quite a bit lately. I guess it's one of those stories that's pretty easy to cover and is guaranteed to arouse some feeling. I mean, who's in favor of bullying? I imagine editors across the country thinking, "We'll send a reporter to the school, talk to some bullied teens, and the story will just write itself. Piece of cake!" The New York Times is the latest entry with a pretty long story today.

Here's my take. I don't know whether or not schools have the authority to impose restrictions on what happens outside of schools. I also know that when school districts - like in New York - try to ban things like sexting, it raises the obvious question of how it's going to be enforced. Given that there are often issues with addressing misbehavior in school, how are we going to enforce rules on things that happen outside of school?

What comes to my mind, though, is that this latest push is symptomatic of society's larger expectation that schools are going to be able to fix everything that needs fixing in today's kids. Reading behind grade level? We need better teachers and more accountability and that will make all kids learn. Cyberbullying taking place at home? The school system will spring into action.

In either instance, I think the school-only approach is unrealistic. In either case, teachers and school administrators are constrained by time, access, and availability. Certainly schools can be the focal point for addressing issues having to do with kids. In fact, schools should be the focal point. But they cannot be the only point. Kids need more than schools.

Seems Like a Good Idea

2010-06-25T07:23:00.003-04:00

It's hard to tell whether this is big news or not. On the one hand, the city seems to be moving away (at least slightly) from their position that bad schools must be closed at once. On the other hand, the whole thing seems awfully limited in scope, so we should exercise a little caution before hailing it as the wave of the future.

For those of you who don't like following links, the New York Times is reporting that the city and UFT have come to an agreement on following a transformation model for 11 of the lowest-performing schools in the city. As the name suggests, it's about turning schools around rather than closing them. The schools will hire master teachers who will train other staff at the school to try to develop the teachers there, student data will be used as a factor in rating teacher effectiveness, and ineffective teachers will face an expedited hiring process.

Now, with the caveat that all my information on this comes from a pretty short article in the newspaper, I'm going to go out on a limb to say that this makes sense to me. I've long been a proponent of working to better develop the teachers we have rather than fire everyone and tap into the imaginary pool of master teachers who just can't find a job as replacements. So I'm a big fan of that. I also broadly agree with the idea of stricter methods for evaluating teachers. Using student data as one of several factors for evaluating teachers makes sense to me too.

I'm impressed that the city and the union seem to have found a middle way forward here. Too often both sides dig into their bunkers and lob grenades back and forth. That's unhelpful to everyone. Let's hope the spirit of collaboration continues.

The Appearance of Action

2010-06-23T07:20:00.003-04:00

Upset with the lack of racial and economic diversity in its gifted and talented programs - and perhaps a little flustered under questioning by City Council members - the DOE is apparently going to be looking at the possibility of changing how they determine G&T eligibility. They'll be looking for a test that's a little harder to prep for so that families from wealthier communities can't "game" the test by hiring tutors, etc.

I have to say, this is not a great moment in critical problem solving by the DOE.

First of all, the idea that they're going to stumble upon some un-gameable test is just ludicrous. Change the test and you'll change how people prepare for it. That's all. Those families that want to prep their kids are going to prep their kids and it's really just a matter of what they're prepping for.

More fundamentally though, the DOE actually seems to be missing what the real issue is. Do they really think that the reason more kids from the Upper East Side are determined G&T eligible than kids from the South Bronx is that the Upper East Siders are "expending thousands" of dollars on test prep? Really? That's the only difference they might be able to think of?

My biggest pet peeve in any sort of policy discussion is when people try to look like they're doing something rather than actually doing something. The DOE is far from alone in this practice. But they are certainly guilty of it. Changing the test from one to another gives the appearance of action and seeking to redress apparent racial and economic inequality, but really it's just changing how that inequality is measured. It doesn't matter what ruler you use, until you actually do change something, the results aren't really going to change.

The Need for Fathers

2010-06-21T07:16:00.002-04:00

Regular readers of this blog should know by now that I favor a pretty broad approach to tackling educational problems. Rather than just focus on what goes on in the school building, I think you need to look at what happens in the lives of children when they're in school and when they're out of it. That's why my eyes perked up a bit when I read in the New York Times about a program in the Bronx to teach men how to be better fathers.

The article was disappointingly short on details, so I'm afraid that I can't comment much on it other than to say that, in theory, it sounds like a pretty good thing.

I'm not one to say that the only way to raise a child is in a familiy where both parents are married and still together. But it does help. At the very least, children do need multiple people who care about them in their lives - both women and men. The statistics are grim in poor, urban communities about this kind of arrangement. Too many women are raising too many children on their own. That's a problem.

The program highlighted in the Times seemed to have worked with 16 men. That's not a lot, but it is a start. If the program works at getting men involved in the lives of their children, let's hope that it grows.

Do We Still Need TFA?

2010-06-09T07:29:00.004-04:00

A sure-fire sign that things are getting tough is when you start seeing people blame groups for something that isn't really their fault. So when you read a story out of Las Vegas about teachers there being wary of Teach for America and thinking that they might not be needed and may even be keeping teacher salaries artificially low, it's a sign that things are not great in Las Vegas. (Full disclosure: I am a TFA alum myself, but not in Las Vegas, though I have been there.)

First, let's rebut the whole TFA is keeping salaries low theme. According to the article, TFA has placed 308 teachers in Las Vegas over the last six years. That's about 51 a year. For 51 teachers - who are part of the union, by the way - to have any impact at all on the average teacher salary would mean that you have the tiniest district in the world or people are talking nonsense. My bet is nonsense given that they employ well over 16,000 teachers.

That's pretty low-hanging fruit, but it's worth pointing out since it shows the realm of ridiculousness that we're talking about.

The other, and more serious, issue raised by the article centers around what the role of TFA should be in during this time of layoffs and cutbacks. As teaching jobs become harder and harder to come by, is there still a role for TFA to play in terms of bringing in new teachers to the system?

I think that the answer is yes, but with changes. TFA needs to take a more focused approach at this point and probably needs to cut back on how many teachers it recruits. But even with layoffs and cutbacks, there are going to be some positions that are harder to fill than others and that's the role that TFA thrives in. Is Teach for America the answer to all of education's problems? Absolutely not. Does it still have a role to play in education today. Absolutely.

Much Ado

2010-06-07T07:11:00.003-04:00

The New York Post was shocked - shocked! - on their cover yesterday to discover that New York students were getting credit for putting the wrong answer on their state math tests. Those fiends at the DOE have done it again! Will there be no end to the dumbing down?

Amidst about 500 words of outrage over the policy - which was upgraded today to "controversial", apparently based on the fact that the New York Post wrote about it yesterday - it comes out that the reason kids are getting partial credit for those problems is that they show work demonstrating at least a partial understanding of the math principles involved.

I'm sorry, but that policy actually makes sense.

Look, ultimately it matters whether or not kids can solve math problems correctly. No argument from me on that point. But these tests are supposedly measuring student learning. If a child is able to demonstrate that they are learning - even if it's not as much as they should be - doesn't it make sense to account for that in our measurement?

The Post's "exclusive" yesterday is essentially an expose on giving credit for showing work, something that's been around at least since I was in school and probably before. It's certainly not a new policy on the New York state tests either.

Is the amount of credit being given for showing work too generous? Perhaps. I don't know. I do know that overheated Post rhetoric doesn't help.

That brings me to my last point of the morning. The more I read education reporting in the Post and other New York papers, the more troubled I am by the things I recognize to be misrepresentations or outright falsehoods. It makes me wonder what I would find if I knew more about, say, economics or world affairs. I mean, if we can't trust the papers to report accurately on education, how can we trust them to get right the big stories like this one?

A Reasonable Deal

2010-06-04T07:02:00.003-04:00

So, you've probably heard by now that Mayor Bloomberg has unilaterally decided to avert teacher layoffs by not granting raises to teachers for the next two years. Say this about the guy, he's not afraid to pull the trigger.

Now, both the UFT and CSA have come out against this, saying that the Mayor doesn't have that authority. And while they may technically be right, in practical terms it probably won't matter. As long as a contract hasn't been signed, the Mayor does have the practical authority to do this.

But is it the right thing to do?

Well, certainly teachers always deserve more money. You'd be hard pressed to find me ever arguing against that. But let's look at the facts here. Just three days ago we all woke up with the expectation that nearly 4,500 teachers were going to be laid off and booted from the system. You think class sizes are bad now? Is that really the education system we want? Furthermore, (and this isn't entirely clear to most people) most teachers are still going to get raises next year. Step increases, which you earn just for being in the system another year or for increasing your education, are still going to be happening. Teachers are going to get raises, just not as big as they may have thought. Honestly, in this economic climate, that's a deal I would take.

Again, the unions have come out against this, and I guess that's there job. They always need to ask for more. But I hope that this is posturing on their part and not the start of an actual fight. If given the choice between no additional raises for everyone and layoffs plus raises for everyone else, I'm going for the no-layoffs plan. In the end, it's better for everyone.

Follow the Money

2010-06-02T06:58:00.004-04:00

The other day, my wife got a mailing from Education Reform Now - a group formerly pretty focused on lifting New York's charter cap. Essentially (and unsurprisingly for someone who's seen ERN's previous work), the full color flyer was a hit on the UFT. On the front was a picture of a third grade parent saying something to the effect of, "I used to think that the union was on our side. But now they're working to protect the teachers who have been their longest, not the best teachers." (Unfortunately, my wife threw away the flyer so I don't have the exact wording.) Inside was a little more explanation on why last in/first out is so bad. There was also a little tear out card that you could put your information on and mail in to say that you think teacher quality and not seniority should be the major factor in teacher layoffs.

Two things struck me about this mailing.

First, the heat is definitely on the union, or at least the heat is trying to be on the union. When there are direct mail pieces trying to whip up popular support against you going out, you know that you're in a precarious spot. At the very least, someone is trying to put you in a precarious spot.

That's what bring me to my second point to ponder: how did my wife end up on the mailing list, whereas I did not? (And yes, I am a little jealous.) We are both former UFT members, though she's a little more recent, but I don't know that it makes sense to target union members with something like this. Plus, I doubt the UFT would share their list with ERN. We don't have kids so her name wouldn't appear on any lists of that sort (if such things exist). She'd never heard of the group, so she hadn't signed up directly as a supporter.

What I keep coming back to is that she is a registered Republican, while I'm a Democrat. Where that starts to get interesting is that in the past that's mattered because she received all of the Bloomberg mailings during the last Mayoral election. I had to read them over her shoulder. Given the facts that I have now, the explanation that seems to make the most sense to me is that the Bloomberg campaign has transferred into OFA-mode and is using their resources to try to bolster non-election campaigns - in this case, the repeal of last in/first out.

This is not entirely out of the realm of possibility either. Joe Williams of the group Democrats for Education Reform sits on the board of ERN. He has hired former Bloomberg campaign manager Bradley Tusk to help in his efforts. So there is a connection there, but it wouldn't totally explain what's going on. After all, Tusk presumably wasn't allowed to keep the various campaign lists after the election for his own personal use.

Now, obviously, that's almost pure speculation at this point and there may be a perfectly good explanation that I just haven't thought of because it's early in the morning. But were I an enterprising reporter, it's a link I just might be trying to look into. After all, if the Mayor or the Republican party in general really is putting resources (monetary and otherwise) behind a group that's explicitly declaring war on the UFT, that would be a story.

The Cap is Lifted, Now What?

2010-05-28T07:27:00.003-04:00

Well, it looks like they're going to do it. According to the Times, the City and State Assembly have reached a deal to more than double the number of charter schools allowed in New York State. In return for that increase, the bill will forbid charters from being operated for profit, allow the state comptroller to audit the schools, require that in instances of co-location any major improvements made to a charter school must also be made to the public school, and require the establishment of a building council to mediate disputes between the schools.

For those of you keeping score at home, that's (in order) two worthwhile changes, one kind of silly one, and one that's totally meaningless.

After all the time and ink that's been spent on this whole issue, I find that apparent resolution a little bit anti-climactic. Maybe I'll be wrong and this will be the education reform that changes everything and makes it so that all children can obtain an excellent education. But I doubt it. Assuming that New York continues to do a good job at approving charters, this will probably help some kids. But it's not going to help all kids. No matter what you read from the Post or Chancellor Klein or anyone else, this will - at most! - affect 6% of public school kids in New York City. That leaves a lot of kids out there who won't benefit at all from this. Let's take a minute to consider them before we take too many victory laps on this one.

Where's the Books?

2010-05-26T07:32:00.004-04:00

I'm a big fan of metaphors and telling details. A telling detail is a small instance that illuminates a larger truth. Honestly, one of the best examples of the use of telling details is the TV show The Wire, where countless small moments demonstrate character and larger social implications. Now, though, I have perhaps a new favorite moment from the real world.

In Douglas County, Nevada the school board is looking to adopt a new English curriculum. They're leaning toward one called Springboard, which is "vertically aligned" and uses "standards-based instruction to reinforce content." It's everything an idealocrat could hope for. There's just one thing missing: novels. That's right, they forgot the books. In this curriculum, students are expected to read only one novel a year.

On the one hand, this is the sort of thing that just makes you want to shake your head and say that it's no wonder that nearly 25 percent of Americans don't read books. On the other hand, this is a telling detail that I think illuminates a larger trend.

With the direction that education reform is moving right now, we like things like vertical alignment and standards-based instruction. Frankly, we should like those things. But they aren't the ends in themselves. And that's easy to lose sight of when you're trying to look at things from an algorithmic, number-crunching sort of way. Maybe this curriculum will help kids do better on state tests. I don't know. But even the state tests aren't the end.

Somewhere along the line, folks seem to have forgotten - at least in Douglas County, and I would argue elsewhere - that there's a lot more to educating kids than will show up on a bubble sheet. That an English curriculum without novels is even being considered just shows how people are forgetting that.

Poverty Matters

2010-05-24T07:29:00.003-04:00

Here's one of those things that didn't exactly surprise me when I saw it, but is worth noting anyway. A report out of the Annie E. Casey Foundation has found that poverty has a negative effect on fourth grade reading levels.

I know. Not really shocking stuff. What makes it worth noting, though, is this finding:

The figures show how poverty and different school contexts can exacerbate the proportion of students having trouble mastering reading. While 83 percent of poor black students in schools with moderate to low levels of poverty failed to hit the grade level reading target, for example, the corresponding percentage for low-income African-American students in school with high concentrations of poor students was 90 percent.

Let's think about that for a minute. Not only does a student's own poverty affect his learning, the poverty of those around him affects his learning. That's a big deal. And it should make us think - at least a little bit - about how we approach poor neighborhood schools.

I think it's safe to assume that how much money is in the bank account of a child's parents doesn't actually have a direct impact how well a child reads. It's not the money itself that makes the difference, it's what the money allows for. A child living in poverty without adequate nutrition or medical care is going to have trouble reaching those all-important grade-level targets. A child with an unstable home life or uncertain housing is going to have trouble learning in school. The evidence is clear that those things matter. We need to take those into account when we're trying to teach the kids. More than that, we need to work to make sure that those conditions are improved wherever they can be. If we don't, we're going to be missing a real opportunity to better the lives of kids in need.

Stunted Progress

2010-05-21T07:17:00.003-04:00

I kind of feel bad for the city's fourth grade teachers. Over the last 8 years, they've gotten kids to make slow, but steady progress on the NAEP reading tests. We're not talking the kind of progress you see on the state tests, but it's progress all the same. That takes a lot of hard work and dedication and they deserve to be commended for that.

But then those kids get to eighth grade and the wheels seem to fall off. According to the same set of NAEP results, the level of eighth grade success is almost exactly the same as it was in 2003.

The crazy thing about this is that today's eighth graders used to be fourth graders, where presumably they were getting better. Then a few years later, it's gone and there's no improvement. What gives?

I know there's all sorts of research and anecdotal evidence about the drop off in student success that seems to coincide with middle school. A lot of that may have to do with the transformation from sweet little kids to raging hormone monsters. But even if that's the case, it seems like we need to do something to adust for that.

As a former middle school teacher, I know it's hard. But all the fourth grade gains in the world don't matter much if they're gone in four years. Progress really only matters if it can be sustained.

Last Stand

2010-05-19T07:17:00.002-04:00

For the most part, I'm not a huge fan of the way any newspaper covers education. The best I usually hope for is a clear statement of facts with a minimum of what it all means, which often tends to be wrong. That's why I was pleasantly surprised to be thoughtfully stimulated by an article set to appear in the New York Times Magazine this weekend called The Teachers' Unions' Last Stand. Now, I don't know that the article necessarily lives up to the hype of that headline, but it is pretty good.

Everyone else probably knows this already, but the point that didn't really fully register with me until I read the article is how radically the Race to the Top guidelines are threatening to change the standards by which unions operate and the concessions they can expect to get from cities and states. I read the New York Post each day, so I've seen the constant barrage of stories about how the unions hate kids and are opposed to any sort of reform. I wrote off a lot of that as just being, well, the New York Post, which tries to make everything about how bad unions are. But it turns out they may be on to something.

The thing that gets lost in New York where it seems like the unions have a lot of power to call shots in the legislature is how much pressure the unions must be under at this point. The "reform" banner has been unfurled across the country and there's a lot of money and attention out there for educational issues. More than that, the money and attention are focused on educational issues that the union and the Obama administration seem to be looking at from different perspectives. There's a definite ideological clash going on without a clear winner in sight. At least, not yet.

Let me issue my disclaimer now that I'm agnostic about a lot of the ideas in RttT and I don't blame the union for everything that's wrong in schools. Not even close. Still, the drama here is compelling. From a political perspective and from the perspective of what's going to be happening in our schools, we're seeing pressure placed on teachers' unions in ways that we haven't seen in a long time if ever. Ultimately, something is going to have to give on one side or the other. It will be interesting to see which side relents first.

Start Young, Go Far

2010-05-17T07:20:00.002-04:00

I've pointed this out before, but in case you missed it, I'll say it again. The achievement gap cannot be laid solely at the feet of differing levels of school quality. There are much bigger issues that need to be addressed before we can really and truly close that gap.

Don't believe me? Check out this article from the Daily News. Turns out that six of New York's 32 districts don't have enough incoming kindergarteners qualify for a gifted and talented program to offer even a single section (about 25 kids) in the district. Want to guess where those districts are? I'll give you a hint, it's not the Upper East Side where a single school can have enough kids qualify to open at least two sections. No, we're looking at Central Brooklyn and the South Bronx. Kind of the usual suspects when we're talking about these issues.

The important thing I want to highlight here is that these tests were given to incoming kindergarteners who have not yet attended even a single day of school. Even before they enter the system, these kids are starting behind. Seems a little unfair to blame the schools for that.

So what do we do?

Looking at information like this just makes me think that we need to start extending our efforts farther and younger. In neighborhoods like Central Brooklyn and the South Bronx we need to make better efforts to boost child health and nutrition. We need to provide more resources to help parents be better parents. We need to invest more in early childhood learning and intervention.

Clearly, the problems start before the kids get to school and extend far beyond what happens in that single building. We need to make sure our solutions do the same.

An Education Election in Harlem

2010-05-07T07:22:00.003-04:00

I just want to flag for your attention an interesting political situation developing up in Harlem. Bill Perkins, who will never be accused of being a fan of charter schools, is facing a primary election challenge from a candidate who seems to be running entirely on a pro-charter platform. Now, that's according to the Post, which has a pretty clear position on charters and isn't afraid to let that position creep into its news reporting. They're also not especially known for their nuance. Still, this could be an education-based election. And that's pretty exciting.

If the election really does turn into a referendum of charter schools, it'll be an interesting test. Perkins is counting on big support from the UFT and Smilke (his opponent) is counting on the help of charter school operators and a groundswell of parent support. How much the ground actually swells for him is the big question. Is it going to be enough to knock off an incumbent with strong union backing?

Fast forwarding a few months, I can already see the Post coverage. If Smilke wins, it's going to be a victory for Harlem children who rose up against those who would resist charter schools. If Perkins wins, it's going to be a victory for the corrupt UFT and their status-quo-loving allies, which will be proof of how corrupt and status-quo-loving the UFT really is. For the Post, this is a no-lose situation. In reality, it's going to be pretty interesting to watch.

AEI and Me

2010-05-05T07:25:00.002-04:00

As far as I know, there's not much that the American Enterprise Institute and I agree on. They tend to be on one side of the political spectrum while I tend to be on the other. So as I was reading this morning's New York Times, I found myself a little bit surprised to be agreeing with an op-ed written by Charles Murray of AEI. It's not like he was channeling my innermost thoughts or anything, but I wasn't totally opposed either.

He starts off with the statement that charter schools aren't necessarily going to be better schools than their traditional public school peers and that even if they are, standardized test scores aren't a very good way to measure that anyway. Okay, so far he is just channeling my innermost thoughts.

Then, he gets to the real meat of what he's trying to say, which is that school choice is important just for the sake of having choice. If there are two schools of essentially equal quality, but they take different approaches to learning, there is a value in letting parents select one over another.

I'm not really against that, though his rhapsodizing about the concept is a little annoying. For all his talk about how people just want to be able to choose, a huge number of parents continue to send their kids to their local school even when it's failing and they've been told (because of NCLB) that they have the right to send their children elsewhere. So I don't entirely buy that argument. I also tend to think that schools should be taking a greater role in a community, not less as would happen with a totally decentralized admission system.

But enough quibbling. Where's the agreement? Well, I think that different schools should offer different things and that there's value in letting parents have the option to select what's best for their kids. I don't think that necessarily needs to equate with charter schools or private school vouchers. Nor do I think that we need a completely inflexible approach of sending kids only to the school down the street from where they live. As with everything, there's a balance that needs to be found somewhere in the middle. Finding it is always the challenge.

No Magic

2010-05-03T07:23:00.003-04:00

Stop me if you've heard this before, but there's some evidence out there that charters are not all wonderful schools. Some are very good, but more are ... less so. It's just that you wouldn't really know that from reading the New York papers where they take a Wobegon view of charters: the principals are smart, the teachers are dedicated, and all the children score above average on their yearly high-stakes tests.

However, a barrier fell yesterday when the New York Times ran a story headlined: Despite Push, Success at Charter Schools is Mixed. I had to check a few times to make sure I wasn't hallucinating that one.

The article itself is not especially brilliant, but it's pretty good. The reporter visits different charter schools around the country and writes about what's going on at a successful one and at an less successful one. Because, remember, there are differences.

The moral of the story, at least to those paying attention, is that charter schools are not magic. There's nothing about a charter in itself that makes it a great school. Charters can be great. Just like traditional public schools can be great. Great schools are great schools. The labels matter much less than what's actually going on in the classroom.

The Times yesterday seemed to take a step toward acknowledging that. Now let's see if their editorial writers actually read their own paper.

On Second Thought

2010-04-30T07:24:00.003-04:00

A thought occurred to me the other day as I was reading about the Senate Democrats' efforts to pass a bill on financial reform. It suddenly struck me that they might be barking up the entirely wrong tree.

Consider this: the hugely influential report "A Nation at Risk" was published in 1983. In one of the more memorable phrases to ever come out of a government commissioned report, it said that if our education system had been forced on us by another country it would have been considered an act of war. In other words, things in schools were really bad.

That was 27 years ago. Obviously, the problems in education haven't been fixed yet, so we must still have a really bad education system. No wonder our economy nearly collapsed!

For at least 27 years (and probably at least a few before that), we've been working with such a terrible system that there's no way that we could be producing productive members of society. It's not the financial system or derivatives (which are invariably described in the press as "complex") or anything to do with Wall Street at all. It's probably the fault of teachers unions for making schools bad for the better part of three decades so now we have a dumb workforce that's ruining our economy.

And yet, even as I type this, I can't help but think that it doesn't quite ring true. Do we really believe that we've produced three decades of educational failures? Are we really willing to say that everyone born after 1977 (so they would be 6 in 1983) has gotten a bad education? Forget everyone, are we even willing to say that most people born after 1977 are unable to deal with the real world because they were poorly prepared by their school experiences?

I just don't think we can make that assertion. (And I say that as someone who was born after 1977 and is doing just fine, thank you.) I think, in fact, that anyone trying to make that point would be laughed out of the room.

So where does that leave us? Pretty much where I've been saying all along. The American education system is, for the most part, a success. Failure is not the norm across all schools. There are schools that are spectacularly failing and those schools tend to be concentrated in poor and minority communities. That's a problem that needs addressing. But it means that we need to focus on those schools, not on remaking an entire system. Let's fix the problems. Let's not worry about fixing the things that aren't broken.

Rational Layoffs

2010-04-26T07:20:00.003-04:00

For the first time in over 30 years, it's a pretty definite thing that New York is going to be laying off teachers. It's not a scare tactic or a negotiating plea. It's really happening. And suddenly, the city is realizing that the method in place for laying off teachers doesn't make any sense.

In New York, layoffs are done on a last in, first out basis. In other words, the newest teachers are the first to be let go. Ultimately, that's not a very good system.

Does it make any sense to not take quality into account at all when making these decisions? Yes, seniority is important because teachers tend to get better with experience. But is anyone really willing to say that every fifth year teacher is better than every fourth year teacher? Or even every first year teacher? That just defies logic and common sense.

The problem is (and this is why I haven't written about this before), I don't really know what's better. Given the way funding works in the city, during budget cuts there's an incentive to fire more experienced teachers because their salaries are higher. Also, leaving things solely in the hands of principals could lead to abuse. I don't buy the DOE's line that no principal would fire an effective teacher because of personal issues. That just seems a bit naive to me.

So what do we do? Well, this makes pretty clear that we need a better way to look at this issue and a better way to evaluate teachers - one that takes into account seniority, but also looks at effectiveness.

As the saying goes, the time to fix the roof is when the sun is shining. We've missed that opportunity and now these discussions - which would be highly charged during the best of times - are going to be even more fraught. But it's still a discussion worth having.

Kangaroo Court

2010-04-23T07:29:00.003-04:00

Anyone who was hoping for a calm, reasoned debate on the role and future of charter schools in New York at yesterday's state senate hearing on the topic was pretty disappointed. As the Daily News writes: "Charter school supporters and their critics spent eight hours shouting at one another at a volatile public hearing Thursday - and left the battle more polarized than ever."

Of course, anyone expecting a calm, reasoned debate about charter schools yesterday hasn't been reading the Post lately.

The Post was correct in today's article (it surprised me too) where they describe the hearing as a kangaroo court. That's exactly what it was and both sides of the debate are to blame. Something about charter schools seems to have removed a reasonable middle ground and left only the extremists to pontificate and/or rant (depending on their mood). There's a real debate to be had here and it's a shame that it's being hijacked by shouting and accusations of personal impropriety (Sen. Perkins takes money from the UFT/Sen. Johnson takes money from charter schools).

It's always easier to yell and scream and chant than to make good points and come to a reasonable consensus. It's too bad that so many people are falling into that temptation.

Anyone Can Do It

2010-04-21T07:32:00.002-04:00

Other than teaching, is there a profession anywhere else in the world where the movement is toward less training and preparation? Are there any programs that will give you a medical license for doing work in a hospital without going to medical school? Is there a movement to make people lawyers who've never been to law school? What about teaching makes it so different?

Here in New York, the Board of Regents has approved a program that will allow programs like Teach for America to create their own masters programs so that participants can get their masters without going to an actual education school.

Not to be flip, but would we allow Doctors for America (if such a program exists) to grant medical degrees based on work done in poor hospitals around the country? Would we allow them to set up non-accredited programs to grant those degrees and then accept them as valid?

A few things seem pretty clear to me when I read a story like this. First, traditional education schools have messed up. Either they've screwed up the way they prepare teachers or they've screwed up their own PR because people seem not to think that they're preparing teachers well. It's a problem no matter which way you cut it.

Second, people think that because they've been in school, they're an expert on school policies and how schools should be run and that everyone can just do it. That's why we have lawyers running school systems and masters degrees being given by non-accredited institutions. We wouldn't put up with this in the medical profession, but teaching is seen as somehow less.

I do have to say that while I have major misgivings about what this actually means and what it indicates, I do strongly believe that an education program should have a strong focus on practical, inside the classroom elements. I don't think that should totally replace theory (which helps inform those inside the classroom elements), but they do need to be a strong component of any program.

What I oppose is the de-professionalization of teaching. I can't help but think that this is a step down that road.

Bounce Back

2010-04-16T07:21:00.004-04:00

Well, they won't have the rubber room to kick around anymore.

Yesterday, the DOE and the UFT came to an agreement to end the rubber rooms. In their place, reassigned teachers will be posted to administrative duties rather than just sitting around all day. The process for hearing and deciding cases will also be sped up. All in all, this is probably a pretty positive thing.

Or is it? Because I can't help but think about what's actually changing here. The answer that I come to is: not much.

The rubber rooms got so much attention because they seemed like a perfect symbol for how the conflict between a bureaucratic school system and a self-interested union (as all good unions should be) led to nonsensical "solutions" like the rubber room. Now the symbol is gone, but I'm not sure that the underlying issues have been addressed.

I haven't seen the Post yet this morning, but I'm sure that they're shouting the news to the rafters. I'm sure the DOE is going around patting each other pretty heartily on the back. The symbol is gone. But how long until another one takes its place?

iDon't Buy It

2010-04-14T07:21:00.004-04:00

I'm always skeptical about books or studies or anything else that single out today's youth as being somehow dramatically different than the generations that preceded them. I think most of it is bogus to begin with and also it seems like every generation is arguing that the next generation is so completely different that none of the old models still apply.

Still, there seems to be a market for that kind of stuff and so now we have the iGeneration. (For what it's worth, I think it's a pretty good name for the thesis.) The iGeneration, author Larry Rosen writes, is so different from all other generations because they are constantly plugged in to all sorts of personalized media. Think iPods, cell phones, etc. This, apparently, means that they learn in ways that would have been unthinkable to previous generations.

To steal a conceit, iDon't buy it.

Without question kids these days have access to a level of technology that did not exist even in conception when their parents were in school. So in that sense, things have changed. But has that technology actually changed the way kids learn? Frankly, I have a little trouble seeing how an iPod is going to realign my conception of history.

Certainly, teaching methodologies and techniques must change as technology changes. I mean, we don't want to go back to using slates and chalk for every assignment. Technology can be a very good thing. But we also don't want to overstate the case and say that it's changed everything. Kids are still kids. In all likelihood, they aren't that much better or worse than the generation that came before them or the generation that will come after them. The wrapping may be a little different, but it doesn't change the fundamentals.

Can't Buy Me Success

2010-04-12T07:18:00.002-04:00

It turns out that not only can you not buy love, but that you can't really buy good behavior from children or adults. At least, that's what research is telling us now.

Last Friday, the word got out in the press that Roland Fryer's much-touted plan to pay kids to get good grades was not particularly successful. To give you a sense of how unsuccessful, the DOE (which can spin just about anything in its favor) was reduced to congratulating itself on having the moxy to have tried the program in the first place.

Friday's news came not too far from the heels of last month's announcement that the city's plan to pay parents for good behavior - like going to the dentist and attending parent-teacher conferences - was ending because of similarly less-than-stellar results.

It turns out that the problems with inner city schools may be a little more complicated than a lack of motivation that can be compensated for by giving away $250. Who would have guessed?

Makes you wonder about the future of teacher incentive pay.

Conventional Wisdom

2010-04-09T07:24:00.003-04:00

WARNING: This post may contain observations that run counter to conventional wisdom. Don't say you weren't warned.

The trendy thing among a certain school of school reformers lately has been to point to New Orleans post-Katrina as a model of education reform.

Newsweek writes that "New Orleans has made more educational progress than any other city, largely because the public-school system was wiped out." Arne Duncan said that Hurricane Katrina was "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans." The conventional wisdom says that with the New Orleans school system (and much of the city) destroyed, reformers were able to start from scratch and put in a system based on what we know works for kids. And just look at the results.

Let's look at those results for a moment. An article in the Houston Chronicle this week highlights a study that finds that Katrina kids are doing better than their Texas counterparts. In Texas. That's right, Texas. Not New Orleans. It seems that the kids who relocated to Texas after the hurricane and stayed there are doing better in the Texas school system than the kids from Texas in the Texas school system.

Here's where your conventional wisdom gets challenged. If the reason kids are doing so much better now in New Orleans is that the school system has been completely reformed, why are kids also excelling in Texas? Let's grant for the sake of argument that the New Orleans schools were terrible before Katrina. So obviously there's a lot of room for improvement with these kids. But if it's the brilliant new system that's doing it, why are the kids in Texas also making such gains? Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't often see Houston hailed as the brightest star in the education reform firmament.

Now, I'm perfectly willing to believe that there's a rational explanation that will keep the conventional wisdom intact. I know that reading a summary of research from the Texas Education Agency in the Houston Chronicle is not exactly top notch research. But I do think we need to consider all the data when we're making grand pronouncements. And I just don't quite see how this fits the narrative.

Done Racing?

2010-04-05T07:22:00.003-04:00

For Delaware and Tennessee right now, life is pretty good. Of all the states who applied for Race to the Top funding, they're the big - and only - winners. For everyone else, it's time for the blame game. Here in New York we're spending a lot of time blaming the teachers' union because that's just what we do here. In other parts of the country, though, they're doing the more rational thing - blaming the judges.

Let me stipulate here that I have no intention of vouching for the RttT judging. I don't know enough about each state's application to say if the right ones won. That said, I get a little suspicious when I hear the losers of a competition suddenly blaming the judges for their losing.

Apparently, several states are mulling not reapplying because those hundreds of millions of dollars just don't seem worth it anymore. To hear that coming from California, where they're fighting a day to day battle with solency, shows you how deep the feelings run.

This is the big danger of the RttT program. It gave a big incentive for states to reform (according to a specific vision) their education system. However, we always knew that there would be states that didn't win and we knew that there would be limits in terms of how to keep states reforming as they went forward.

Now is the time for the real test (a high stakes test, if you will). Now that we know there are winners and losers, what happens? Do we see a continued focus on schools and improving education or do we revert and call it quits. What happens in the next few weeks and months is going to define the legacy of Race to the Top far more than anything that has come before.

Doesn't Matter After All

2010-03-31T07:22:00.003-04:00

Given the state of state budgets across the country, I imagine that we're going to be seeing several more stories like this one over the next few months. For those of you who don't believe in clicking on links, the headline reads, "Larger Class Sizes Ahead as Teachers Collect Pink Slips: Effect on students may be minimal as the acaemic benefits of small class sizes remain unclear."

As you may be able to guess from reading that headline, the point of the article is that class sizes are likely to increase in Chicago, but that parents shouldn't be worried because class sizes don't affect student performance that much.

I'm going to duck the whole question of how much class size affects achievement versus other things like teacher quality. Instead, I want to focus on why this story, why now. The answer, I think, it pretty obvious.

Imagine that you're a cook in a restaurant and everyone wants saffron in their meals. (For the record, I don't really know what saffron is, but it sounds fancier than pepper.) However, you can't really afford saffron because of budget cutbacks. What do you do? Well, you might try persuading people that saffron really doesn't do that much for a meal anyway. In fact, salt is just as good maybe even better. That's kind of what's happening here.

Unable to provide the kinds of class sizes that will keep parents happy, the schools are launching a PR push to say that class sizes aren't that important. What's really important is that you have good teachers. I'm sure we'll be hearing soon about how great the Chicago teaching corps is.

I imagine we'll soon be seeing more stories from education departments around the country downplaying the importance of small class sizes. Whether they believe their own press or not is something I can't say for sure. But, for now at least, what else are they going to do?

Like Al Capone

2010-03-29T07:12:00.003-04:00

I don't think I've written before about the DOE's plans to close 19 high schools for next year. The reason I've avoided it is because I'm truly divided on the subject. On the one hand, I'm not a fan of just going around closing schools and hoping what you open in their places turn out to be better. On the other hand, these are not great schools and I wouldn't want my own children to go there. So I stayed out of it.

Last Friday, the State Supreme Court held that the school closings were invalid due to "significant violations" of the mayoral control law. The UFT, NAACP, and others who were fighting the plan celebrated. That strikes me a little like throwing a party for getting Al Capone on tax evasion. Yeah, you've won this round, but you haven't really addressed the real issue.

The basis for the judge's decision was that the DOE issued only boilerplate educational impact statements and that insufficient notice was given for public hearings. (Were I feeling snarky, I might point out that the insufficient notice didn't seem to prevent those hearing from lasting untili 3 in the morning, but I'm not feeling snarky today, so I'll let it pass.)

In other words, the DOE didn't dot a few i's or cross a few t's. The policy of closing schools remains in place and unchallenged. So now the DOE has to give a few more days notice before ignoring hours of public testimony and closing schools. I'm not sure if this is the victory that some seem to be claiming.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

2010-03-26T07:19:00.002-04:00

Every so often I come across something truly bizarre about how our brains work. Mainly it's when I'm reading a Malcolm Gladwell book, but sometimes even when I'm reading the Core Knowledge Blog. This is one worth sharing.

Researchers have found that simply seeing the letter A or F before taking a test significantly alters individuals' performance on the test. Seeing an A seems to boost the score. Seeing an F seems to make people perform worse.

Seriously. Check out the write-up here.

I literally cannot wrap my mind around this. On the one hand, it's pretty incredible. On the other hand, I'm a little freaked out about how apparently malleable my brain is. Wow.

Texas Down, Cities Up

2010-03-24T07:24:00.004-04:00

Bad news in Texas. According to the Dallas Morning News, 40% of Texas high school graduates need at least one remedial class when they get to college. And that's just the students who go to college. Imagine what the overall high school population is like. But don't worry. The Texas school board has taken strong, decisive action by eliminating Thomas Jefferson and the world "capitalism" from its standards. So ... yeah. We'll see how that goes.

In much more encouraging news, a report out of the Council of Great City Schools finds that urban school districts are making significant gains in both math and reading. This is according to data from both state tests and the NAEP. That's hugely encouraging news.

That's hugely great news. I've often written that while the nation's education system as a whole is doing pretty well, in poor and urban areas it is often spectacularly failing. If we can turn around that trend, the whole school system will be improving and we won't have to hear any more whining about places like Estonia are doing so much better than us. (Not that there's anything wrong with Estonia, I just like the way it sounded in that sentence.)

When you go a doctor with an earache, a good doctor will focus on your ear instead of trying to go over every inch of your body looking for solutions. Too often, we've gotten caught up in forgetting the ear. Now, it looks like that may be changing. And that is a very good thing.

Short Term Solutions

2010-03-22T07:33:00.003-04:00

Oh, Arizona. Land of my childhood. Why worry about long term effects when the budget needs cutting now, especially when you won't even consider doing anything to increase revenue? In case you're wondering, the state legislature just voted to eliminate full day kindergarten in the state.

The state was facing a huge budget gap and full day kindergarten seemed like a pretty good target. After all, several state legislators thought it amounted to little more than "taxpayer-funded all-day baby-sitting." That's right. Kindergarten is just babysitting. No educational value at all. That research showing that it helps prepare kids to read and write better? Totally bogus. I guess that's the argument at least.

On the bright side, this will probably provide less opportunity for kindergarteners to exercise their rights to bring guns to school. What a state.

The sad part is that this same calculus is being repeated all across the country (the cutting schools part, not the arming children bit). As states look to trim budgets, they go after schools, colleges, etc. To an extent, that makes sense. As Willie Sutton might say, "it's where the money is." Presto bingo, budget deficit closed.

But then what?

Cutting education funding may help in the short term, but then you have less educated people contributing less to the workforce and bringing down the state for a whole generation.

Of course, that doesn't bother the Arizona legislators. They'll be long out of office by that point. Arizona has term limits, after all.

Texas Is Not Helping

2010-03-19T06:59:00.003-04:00

Every so often I write about a story that I come across showing how today's youth are the dumbest, laziest, most disreputable generation ever to blight this earth. You'd be surprised how often it comes up.

Readers of amNew York yesterday were treated to a story about a science poll among children that found that many named Buzz Lightyear as the first man to walk on the moon and who thought Isaac Newton invented fire. Incredible. This truly is the dumbest, laziest, most disreputable generation to ever blight the earth. (Click here for Socrates' thoughts on the matter.)

Before we transfer all this wailing and teeth gnashing into a desire to pick up torches and pitchforks and march against the teachers unions, I should point out that this study was conducted in Britain. Maybe this will be a good opening for us to finally reclaim some of that glory our education system has been lacking lately.

In an effort to ensure that we don't run up the educational score on our peers across the pond, the Texas school board has finally approved their standards and in a perverse way, it's kind of a thing of beauty. Ronald Reagan? He's in. Need to emphasize him in the history curriculum. Thomas Jefferson? Nah. I mean, what's he done for us lately? Did he singlehandedly defeat communism?

Oh yeah. And Joseph McCarthy was right all along.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Unfortunately, in this case what happens in Texas doesn't stay there. Because it represents such a large textbook market, we'll be seeing snippets of Texas standards in textbooks all over the country.

Somehow, I doubt that's going to help us when those dumbest generation researchers comes to this side of the Atlantic.

Another Perspective

2010-03-17T07:25:00.003-04:00

I was reading an interesting article yesterday that was essentially about how politics is very different in America and Britain despite the appearance of similarities. It's not my usual cup of tea, but what can I say? I'm eclectic.

One example that the article mentions is that in America we're moving toward a national set of standards (which will probably be followed by national assessments if the trend is going to continue) while in Britain there's a push to move away from their existing system of national standards and tests. I guess that they're seeing a lot of educational inequality there (sound familiar?) and they want to allow schools more room to innovate and personalize for their student populations.

I frequently write that for everyone who says one thing is THE answer for education reform, there's someone else who holds that the exact opposite is true. We seem to be seeing that at a national level here.

So what does it mean?

Probably that no one idea can be implemented that will cure all the educational problems in a country. Education reform needs to advance on a variety of fronts to address a variety of issues if we're going to see real change.

There's an old saying to beware of Greeks bearing gifts. I might amend that to say beware of education reformers bearing THE answer.

On to the Next Thing

2010-03-15T07:18:00.003-04:00

I take it as a pretty good sign for health care reform that President Obama is starting to move on to other major projects - notably strengthening financial regulations and improving the No Child Left Behind law. Both are in need of a lot of help.

My favorite of the new provisions being considered for NCLB is to focus less on measuring the kids who are proficient at grade level and more on getting kids to make progress from wherever they started. This makes sense to me because that's something over which the school actually has control (at least relatively speaking). The schools take whoever comes to them, regardless of whether or not they're at grade level. It just makes sense to me to measure schools and school quality by how far they advance children, not just who's able to get past the line of proficiency. When we do it the old way, schools doing great work with difficult populations are rewarded less than schools doing mediocre work with easier populations. That doesn't make sense to me and I'm glad to see that I'm not alone.

Also, as a former social studies teacher, I'm glad to see that states may be expanding their testing regime beyond reading and math. Hopefully an expansion there will lead to less narrowing of curriculum in the name of test prep and adequate yearly progress.

As with everything, the devil is always in the details so I'm not going to offer a final assessment just yet. But from what I'm seeing now, they're on the right track with this one.

Today's Zeitgeist

2010-03-12T07:13:00.004-05:00

I knew the moment that I saw this week's copy of Newsweek arrive in my mailbox that I was going to hate it. It says, "The Key To Saving American Education" in big yellow font with "We must fire bad teachers" written over and over again on a blackboard. I tried to read it with an open mind, but sometimes you can judge a Newsweek by the cover. I hated the article.

In terms of education ideas, it wasn't all that helpful (I'll get to that in a moment). If I was looking for a bright spot, I might say that it provided a helpful glimpse into the education reporting zeitgeist of the moment. Consider, the article slams "obstructionist" unions and "insipid" schools of education. Good things include KIPP and Michelle Rhee. In other words, in 20 years when I'm trying to explain to people what the educational dialogue was like in the year 2010, I can just pull out this article and it's all there. It'll save me the trouble of needing to hunt for multiple sources.

So now back to the actual point of the article - namely, that teacher quality is the key to good education and so we should fire all the bad teachers. First, let me say that I think teacher quality is incredibly important, but I don't know that I'd label anything, no matter how important, as the only and only way to get to the promised land of educational success and parity. Trying to solve complex problems with simple solutions sounds to me like a recipe for constantly lurching from one extreme to another. (Good thing school reform has avoided that, right?)

So we've got bad teachers in the system. Okay. We don't know how many (Randi Weingarten says 2%, but the article seems to think it's probably higher), but if it's the sole reason that we have an educational achievement gap, you can bet that it's a lot. Okay, so let's fire them.

Now what?

Seriously. Think that through for a moment. Now what?

Keep in mind, we've already got our best teachers in the schools. It's not like there's a whole lot of brilliant, wonderful, dedicated, committed teachers floating around out there without jobs because all the teaching positions are being hogged by obstructionist union members with degrees from insipid education programs. Who goes into the classrooms if we fire all of the teachers who aren't up to par? And how do we ensure that those teachers are better than the ones they're replacing?

The article chose to remain silent aside from some general puffery about making teaching a more desireable job. Well, good thinking. Why don't you get right on that?

I don't mean to be doom and gloom here because I don't think educational reform is hopeless and I do think that improving the quality of our teachers is important. I just don't think it's the only important thing and I don't think that massive firings are going to be as productive as Newsweek seems to imagine.

P.S. It didn't make the printed version, but check out this Newsweek blog that maybe undermines all their doomsday talk. My favorite line: "And the fact is that success – not failure – is actually the American educational norm."

Teaching the Wrong Lesson

2010-03-10T07:28:00.004-05:00

When I was a teacher, sometimes I could tell that the kids took the wrong lesson away from the class that day. For instance, when trying to explain how being a peace would help the people of ancient Athens focus on things like art and philosophy, I dropped in the old guns versus butter economic model just to illustrate the idea in concrete terms. The result? At the end of the day, kids were trying to convince me that the ancient Greeks traded guns for butter. And nothing could persuade them otherwise. Wrong lesson.

I'm afraid that we're starting to see the wrong lesson take root in the traditional public/charter school competition. The initial idea (as I understand it) is that schools should make themselves as good as possible so they can attract the most students as parents "vote with their feet." The lesson that's apparently being learned? Well, as the New York Times reports today, it's that marketing matters. In retrospect, like the wisdom of using guns versus butter, this result isn't terribly surprising. But it doesn't make it any better.

Check out this quote from the article:

So among their many challenges, some of these principals, who had never given much thought to attracting students, have been spending considerable time toiling over ways to market their schools. They are revamping school logos, encouraging students and teachers to wear T-shirts emblazoned with the new designs. ... A few have worked with professional marketing firms to create sophisticated Web sites and blogs.

Is this really how we want our principals to be spending their time and energy? Revamping logos? Really? No mention of improving the curriculum or recruiting top teachers?

Though I am charter skeptical, I'm not writing this as a knock against charters. I'm not going down the they-started-it road because that really doesn't matter very much at this point. The blame here lies with administrators and pundits who have made the traditional public/charter school issue a manichean black and white struggle in which only one can win. In doing so, they've undermined the very idea that charters were supposed to represent.

The original idea, remember, was that charter schools would be free from some of the usual school expectations and rules to give them freedom to experiment. Then, those ideas that were successful could be replicated in other schools. The idea was supposed to be collaboration, not competition.

But for whatever reasons, we've gone down the road of competition and now we have to deal with the unintended consequence of schools learning the wrong lesson.

P.S. Check back on Friday when I vent my spleen over Newsweek's cover story on firing teachers. Ugh.

A Real Race

2010-03-08T07:30:00.004-05:00

I can't tell if I should find the coverage of the Race to the Top process encouraging or insulting. It probably depends on my mood, but there's a tone to the coverage that just doesn't quite seem to sit right with me. Namely, the way the judging process is being covered as if it's a horse race or some other kind of sports event.

Take last week's New York Times article on the 16 RttT finalists. If you didn't know that we were talking about the education of millions of children, you might think this was an amusing diversion that we might find playing at the local OTB.

On the one hand, it's nice to see that education is getting some of the breathless coverage that we usually associate with the baseball penant race or Tiger Woods. On the other hand, this is a real issue and it seems like the coverage should reflect that.

The contradiction here is that the Obama Administration's goal in setting this up is exactly to create the kind of buzz and excitement around education nationwide that has so often been lacking. So maybe this is the idea all along.

I'm probably just getting cranky because in the grand scheme of things, who actually cares how the Times covers this particular story? After all, this is the same paper that publishes David Brooks, so it's not like I take their education reporting very seriously to begin with.

A Statistic

2010-03-05T07:24:00.003-05:00

Deep down, I know that I should be outraged or disappointed or one of those other sorts of negative emotions over the fact that my state government is being described as beyond dysfunctional (because "dysfunction at least includes the word function"). Here in New York we're looking at a massive budget deficit, a broke (as in no money, not in need of repair, though it is) public transportation system, a state senator expelled from the senate for assaulting his girlfriend but now running to reclaim his seat, and a governor under at least three separate investigations and who may yet resign. This is bad stuff.

Yet at some level, I can't help but find it amusing.

There's a line from Stalin to the effect that one death is a tragedy, but one thousand deaths is a statistic. A similar line applies here.

One scandal/controversy/dire situation is cause for real concern. When we get to this many, it's just beyond what I can fathom. At some level, it has to be a joke, doesn't it?

In terms of actual direness of situation, we aren't at the California level yet. But it sure looks like we're trying our hardest to get there.

What's the Goal?

2010-03-01T07:32:00.004-05:00

An interesting report in Newsweek finds that while colleges are recruiting more minority students, the graduation rates for minorities is staying relatively low. For instance, at Bowdoin College, they nearly doubled the number of minority students entering the school. However, while neaerly 90% of white students graduate, only 70% of minority students do. At the University of Northern Iowa, 67% of white students graduate while only 39% of black students do.

The article goes into a couple of possible explanations for why these figures are what they are and I'm sure you have a few theories of your own. To my way of thinking, though, the problem is that we've confused our means and ends again.

This seems to happen a lot in schools. We want to make sure all students are learning so we decide we should test kids to find out if they're learning. Then, the tests become the end-all be-all and we lose sight of whether the kids are learning real things or learning how to game/pass tests.

Same thing here, we decided that we wanted more minority students in college. We seem to have forgotten that getting students into college is only a means toward the end of graduating and getting good jobs afterwards. So Bowdoin boosts its minority admission and declares victory and, oops, forgets that there's a little more to the picture than that.

That's not to say that the efforts of Bowdoin and others aren't useful or worthwhile. They are, in fact, necessary steps. But they are not sufficient steps if we want to ensure that we're fully educating our population.

The DOE Wins Again

2010-02-26T07:41:00.004-05:00

I want to build a little bit off of my last post about how public perception is clearly not on the side of the UFT or city teachers. To do so, let's take a look at a story that ran in the Times last Tuesday. The lead of the story reads:

"The Bloomberg administration has made getting rid of inadequate teachers a linchpin of its efforts to improve city schools. But in the two years since the Education Department began an intensive effort to root out such teachers from the more than 55,000 who have tenure, officials have managed to fire only three for incompetence."

Notice anything?

What immediately jumps out to me is that the story is premised on the idea that our system is chock full of inadequate teachers, but that the city has "managed to fire only three", presumably because the union protects those bad teachers and keeps our school system so mediocre. Quite a premise.

An alternative premise might be that in a system of 55,000 teachers, only three were officially deemed to be incompetent. Everyone gets an A on their progress report!

My sense is that the truth lies somewhere much closer to the middle. Speaking from my own experiences in the classroom, there were some really great teachers, a lot of decent ones, and a few duds. I imagine that bell curve breakdown wasn't unique to my school.

Ultimately, the reality of the situation is a little beside the point that I'm trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is that the DOE has so completely overwhelmed the UFT's arguments on these issues that the New York Times - the "paper of record" - has totally bought into the DOE's side of the debate. You can imagine how this story played out in the Post. The mind boggles at the possibilities.

One other point worthy of note. By my count, the article says that 431 teachers who the DOE thought were incompetent are now not teaching. The vast majority of them apparently left the system after they learned that they could face charges. Assuming that our goal is to remove bad teachers (and I tend to think that's not such a bad idea), the 431 number is a much higher one to broadcast. But then, if that's your lead, how can you use it to show how obstructionist the UFT is?

The bottom line is that the argument seems to have been won. The DOE staked out the terms of the debate and then stomped the UFT. The sad part is that the teachers have barely fought back.

This the City Believes

2010-02-24T07:33:00.003-05:00

Gotham Schools has a list of the city's contract demands in their now-stalled negotiations with the UFT. Scroll down to the comments section and you'll see that the demands are not exactly being well received by the teachers in the crowd (there's a abnormally high proportion of Nazi comparisons in the ranks). I'm not about to pop off with Herr Bloomberg comments, but the demands did strike me as asking for a whole lot without much inclination to give anything back in return. Normally, that's not the kind of position that leads to happy smiles all around and I can see why both sides are saying that they're at an impasse. So what is the city thinking?

Well, if I had to guess, they're thinking that they hold all of the cards. And they may even be right.

Here's how things look to someone not directly involved or with a personal stake in the negotiations:

The city's budget is extremely tight and cuts need to be made.
Layoffs and budget tightenings are happening in households all across the city and country.
Teacher salaries have gone through the roof in recent years and they're still asking for more.
There are a whole lot of teachers (ATR pool) who are getting paid for not teaching.
There are another group of teachers (the rubber room) who shouldn't be teaching but are still getting paid to not teach.
Mayor Bloomberg has done a good job with the schools.

Now, you can argue many of these points, but the fact is that the city has already won most of those fights in the public sphere. The PR battle is over and the union has lost. They're now negotiating for raises when many are looking at layoffs. They're negotiating to protect the salaries of teachers who aren't teaching at a time when the city is looking to impose fiscal discipline. They have been painted for years as a special interest group that will now be opposing the well-regarded school leadership of the Mayor.

No wonder they're going for it all.

The fact is, the city is risking very little by holding firm to their demands because they are confident that the public will back them up. So they win more PR points against the union by sticking to their guns and "standing up for what's right for our city." Then, when through arbitration they don't get everything they want, they win even more PR points by being able to turn the union's victories into examples of them screwing the city at the expense of themselves.

I'm not saying they're right. I am saying, they're sitting in a pretty good spot right now.

Ask the Experts

2010-02-22T07:28:00.003-05:00

For some reason, people don't seem to find it necessary to ask teachers what might help improve education. My guess is that it's because everyone went to school at some point in their lives that everyone thinks they know what actually works for educating kids. So the experts (teachers) get ignored as essentially a special interest group (they do have a union, you know) while the decisions gets made elsewhere using input from other people.

This isn't just my sense. According to a report based on the Met Life Survey of the American Teacher, fully 69% of teachers do not believe their voices have been adequately heard in the current debate on education. That's pretty incredible. You know that if 69% of doctors said their voices weren't being heard on the health care debate there would be an explosion of outrage. But when it's education that's in question, that's just kind of accepted.

Am I the only one who thinks that's nuts? When my seak is leaking, I call the plumber. When my computer goes haywire, I call tech support. When the education system needs reform, I think we should ask the teachers what they think. How am I in the minority on this?

Almost a Great Idea

2010-02-19T07:26:00.002-05:00

Out in St. Paul, Minnesota, they've come up with a pretty good plan. Kind of. The plan is to send out a team of experienced teachers - they're calling them coaches in this program - to work with high-needs kids in schools across the city to improve their test scores. I'm 99% on board with this program.

I love the outside the box thinking of taking a team of senior teachers and sending them in to do intensive work with small groups of kids who most need it. This is the kind of targeted intervention that I think we should be doing all the time. I just wish that it was for some end other than a one-time boost in test scores.

If this were a regular program designed to operate continuously forever, I would be singing its praises from rooftops. But the sole focus on testing is an issue. Specifically it's on the goal of boosting test scores by 10 percentage points this year. I have issue with that.

Learning is about more than acing high stakes standardized tests. They have a powerful tool here to really make that clear to students and really make a difference. But they're only using the tool halfway. What a waste.

Either/Or Reforms

2010-02-17T07:24:00.002-05:00

I've frequently lamented the fact that education reform so often seems to boil down to either/or propositions. Either you're for smaller class sizes or you're for curriculum changes. Either you're for market-based reforms or you're a status-quo-loving-teacher-union-defending-failure-to-kids. That's the way it's always played out in the media at least, but I never quite bought it. But now I may be changing my mind a little.

What's gotten me to readjust my thinking a little bit is that Florida is going to be spending $200 million to revamp their math curriculum, even as budget cuts hammer education across the state. And that got me thinking. These reforms actually cost money. Want to revamp your curriculum? Pay the curriculum companies. Smaller class sizes? Pay for more schools and more teachers. Better teachers? Pay for more recruitment and professional development. The list goes on and on.

Philosophically, I think that we can't afford to focus on just one effort. Instead we need to focus on an array of reforms that will improve entire schools and communities. Pragmatically, I see that we might not be able to afford more than one thing at a time. Until we can address that, either/or may be here to say.

DOE Closes More Schools

2010-02-10T07:31:00.003-05:00

I have to say that I think there's something vaguely familiar about the DOE's decision to preemptively declare this a snow day before a single flake had fallen. After all, it was based on data (the weather report says that we're going to get walloped) and it led to a bunch of schools getting closed.

Does this just scream DOE or what?

It may turn out to have been the right decision. As I'm looking out my window right now, there is a fair amount of snow falling and it is supposed to get worse as the day goes on. But there just seems to be something kind of odd about calling a snow day before there's any actual snow. Logically it seemed like the right decision, but do we know we're looking at the right data?

I won't draw out the metaphor too far. However, I do see this as telling of the larger trends in the DOE.

Unspeak in the New Yorker

2010-02-08T07:26:00.003-05:00

I know that it's about a month old at this point, but I'm finally caught up on my New Yorker reading so I've finally had a chance to read the profile of Arne Duncan. On the whole, I thought it was pretty interesting and encapsulated a lot of my ambivalence about the guy and his agenda. Some things I'm totally on board with. Others, less so.

What I'm totally opposed to, though, is the kind of ridiculous journalism that slips in lines like, "In the fight over education in America today, there, roughly speaking, two major camps: free-market reformers, who believe that competition, choice, and incentives must have a greater part in education; and liberal traditionalists who rally around teachers’ unions and education schools." (For the record, that's the author of the article, not Duncan speaking.)

In other words, there are people who want to help kids learn through a competition-based reform model and there are people who are union-loving, education-school-promoting, failing-school-allowing defenders of the status quo. At least with the "roughly speaking" phrase there's the chance that some other camps might exist.

I've written about this before, but it doesn't make me any less angry to see. School reform doesn't necessarily mean charter schools and teacher incentive pay. It just doesn't. It can also mean reducing class sizes, reworking curriculum, promoting the community school model, and a host of other efforts taking place across the country. For whatever reason, our journalists just can't seem to wrap their minds around the fact that there could be a whole lot of different reform ideas out there and that people who don't think charter schools are the answer might not be in favor of keeping everything exactly the same.

Unspeak lives, even in the pages of the New Yorker.

Dealer's Choice

2010-02-05T07:18:00.002-05:00

It's interesting how stories sometimes get shaded in the press. Take this article about AP test passage rates from USA Today. The headline reads: Failure Rate for AP Tests Climbing. If you just read the headline you might think that everything was terrible with education in this country. However, if you read to the eighth paragraph (in a 13 paragraph story) you might also see that the absolute number of kids passing the tests has increased as well. See, there's a lot more kids taking the tests now than used to and that means that two indicators are increasing. On the one hand, we're seeing kids take the test who in the past probably wouldn't have taken the test even though they were ready and would have passed. They're taking and passing the tests now, which is why the number of kids passing has increased. On the other hand, you've got kids being put into the classes and sitting for the tests who aren't ready for that kind of work. That's why the passage rate is declining.

The headline obviously emphasizes the negative, but do the facts support a negative story? Yes and no. The facts can support either a positive or negative spin. The headline could just as easily have read "More Kids Than Ever Passing AP Tests." That would have been equally accurate. But remember, this is in the papers and it is about education. So was there ever really a choice on the angle?

Change We Can Believe In

2010-02-03T07:32:00.002-05:00

Not content with just reforming education through the Race to the Top fund, President Obama has come out swinging again on education. This time, he's talking about rewriting the No Child Left Behind law. At the risk of repeating what's already been on about 1,000 edublogs, way to go.

At this point, it's pretty clear that No Child Left Behind, though well intentioned, has some serious flaws. It's over-reliance on standardized tests is a huge example of that. So what does Obama do? He sets out to deemphasize standardized tests in determining which schools are succeeding and which are failing. If this really happens, it could lead to a huge shift away from the skill, drill, and kill methodology that's become pretty much a necessity in the NCLB era. Let's move away from the high stakes tests and toward a more complete measure of student and school performance.

Arne Duncan said, "We want accountability reforms that factor in student growth, progress in closing achievement gaps, proficiency towards college and career-ready standards, high school graduation and college enrollment rates."

Yes we do.

Can't Afford to Wait

2010-02-01T07:16:00.002-05:00

It seems like I was just writing about the value of early childhood education and interventions when another bit of research came across my desk that really bolsters the point. A study comparing the relative effects of neighborhood poverty at early childhood and early adolescence found that the neighborhood kids live in when they're in first grade strongly predicts their reading levels in seventh grade regardless of where they live in seventh grade. In other words, a first grader in the South Bronx is likely to have a lower reading level when he hits seventh grade, even if he moves to the Upper East Side.

On the one hand, this seems pretty shocking. I mean, we'd like to think that schooling matters and that if circumstances improve children's learning will likewise improve. If we don't believe that, then a lot of other efforts seem kind of pointless.

On the other hand, it does make a certain amount of sense that the conditions under which kids first learn (or are supposed to learn) to read impact their entire reading career. A child who doesn't start learning the necessary skills early on will be playing catch up from then on. That's kind of bleak to consider.

The bottom line here, though, is that what happens to kids early matters. If we want to improve our schools and our education system, we need to start at the beginning and work our way up. That's going to have the strongest impact and it's going to make the most difference. If we wait, it may be too late.

Now or Later

2010-01-29T07:30:00.003-05:00

The old saying goes that it takes money to make money. The new saying, at least in Michigan, is that it takes money to save money. A study there found that the state's preschool programs are saving the state about $1 billion a year. The savings comes from reduced costs in having children repeat grades, the juvenile justice and corrections system, substance abuse programs, and more. That's to say nothing of the fact that children who don't get sidetracked into drugs and crime are also more likely to earn a productive income.

This is actually pretty obvious if you think about it. As my dad always used to say, "you can pay now or you can pay later." He was usually referring to homework time, but it applies. We can pay now and get kids off to a good start or we could pay later when we have to correct the behaviors that have gotten started. As the YMCA used to say, "it's easier to build boys than mend men." That one's pretty catchy.

The irony is that pre-k programs are perpetually on the chopping block. Paul Anton, who oversaw the study under discussion said, "Cutting a dollar in early childhood education is not going to save money, it will cost you in the future."

Let's hope his voice gets heard.

Oh, Texas

2010-01-27T07:27:00.003-05:00

Thank god for the Texas school board. Here in New York we've all been up in arms about the fact that the state legislature didn't lift the charter cap and what's going to happen to our Race to the Top application. Out in Texas, they opted out of that whole Race to the Top thing a long time ago. Clearly. Instead, they're focusing on the important issues, like making sure that Commies don't appear in the classrooms - not even in book form. And even when they aren't actually pinkos.

In one of those too strange to be believed moments of educational reform greatness, the Texas school board removed Bill Martin Jr. (author of the Brown Bear, Brown Bear books) from the social studies curriculum list of individuals to be studied for their cultural contributions. The reason? He'd apparently written another work called Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. Somehow I missed that one in the school library.

Turns out that not only was this a rather sharp turn in Mr. Martin's writerly MO, but he was also dead when he did it. Oops. Turns out Bill Martin isn't such a unique name after all.

And that's who's making educational policy in Texas these days.

I wrote a while back (and again here) about how things like this have to make you wonder about the efforts to install national standards. But I'm actually starting to re-think that position now. Remember, Texas with its huge textbook market in many ways sets the standards that are going to be reflected in textbooks used across the country. And you can see how they're using that clout. At this point, anything to take power away from Texas almost has to be seen as a good thing.

Also, so there's no doubt, I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party.

On Second Thought

2010-01-25T07:17:00.002-05:00

Out in Chicago they've been taking a look at the educational reform strategies that are now being used to reform schools across the country. The strategy - which focuses heavily on closing failing schools, opening new ones, and charters - has been, well, not as encouraging as one might hope. To get right to the point, scores from the newly opened elementary schools are the same as the city average and the high schools tend to do worse than the city average. In other words, just opening new schools doesn't mean that they're going to automatically be better than what they are replacing. Good schools are good schools. New schools can go either way.

Meanwhile, out in Long Beach - which has just received the Broad Prize - they've achieved success by being the anti-Chicago. They have focused on data, community buy-in, and staff development. Also, instead of "flitting from reform to reform or looking for silver bullets", they have stuck with that approach for nearly 20 years. (Are you listening Joel Klein?) Now data, community buy-in, and staff development aren't exactly the sexy stuff of the Education Reformers, but if it works then why isn't the data set all over this. And if the portfolio method isn't so effective, you'd think they'd be turning against that.

The thing about all this reform is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. People are getting locked into their ideas of what works whether it does or not. I'm not saying that only one approach can be successful. I think the exact opposite is true, in fact. But we need to make sure we're actually looking at what works instead of just saying it works and taking action that doesn't help.

Seven and a Half Hours

2010-01-22T07:28:00.004-05:00

A blog seems like an unlikely place to lament the use of technology and media in the world, so I'll try to keep the lamenting to a minimum. Still, it takes a stouter heart than mine not to be a little sad to read that kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend about seven and a half hours a day using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device. That's pretty incredible when you think about it. What makes it sad, though is that those who spend the most time with the devices get the lowest grades. The heaviest users were also most likely to say that they were bored or sad, or that they got into trouble, did not get along well with their parents and were not happy at school. I might argue that the causation on that might be the opposite of what the sentence construction would indicate, but let's not quibble.

Given all this, I couldn't help but think about all the efforts to move the latest technology into the classroom. I mean, is that really what kids need?

The key quote from the article in terms of influencing my thinking on this comes from the report on which the article is based. Basically, it says that it's "time to stop arguing over whether it was good or bad and accept it as part of children’s environment, 'like the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat.'"

Does ubiquity (and possibly inevitability) justify something? I don't know. However, this does seem to be part of the new landscape for kids and we ignore that at our own peril. Like all technology, these devices are not good or evil in themselves, but it all depends on how they are used. If a teacher can find a good and meaningful way to use them, go for it. Otherwise, I don't know that we're helping.

Race to the Bank

2010-01-20T07:26:00.003-05:00

I took a journalism class in college where we were always taught to look for telling details. A telling detail was the kind of small, observable thing that was supposed to shed light on a larger truth about whatever we were writing about. The idea always sort of captivated me and I find myself spotting telling details from time to time.

A great example occurred to me yesterday when I checked in on the Gotham Schools website (which everyone should read every day) and read the headline, "On RttT Deadline Day, Paterson Proposes $1.1B in School Cuts." Think about that headline for a moment and what it says about the larger state of affairs for education reform and the reform agenda.

Race to the Top was supposed to be about encouraging states to do be innovative and aggressive about improving their educational performances. That's why Paterson spent a good portion of the day trying to get lawmakers to lift the state's charter school cap - an effort that was ultimately unsuccessful. But let's get back to the telling part of the detail. Mainly, that cutting $1.1 billion isn't seen as being as limiting to educational reform as the fact that the state only allows 200 charter schools. That's incredible to me.

I know that things like funding education are the kind of things that defenders of the status quo always do, but seriously people. Cutting per-pupil spending by 5% has to be considered an impediment to serious education work. Can we really race to the top without funding?

To be fair, I have no idea how to fix the state's fiscal fiasco, which seems to get worse each time I read a new report on how bad things are. So I get that cuts to schools were probably inevitable and that even a huge cut like this is only just a small portion of how much money does go to education in the state. I just marvel at the fact that no one saw the irony in cutting so much education funding while we were trying to show how education-focused we are as a state. That is a telling detail.

Who's the Boss?

2010-01-15T07:26:00.003-05:00

It turns out that Houston has a bit of a controversy going on in terms of how they evaluate teachers. The school board there was set to vote on a plan to evaluate teachers based on the Texas high stakes testing results. Teachers who aren't doing well may even be fired. Naturally, this has got some people overjoyed and others less so. It does raise - for me anyway - one issue that I think is worth really delving into. (For the sake of argument, let's assume that standardized testing is a valid way to measure student learning. Obviously there are pros and cons to the approach, but let's put those aside for this post.)

The president of the teachers' union there is quoted as saying, "There are so many factors that influence scores — school climate and leadership, not to mention how students woke up feeling on test day." Let's throw into that hopper things like socioeconomic status, nutrition, health and dental care, and more. I think most everyone would agree that kids don't walk into classrooms as blank slates ready to take in whatever the teacher throws at them. Rather, there are all sorts of things both in and out of school that have an impact on student learning. We know that. So let's take it to the next step.

Who has ultimate responsibility for ensuring that kids are learning?

If the school board approves this measure, they are saying it's the teachers. The teachers' union is saying that the principal and outside factors (like parents) also have some responsibility. All of the arguments have some validity. However, if we accept all of them, then who do we blame when things go wrong or praise when they go right? Can we take children away from their parents if their test scores aren't improving?

If we go down that road, we get into accountability nihlism and that's not ultimately going to help us very much. So then where does the responsibility lie?

In the end, I think we have to answer the question by saying that it's the schools. We can and should do everything we can to improve the living conditions for children in underserved communities to help on that front. We can and should provide as much support for parents as possible to help them raise their children so that they'll be able to succeed in school and in life. We can and should do a whole host of things to help the kids who need it most. But in the end, it's the school's job to educate kids and the buck needs to stop there - fairly or unfairly.

Should we fire teachers because of poor student performance? Not as a first line of defense, but it should probably be an option. As long as our goal is to improve schools first, I think we'll see much less need to punish them.

What's the Value?

2010-01-13T07:10:00.003-05:00

A quick lesson in economics:

Marx said that the value of something was equal to the labor put into making it. That's why profit should belong to the workers - they were the ones who instilled it with value. My grandfather always used to say that something is only worth what you can get for it. He wasn't a great economist, but as a banker he did have a certain level of valuable insight. By either measure, the value of a high school diploma is in real trouble if this story from the New York Times is accurate.

For those of you who are linkophobic, the story says that states tend to lower their standards when it becomes apparent that many students aren't going to pass state exit exams. I think I've mentioned before that the Times is sometimes a little slow in getting to these education stories, so you probably aren't shocked to be hearing this. But once it's in the paper of record, it's worth noting.

Let's assume the best case here and ignore the fact that the reason standards are being lowered is that no one wants to be in charge when a bunch of kids are denied diplomas who thought they would be getting them. Let's assume that the standards game is a way to ensure that more kids get diplomas because we know that those are valuable for job seeking and other endeavors.

There's that v-word again. What is the value of a diploma? If standards are being lowered and kids don't need to work as hard for it, then Marx would say that it wasn't as valuable. If employers know that kids with diplomas aren't necessarily ready for meaningful work, then diploma holders aren't going to get as much for having one. Whether you listen to Marx or my grandfather, the value of a diploma is goes down when standards go down.

The bottom line - and I don't think this is controversial - is that we need to make sure more kids are getting diplomas, but we need to do it by raising the kids to the level of the diplomas, not by lowering the diplomas to the level of the kids. In the end, we aren't really helping anyone by doing that.

Tenure Issues

2010-01-11T07:36:00.004-05:00

Teacher tenure is in the news again, this time in Los Angeles, where the local paper has run a story that essentially finds that everyone is given tenure regardless of their actual teaching ability. Then, once they have tenure, those teachers are pretty much never fired.

This is sure to drive the teacher tenure opponents up the wall and probably with good reason. That said, I don't know that this is really the focus of all that's going wrong in our schools. I think it was Diane Ravitch who made the point that if unions and tenure decisions are really so bad, why aren't they ruining middle class suburban school systems? Fair question and one to which I haven't heard an answer.

However, it seems like tenure advocates have to be slapping themselves on this one too. Best case scenario is that tenure looks bad and hurts the PR for the unions and for teachers in general. (The worst case is that it actually hurts students learning.) So when you see a story like this, you know it's just hurting your own case.

I personally don't think that tenure is what's causing any sort of significant problems in our system. But that's no excuse for not being intelligent about how it's awarded and what it means. The article from the LA Times shows that neither of those things are taking place. It's not the end of the world, but it is a problem.

An Actual Turnaround

2010-01-08T07:16:00.003-05:00

I've written before that I'm a pretty big believer in the Obama administration's focus on turning around the lowest performing schools in our country. As I've written, the whole point of the achievement gap is that a lot of schools serving more affluent areas are doing pretty well while a lot of schools serving the less affluent neighborhoods in our country are doing abysmally. That's why there's a gap. What I'm less a fan of is the administration's focus on turning schools around by simply closing them and opening a new school (or new charter school) in their place.

First, this strategy is premised on the idea that any new school will be better than the school it's replacing. Given the status of those schools, this isn't exactly a high bar to reach, but I'm not sure it's an entirely logical conclusion that absolutely anything would be better. I mean, don't districts ever open new underperforming schools?

That's why I like the idea of actually working to turn schools around rather than just close schools and opening a new one that we hope is moving in the opposite direction. You can imagine my happiness to see that a program in Chicago (which as a city has more than a few connections to the current powers-that-be in the White House) has been working with a group called Strategic Learning Initiatives and has been getting results.

SLI works within schools to turn them around rather than focusing on what the next school in that building will be doing. As their CEO says, "it’s less expensive, and often more effective, to invest in the people already working in the schools."

Ultimately, I don't think it's terribly realistic of us to think that we'll be able to abolish the entire system that we have and open something new and better in its place. I just don't think the manpower is there. So let's focus on improving the people we have and getting the best possible results out of them. Chicago is showing that it can be done. Is Arne Duncan listening?

Those Deadbeat TFAs

2010-01-06T07:23:00.002-05:00

So, maybe you read in the New York Times that Teach for America alumni are a bunch of burned out deadbeats who have dropped out of civil society in favor of whatever it is that burned out deadbeats do when they stop teaching. I mean, the Times didn't use those exact words, per se, but the attitude was there and that was kind of the slant of the article.

The actual gist was essentially that TFA alumni (those who complete their two year commitments) have lower rates of civic engagement - as measured by voting, charitable giving, etc - than those who leave the program early or are accepted to the program but opt not to join, according to a study out of Stanford. Eduwonk has a pretty good take on the study here that shows the picture may not be quite as bleak as the Times makes it out to be.

What it boils down to really is that TFA does an excellent job identifying and recruiting people who are and are going to be engaged in their communities - voting rates even among the deadbeat crowd are nearly double the national average - but that the TFA experience itself doesn't help get people more involved in a broadly defined way.

I don't want to be an apologist, but I don't see that as a very big deal. The alumni are still more likely to be involved than the average person and they're also much more likely to be involved in educational issues. Given the goal of the organization (to transform and improve education from both within and outside the classroom), the dip in charitable giving is something that I can deal with.

A New Decade

2010-01-04T07:18:00.003-05:00

First of all, happy new year everyone. Indeed, it's a happy new decade and I hope that everyone finds this decade even better than the last, whatever it was called.

On that note, the New Yorker ran a predictably droll piece in their Talk of the Town section about how the lack of consensus about what to call the previous decade might have been a harbinger for the lack of consensus on a variety of other issues that came before us during the previous ten years. While I'm still not entirely sure what we're going to be calling the last decade, in terms of educational epochs, it was pretty clear.

Without question, the aughts (if that's really what we're going to insist on calling them) were the No Child Left Behind decade. That was the defining feature of education policy as first the law was passed and then more and more states started putting greater and greater emphasis on high stakes student testing. Look around New York or pretty much anywhere else and you see that test scores not only reign supreme, but that many aren't even questioning that testing emphasis is the way it should be. It's just part of the landscape.

I know it's early (4 days out of a total 3650), but I've already got a nominee for what the new decade in education will be: the Race to the Top decade. Clearly that's the big focus right now and with all that money on the line, it's no wonder. Whether or not the focus stays on that one initiative for the next ten years is doubtful. I know I'd bet against it. However, the sentiment summed up by the effort is, I think, going to be here to stay.

In short, Race to the Top is about tweaking the effects of NCLB without fundamentally altering the landscape that it created. We're seeing pushes for national standards and for states increasing their standards and creating more school choice. All of this is what NCLB set out to do, but didn't do that well. In other words, we're still tinkering with the same program, but we're trying to correct the mistakes that were made the first time around.

Part of me can't really imagine that the moniker "Race to the Top Decade" is really going to be sticking around 10 years from today. But if it is, remember that you heard it here first.

Adults and Kids

2009-12-18T07:29:00.003-05:00

In the world of education reform, there's a certain stigma attached to advocating for "adult issues" rather than "children's issues." Usually that's in the context of saying how unions are ruining education. However, I do have to say that there may be a case made for looking at the adult issues from time to time given that they inevitably affect the children.

In Arizona, they just received a score of D+ in the area of teacher retention from the National Council on Teacher Quality. An article in the Arizona Republic goes through a lot of the reasons that teachers leave and you know what? They're all adult issues. Assuming that we think kids should have high-quality teachers who are experienced in the classroom, it seems like we should be looking at some of those adult issues and seeing how we can improve them.

The UFT used to say that teachers want what kids need. Maybe and maybe not. But kids certainly do need good teachers. And if we want good teachers, we need, at least occasionally, to look at the adult issues and take them seriously. It's not an either/or proposition. It's about finding ways to do both.

Speaking of Arizona, I'm heading out there for the next few weeks and will be away from the blog. So Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and see you in the New Year!

Lucky Guy

2009-12-16T07:27:00.003-05:00

I never thought I would write that I think the press has gone kind of easy on Governor Paterson. Keep in mind that for about the last year there have been a steady stream of stories essentially saying that he's a lame duck and that Andrew Cuomo is so much better than he is and how the White House hates him and New Yorkers hate him and even people who've never heard of him think that someone else would be a better governor. He hasn't helped his own cause very much, but I can see how it would foster a tough environment in which to govern during difficult times.

But he seems to have caught a break. At least for now.

In his continuing efforts to cut back on spending in the state and close an ever-growing budget deficit, Paterson has announced that, among other things, he's withholding payments to school districts across the state. The New York Times headline read: School Districts Scramble After Albay Delays Aid. That's two breaks in one headline. The first is that the delay was attributed to "Albany" instead of "Paterson the terrible governor who's going to get beat by Andrew Cuomo if he insists on staying in the race." Admittedly, Albany is shorter than all that, so maybe that was the deciding factor.

The other break is a little subtler and is, in fact, repeated in the story itself. That's the use of the word "Aid" instead of, say, "funding". Now that's an interesting distinction that makes the withholding more palatable. Keeping school funding out of the hands of schools sure seems like a pretty cold-hearted move. But if it's just aid, well, maybe it's not so bad. It'll just be a little less help.

I suppose I'm not well-versed enough in the subtleties of New York State's various fiscal policies to say for sure what qualifies for aid versus what is considered outright funding, but it seems like Paterson might have caught a symantic break here, even if it is just a little one.

New Toys

2009-12-14T07:29:00.002-05:00

It's the end of the year and that means two things for newspapers and magazines: lots of retrospective looks back at the best and worst of the year and lots of crystal ball gazing as to what the new year will bring. Even though schools operate on an offset schedule, it doesn't stop the educational journalists from indulging. I mean, who wants to feel left out?

Anyway, the experts at THE Journal have put together their predictions for what 2010 will hold in terms of classroom technology. The predictions are: more e-books, more netbooks, more interactive whiteboards, more personal devices (i.e. smart phones) in the classroom, and more individualizd instruction through technology. Presumably there will be less of some things also, but they don't make the article.

It's interesting, because to a large extent it's probably right. As the new technology is released and then becomes mainstream, teachers are looking to find ways to use it. It's seen as a high interest way to hook kids into the curriculum. While teaching about the Greek-Persian wars, I had my students create blogs and write about what was happening. The kids loved it.

The catch, though, is that I don't know that they really learned anything extra about Greece by writing what they knew on a blog rather than a regular old paper. Maybe they learned some technology skills. Maybe they were more motivated and so put in more effort and thus learned a little more. But essentially it was the same content in a new medium.

Whenever I read about a teacher incorporating Twitter into a lesson or something like that, I can't help but wonder if it isn't being used just as a gimmick. Is it boosting learning or just changing the packaging? Right now we seem to be doing a lot of repackaging. But I think that's probably the first step toward changing something more fundamental.

Reading Makes You Smarter

2009-12-11T07:30:00.003-05:00

Everyone knows that reading makes you smarter, so it would seem to be a waste to devote an entire post (even a short one) to that proposition. But sometimes science comes up with something pretty cool and so we have to risk diverging into the annals of the obvious to make a point.

According to NPR, research just published in the journal Neuron indicates that reading more literally builds up your brain. We're not talking about a metaphorical you're smarter so your brain is stronger, we're talking about actual observable differences in the brains of people who read more. Specifically, reading seems to build up white matter, which (as near as I can tell) are like the highways that connect the different parts of your brain. By making all of those connections stronger, you're allowing your brain to process and synthesize greater amounts of information and build stronger connections.

How cool is this?

The more reading you do, the stronger those white matter connections become. They even took a group of poor readers and put them in an intensive remedial program where they found that white matter built up at the same rates as reading level - those who improved the most in reading also added the most white matter. In addition to all that content that they brought into their brains (which is, of course, another benefit of reading), they also literally made themselves smarter in a general and objective sense.

I don't have any policy recommendation or anything as a result of this other than that we should encourage everyone to read (a novel idea, I know). I just think this stuff is really interesting. And I'm going to go do some reading now.

Predictable Predictions

2009-12-09T07:32:00.003-05:00

There's nothing the press loves so much as a dramatic story about a school rising from the ashes of failure and achieving great (or at least less substandard) things for their children. So it's no surprise that the L.A. Times profiles another school in that series. What I like to see, though, is the ways in which the schools are able to turn themselves around. Turns out that it doesn't always require a school being closed, the staff being fired, and a no-excuses charter opening in its place. Sometimes it just takes some extra time.

De Anza Elementary School in Los Angeles has made the turnaround by extending their day. Now, nearly half of their students spend time at school after school to receive extra help and academic enrichment. Families are brought into the school. It's not quite a community school, but it seems like a close cousin of the concept. And it works.

It's always nice when the things that seem like they ought to work actually do. I mean, you extend the time kids are supervised in an academic setting, you give them more one-on-one attention, you draw families into the process and good things happen. Seems pretty predictable, so it's good that the predictions are correct.

Math and Teaching

2009-12-07T07:23:00.004-05:00

File this one in the counterintuitive column. According to an article in Education Week, elementary and middle school math performance isn't really benefitted by having a teacher who majored in math. The study being reported on found that prior math experience (undergraduate major, previous career in something like accounting, etc.) didn't have much impact on the younger grades. By the time high school starts, though, the connection grows stronger.

I say that it's counterintuitive, but that's not exactly the case. As anyone who's ever been into a classroom knows, there's a lot more to teaching than knowing the content. Knowing the causes for the Civil War doesn't necessarily mean you'll be able to convey them well to a classroom full of hormonal teenagers. You also have to know how to teach.

That's the punch line in the whole push for "highly qualified teachers." In reality, the push is not toward highly qualified teachers, but rather toward people who are highly qualified in their field and who will become teachers. I'm not saying that's a bad thing in any way. However, we shouldn't confuse highly qualified mathematicians for high qualified math teachers. It may or may not help, but it's not enough on its own.

I'm a Believer

2009-12-04T07:28:00.002-05:00

Have I mentioned before how much I love the community school idea? I mean, what a great way to tie together so many of the different threads that need to be in place for children of poverty to succeed. Not least of those being helping to address the problems that the adults may be facing.

A recent article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (about a community school in Boston, oddly), included the line, "as a result of helping parents, schools can relieve children of some of the non-academic baggage that's making it hard for them to learn." Spot on. Help the whole child and the whole family and you're going to see results for the kids. It just makes sense.

The article is actually a pretty good one. It does a good job explaining the rationale for community schools, the work that goes into operating one, and the results that can be derived from doing so. It's not that long either, so you can read it even if you're in a rush.

The bottom line is that community schools take a ton of work from creative, driven people in order to function. It takes looking beyond the traditional role of a school and seeking to embody more. But, really, isn't that what we need right now? We know where the traditional model has gotten us, both for better or worse. Especially for schools in poor areas, we need anything that will add more to the better column.

What's the Problem?

2009-12-02T07:23:00.002-05:00

Race, class, and school admissions. If that isn't the set-up for a fraught conversation, I don't know what is. I mention it because that's exactly what's going on in Chicago. A 2007 Supreme Court decision prevented the use of race in determining school decisions. That caused problems for the system in trying to comply wth a desegregation order. So, rather than use race as the determining criterion, CPS is looking at census tracts, neighborhood income levels, and other socio-economic indicators as the determinative factors. The goal being that by looking at these issues, the system will be able to reap a "racial dividend" and achieve essentially the same result.

Frankly, all of this makes sense to me. However, some of Chicago's alderman have other ideas and are calling the new system unjust and a way to get white students into selective schools. They may have a point given that the new methods seem to be somewhat less than ideal. For instance, the article reports that "some students will be competing against kids whose families make at least 10 times more than theirs do." So obviously the system needs some tinkering.

Assuming that things were working well, though, I think that this makes a whole lot of sense. I've always been a strong believer in the maxim that your solutions should address your problems. Otherwise, what's the point? So is the problem race or is the problem socio-economic disparities. Obviously, the two are pretty firmly linked in this country so it's a little tough to separate them out. However, since I have a hard time believing that different races automatically have different levels of academic achievement, I'm inclined to favor socio-economic factors. If that's the problem, then that's what our solutions should be targeting. Chicago seems to have started down that road, but they've got a ways to go still.

On an unrelated note, the Los Angeles Times just ran an editorial saying that while charters have a lot of promise, "they're no magic bullet." Couldn't agree more. Could we be seeing the beginning of a shift on popular perception of the schools? Obviously one editorial doesn't make a trend, but it's a start.

A Different Track

2009-11-30T07:20:00.002-05:00

Louisiana schools have been garnering some controversy for their plan to introduce a "career diploma" for students who aren't likely to be attending college after high school. As I understand it, the first two years of high school would be pretty much the same for everyone. After that, there's a split. Those on the college track would be moving through more advanced courses in the basic core subjects. Those on the career track would be taking more electives that would prepare them for future careers, presumably in manual trades.

I think the controversy is pretty well summed up in these two quotes. An opponent says:

“This policy creates a path to lowered expectations and diminished opportunities for some students, and we know from experience in other states that ‘some’ often means low-income students, and students of color.”

In contrast, a supporter of the new track says:

“How much lower is your standard for that student that you push out and put on the street? You tell me how we’re lowering it any lower than that.”

And that's pretty much the crux of the argument. Are the standards being lowered for kids who could succeed if they were just pushed a supported a little more or is this providing a meaningful alternative for kids who will otherwise get little meaning out of their "education"?

Of course, this all comes down to how well it's executed. That's always the case. Provided that it is done well and used appropriately, I don't see anything wrong with letting kids who want to be electricians or auto mechanics or any of those trades start preparing for their careers rather than force them into classes that don't mean anything to them. This plan is absolutely compatible with a viewe of education that is about preparing kids to succeed in the world. However, if this career track is a mere dumping ground, then it's a big problem.

So much depends on execution.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T07:30:00.001-05:00

I was going to write a post about the various things (educational and otherwise) that I'm thankful for this year. But rather than indulge my maudlin impulses, let me just wish you a happy Thanksgiving. See you again on Monday.

Race to the Bottom Line?

2009-11-23T07:25:00.002-05:00

On the Core Knowledge Blog, Robert Pondiscio already (pretty hilariously) portrayed the Race to the Top guidelines as a teacher finding kids ready to line up - “Oh, I like the way California is linking teachers and test scores! You too, Indiana and Wisconsin! What an excellent job you’re doing! Uh-oh, Nevada is definitely not ready!" A recent article on Slate does a comparable (though less entertaining) take on the subject by raising two questions that should be on the minds of every teacher who's ever tried to incentivize/bribe a class to do something. Namely, what happens to the ones who don't win and why will good things continue to happen after the reward has been withdrawn? Excellent questions, both.

The point of the article is not that Race to the Top is totally flawed and not worth doing - at least that's not how I read it. Rather, it's a call for looking at the next steps. If we reward the states that are already doing well, then what do we do for the states that most need the help because they are struggling? And what do we do to continue to incentivize those states that initially win money but are now presumably supposed to continue on with their very expensive reforms.

(Just for the sake of the argument here, let's assume that all of the Race to the Top guidelines are perfect and what every state should be doing. I don't know if I totally agree with that, but let's say so for the argument.)

In other words, the way it is structured now, the Race to the Top will initiate a burst of reform from a section of the country, but will likely not be sustained or imitated by those states that aren't part of the initial burst. At least that's the argument on Slate. As the author writes, "The behavioral economics [of Race to the Top] don’t pan out."

Partly that's correct and partly it's not. Truly, these are expensive reforms that the Obama administration has in mind and given that just about everyone is looking to cut education budgets, it's a bad time to be starting expensive efforts unless you have a ton of federal money helping you out. What I don't quite believe, though, is that the only reason states will continue these reforms - or continue to try to imitate them - is the federal money involved. The problem with economics is that it just looks at the money and thinks that everything is explained. However, this analysis overlooks the fact that states may in fact want to improve the education they are providing to children even independent of the federal money. There's a goal beyond profit here. Forgetting that would be a mistake.

The bottom line (something economists love) here is that there are big questions about Race to the Top that should be thought about and addressed. But they are not fatal flaws and there's still plenty to be hopeful about.

Worse Than We Thought

2009-11-20T07:30:00.003-05:00

Every so often a major newspaper discovers (or rediscovers) that there is an educational achievement gap in this country that breaks down along racial and class lines. This week, it was the New York Times making the discovery as they wrote that the high school progress report grades broke down along racial and class lines. To whit, predominantly white middle class schools got higher grades than predominantly poor minority schools. On the one hand, this is hardly shocking. On the other hand, it's worse news than it first appears.

First, a note about the progress reports. They've rightly been much-mocked for their panglossian view of the New York City schools. And I'll admit that I've been known to join in. However, that mocking actually kind of misrepresents what it is that the reports are actually designed to do. There reports are not like a progress report that a child brings home from school, which is really an interim report on how close that child is to meeting an ultimate objective. Rather, the school progress reports are literally reports on progress. Earning an A doesn't mean that the school is an above average school. It could still be a bad school. However, it does mean that the school made an above average amount of progress on the state tests. This is a distinction that gets lost when just about everyone (DOE included) talks about the progress reports. Again, these reports are not supposed to indicate where a school stands against an absolute standard, but rather how much progress the school is making toward bettering itself.

(Just for the sake of time and brevity let's set aside for the moment a discussion about the flaws in the system that relies upon a single year of test scores to come up with a score, though that conversation is definitely valid and worth having.)

Let's get back to the fact that the progress reports are designed to measure school progress and not the absolute quality of a school. When we keep that in mind, the achievement gap the Times discovered is almost more troubling.

It's not news that poor and minority schools face huge challenges and tend to come in behind their whiter and more affluent peers on absolute standards. It would be big news if that weren't the case. However, after years of education reforms on a variety of fronts, we'd at least like to think that we're moving in the right direction on these schools. However, the reports on progress seem to indicate that this is not happening. Instead, the schools that need to be making the most progress are in fact making the least. Think about this for a second. Even when we all but discard absolute measurements and focus on the relative scale of "progress" poor and minority schools lag behind.

I always hesitate to throw around words like disaster and debacle, but every so often I feel them creeping into my vocabulary. This may be one of those times.

In the rush to discredit and defend the progress reports (depending on who's speaking), we've lost sight of the fact that there actually is some news we can glean from these reports. And the news is not good.

Ups and Downs

2009-11-18T07:19:00.002-05:00

Arizona, when its elected officials aren't saying moronic things, is the undisputed charter school leader of our country. The state boasts 500 charter schools, which account for 25% of the public schools in the state and 10% of the student population (class size comparisons, anyone?). Seems like this should have rocketed Arizona to the top of the state rankings, right? Well, the only problem is that the state's charter schools don't show as much academic progress as the state's traditional public schools. At least, that's what a study out of Stanford University found.

Now, in fairness, apparently the charter supporters are saying that the methodology of the report is flawed. So let's mark the findings with an asterisk for now. But what the sides both seem to agree on is that the quality of charter schools varies widely. No kidding.

For some reason, the real diehard charter supporters seem to think that all charters are always better than all traditional public schools. Even in the face of evidence that it simply isn't true. And it's obviously not true. It doesn't even make sense. Rather, there are some charters that are excellent schools. Just as there are some traditional public schools that are excellent. Likewise, both have their duds. What makes a school good is not that it has a charter label affixed to it. That's ultimately just a label. As I've said before, we should stop focusing on the labels and start focusing on what actually makes schools good and successful and replicate that in as many schools as we can so that all schools can be good schools. Charters can certainly be part of that picture, but they are not a complete answer in themselves.

I also want to draw attention to a line from the Washington Post article linked above that says, "But the state also offers a cautionary lesson as President Obama pushes to dismantle barriers to charter schools elsewhere: It is difficult to promote quantity and quality at the same time." Sounds familiar.

More Teachers Than Classrooms

2009-11-16T07:16:00.003-05:00

The common wisdom is that teaching is a recession-proof profession because no matter what kind of economy we're experiencing there are going to be kids and they are going to need to go to school. As common sense goes, it's pretty common. Only problem is that it turns out not to be technically true. With districts across the country cutting positions because of funding issues, there are now too many teachers on the market for the jobs that are available.

Interestingly, the one exception is math teachers for whom there is still an "extreme shortage" according to American Association for Employment in Education. I think that says something interesting about who becomes teachers and the fields from which they are drawn.

The silver lining in this is that with more teachers than positions available, principals should have the luxury of hiring the very best teachers for their classrooms. After all, the more people who apply for a position, the more likely you are to find a really great teacher. So maybe this will end up being a good thing.

The bad news would come when otherwise good and qualified teachers try to seek employment elsewhere if they can't find a job. (This could be the result of structural unemployment, so don't tell me I'm contradicting myself.) In the short term, the increased competition for jobs could be good. In the long term, I hope it doesn't cause damage.

An Interesting Case in Chicago

2009-11-13T07:26:00.004-05:00

A little bit of education trivia for you: Chicago area schools have one of the largest gaps in teacher salaries in the country. For instance, the teachers in Oak Brook make an average of over $80,000 a year while the teachers in Grayslake make an average of about $38,000 a year. Pretty striking difference. Yet, despite this yawning gap in salaries, the students in these two areas appear to be performing at roughly the same level. That's interesting to me on two levels.

First, isn't it an article of faith among the idealocrats that higher pay for teachers (particularly if it comes in the form of merit pay) is supposed to equal better results for kids? I've never liked that argument terribly. True, you may attract more high fliers to teaching if the pay is better. But the idea that teachers are just not motivated to get kids to learn unless you dangle a carrot in front of them never rang true to me. During my time as a teacher, there was literally no amount of money you could pay me to work harder because I was already going all out. I still wasn't a great teacher and more money wouldn't have made the difference. But I digress. The real lesson here is that more money for teachers doesn't necessarily equate to more achievement for kids.

The second point that comes to me is that more experience doesn't necessarily seem to make a difference either. As the article points out, more time in the classroom (and more advanced degrees) tends to equal higher pay in the teaching profession. That's one reason the Oak Brook teachers get paid more. Yet those extra years of experience and additional diplomas also don't seem to be making a difference. The young turks in Grayslake seem to be doing just fine. Take notice all of you who say that we need to do more to value experienced teachers and ignore those young ones coming up because they aren't going to be as good.

I hate to write a post where I just tear down other people's ideas without offering up something productive of my own. So here it is. If there is a single way to predict and foster better teachers, we haven't found it yet and it may not exist. That doesn't mean we should stop trying to improve our teaching force. It does mean that we should stop looking for a single silver bullet that's going to improve all of our schools. It's just not that simple.

A Surprising Surprise

2009-11-09T07:27:00.003-05:00

I often find myself surprised by the things that education researchers seem to find surprising. Take a recent analysis by the Brookings Institute on education standards. As the researchers write, "Our analyses suggest that the creation of common standards will have little impact on our future in and of itself." Rather, the researchers conclude, it's measures like "aligned assessments, and aligned curriculum, and accountability for educators, and accountability for students, and aligned professional development, and managerial autonomy for school leaders, and teachers who drawn from the best and brightest, and so on" that actually have a real benefit on student learning.

In other words, just setting standards doesn't cause kids to meet them. You also need to ensure that teaching and all the other aspects of what actually goes on in the classroom are high quality if you want to get great results. The researchers write that these findings "surprised many readers." Really? It's surprising to people that setting a goal isn't enough and that you need to make sure you're actually working toward achieving that goal?

The Brookings people are careful to point out that standards are not useless and I agree with them. It makes sense to have clear benchmarks for what students should be able to do. However, we can't confuse the setting of those benchmarks with steps that will actually help students meet them. Surprisingly, that's surprising to some people.

Bloomberg, Part III

2009-11-06T07:13:00.004-05:00

Now that Mayor Bloomberg is going to stay mayor for another four years there's all sorts of talk about how he'll avoid the famed "third term curse" that brough down Koch, Cuomo, and more. Bloomberg has pledged to renew his energy and chart a bold new course through the next four years. The course won't be that new (I mean, he is the incumbent), but he seems to be saying that he's open to new ideas.

With that in mind, here are some ideas (not all of which are new, per se) that the mayor could think about integrating into the education agenda for the next four years. As much as possible, I'm trying to make these things I think the mayor might actually do as opposed to just making a list of things I would want to see if I'd been elected. So here's what I've got:

1. Use mayoral control to create more community schools
Mayoral control over the schools gets so much attention that we kind of forget that the mayor has control over all sorts of different things (Health Department, ACS, Sanitation, etc.) that directly impact people's lives. The Harlem Children's Zone has won a fair amount of acclaim by focusing on an entire community approach to educating children. Schools are the centerpiece, but there's also a huge investment in all other parts of the community. This seems like the kind of thing that a mayor, with control over all the city agencies, could really make his own. Bloomberg should pick a few pilot areas and create city-sponsored community school zones. Increase the investment and attention intensively into the entire community and you're just about guaranteed to see students doing better.

2. Use next year's impending test scores drop to realign accountability programs
The consensus seems to be that the state is going to make the tests harder next year and that we should therefore expect to see test scores drop. Since test scores are what the DOE uses for all of its accountability measures, this isn't going to look great for them. Of course, there's a lot of evidence that the measures are a little bit inflated already to make the DOE look as good as possible. With a year to start managing expectations of a downward drop, the Mayor could use this opportunity to realign all the measures and standards to be a little more reality-based and a little less inflated. The immediate drop will be attributed to the tests getting harder and then any improvement from there will be more authentic and believable. More rigorous tests (as they're often described) will provide cover to do what probably needs doing anyway, but won't be done because no one wants to see scores drop.

3. Replace Chancellor Klein
I know I said that I wanted these suggestions to be things that Bloomberg might actually do and I also know that most indications are that Klein isn't going anywhere. But what if he did? Klein has been a complete lightening rod for the last seven years and he's received heaps of scorn and reprobation from many sectors of the community. So replace him. The mayor still has control over the schools and has the power to appoint a Chancellor, so he could still pick someone who would follow largely the same agenda. Plus, it would earn him (Bloomberg) and the replacement pick a period of goodwill. During this honeymoon, he could still follow essentially the same agenda (and let's be clear, he will follow the same agenda), but people wouldn't be as on to it since there was a new face at the top. Plus, if Bloomberg really does want to make his changes to the school system permanent, a replacement Chancellor would have a much better job of being reappointed by the next mayor than Klein has. There's a lot to be gained by doing it and surprisingly little to lose.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. Let me know if I missed anything.

Now That It's Over

2009-11-04T07:31:00.003-05:00

After a long day and night spent out on the streets campaigning yesterday, I'm not as my most alert for posting this morning. So here's just a few quick thoughts on Mayor Bloomberg's (narrow) re-election. On Friday, I'll come back with education suggestions for the mayor's third term that he might actually follow.

They (whoever they may be) often say that re-election races are referendums on the incumbent. Sometimes that's true and sometimes it's not. This is a case where it was true. After all, the Mayor enjoyed a 14-1 spending advantage and his opponent wasn't actually mounting a visible campaign. The decision people made yesterday was all about the Mayor.

The interesting thing there is that according to Times exit polling, 70% of New Yorkers approved of the job the mayor was doing. You may notice that's about 20% more than actually voted for him. This wasn't even a referendum about the mayor's job performance, it was a referendum on him. That's kind of interesting to me.

Obviously, the campaign style was a mistake. That seems pretty un-controversial to say when your vote total is 20% lower than your approval rating. A voter is quoted in that Times article saying, "I feel he bought himself the election” and “ran a smear campaign against a nonexistent opponent." Rightfully so, that didn't sit well with people.

Let's hope all that talk about a third term curse is bogus. After all, I live here and if the Mayor comes on hard times this go-round, he's not the only one who'll be in trouble.

Someone For Mayor

2009-11-02T07:26:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow is election day in New York City and about two weeks ago the idea occurred to me to run a mayoral endorsement on the blog today. The only problem is that now, two weeks later, I don't really know who I would like to be mayor. I honestly haven't made up my mind yet even though I will have voted 24 hours from now. This is a tough one.

My biggest issue, as you might be able to guess, is education. I think that's the biggest challenge facing the city and the one that the mayor has real authority to work on. So that's my litmus test. Even with a pretty narrow scope, I'm still terribly conflicted.

On the one hand, I disagree with a lot of the things that Mayor Bloomberg has done over the last eight years. I also object to his needlessly negative and often dishonest campaign approach. However, he has been focused on education, which is more than can be said about most leaders in this country. He's allocated tons of money to the schools and has tried a series of reforms to correct a system that clearly wasn't working. Whether these new reforms are the answer is, of course, a matter of heated debate, but at least he's trying something.

I often see Thompson as running against the Mayor's education policies. The bulk of Thompson's education platform is pretty much a direct response to things the Mayor has done poorly (not involving parents, too much test prep, etc). What's not clear is what Thompson's affirmative agenda is going to look like. It's one thing to say that you'll involve parents in meaningful ways and that you'll educate the "whole child", but what does that actually mean at the end of the day? And what's the guarantee that it will get done? After all, the Bloomberg/Klein system keeps saying that they're going to do a better job involving parents too.

I've also been remarkably unimpressed with the entire Thompson campaign. I mean, I get that the other guy has $15 billion to potentially spend, but that doesn't mean you should just roll over and die. Let's just say that I'm not impressed with his managerial skills on this front.

So the choice boils down to a guy I know I often disagree with, but that I know is taking big action on the issue I care about and a guy who says he'll do everything differently and better, but that I don't know will actually be able to accomplish anything. Like I said, this is a tough one and time is ticking.

Remember to vote tomorrow.

Everyone Wins?

2009-10-30T06:59:00.002-04:00

When charter schools were first getting started, the argument for them was largely theoretical. It went along the lines that competition would urge everyone to do better, therefore we should have competition in our school system. It's a fairly reasonable argument as theoretical arguments go, so states started implementing charter programs, even without evidence that they would be effective. One of the benefits of the last several years is that we're starting to see research from those charter schools that did get started. Frankly, I'm glad for it because major policy decisions on education should be based as much as possible on evidence rather than theory and ideology.

So far, the evidence has been a bit mixed. Not terribly surprising given that in all systems some schools are going to be good and some are going to be less so. In addition to questions about whether charter schools are automatically going to be more effective than traditional public schools, there's a big question about what happens to the kids who stay at the public schools when a charter opens nearby. Now, as an iPhone ad might say, there's a study for that.

Marcus Winters of the Manhattan Institute (which does tend to lean rightward) looked at the "left behind" kids and actually found that they did better when more kids left for charter schools. For those of you who prefer primary documents, check out the study here. This "small but not insignificant" effect is enough for the editorial writers at the Daily News to declare that the "groundbreaking report demolishes the last argument of the dead-enders who refuse to acknowledge the remarkable promise of city charter schools." I don't know if I'd go that far, but it certainly is something that needs to be reckoned with.

Winters says that the reason for the improvement is that there's competition between schools and now all of the schools need to raise their game in order to stay competitive. That very well could be the case, but I don't know that he proves it with his research. He has certainly demonstrated an effect, but I don't know that he's demonstrated its cause. For instance, Leonie Haimson might argue that more kids moving to charter schools lowers class sizes for those "left behind" which would improve their classrooms performance.

The other question that occurred to me is whether or not the generally rising test scores across the state were taken into consideration and controlled for. It seems like that could skew results in favor of showing progress at certain schools (like the report showing that grades tended to improve at schools with the teacher bonus program in place) when the progress was really universal. I'm not a sophisticated enough reader of research papers to say whether it's accounted for or not or even if it would be relevant to the model. It's just a thought.

The bottom line is that we're now seeing a lot of charter research being released, which is a great thing no matter which side of the charter divide you find yourself on. I still hope that in future research we look at the whys as much as the whats. If we want to expand successes, we need to know what's working and why so we don't copy the wrong things.

P.S. Nicholas Kristof had a pretty good column in the Times yesterday about how we should be putting some of the money we're spending in Afghanistan into schools rather than just soldiers. He points out that schools are a powerful way to help transform a society. He also points out that al Qaeda understands that and is opening madrassas for just that purpose. Kristof writes, "It breaks my heart that we don’t invest in schools as much as medieval, misogynist extremists." Ouch.

Dumbing in Des Moines

2009-10-28T07:20:00.004-04:00

Regular readers may know that I'm not exactly Mr. Get-Tough-Raise-the-Standards-No-Excuses and that I think the phrase "dumbing down" is really just so much unspeak. But every so often, I see something that makes me think that the phrase may have some use after all. Take Des Moines. Please.

Seriously, though, the Des Moines public schools are considering reducing the number of credits needed to graduate in order to try to reduce the high school dropout rate. While reducing the drop-out rate is a laudable goal, I find myself questioning this particular method of doing so. Let's play a little bit of best case/worst case.

Best case, the school board has realized that their requirements are unrealistic/unreasonable and don't actually promote student learning. As such, they are adjusting the criteria for graduation to better reflect the needs of the students. Let's hope that's what is happening.

Worst case, the board has forgotten that a high school diploma does not have any real intrinsic worth and is using it as a replacement for actual learning. If the standards really are being dumbed down in order to ensure that more kids get a slip of paper saying they've graduated high school, it's a huge mistake. The slip of paper doesn't actually prepare you for the job. All the paper does is signify that you've done the work and learning needed to be successful beyond school. Raising graduation rates only means something if being a graduate means something. If everyone gets a diploma regardless of how much they've done or know, then what use is the diploma?

Truly, we are facing a drop out crisis across the country that needs to be addressed. But let's focus on early interventions, academic help, and things like that rather than making graduation easier. Dumbing down graduation standards doesn't actually help anyone. If that's the strategy, Des Moines might not be worth taking at all.

A Disheartening Finding

2009-10-26T07:24:00.003-04:00

Public Agenda has some interesting research out where they surveyed about 900 teachers from across the country on their attitudes about teaching. They then broke the teachers up into three groups: idealists, contented, and disheartened. In what has to be considered troubling news, the largest group is the disheartened teachers (the breakdown is 40% disheartened, 37% contented, and 23% idealist).

I'm not one to go around blaming teachers for everything that's wrong with education. However, this is the kind of thing that has to make you stop and think. Are disheartened teachers really going to be as effective as contented teachers? Is someone who thinks it's a "wonder that more teachers don't burn out" really going to be the best person to have in the classroom?

A couple of points worth considering. First, disheartened teachers are much more likely than contented teachers to be teaching in low income schools. Naturally, this tends to be a more challenging environment, which probably has an effect on how teachers view their profession. Also, disheartened teachers are more likely to be negative about their principals and to say that discipline and behavior issues are problems at their school. Administrator support is also listed as a negative.

I'm a little curious about the chicken the egg relationship between the answers. I wonder if its negative conditions that make the teachers disheartened or if disheartened teachers are more likely to see the negative side of things.

Whichever it is, it's a problem when nearly half of teachers (a great percentage of whom are working with the neediest children) are unhappy with their jobs. Whether that means working to improve conditions in schools (which would be helpful) or whether it means removing teachers who don't belong in classrooms (which may be necessary), the status quo can't be allowed to stand.

Arne and the Community

2009-10-22T21:19:00.001-04:00

On Thursday morning, I was fortunate enough to be part of a group that got to hear a speech by Education Secretary Arne Duncan at a Children’s Aid Society conference on community schools. It’s kind of hard to know where to start because he touched on so many different points (though seldom went into any real depth). That said, let me give it a try.

But first, I have to say how much I love the idea of community schools. Check out that CAS link above. The basic idea is that schools should also serve as community centers that are open after school to serve both kids and members of the community. Further, schools should be partnering with all sorts of social service providers to address all the components of being a child in poverty, not just the academic issues. Count me as one who’s 100% with that.

You can count Duncan too, based on his speech. Given that he was speaking to a room full of community schooling advocates, I suppose that’s not terribly surprising, but it was sure nice to hear someone in charge really seem to get the idea that there’s a lot that needs to be done to really help educate kids. As he said, “We’re fighting a tremendous number of battles as a society.” No kidding. As I’ve often written, the host of issues surrounding kids in poor communities goes far beyond what we think of as traditional educational issues. If we want to make a difference, we’ve got to look beyond the traditional classroom roles.

Part of the reason for moving beyond the traditional model is that the role of schooling has fundamentally changed. Namely, the stakes are a lot higher now. As Duncan pointed out, 30 years ago, there was such a thing as an acceptable dropout rate because people could work in factories or other similar jobs. That’s just not the case in today’s economy. As Duncan said, “Now there are no good jobs in the legal economy for high school dropouts.” The stakes are higher because every child needs to succeed in school. That means that schools need to find ways to reach every child, which means that they need to go beyond what they did in the past.

That’s where the community schools model comes in. It focuses on all aspects of a child and involves the community in solving what is essentially a community problem. It even begins to solve some of the problems in the community itself. I’m really excited by the bold idea of re-imagining what a school is in a modern community. I know I’m late to the party (again, check out the CAS link), but I’m happy to be here now.

Stimulus and Real Learning

2009-10-21T07:29:00.002-04:00

Two quick thoughts for your Wednesday morning.

First, the next time someone tries telling me that the stimulus plan didn't work, I'm going to point out that 250,000 people employed in education wouldn't have jobs if it weren't for the stimulus. That's the number of education employees whose jobs were preserved by federal recovery aid, according to the Department of Education. Now, the wording leads me to believe that not all of them are teachers, but I think it would be fair to assume that a good percentage of that number are in the classrooms. The fact that so many districts are still in trouble and saying they may have to lay off teachers shows you how bad things are.

With all the focus on Wall Street and unemployment (both serious issues, to be sure), it's easy to look at the stimulus and say that it didn't work. But at the local level, the stimulus preserved so many jobs and programs that would otherwise have been cut. It's in the absence of massive negative changes that we see the positive effects of the stimulus. Say what you will about the price tag, but the stimulus saved local municipalities from going into a tailspin that would have proven nearly impossible to correct at any time in the near future.

Second, this is the kind of thing that more schools should be doing. I'm sure Robert Pondiscio at Core Knowledge Blog will be covering this better than I will, so check out his site. The gist, though, is that a Harlem charter school takes their kids on a "field study" to a farm each year to learn about the animals so that they have some background when farm animal questions come up on the state tests each year. Note that rather than just try to teach kids better strategies for faking their way through the test, the school is actually exposing their kids to new knowledge that they likely won't find in Harlem. That's what school is all about. And in the end, I'm sure it will pay off in their test scores. Too bad more people don't see things that way.

I'm going to be at an event where Arne Duncan is speaking tomorrow morning, so check back in on Friday for some original reporting from Teachable Moment.

A Few Nobel Thoughts

2009-10-16T07:11:00.003-04:00

I know it seems like a long time ago now, but it was one week ago that Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe you heard that some people were a little upset by that. It all seems so long ago now that a living, breathing Republican has voted for health care reform, but I've still got a couple of things to say about it.

Let me start off by saying that I don't think I would have given the prize to Obama this year were it up to me. That said, here are three thoughts to help keep things in perspective.

1. Obama did not ask for this.
It's not as if Barack Obama was out campaigning to win this award. In fact, it kind of hurts him domestically now that he did win. It seems like there was a lot of anger directed at the president for winning the award even though he didn't do anything other than be who he is and do what he does. Of course, that's often enough these days.

2. Having a liked a respected president used to be a good thing.
The other thing that's gotten lost in all of the outrage over this prize is that winning international recognition isn't a bad thing. It seems like there was a time when patriotic Americans would have been proud to have a president who is so obviously respected by the world community. That's not to say that the critics are unpatriotic, only to point out how far we've fallen.

3. You don't know who won the last Nobel Peace Prize.
Really, you don't. Think about it for a second. Nope, Al Gore was 2007. (To save you the trouble of Googling it, the 2008 winner was Martti Ahtisaari.) The point is, we tend to think of the Nobel Peace Prize as a kind of secular sainthood because of winners like Albert Schweitzer and Martin Luther King Jr., but for the most part we don't really care that much who gets it. If we did, you'd know who Shirin Ebadi is. So let's get over all the outrage because it's not something we actually care about. It's not like he got an Oscar or anything.

The bottom line in my thinking is that this is another over-hyped outrage of the week kind of thing. It's sad we have to deal with stuff like this because, you may have heard, there are real issues out there.

P.S. My favorite line to come out of all the Nobel whining is this: Even ASU has higher standards than the Nobel prize committee. What can I say? It's funny.

No Surprises

2009-10-14T07:13:00.003-04:00

Last night was the first debate between Mike Bloomberg and Bill Thompson as the two campaign for mayor. I watched it (because that's the kind of guy I am) and wasn't terribly surprised by what I saw. Predictably, Thompson came out swinging in his first opportunity to confront the mayor face to face. Predictably, Bloomberg didn't really rise to the bait and tried to paint himself as the pragmatic problem-solver who's above the usual politics. So no surprises there at all.

Also, unsurprising was that education came up fairly often, even though nothing new was said. Bloomberg said that things are better now with him in charge of the schools than they were when Thompson was in charge. Thompson said that he actually did some good things, but that he wasn't ever in charge because, remember, no one was in charge under the old system.

That was one of two highlights of the debate for me because I think it means that Bill Thompson is reading my blog. I wrote a few weeks ago that he should say almost exactly that. I also wrote out an ad script that basically got turned into a question during the "cross examination" portion of the debate. And it actually hit home. When Thompson asked about all of Bloomberg's party switching and whether that represented just more politics, the mayor was noticeable uncomfortable. It was perhaps the only point of the debate in which he didn't seem to have a ready answer. I'm sure I'm not the only one to have thought of that, but I put it in print so I'm claiming full credit.

The bottom line (as both candidates seemed to enjoy saying) is that we didn't get anything last night we weren't expecting. Education is still an issue, but it's still a bludgeon. No new insights. No new programs. No new ideas. We'll see what happens on October 27th when they meet again.

Keep the Cap

2009-10-09T07:24:00.003-04:00

I don't know if you've been following this story like I have, but some study just came out showing that Harvard students outperform students from other universities and that Harvard as a whole does a better job educating students. Naturally, this has given rise to calls for action. The one that's seems to be gaining the most steam is the call to open more Harvards. After all, if one Harvard does such a great job, imagine what would happen if we opened three Harvards or even 10 Harvards.

In case you haven't caught on, this is a set-up so I can talk about charter schools and the policy follow ups in light of the Hoxby report, which found that New York City charter schools consistently outperformed the city's traditional public schools. What made the Hoxby report so interesting was that its findings flew in the face of the results of a recent national study that found that most charters were as good or worse than traditional public schools, with a relatively small percentage outperforming their traditional peers. Hoxby's report seemed to buck that trend, at least in New York City. Hearing only what they want to hear and seeing only what they want to see, the charter school backers in New York declared that Hoxby's study proved conclusively that charters are always better schools and therefore we should have lots more of them. Calls began to remove the state-imposed cap on the number of charter schools permitted in New York (which currently stands at 200). I think that's it for exposition.

If all you know is the Hoxby report, it makes sense to want more charter schools. After all, apparently there's proof that they are better. This is problematized somewhat by the CREDO report which found that charter schools tend not to be better. What's missing from the discussion right now is someone pondering what it is about New York charter schools that makes them exceptional (assuming the validity of both the CREDO and Hoxby reports).

That brings us back to Harvard with the disclaimer that I'm working on logic here as opposed to solid research to back up what I'm saying. It's good logic, but it's not definitive nor should it be taken that way.

Part of what makes Harvard successful is that there's only one. Thus, that one Harvard is able to attract the best professors, the best researchers, and the best students (I'm not trying to get into an argument about creaming here, just stay with the analogy). If there were two Harvards, that pool of the very very elite would be diluted by about 50% at each individual Harvard. If you get to 10 Harvards (to say nothing of 200) you get even more dilution. What makes Harvard special is that there's one and they can make it the very best that it can be.

So now let's veer back into charter territory. It seems to me to be logical that when we cap the number of charter schools allowed in the state, we'll then end up with the 200 best charter schools that want to open. Just like Harvard will take the top professors and top students, the state will take the top schools. That makes sense. Doesn't it then also make sense that if we threw open the doors to everyone we wouldn't be getting the same quality? If Harvard let anyone who wanted to teach there actually teach there, do you think instruction would be of the same quality?

I've written before that I find it hard to believe that just having the label charter affixed to a school makes it a better school than one without that label. Maybe we should consider the possibility that the charter cap we have in place is helping New York's charter system by ensuring only the best get through and that lifting the cap could actually be detrimental. That may or may not be the case. But it sure seems logical.

What If They Don't Pick Right?

2009-10-07T07:17:00.003-04:00

Policy makers and folks of their general ilk tend to assume that people will choose to do what's best for themselves if they have the opportunity and they have the information to ascertain what's best. Never mind that people smoking cigarettes (to say nothing of using illegal drugs) puts the lie to that assumption, it's still the general operating mentality. It's the same mentality that advocates for school choice, green vendor programs, and other social innovations designed to help people do what we assume they would want to do if they had the choice.

A study released yesterday from NYU and Yale puts the lie to assumption yet again. In July 2008, NYC restaurants had to start posting the calorie counts of their menu items right next to the item on the menu. The idea was that if I walked into a McDonald's I would know exactly how many calories were in a quarter pounder and, presumably, I'd then leave and go eat a salad somewhere. The only problem is that this study indicates that the program didn't work. In fact, it looks like people are ordering more calories in their meals after the counts went up, rather than less. Don't people just do the darndest things?

This is not, itself, an arguments against giving people more information and more choices. Neither of those are bad things. However, the idea that either or both is a panacea for whatever social problem we're trying to fix is simply false. Let's remember that before we put all our eggs in that basket.

A Lighted Tunnel

2009-10-05T07:29:00.002-04:00

The head of the Chicago teacher's union wants the city to create a new school for chronically disruptive students. As she says, "Teachers can't teach and students can't learn in a constantly disruptive classroom.” Hard to argue with that. However, my initial reaction is completely divided.

On the one hand, from my time in the classroom, I can think of a few kids whose constant misbehavior dragged down the entire class. It was the instigators who would send the whole class off the rails. There were the kids who were throwing books out the window, overturning chairs during group work time, and punching other kids in class. Clearly, the classroom culture would have benefitted from their absence. Their presence made it nearly impossible for those who wanted to do the right thing to actually have that opportunity.

On the other hand, I'm very leery about a program that could essentially consign those kids to the outskirts of the education system with no hope of returning to the fold and bettering their own lives. Removal from a regular classroom may be warranted. Placement in a pre-prison system is not.

The only way that I see this kind of program working is if the kids who are removed from their regular classrooms are given a fundamentally different educational experience. We can't just put all the bad kids together in one room and give them the same experience we would if they were in their old rooms. That obviously wouldn't work. It would probably make things worse. But if we instituted a system of intensive remediation, character building, possibly therapy, and a host of other supports we might actually get somewhere. To her credit, this seems to be what the Chicago union has in mind.

This kind of program can work. But it can only work if there's a light at the end of the tunnel for these kids. Simply banishing them isn't the answer.

A Question of Why

2009-10-02T07:23:00.002-04:00

Good news, people. A report out of the Center on Education Policy has found that the achievement gap is narrowing. Of course, it's not nearly that simple, but let's take a moment at least to bask in the very positive headline.

The study found that on the whole, the gap between minority and poor children and white and more advantaged children is less than it was. Furthermore, the gap closing seemed to be taking place largely because those at the bottom are gaining more quickly, as opposed to those at the top slowing down.

And now for the bad news. First, there's still an achievement gap and it's huge in some states (as much as 20 percent). Second, this report looks at state test scores and doesn't take into account the lack of progress on achievement gap closing as its shown by NAEP scores. Also, while the gap narrowed 58 percent of the time (across all of the studies trend lines), the gap increased 37 percent of the time.

The picture gets bleaker pretty quickly, doesn't it?

The next step that these researchers never seem to take is to look at why this might be happening. I get that the study I'm asking for would be infinitely more complicated. I really do understand that. But it also seems like it would be worth it. As it stands, we're looking at data and saying, "Wow, that's great that the achievement gap is closing (except where it isn't). Let's make sure all schools are doing that. Oh wait. We don't know what's actually making the difference. Let's open more charter schools." At least, that's what I'm hearing policy makers say. Maybe you're hearing something different.

To sum up, let's celebrate those 58% who are successfully working to close the achievement gap. But let's not celebrate for too long. After all, for another 37%, the problem is getting worse and we don't really know what's making the difference either way.

If I Were Bill Thompson

2009-09-30T07:26:00.004-04:00

Now that the Democratic primaries are really, truly, and officially over, I want to take a brief foray back to my blogging roots and post on a purely political issue (though I'll mention education a little later on if that's what you care about).

Michael Bloomberg has been running with the tagline that he represents progress, not politics. If I were William Thompson, I wouldn't let him get away with running that line unchallenged. Here's the script of the ad I would run. For visuals, think of less-than-flattering pictures of the mayor in black and white or something. The voiceover would be done kind of like someone reading a picture book to first graders. Here's how it would go:

This is Michael Bloomberg and he sure loves playing politics. He used to be a Democrat. But then he decided that he wanted to be Mayor of New York City. There were a lot of Democracts who wanted to be mayor, so he became a Republican because it would be easier. Then, after he'd been mayor for a while, he decided he wanted to be president. So he stopped being a Republican and became an independent. But people didn't want him to be president so he decided that he wanted to be mayor again. He thought he was doing such a good job that he changed term limits so he could run for a third term. And he's a Republican again. Michael Bloomberg. He sure loves playing politics.

Never one for false modesty, I have to say that I think this is brilliant. The whole Bloomberg-is-totally-above-politics idea is so obviously false that it's child's play to point it out. If that's going to be the basis of his campaign, I would hit that point hard and repeatedly. It's only fair.

And now for my point about education (I told you I'd get there). Over the last few months, Thompson has criticized Bloomberg's handling of the schools under mayoral control. Regardless of the criticism or how valid it may or may not be, the Bloomberg response is inevitably, "Unh uh. And he wasn't a good president of the board of education when everything was terrible." (I'm paraphrasing here, of course.) Here's my response if I were Thompson the next time a reporter asked me about that:

"You know, it's funny. During the fight to renew mayoral control, Michael Bloomberg kept saying that under the old system no one knew who was in charge and there was no accountability. Now that I'm running for mayor, it turns out that I was in charge all along and that I should be accountable. I guess it took me running for mayor to help him figure that out."

In the interests of disclosure, I should say that I'm actually undecided in the mayor's race and that so far I don't think Thompson has actually done anything to influence me one way or another. In my mind, for now at least, this is entirely a referendum on Bloomberg. That said, the dishonesty and disingenuousness of the Bloomberg campaign offends me and it needs to be called out.

P.S. He may have lost yesterday, but this tongue-in-cheek ad for Mark Green is hysterical.

Newspaper War

2009-09-28T08:13:00.002-04:00

One thing I love about New York City is that there are three major newspapers all covering the city. In Arizona, where I grew up, there was one newspaper covering the entire state. Granted, Arizona as a state is not always as interesting as New York City, but it's nice to have some different perspectives at play.

When it starts to get really interesting is when the newspapers start to wildly diverge in the stories that they are telling. Working with the same facts and events, the papers shift very different narratives about what is going on in the world. The latest example I see of that is in their education reporting.

For months now, the New York Post has been touting the Mayor's education record. During the fight over mayoral control in Albany, the Post was running an educational hagiography for the mayor in daily installments. In typical Post fashion, it was anything but subtle, just in case someone might miss the point. Since then, the drumbeat for Mayor Mike's tenure over the school system has been pretty steady.

Recently, though, the Daily News has stepped up their game with a series of articles that are less-than-flattering about the mayor's reign. Even the mayor's education mailing came under some scrutiny. Keep in mind, there's only one New York school system and there's only one mayor who's in charge of it. But depending on which newspaper you read, you'll get a very different perspective on what's going on.

I can't say that I know why the papers are taking such different tacks. Maybe the Daily News is planning to endorse Thompson, while the Post is obviously going to be endorsing Bloomberg. Maybe the reporters just have very different takes on what's happening. Likely, it's something else entirely. But whatever it is, it shows how nice it is to have some different perspectives.

Find What Works

2009-09-25T07:21:00.003-04:00

As a long time charter school agnostic (if not outright athiest) I have to admit that my worldview was initially shaken when I read about a new study that seems to show that New York charter schools outperform traditional public schools (old news) even when you try to account for the "creaming" effect (new news). This is pretty big stuff. The study compared the educational outcomes of students who won spots in charter school libraries to students who applied for spots via the lottery, but did not win and get a seat. This is designed to eliminate the selection bias that comes from only studying those kids whose parents are involved enough to apply for a charter seat versus those whose parents may not be involved at all.

Now, as with all things, it's possible to pick the study apart with tweezers. You could say that there are some questions as to whether the study really meets the "gold standard" it claims to (thanks Gotham Schools). You could point out that a nationwide study of charter schools found that only a small percentage of charters outperform their traditional peers. You could say that similar studies on the DC voucher program showed no difference. You could even say that any study measuring student learning based on standardized tests is really measuring test-taking skills more than learning and therefore should be disregarded.

You could say all of those things and some of them may even be valid. But the research is showing here that New York charter schools are doing pretty well. So maybe we got a disproportionate number of that 17% of effective charter schools nationwide. I suppose that's possible. But ultimately, I think it may also be beside the point.

The question I always ask when I see a study like this is: "What makes these schools better?" I still find it hard to believe that their very charter-ness conveys some special educating ability that other schools lack. These schools are doing something in their classrooms that is helping their children learn. If we want to replicate it across a wide range, we need to know what it is.

Unfortunately, study author Caroline Hoxby doesn't know. (Which is fine, since that wasn't really what she was studying.) The point here is that we need to find out what the difference maker really is and then replicate it as far and wide as we possibly can. Let's stop slugging it out over charter schools and look at what works. If that means more charter schools, then fine. If that means taking some charter practices and applying them in traditional schools, let's do it. Either way, now is not the time to sit smugly or petulantly because of the results of some survey. Let's start looking at what we can find that will bring results for the kids. Those are the results that matter.

Mayoral Unspeak

2009-09-23T06:29:00.003-04:00

City Hall News starts a recent profile on Bill Thompson's mayoral campaign as follows:

"Bill Thompson cannot win the competence argument against Michael Bloomberg. He would like to, he is trying to, but the idea that Bloomberg is good at the job of being mayor is so deeply entrenched in the minds of New Yorkers that any time spent trying to convince people that he would actually be better would probably be in vain."

Almost the exact same thing could be said of the mayor's education record. It's taken as self-evident that mayoral control has been a good thing for city schools. That's why when Thompson makes charges about the books being cooked, the Bloomberg campaign's response is, essentially, that Thompson is just jealous of the record. Never mind that the record itself is being called into question. That doesn't matter because everyone knows that mayoral control has been a good thing.

More than the billions of dollars that Bloomberg possesses and more than the tens of millions of dollars he's willing to spend on the campaign, Bloomberg's biggest asset in this campaign may be that his record - on schools and other things - has become a form of unspeak unto itself. Accurate or not, it wins the argument before one even starts.

Problem or Solution?

2009-09-21T07:18:00.003-04:00

I came across an article this morning and I'm really not quite sure what I think about it. New York is entering a third year of its program to offer cash incentives to poor families who do things like get their kids to school and go to regular medical checkups. At least according to the article, the program seems to be having modest, though not overwhelming, success.

I think that your view on such a program has to depend on what your view on the problem is. Is the breakdown of social services in ghetto communities the result of lack of economic opportunity by the residents or lack of knowledge or lack of incentive or lack of values. That's of course not to say that any of those possibilities are necessarily exclusive of any of the others. Also, by paying people to do what they should probably be doing anyway, are we sending a very wrong message that's going to have longer term repercussions?

The bottom line is that I don't know the answers (and I would be skeptical of anyone who said they did). On the one hand, if it helps people - especially kids - then that's a good thing and is worth supporting. On the other hand, if it sets up a system that undermines the intrinsic value of those behaviors in the long term, is it really helping?

The sad part is, good or bad, we won't really know until it's too late. What's clear now, though, is that this is not a cure for what is fundamentally wrong in poor communities. So even as we hope that this program helps, we need to continue searching for the fundamental bedrock changes that these communities need.

No Surprises Here

2009-09-18T07:23:00.003-04:00

Surprising absolutely no one, NYC Mayor and mayoral candidate Mike Bloomberg sent out a mailing (approximately the ten thousandth I've received) hitting newly nominated mayoral candidate Bill Thompson over their compared education records. I got the flyer in my mail on Wednesday, which is pretty impressive when you consider that Thompson didn't win the primary until late Tuesday night. Maybe the mail will run better if Bloomberg is re-re-elected.

The flyer doesn't go in much for subtlety. On the top in huge red letters it says "On Education: The Choice Is Clear." Then there's a T-chart showing Mike Bloomberg's record as mayor compared to Bill Thompson's record as president of the board of education. Unsurprisingly (this is campaign lit after all), Bloomberg looks very good in the comparison. I wish I could show it to you, but I don't have a scanner. I'm sure if you check your mail boxes, you'll be seeing it soon. Even if you don't live in New York.

Not much to say here, but I do have three quick observations.

1. It's nice to see education featured so prominently in a political campaign.
2. It's a shame that the issue is being used as a bludgeon instead of a launch point for real discussion.
3. When one side has billions of dollars to spend on advertising it's not really a surprise that we aren't going to have a nuanced conversation.

Also, in mayor-related news, check out this video. Happy Friday!

Some Critical Thinking

2009-09-16T07:30:00.003-04:00

The always-thoughtful Diane Ravitch has an interesting piece in the Boston Globe where she takes the 21st Century Skills movement to task. Her argument is that while critical thinking is important, you can't think critically unless you have the knowledge upon which to base your thinking. Therefore, rather than try to explicity teach "critical thinking" the same we would, say, teach the parts of a cell, we should focus on the core knowledge that will provide a foundation for such thinking.

I'd say that she's at least 85% right. Assuming (and this seems like a possibility at least) that she doesn't object to focusing on critical thinking after the core knowledge is in place, she may even be 100% right. The fact is, without facts, we don't really have anything to think critically about. We can spin the wheels in the brain, but ultimately we won't come up with anything unless we actually know something to begin with. (The one possible exception might be Descartes' "I think therefore I am.")

That said, I think that there is a value in lessons on thinking critically and the connections and flaws that we can develop through that process.

In high school, I was a member of the debate team, which made me probably the coolest kid in the whole school. The first step to each debate topic was to stock up on facts and figures and the arguments of the past. That was the core knowledge part of the thing. But in the end, that wasn't enough. It wasn't until my senior year when I'd really absorbed the formalized way of thinking and arguing that I was able to start winning debate tournaments. Until that point - until I'd really started to learn what critical thinking meant in that context - I was well-prepared, but ultimately ineffectual.

So the balance must be found. Certainly the base of knowledge is critical, but so too is a systemitized way of thinking. Without both, neither is much good.

P.S. Could Teach for America be reading this blog? Looks like they're working more on professional development for their teachers. Sounds familiar.

Using Great Teachers

2009-09-14T07:24:00.002-04:00

The news on this has been out for a while now, but it's worth highlighting, nonetheless. A new study of North Carolina schools found that good teachers not only benefit their own classrooms, but they help improve the performance of other teachers in other classrooms. In other words, having a master teacher in a school can help all of the teachers at the school.

This was immediately spun into the debate over merit pay for teachers and both sides are using it to support their own claims. Follow the link above for all the gory details. That's a good point to consider in light of this and not surprising, since that's one of the hot button topics right now and so all discussions seem to come back to that at some point.

However, I tend to find myself thinking about the need and possibility for more professional development in schools. In all the push to get rid of the bad teachers and reward the exceptional teachers, we tend to forget about the ones in the middle who are just plain average. These are the hard workers who do good things, but are not the kind of people who are going to be in the running for teacher of the year. Frankly, this population makes up the majority of teachers and so we should probably focus some of our attention on them.

Since we know that great teachers can positively impact more average teachers, why don't we focus on mentoring programs and staff-led development on an ongoing basis. In all of our talk about reforming education, too many people are trying to work to totally reinvent the wheel rather than make what we have the best it can possibly be.