Friday, October 22, 2010

Competition: Got Rankings?

New York City is going to follow suit with its western counterpart, Los Angeles, and publish a ranking of its teachers.  To be exact, LAUSD did not release the rankings of its teachers, the LA Times actually created it.  If you read the science behind the system on the LA Times website, it pretty much says that the numbers do not mean a whole lot and there are a number of debatable assumptions and flaws.

I could not find any mention by the LA Times that the California State Test is not comparable across grade levels.  Every teacher knows that scores on the CST tend to rise and dip at certain grade levels.  These dips in scores are not due to teachers or schools or the state’s education system.  They are due to the test itself.  The CST is a post mortem for a particular subject or grade level.  You can compare any given test over time, but cohort analysis is invalid.

I am not totally against rankings though.  I can’t find a decent plumber I can trust to do a relatively lucrative repair job at my house.  I want a ranking of plumbers so I can get the best guy.  Hey, I want my dentist ranked too, and my doctor, and my hairdresser.  I mean, a good education won’t mean a thing if we aren’t healthy, if we don’t have sanitary plumbing, and if we don’t look good!

NewsFlash: A New York City court sided with the teachers union and just blocked the release of the data on the grounds it is inaccurate and misleading and could compromise confidentiality.  I can already hear the the anti-union pseudo-reformers complaining that unions are halting progress - never mind the justice department made the decision...

Go ahead, rank this!...and reclaim public education!

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Competition: Support the Losers

In this mini-series on competition, I will explore the differences between public schools and the corporate world and build my case that competition will not magically mend the ills of public education.

I was perusing the news websites the other day when I came across an article about the recent partnership of Facebook with Microsoft’s Bing to create social-network enhanced web searches.  The blogsters were predicting the downfall of Google as the social web took over the content web.  While an interesting debate, what struck me was this quote from a Google spokesman:

"We welcome competition that helps deliver useful information to users and expands user choice," said Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman, in an email to Computerworld. "Having great competitors is a huge benefit to us and everyone in the search space. It makes us all work harder, and at the end of the day our users benefit from that."
This caught my eye because competition has been a big theme in recent public education reform efforts that seek to use the power of competition to bring positive development and improvement to schools, like it supposedly has in corporate America.  

OK, this article also caught my attention because I happen to know the spokesman and  I suspect, in reality, Google engineers are just going to let this go as a passing fad (though I have no inside info on this one).  Nonetheless, the statement is a great example of how corporate America views competition, when they are not too busy suing each other over it.

If you read this blog, you know that public education reform is being pushed by the billionaire pseudo-reformers like Bill Gates (see, my tech example wasn’t so far off topic after all!) and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, who embody the corporate model.  As such, these foundations and their money are largely driven by competition.

Just this week, the Broad Foundation awarded its $1 million prize for scholarships, The Broad Prize for Urban Education, to an Atlanta, Georgia district that had closed achievement gaps and shown more improvement in its test scores than its competitors. 

The successful are rewarded, and those who do not measure up are ignored and left to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.  In the marketplace, these less competitive institutions may just fold.  In education, we are talking about schools and the populations they serve. 

We have corporations that are too big to fail, and yet these pseudo-reformers seem to want public schools to fail to weed out the weak links.  Where will the kids go?

While Billy G. and Eli B. wave their invisible hands with invisible wands of competitive fix-all, just think about all the Joe-the-Plumbers out there who are struggling to make ends meet.  The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  That is the ultimate end-game of corporate America.

Do we want that for public education?  Do we want to create a system of haves and have-nots?  Public schools are too important to fail.  Current reform efforts are creating a class of have-nots within the educational system that is resulting in kids being left behind.

Stand up for the losers, reclaim public education!

Monday, October 18, 2010

A Week in the Life of... (Part V)

In this series, I will record the interesting and not-so-interesting events of the school day and post it the following morning.  This is an effort to reflect on my day and my teaching and to provide you with some of the more mundane things that happen in the classroom and influence the process of education…

Friday
Today, the second section of Earth Science took their test.  Block schedule often means various sections of a class happen on different days.  In lab sciences, this can mean extra work in setting up and breaking down labs.  

After the test, we watched the “Deserts” episode of Planet Earth.  Normally I would have a noteguide for any movie presentation, but this was a bonus after the test.  Planet Earth is a fabulous program.  Its strength is in covering the physical and biological science of a region or biome.  The series seems to have sparked a new age of quality science films.  There is a great selection of Earth Science and Physics media out there.  Yet, I have yet to find a quality series on Chemistry that wasn’t filmed last century…

Physics was a lively crew – last block on a Friday.  I would say one thing in lecture and 2-3 people would start talking.  This was a real pain, except all the side discussions were about physics.  “I appreciate your excitement, but let me get through this!”  The topic was dynamics (forces and motion) which is fun to teach because we have many misconceptions about the physical world.  Whether it is 3rd Law force-pairs or understanding balanced forces and Newton’s 2nd Law, it is great fun watching students re-create their worldview in a physically correct fashion.

This is the last installment of “A Week in the Life of…”  It has been a fairly ordinary week in the classroom (while lacking in entertainment value, ordinary is fine with me!), yet an extraordinary week in my life outside of the classroom, as Wednesday’s events put me in a daze for the remainder of the week. 

Perhaps I will do this series again, a cross-section sampling of sorts, but in the meantime: reclaim public education!

Friday, October 15, 2010

A Week in the Life of... (Part IV)

In this series, I will record the interesting and not-so-interesting events of the school day and post it the following morning.  This is an effort to reflect on my day and my teaching and to provide you with some of the more mundane things that happen in the classroom and influence the process of education…

Thursday
Somehow, through the distractions of life, I managed to get all of Monday’s tests graded and returned and a test written for Earth Science. I will need to remediate several topics relating to atomic structure and the periodic table in Chemistry.  It is one of those essential standards – students need to understand this stuff to have success in the class as we move forward.

Chemistry had a lab today where they devised a test for the presence of Iron (II) and Iron (III) ions in solutions.  Will students ever use this skill in life?  Probably not, unless their job description includes water testing or they are successful enough in some other field to own a swimming pool.  But, students will have to use powers of reasoning and logic in whatever they do.  Chemistry and Physics sharpen our problem solving abilities.

In Earth Science, students took a test on the atmosphere.  After the test, I was speaking with a student about his classwork and mentioned the test.  He said, “We had a test today?”  I said, “Yes, remember you sat in that seat there and took the test!”  He says, “Oh, I didn’t realize that was a test…”  Believe me, there was a review sheet, we went over it before the test, we cleared off the tables, we did all those test-taking things, but somehow it slipped past this guy.  Hey, I can sympathize. I’ve woken up halfway through many a meeting and wondered what in the heck everyone was talking about!

So, if you are still with me here, let’s reclaim public education!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

A Week in the Life of... (Part III)

In this series, I will record the interesting and not-so-interesting events of the school day and post it the following morning.  This is an effort to reflect on my day and my teaching and to provide you with some of the more mundane things that happen in the classroom and influence the process of education…

Wednesday
I learned today, right before Physics, of the death of a friend and neighbor, a father and grandfather, too young to die.  At the same time the Chilean miners were being lifted to freedom from the grasp of earth’s deep gravity, my friend succumbed to that very force.  For some, the gravity of life can be overwhelming. 

I am reminded of the many challenges my students face and the fears and uncertainties that they encounter: the student who moves from foster home to foster home that has not known love, the student who loses a parent (I have seen that happen too many times), the student who is teased or bullied, the student whose identity is ostracized by society.

The strength and stoicism displayed in mere children when faced with adversity attests to the human spirit.  We are survivors (we adapt, we assimilate, we build shelter).  Yet, sometimes the gravity of life pulls too strongly.

It is in times of great tragedy that we are most human.  Unfortunately, as these events pass, we lose that human connection and we slip back into routine.  As teachers, we can too easily become embroiled in the details of our curriculum, in the results of the high-stakes tests, and lose sight of the very lives we try to touch and enrich.  Behind every set of eyes, however glistening or glossy, is an individual story. 

To reclaim the power of education we need to begin by reclaiming our humanity. The current focus in education is on learning and results, and somewhere in that equation the well-being of the student is lost.  Teachers and students deserve a climate of education where there is space for the telling of those individual stories.  The end result of education is a human life, not a statistic.

Regaining humanity is not a philosophical exercise.  It is real and concrete.  It means providing food and shelter and medical care for all our students.  It means allowing our students to discover themselves and grow in a system that is not cheapened by the lowest common denominator of test scores.

Reclaim humanity, reclaim public education!

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

A Week in the Life of... (Part II)

In this series, I will record the interesting and not-so-interesting events of the school day and post it the following morning.  This is an effort to reflect on my day and my teaching and to provide you with some of the more mundane things that happen in the classroom and influence the process of education…

Tuesday
Last night, after an evening surf session and bbq pork loin, I made a test review sheet for Earth Science and developed some practice/review of graph analysis and the scientific method to reinforce what students learned in their solar house labs.

It is amazing how poorly written many of the packaged activities are that come with the textbook.  These activities are full of mistakes or just don’t work well.  I prefer to make my own worksheets and problem sets, but that is very time consuming. 

Today I had two sections of Chemistry and one of Earth Science.  Classes on Monday are 50 minutes long, but classes today and the rest of the week are on a block schedule and are 90 minutes long. 

Chemistry classes were focused, which was good because we were starting some important material on compounds.  In the first block a girl threw-up.  Luckily there are sinks at every row, so she gracefully deposited it there.  She took a short break in the bathroom and returned, ready to learn.  What a champ!  The lesson proceeded relatively uninterrupted – I think half the class was unaware.  That is not the first time someone has puked in the sinks.  I try not to take it personally.

The second Chem block was relatively uneventful, though I did confiscate a cell phone.  Texting during lecture…I guess this student missed the part about it being an important lesson.  I feel like I can barely afford my TracFone, I have no idea how parents and/or students can afford some of these fancy smart phones.  Kids can’t afford a binder, but they can have a wireless plan?

The final block was Earth Science.  A productive and focused day implementing the graphing and scientific method review.  I think the lesson really helped to solidify things for students.  Even something that seems simple at the high school level, like describing the shape of a curve, requires practice.

A beautiful warm day beckons outside.  I wonder if those tests from Monday will be graded in a timely fashion?  Thanks for joining me through my week and helping me to reclaim public education, one day at a time.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

A Week in the Life of... (Part I)

In this series, I will record the interesting and not-so-interesting events of the school day and post it the following morning.  This is an effort to reflect on my day and my teaching and to provide you with some of the more mundane things that happen in the classroom and influence the process of education…

Monday:
Last week was homecoming.  That means Saturday night was the homecoming dance.  There is lots of talk in the hallways this morning about various exploits and parties over the weekend.  I see every class today: Chemistry, Earth Science, Chemistry, Physics, and then Earth Science.  The remainder of the week is a block schedule.

Chemistry and Physics are getting a test today – I put it off during homecoming week, but time to get back to work.  The lack of sleep is finally catching up with some students, so we will see how the scores turn out.  One senior mentioned feeling burned-out from homecoming activities and having taken the SAT this Saturday as well.  I often question the value of all the extracurricular things we do – these activities get less scrutiny for their educational value because they are deeply rooted in tradition.

As students finished up tests I went over missing assignments.  I allow late work for a penalty.  I liken it to a credit card bill.  The bank isn’t going to turn your money away because it is late, they will charge you interest.  I want the students to do the work, or I would not assign it.  I never found refusing to accept late work to make a significant impact on the amount of homework turned in on time.

Earth Science students are finishing a lab, gathering and analyzing data on the heating of a model solar house.  There is a lot going on and many groups need help.  The lab is focused on following the scientific method, setting up a proper experiment and analyzing data.  Students did not understand how to use their data and their graphs to support their conclusions. 

Funny, I see teachers do this all the time too.  We often make anecdotal statements and don’t back them with data.  The push in education today is all about backing up instructional decisions with data.  It is good up to a certain point, where it can make the teaching experience rote and remove organic possibilities.  Even scientific exploration benefits from play or just trying something because it feels right.  Anyway, tomorrow I will have to develop more practice with the scientific method and with graph analysis.

One of my laptops died today in class (I have 4 old laptops I have acquired over the years for use with computerized sensors).  Luckily, I was able to pull it back from the brink for the last period class.  Things like that make teaching interesting and require the ability to think on your feet – all of a sudden there is a group that can’t do the lab, what do you do? Feels like a Monday…

Most Earth Science students got through their labs.  Chem and Physics took their tests.  The soccer team missed the Physics test.  Why is there a soccer game on the Monday after homecoming?  Don’t get me wrong, I fully support athletics and coach a club lacrosse team, but sometimes I wonder: from what are we reclaiming public education?

Monday, October 11, 2010

Flipside

Well, if unions brought us the weekend, they also brought us Monday mornings.  Here is a little something from the Daily Show to put a hop in your step and a smile on your face. Click here to reclaim public education!

Friday, October 8, 2010

The Union Scapegoat

When I was in third grade, one of my favorite songs to sing during music was Merle Travis’s 1940’s “Sixteen Tons”. 

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go;
I owe my soul to the company store.

The suffering of these coal miners under the oppression of debt bondage would not be relieved until the formation of unions.  Throughout history, the organization of labor has improved worker health, safety, and equity.  As I sit here on a Friday at the end of a long homecoming week at school, I am also reminded of the bumper sticker that reads “Unions: the folks that brought you the weekend”.

While the weekend may still be popular, unions are under attack, and no union is under attack more at this time than teacher unions.  The majority of the shortfalls of American education are being placed squarely on teacher unions and the misconception that these unions are blocking reform and keeping incompetent teachers from being fired.

Unions are not the villains.  There is a reason that teacher unions exist.  There are innumerable examples of renegade administrators firing teachers and making unfair demands. Even teachers who flock to charter schools and away from the prevailing public education model are finding a need to unionize to combat unfair labor practices.  In fact, there are cases of charter school teachers being fired for organizing.

I have a love-hate relationship with my union.  I once taught an AP Physics section during a prep period and received additional pay.  The union put a stop to it because it threatened prep time.  I thought it should be my decision to make, but precedent is a slippery slope.  In another case, I was being threatened by an administrator with false parent complaints.  There were really no concerns and the administrator was clearly trying to exercise manipulation and control over me.  All I had to do was start the grievance process with my union and the administrator backed off.  Though I am not an involved member, I have never taken my union for granted after that incident.

The largest fallacy about teacher unions is that of tenure.  Unions protect their members, that is their function, but administrators do the hiring.  There is no system in the country where teachers are automatically tenured.  There is a probationary period of one or two years, and if administrators were doing their jobs, weak teachers could easily be identified and moved on or supported with appropriate professional development. This is a managerial issue, not a union issue.

The strength of unions is not in keeping bad teachers in, it is in keeping bad administrators from recklessly wielding their power.  I have never heard of a union doing anything other than protecting its members in their health, safety, and equity.  We might not load sixteen tons of coal and break our backs and owe our souls to the company store, but we teachers do have a unique set of demands on us, and I don’t mind having a union that has got my back.

In the end, it is obvious teacher unions aren't doing that great of a job - I can’t even afford to buy a house within the district where I teach! Enjoy your union created weekend and don’t forget to reclaim public education!

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Pay Me More (but I won’t perform better)

Would I like to be paid more for what I do?  Who wouldn’t?  Incentives and bonuses are a staple of the corporate world.  Sell a certain amount of product, receive a bonus.  It is pretty clear-cut.  In the world of education, it is not that simple.  We are not selling or producing products in the traditional sense, and measuring results is more challenging. 

The current trend is to award merit-pay based on results of standardized tests.  There are numerous reasons why this might not be an equitable or valid system and many predictions as to how it could negatively affect collaboration and other positive aspects of a school community. 

But, the best reason that I could find against a system of merit pay is that, well, it does not work.

In a study performed by the National Center on Performance Initiatives at Vanderbilt University, researchers found just that: merit pay does not improve teacher performance as measured by student learning.  The report states:

The experiment was intended to test the notion that rewarding teachers for improved scores would cause scores to rise. It was up to participating teachers to decide what, if anything, they needed to do to raise student performance: participate in more professional development, seek coaching, collaborate with other teachers, or simply reflect on their practices. Thus, POINT was focused on the notion that a significant problem in American education is the absence of appropriate incentives, and that correcting the incentive structure would, in and of itself, constitute an effective intervention that improved student outcomes.  By and large, results did not confirm this hypothesis.

This study simplified the question to some extent, but it is good evidence that this top-down style of reform is not effective.  As far as pay goes, bonuses emphasize results too much.  If pay is to have a greater impact, it needs to be in a front-loaded system.

Pay teachers across the profession a higher salary.  In return, teachers will need to achieve a higher level of training to enter the profession.  Higher salaries will also attract more potential teachers. Furthermore, support teachers throughout their careers, not with monetary bonuses, but with fully funded professional development.  These development opportunities will not only improve student learning, but will support beginning teachers in their critical early years.

Frontload pay increases and up the ante on what it means to be an education professional – that is systematic change that will increase student learning.  As for me, it may be too late to benefit from such training, but I won’t stop trying to improve and I won’t stop trying to reclaim public education!


Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Why We Need More Kids Riding Bikes into Walls

The trailer for “Waiting for Superman” (the whole movie which I have resisted seeing in an effort to vote with my dollars) has a great clip of someone riding a bike into the side of a building in an attempt to land on the roof of said building.  Meanwhile the announcer has mentioned that school kids in the United States trail in every category of performance except one: confidence.

The clip of the guy riding the bike into the side of the building makes confidence seem like a bad thing.   I wholeheartedly disagree.  We need more kids riding their bikes into the sides of buildings.  Let me explain.

It is critical for the success and survival of our nation that we continue to innovate.  Bill Gates, Mark “there’s-a-sucker-born-every-minute” Zuckerberg, the Walton family and all the other billionaire pseudo-reformers would agree.  Their fortunes were all based on innovation and having the confidence to see these innovations to fruition.  

No doubt there was some self-deception going on as well.  Studies show that motivation and confidence are rooted in our ability to self-deceive, to make ourselves think that we are the best, that we will succeed.

High-stakes testing and the competitive nature of current pseudo-reforms have killed the creative and project-based style of education that makes confident innovators of our students.  We just have a lot of confident test takers (and stunt bicyclists).  To increase science and math performance (an objective of the Obama administration), do not make a more rigorous test, but allow for students to experience a more natural flow of investigation and learning.  This will only happen if the reigns are loosened on teachers who are currently saddled with standards covering a wide range of content and high-stakes tests that do not foster innovative and creative curriculum. 

So, while a good dose of self-deception may have helped make Bill Gates one of the richest people in the world, this same self-deception is hurting American education as he and others promote pseudo-reforms that do not serve the system of public education as a whole.  Wake-up and reclaim public education!  Believe me, you have the confidence to do it.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Fakes, Finance, and Finland

Arianna Huffington has gotten in on the action today by launching a new site for all things education: HuffPost Education.  The site seems to be making a genuine call for input from educators, students, teachers, and the interested public.  It appears to be taking an open and receptive stance to all sides of the debate and even seeks to celebrate the successes of teachers across the nation (thank you).  Yet, initial funding for the site is coming from Paramount Pictures, who released "Waiting for Superman", and the line up of contributors reads like the movie's credits, including Bill and Melinda Gates.

One of the blogs found on the HuffPost site did catch my interest. The piece is called The Fake Revolution, by Sam Chaltain. The title, and some of the points he makes, struck a chord with me.  Just this morning, driving to work, I heard a report on NPR that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is donating millions (35 to be exact) to community colleges to increase graduation rates and job placement.  President Obama and Vice President Biden sold the initiative as if it was some sort of meaningful reform.  The Fake Revolution.

Chaltain also mentions an interview he heard with Finland's minister of education.  Finland is light-years ahead of us.  Chaltain emphasizes that Finland does not have high stake tests, they value their teachers and schools (in other words they are not dependent on their population of billionaires to fund education), and they empower their teachers to determine what students require to learn instead of the top-down system we have in America.

A recent article by Linda Darling-Hammond in the NEA (National Education Association) publication, NEA Today, also highlighted Finland's education system.  The article explains how when Finland started to revamp its broken education system in the 1970's, it started by enacting social reforms including health care for children in parallel with school reforms.  So, to my Tea Party/Republican friends: we too can have a world-class education system, if you don't mind a little socialism. 

And really, socialism is key because it distributes resources equitably across the system.  Bill Gates and his Billionaire buddies are creating a have and have-not system.  It is not sustainable.  Facebook's Mark "there's-a-sucker-born-every-minute" Zuckerberg's $100,000,000 (that's 100 million dollars) donation to Newark New Jersey schools is not education reform.  It is the Fake Revolution.  That 100 million got tied up in legal issues, by the way. 

Enough of the social-networking, we need some socialist networking.  Let's make our schools more equitable.  Any reform of public education needs to start with this premise: education for all, equally. Reclaim public education!

Monday, October 4, 2010

Superman (and Superwoman) have arrived!

If Davis Guggenheim’s only goal in the making of the movie “Waiting for Superman” was to stir up a national dialog, then I guess it was a success before it even hit the theaters.  From the outset, the movie reeked of what I call the billionaire pseudo-reformers, a group of influential leaders with no formal education expertise who have hijacked education reform in America. In general, these people seek to make a top-down system, implement aspects of a business model such as merit-pay, create inequitable charter schools, and in general privatize the institution of education.

A quick tour of the “Waiting for Superman” website reveals a disturbing connection to corporate America and the billionaire pseudo-reformersThere is a section of the site where it is possible to pledge to see the movie, admittedly a great promotional feature.  But, and it’s a big but, based on the number who pledge, corporations and foundations will donate money.  These include corporations who stand to profit from schools whichever direction reform goes: Office Max and the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  It also includes the venture fund NewSchools.  I had never heard of NewSchools, so I checked out their list of donors.  Among others, NewSchools boast as investors The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation. 

These are the very foundations that I call the billionaire pseudo-reformers: those advocates of a top-down, business model, exclusionary system of reforms! These billionaires are shelling out millions of dollars in social experiments, and when they fail, they move on to the next experiment leaving the burden of repair to the lackluster resources of public education.  Why do these organizations have such a high stake in education reform?  How do they stand to benefit, and at what cost to public education?

At another page on the movie’s website, there is an opportunity to join the debate (I could not resist, of course).   The question was, “should student test scores be used to evaluate teachers?”  High stake tests and merit-pay are a cornerstone of the pseudo-reformer movement.  The majority of respondents (59% at press time) said no, as did I.  Here is my response
…Bill Gates and his like-minded billionaire buddies need to get out of the business of education reform. They are hurting more than they are helping. Funny that Microsoft has made a business model out of squelching competition and yet Gates promotes unhealthy competition within the school system. The question should not be whether schools need to adopt a corporate model, such as merit pay, but why in the world anyone thinks the corporate model is successful in the first place! I mean, just look at the state of the economy and where that model has led us...
And, I added a pledge NOT to see the movie.
Superman has already arrived and is working his cape off in classrooms around the country.  Reclaim public education!