GHSGT Math + Good Kids Failing = Rant

This is a rant. I wrote it three weeks ago now, and have now “cooled off” enough to still think it’s worth posting. 

One of my summer tutoring kids just left, and I was talking to Mick and he suggested I write all this down.  He’s right, and I’m furious.  This is a rant about the State of Georgia and the state of our public education, and if you don’t feel like reading a rant or if you think you’ll get fired up as well and aren’t up for that, take this warning and close this link.  I promise I won’t get angry with you.  But I don’t want you reading along if you don’t want to deal with a rant.  Consider yourself warned.

Still with me?  You are so good to me!

Here is the story.  This kid should have graduated two months ago.   He hasn’t passed the Georgia High School Graduation Test yet, though, despite a handful of opportunities, and that just plain stinks.  I am by no means a bleeding-heart or an excuse maker, I don’t feel bad for kids just because they can’t pass a test, and I almost certainly do not believe in “test anxiety.”  That being said, this kid’s been robbed in more ways than one, and I am furious that he’s a victim of our lousy system.   He’s one of the good kids, and he’s a victim.  And I’m pissed.

First of all, the test itself is patently unfair.  This is not new in the history of Georgia tests.  For years, the GHSGT Science component was known to be ridiculous and the very model of a bad test:  after three years of high school science, students were expected at the end of their junior years to recall facts from a class they took two years ago.   And the GHSGT isn’t the only Georgia test rife with issues and questions of validity, either, but we’ll save that for another rant, another day.

It used to be that the math component asked questions such as “which of these is used to measure temperature?” and showed images of a clock, a thermometer, and so forth.  A lot has changed since then, of course, and the state has done a 180-degree swing to prove just how much it has “increased standards.”

Unfortunately, they went about it all wrong.  Now, the math test is a lot more like the science test used to be, which is to say, asking three years of content material in one exam, and much of that material either at the basic “recall” level (do you remember this specific fact, kinds of questions) or at way too high of a level for a specific topic.  What do I mean when I say that?  Great question.  What I mean is that  although the question itself may be a higher-level question, because the test covers so much material, even these questions are reduced to “do you remember this specific concept?” and are not, in the end, higher-order-thinking questions as much as memorization questions.   Thus, the GHSGT is terribly unfair, unrealistic, and I’ll say it: damaging.   I know you’re thinking, “okay, but what makes it so bad?”  The short answer is that it covers too much material too specifically, which I just explained.  But it’s more than that. 

Let’s start with a simple question: what is the – or any -- high school graduation test designed to measure?  It seems to me that it should measure basic competency to be a functional adult.  It should show that a student went to high school, took math classes, and has a functionally literate understanding of math.  Pardon my French here, but who really gives a rat’s you-know-what if Junior can identify the properties of the circumcenter of a right triangle?  What we should be measuring with this graduation test should be basic benchmarks.  Can you identify the graph of a quadratic? What happens if the leading coefficient is negative? Can you use and apply the Pythagorean Theorem?  Can you calculate area and understand the difference between, say, lateral and surface areas of a prism?  Can you perform simple operations and solve moderately complex equations?  Can you add and subtract fractions?  Can you find an average?  Perhaps even a weighted average?  Can you identify and apply mean, median, mode and understand why mean is not resistant to outliers?  Can you read a graph or a pie chart?  Can you write, graph, and identify a linear equation?   Can you manipulate a recipe or figure out how much paint you need for a room, or can you convert inches to miles, centimeters to feet?

THESE are the things that make for a functionally literate adult.

We don’t need to know if you remember how to use the sigma-notation formula for standard deviation, or how to complete the square for a quadratic function.  If you ever need them again (and you may well – I don’t dismiss these skills out of hand; I am merely agreeing with most high schoolers when they say they will never use this stuff again), you will surely be able to look it up.   But you should know, for example, that there are 52 weeks in a year*, 3 feet in a yard*, and how to make change if I buy a shirt for $19.99, tax is 6%, and I hand you two twenties*…. And I don’t say that because I expect you to be working retail.  I say that because I expect you to understand American currency and simple arithmetic.

*all things my students did not know how to do. That should tell you their level, and affirm the idea that they would be better served in a slower, lower-level math class that meets their needs and prepares them to function in society.  I’m not saying they need a life-skills class, but I wouldn’t argue against it if you offered them one!  These are good, articulate, kids.  They are not “slow,” and they will be outstanding members of society.  But instead, we’re saying they don’t get to graduate high school, and that in turn limits their options severely.  They’re not trying to go to Harvard.  They’re trying to go to community college, or take the ASVAB and join the Navy.  The Navy will realize soon enough that they’re not fighter-jet pilots… why can’t the State of Georgia?

But that’s not what happens in Georgia.  Instead, students are asked to both remember and correctly apply more challenging concepts as much as three years after they first encountered them.  And for some students, that’s not a problem, but for the kids who don’t really belong in those classes to begin with, that’s grossly unfair and entirely unreasonable.  It doesn’t measure what they can do, it measures what they have specifically remembered – because it was not, sadly, actually ever learned.   It fits right in line with the Georgia – and national, to some extent – misguided mantra to “raise standards,” without any regard to whether there is any actual learning.  We’re so concerned with telling everyone how much material we cover, that we never actually tell them how many kids never “got it.”  And we doctor our test scores and cutoff marks to make it almost impossible for the layperson to realize how doctored and sad and off-the-mark the tests and measures really are.

I’ve said this many times, and I don’t want to stray too far down a tangent here, but wouldn’t it be better for all of us if, instead of saying “look how many topics we covered,” we could say, “look how much we learned”?  We race to touch upon so much more than reasonably fits in a school year, we shove material down kids’ throats when the kids are not ready for it academically or developmentally (in some cases, both), and then we have to dumb it all down so the kids can at least have some measure of success and the failure rates are not astronomical.  Then, we test these same kids at higher levels and wonder why no one is successful.  It makes no sense!

The GHSGT should not be a “final exam” for subject-area content.  It should be a gateway exam to say that you meet minimum competencies as a literate adult. The measure of how well you understand specific difficult concepts from Algebra 2 or Geometry should come from those course grades and those EOCTs (what with being in a testing frenzy and all, though I do happen to agree with EOCTs, if not exactly – or even remotely -- how they are handled in Georgia).

The Georgia High School Graduation Test as it is now sets up these good, but ill-placed, kids for failure.  Our system of “bigger, better, faster,” ignores the needs of the kids that are not special-needs, but DO need a slower pace.  We have effectively said they won’t be good members of society, and to prove it, we will make it so that forever, they will have to say that despite four years of excellent attendance, decent grades, and all sorts of participation in extra-curriculars, they have to say for the rest of their lives, “I didn’t graduate high school.” 

Why do we do this?

We know at whose expense it is, so I ask again, WHY DO WE DO THIS?

“Making Middle Grades Work” Doesn’t Work

Brace yourself.  This is a long one.

I wanted, actually, to say in my title that Making Middle Grades Work is “stupid,” but I thought that went a bit too far.  And I’m sure you can Google it right now and find countless reports of how great MMGW is, but I’m here to tell you that they are wrong.   Are there elements of MMGW that are great?  Sure.  But as a whole, it’s a problematic model and I’m writing this to talk about why.

In my last post, I mentioned my frustrations with the tendency for blanket policies within the education world.  While this is true for nearly everything (“all-call” emails reminding an entire faculty about appropriate seasonal dress, hoping to reach one particular offender, come to mind as one egregious example – and yes, this has happened more than once at more than one school where I taught, believe it or not), it is particularly true when someone in a position of authority happens upon a technique a teacher has used successfully.

Call out the troops!  Mrs. Dayplanner teaches quadratics this way!  We must all now use her method! Mr. Havenport is doing this really great tool for discipline!  We must now all use his technique!

It’s awful, and it defeats the purpose.  And there is no mention of the fact that neither of those methods might have worked with any of Mrs. Dayplanner's previous classes, and Mr. Havenport uses that technique with only half of his classes, and it's usually not his first choice. 

If there is anything true in education (well, there’s a lot true in education, but this in particular), it’s that we are constantly reminded to teach the individual students. We all have individual people in our rooms, who all come from different home experiences, with different stories and different environments making them into exactly who they are as they sit in our classrooms.  Differentiate, differentiate, differentiate, is the battle cry.  And then we’re given blanket mandates that we must teach these lessons in these ways, marching in lock-step, disregarding the specific and particular needs of the individual people in our rooms.

Making Middle Grades Work is a giant example of this.

If you’re not familiar with MMGW, its essential tenet is that you can not, and will not, allow students to fail.  They can not, and will not, be allowed to make choices to fail.  They can’t “not turn in” assignments; they can’t turn in poorly-done assignments.  Or rather, they can, and the teacher will give repeated opportunities to fix whatever is wrong and to complete whatever is missing.  Envision a teacher telling a student who’s choosing to give up, “I won’t let you make this choice,” and pushing them to succeed.  This is a great teacher, right?  Now, turn the tables just a bit.  The teacher no longer has to pull that student aside to say that or offer that assistance; it’s mandated.  There is no choice to be made. 

Trouble is, students have a right to make a choice.  More importantly, we have a duty as teachers to let them exercise that right.

You read that right.  We have a duty as teachers to let our students choose to fail.

Now I know there are people who are thinking, with so many kids already in so much trouble, can she really be sitting here telling me it’s a teacher’s duty to let these kids choose to be unsuccessful?

Yes.  I can, and I am.

Because here’s the problem:  Any good teacher already does these things for his or her students.  Any good teacher already notices who is giving up and who needs another shot, and who needs an exception made to allow them to re-do poor assignments or turn in missing ones.  Any good teacher already uses his or her discretion and professional judgment based on infinitely many factors to do all of these things, and more, for his or her students.  I can’t tell you how many times I did it, or how many times I saw it done.  And it’s not just for the students on the brink of failure:  it’s also for students who need a nudge from a B+ to an A-, or a C to a C+, or anything else.   The key difference is that students used to have to engage with that teacher or otherwise earn the opportunity. 

Now, don’t get me wrong.  There are certainly bad teachers in the world.  But let’s talk about the majority of teachers, who are good, who entered teaching for all the right reasons, and who, day in and day out, bust their tails to do the best they can.  And yes, that’s most teachers. 

Well, those good teachers already do what MMGW mandates.  They do it on their own scales, in ways that fit their classrooms, their schools, their students, their courses, their rubrics, and so forth.  Moreover, there are mechanisms in place to work around the teachers who are not already doing this.  For students slipping by, there are guidance counselors and administrators who theoretically pull grade reports; there are interventionists, and if it’s the student who wants an opportunity but is up against an unreasonable teacher, there are certainly appeals to the administration and higher.   So in that sense, MMGW is not only unnecessary, but it’s also redundant.  A good teacher already does it; a bad teacher can be overridden.

But we have MMGW, and so what happens?  Students are not dumb; they understand how to game this system within a few seconds of hearing it.  “I can turn it in however late I want?  And do it over ‘til I pass?”  “You can’t fail me?” 

And so, what used to be a teacher working individually with students to help them succeed is now a blanket policy robbed of its effectiveness.  (“You will help your students succeed” is not what I mean.  Of course that should be policy.)  The teacher isn’t working with any student, or making any special accommodation to help the student along to success.   There is no discretion to make different accommodations for different students based on their unique circumstances.  (And as an aside, I am adamantly opposed to the “if I do it for you, I have to do it for everyone” nonsense.  No, you don’t.  You have to do it for everyone with this exact set of circumstances in this exact situation.  What is wrong with exercising discretion these days, and making distinctions?  Again, a phenomenon of blanket-policy-thinking failing us.)  The student feels no small victories along the way, no reward for an unexpected opportunity to re-do the assignment.  There is no personal sense of satisfaction or accomplishment in bringing up a grade – because MMGW removes the ability for it to feel in any way special.   Now it’s mundane.  Didn’t get a C?  Do over.  And do over.  And do over again. 

Think of being this struggling student.  Wouldn’t it mean more to you if your teacher noticed you, sought you ought, and made a gesture to help you?  Isn’t it necessarily less meaningful when the teacher does all of those same things as a matter of course and has no choice but to do it?

That sounds terrible.  I sound as though I advocate telling teachers they don’t have to care.  That’s not the case at all.  What I am trying to say is that by making all of these accommodations entitlements, they lose their effectiveness because students don’t feel any ownership of them, or any sense of having earned them. 

There is a lesson to be learned in failing, just as there is a lesson to be learned in losing a game.  It’s a matter of learning how it feels and deciding if you want to be in that position again, and then figuring out what to do to avoid it.  These are important life lessons and important life skills, and MMGW takes away the opportunity for students to authentically learn them.  There are consequences for one’s actions (or inactions), and sometimes the consequences include failing an assignment or a class, or losing a game.  And where better to suffer these consequences than a middle school, sheltered from the real world and long before high school and all that “matters” academically for post-high-school plans?

So yes, it is our duty as teachers to let students learn these lessons, in order to grow as people and to understand what it means to take responsibility for oneself. By disallowing an opportunity to fail, we fail our students – and society -- in a greater, more damaging way:  we fail to teach the next generation that there are consequences to one’s actions, and how to be responsible for one’s choices.

Years ago, when I first started teaching, I had a colleague who wanted to make every assignment he gave “extra credit.”  He was frustrated by the phenomenon wherein students will do more of, and a better job at, what they perceive to be a reward compared to what they perceive to be the expectation.  I can’t say it enough:  MMGW takes this away; there are no opportunities for teachers to say, “I know you can do better.  I’m giving you an opportunity to do better.  Let’s fix this.”  There is no extra credit.  And thus, there is no reward.  Worse, there is no opportunity for teachers to take a moment to know a student and interact on a personal level: “ I want you to succeed, and we are going to get you through this class because you are going to redo this assignment.”  Nope. It’s mandated.  Sure, a teacher can still nurture and nudge, but the student had the same ability to turn in the assignment repeatedly without that.  It’s not special, and that personal touch, and the significance of it, is forever lost.  Go a step further, and there’s not even motivation to do the work to begin with.  The good kids will do it because “it’s what you do,” but there is a very quick slippery slope until even the best kids will take advantage of the “no deadline, no bad grades” policy. 

MMGW is, quite simply, a mess.

If you give a kid $5 every time they come to your window, and all they have to do is come to the window to get it, eventually they’ll stop coming.  It’s not special.  It’s too easy.  It is, in effect, rendered meaningless to get that $5.  And yet if one day you’re not at the window to give out the $5, you’ve robbed the kid of what has become an entitlement. 

MMGW robs our kids of the opportunities to feel special.  To feel as though someone has taken special note of them to give them an opportunity to succeed.  It robs our teachers of autonomy.  It takes the very students we’re most worried about, who perhaps don’t have support at home or a sense of self-worth, students who already think no one cares or thinks they’re special, and takes away one last opportunity for teachers to help provide it.  Don’t do well?  A good teacher would likely let you try again.  And again.  And again.  But more than likely, these extra chances would be under pre-estsablished conditions, and with the teacher’s guidance, and the knowledge that you were working as a team.  MMGW makes it a mandate, and conveys the message that there’s nothing special about you or anyone else.

It’s not how the world works.  Okay, who cares how the world works, right?  We’re here to teach our kids, but also to coddle when they need coddling. 

Good.  Well, MMGW took away the opportunity to coddle.

It teaches our kids that there’s no need to have a work ethic, because you can do it over and over again whenever you finally feel like doing it to begin with.

I can’t stand MMGW, because it takes what good teachers already do, strips the acts of feeling personal or special, strips the teacher of the authority to fix consequences, and steals from our students the opportunity to learn about responsibility and life.

Are there modified versions of MMGW?  Sure there are.  Are there books out there that tout it as the next greatest thing?  Well of course there are, silly.  It “worked” somewhere, so it must now be done everywhere! 

I don’t believe in it.  I believe in giving autonomy to our teachers.

Because once again, what works for one won’t always work for the many, and by forcing it on the many, we are forcing some classrooms to go from effective to ineffective – not because they were struggling before, but because someone decided we must all, once again, march in lockstep.

Here’s an idea for a blanket policy:  get rid of MMGW.  That just might work.

Common Core ... and more

I stumbled upon an education quote today (on Pinterest, of all places).  It was about the new Common Core curriculum, and embracing all the change and how educators have fire in their hearts and oh, if only we’d see the potential, it’s truly an amazing time to be an educator!

Here is the quote in its entirety, typos and all:

As we move to the Common Core standards, we will continue to see changes in what and how we monitor and asses student learning. The use of technology in the classroom as an means of delivering content and also as a means for formative and summative assessment will continue to develop over time., It is indeed a magical time to be an educator, if only we embrace the possibilities before us.*

And I about threw up in my mouth, to be a little crass.

Thing was, it wasn’t because I necessarily disagreed with the gist of her saying:  I happen to think that on many levels, the Common Core is fine (not all levels, but we’ll talk about that later), but I don’t drink the “rah rah all is well” Kool Aid.  And I don’t mean to attack the author personally, because I really do believe her heart is in the right place and she fights for what she believes in.  (And I believe that even more now that I've been to her blog and read more of what she has to say.)

But it’s not a great time to be a teacher.  And let’s get something straight, we’re "teachers;" we don’t need some fifty-cent ego-boosting word of “educators,” and quite frankly, I find it off-putting and pretentious. 

Pick up any newspaper or major new magazine, and you’ll see just how bad it is, actually, to be a teacher.  There are relentless pressures from all sorts of sources about test scores.  There are helicopter parents who rule the schools through bullying and intimidation, and spineless administrators who refuse to stand up to them.  There is a complete lack of discipline.  There are frozen – and cut, if you count furlough days – salaries, and paying for your classroom supplies from your own pocket.  There are increased class sizes and ridiculous pushing-down of content to grade levels where kids are not physiologically developed to do it, but we need to say we “teach Algebra” in grade six or what-have-you.  There are countless “Experts” passing legislation and top-down mandates that make no sense and cause unnecessary and burdensome paperwork for teachers and in many cases, create so much “procedure” that teachers can’t even timely help the kids who need it most.  There is a whole culture of blaming the teachers for everything and saying we need better teachers … but demonizing our current teachers at the same time. 

So, really?  It’s a great time to be a teacher?  I can’t even begin to count how many former teachers I know who say over an over again how glad they are they got out, or got out when they did.  It is most definitely not a good time to be a teacher. 

Now, I am of two minds on the Common Core.  On the one hand, I think it is good for us to have some sort of common curriculum so that a kid who moves from Alabama to Alaska can say what class he or she was in, and that translates.  But that’s only in theory.  We’re (I’m going to use “we’re,” even though I am not teaching anymore) all using different books and have different students in our classrooms; we all necessarily move at different paces and make different accommodations.  That’s kind-of the point, right?  Meeting your audience?  And the Common Core creates a slippery slope to a national curriculum that takes a state power and brings it over to the federal government.  I don’t like that, and I don’t trust it, and I do not believe we need educrats who’ve studied theory or public policy telling us what to do and how and when to do it. 

(The same, by the way, holds true for content-area experts.  I understand that you’re a math major, or an English major, or a chemist; that means you are, and have typically been, good at it. You don’t know what it’s like in a classroom with 30 kids of different abilities, or where they will make their mistakes, or how to teach factoring a seventeenth way because the first sixteen didn't click for two kids. You have a false sense of what school is like, because you only ever went to school and sat in class – for the most part, forgive me my generalizations – with the good kids.  You don’t know why or where this stuff is hard, and – dare I say much like many first-year teachers, you have a very naïve perspective on what can be accomplished and how “easy” it will be to accomplish it.  That's okay.  We still love you. But we don't need you making education policy or having final say on curricula.)

And on the other hand, I don’t think too many people would argue that as a nation, and from state to state, we already had a somewhat de facto national curriculum.  So in that sense, I think the Common Core is a bit redundant, if you will.  It purports to eliminate the nuanced differences between what constitutes Algebra 1 in Miami, Florida and Miami, Ohio, but as I said earlier, it just doesn’t account for the countless other factors that led to the differences to begin with.

Which brings me to my next point:  the tendency of the government – all the way down to local school systems – to rule by blanket policy, taking what might have been good and rendering it worse:  either broken completely, or not as efficient or effective, or almost to feel like punishment. 

But that’s my next post.  Stay tuned. I’ve got a lot to say.

--Jen

P.S.  By the way, the full post from which I found the quote actually talked about student assessment and the need to change what we’re currently doing.  I agree completely, and I’ll write more about that, too.

*Janie Andrich, from pinterest, which linked to http://janieandrich.com/2012/05/24/what-parents-want-from-student-assessment/

Oh, Massachusetts

Bless your heart, always trying to fix all that ails us, you liberal bastion.

You just went ahead and legislated that effective for the 2012-2013 school year, there shall be no more "unhealthful foods" in school cafeterias, vending machines, and so forth.  Admirable, to be sure, but no more white bread for sandwiches?  No more flavored milk (and I am sure, though I didn't yet read it, it's not unreasonable to suspect there will also be no more whole milk).  I understand the obesity concerns, and agree that we don't need to be serving fried slop or sodas.  I disagree that we need to eliminate white bread, flavored milks, etc.  Which is better:  to have a child drink whole milk, or no milk?

Here's a thought:  instead of legislating what we can eat, why not just legislate that schools must bring back recess and physical education?

Just sayin'.

I Stole...

... this image from Facebook posts of friends.

I think the bottom ought to read, "And those who've never taught, pass laws about teaching."

Even so, you get the point.

Glenn Beck ...

... is hosting a forum about education right now on his show.  Unfortunately, the two children whose education I most value are making it difficult for me to watch right now, but we're "dvr'ing" it.  Still, some quick points:

1.  A lot of people ask me what I want to do, and why.  Here's a longer version of my elevator speech answer to this.

I went to law school because I want to get involved with education policy.  I taught in public schools, and regardless of what you think of public schools, the fact is that teachers do not make the rules, do not control the purse strings, and almost without question they do not have a voice as to curriculum, or policy.  (I am not talking about unions or the NEA claiming to represent teachers.  Those "voices" are a different issue altogether.) 

No Child Left Behind is a perfect example of good intentions gone terribly wrong.  People wanted accountability in the schools, and the best way to measure something quantitatively is to test it.  Thus we entered the world of large-scale high-stakes testing.  Any teacher could have told you in two seconds how the system would be gamed, the standards lowered, the passing scores manipulated, and ultimately the curriculum modified to reflect this dumbing down -- all to show that we "mastered" a test and we're all on the same playing field.  Any teacher could have predicted that schools would follow a (sorry have to say it here) race to the bottom until classes became little more than a series of practice tests for the big test, with testing -- not teaching and learning -- the focus and the only concern of administrators. 

The problem is that no one asks the teachers for their input.  The people who make the rules and push down legislation and mandates have never been in a classroom as a teacher, and by and large they've only ever been in classroom as, and with other, good students.  On the other hand, teachers neither get meaningful input nor care to leave the classroom, so they never have an opportunity to make the rules or policies -- or even, in a meaningful way, to influence them.  (Seriously, had anyone in any role of influence asked teachers to predict the end result of NCLB, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now!  And when I was "just" a teacher, sure, we were asked for our opinions, but they were either not presented to the powers-that-be, or they were repainted with rosier glasses.  Our concerns were never heard, our input never valued other than for show.)  The result is that we end up with a group of professionals being told how to do their jobs by people who have no earthly idea how to do those jobs.  The logic seems to be, "I was a student; I know how to be a teacher."  Huh?  I was a patient, so I know how to be a surgeon? The fallacy is so obvious, and yet it is not just ignored; it's as if no one has ever even considered it.  As far as I can tell, this is the only profession where everyone thinks they know how to do it better than the professionals. 

I went to law school to get involved in education policy because I want to be the bridge between teachers and their concerns, and legislators and other policy-makers.  I want to be a voice of reason for teachers' interests and concerns without being bullied, pushed and pulled by union and other political interests that really have nothing to do with teaching and learning.  I went to law school because I have something to say, by golly, and I need the "credit and cache" a law degree gives me to be able to say it to people who are in power to effect a change.  Maybe one day I will even hold one of those positions!

2.  A teacher on the show was just speaking (among other things) about how she is mandated to have a certain amount of class time each day dedicated to small-group work and large-group work.  She expressed  frustration with the idea of small group work as it is presently mandated, because it small group work is not always appropriate or the best fit for the students' needs.  Glenn Beck seemed to balk at this at first, offering, "But isn't that where we are all going?" 
Here is the problem:  Yes, in work situations it is important that we know how to work in groups.  But there is no value in working in groups if you first don't know how to think.  Knowing how to work in a group is an important life skill; knowing how to think so you have something to bring to that group and value to add is infinitely more important.

That's it for now.  I'm eager to watch this forum from the start, and hopefully I'll be able to do that this weekend.

A Clarification on Tenure

Back in October, I posted a little bit about tenure.  I was (and remain) pretty adamant that "tenure" does not grant with it a status of "unable to be fired."  That being said, I do want to let you all know that I absolutely realize that it does have a de facto sense of that.  I tried make that clear in the original post and realize that Iwas not as clear as I could have been. 

So, here's the summary:

"Tenure" means that you have a right to due process and an appeal if you're fired.  It does not entitle you to your job in perpetuity; merely to a right to know why you're being fired, and to be heard if you're forced out.  And of course, you can't be fired arbitrarily.  With tenure, you can only be fired for cause.

That being said, historically administrators do such a poor job of documenting cause, that by the time it is clear that a teacher really really really needs to go, administrators are way, way, waaaaay behind in having a justification for firing that tenured teacher. Generally speaking, unless the offense is egregious, the paper trail to show cause for the firing can't be created overnight.  (You can't show a history of bad behavior if your history only started recently and therefore can be explained away...)  So, if you have a lousy teacher who's getting worse, but no single "big thing" to point to, you can't fire this teacher unless you've documented the issues, however small, all along.  Most of the time this doesn't happen.  (Do I have data?  No, but I have anecdotal evidence and heck, I watch the news and read education blogs!)

Moreover, once you've got this teacher you want to fire, very often the union steps in to represent the teacher.  Now, whether you like it or not, those union reps and attorneys are doing their jobs to represent their client teacher.  (Think, if you will, of the defense attorneys who represent the worst of the worst.  Those criminals still have rights, and the attorneys don't defend the criminals, per se, but rather protect the rights of those criminals.)  Same is true for the attorneys and union reps who step in to "save" the teacher's job.

I was speaking with an education law attorney recently who said she doesn't believe in tenure precisely because of this part of the process.  Teachers who need to leave teaching (by any standards but their own) will fight, and put the administrators through such efforts and misery that the administrators almost universally say "never again." Quite frankly, it takes such time and effort (and therefore, money), and the process is made so miserable, that it is easier for school districts to let bad teachers languish until retirement, than to be repeatedly dragged through the mud.

I am not convinced I don't believe in tenure, though, because I have seen arbitrary decisions by petty administrators, and tenure generally works to balance that.  It allows teachers to stand up for themselves without fear of retribution.  (Before you go saying that there are other protections in place, I will say that there are infinite ways for an administrator to make a teacher miserable, any of which standing alone is perfectly "justifiable given the circumstances and needs of the school." To document and show a pattern of retaliation is difficult, if not impossible, and yet we all know it happens.) 

What we do need is for administrators to start the evaluation process and paper trail immediately -- and we need an appeals process that isn't so miserable that it makes administrators want to forget it and keep terrible teachers around.  This is where more robust teacher evaluations are very important, and I think we're starting to see a swing towards such evaluations nationally. Of course, there are still many issues to work out with teacher evaluations in general, but that's another post.  My point is that richer, more detailed evaluations would help avoid this lack-of-documentation issue.

I'm going to try to sit in on some hearings in the future, to see how the tenure/firing process works in person.  I don't know if I'll be allowed to do this, but if I can find a public hearing, I'll write more about what I see.

I had a glimpse into a Value-Added Classroom, and all I can say is "Go Back"

Do you remember the movie Say Anything, and the joke in Diane Court's valedictory speech, "I saw our future, and all I can say is, 'go back'"?  Well, if value-added is our future, I'm with Diane.  Maybe not as staunchly, but after what I read today, I am leaning that way.

An article in today's AJC starts out:

HOUSTON — Andres Balp’s Texas classroom provides a glimpse of the data-driven future facing Georgia teachers and students.

In his fourth-grade room at Houston’s Lyons Elementary, the focus is clear: measuring exactly how well students are progressing. Children are grouped by how they have done on standardized tests, making it easier for Balp to work with the lower-performing kids. A poster charts daily test scores — black ink for high marks, red for low — to show who’s on track to hit state exam goals. Students follow their own progress too: Taped to each desk is a small square of colored paper with the student’s goal score for a daily 12-question assessment.

Balp, a 17-year classroom veteran, holds the master key to all this data: a three-ring binder filled with graphs showing test scores for every student — and forecasts of how they’re expected to do going forward. It informs the interactions he has with his students.
His income hinges on this data. So does his job. 

As for me, I am still reading everything about Value-Added data and evaluations that I can find.  I tend to think it's okay, with some qualifiers (namely, that it is used, as the article goes on to say, for the teachers to help the students and not as a means to penalize teachers).  But, when I read this article I was struck by the classroom that's described in the lead.  In particular, I have to say that I would not want my children in this room, or any like it.  Nor would I want to teach like this.

I don't want anyone tracking every minute grade like a fantasy baseball stat, and neither do I want every action in any classroom dictated by some metric, as the article would have us believe all good teaching must be.  I am all for the extrinsic motivation of the old-fashioned "gold star" charts, but the red-and-black comments letting students know who's on track to meet state testing requirements?  Doesn't anyone fear that goes a bit too far, perhaps losing the too-much-red-not-enough-black-grades kids to the phenomenon of a self-fulfilling prophecy?  I absolutely believe (or really, know) that we need some data to evaluate where we stand, but this goes too far.

What really put me over the top, though, was the charts on the desk to tell us the daily assessment goals.  Doesn't anyone see anything wrong with these "forecasts" of what is expected of each student, like abstract stock figures, with growth and plateau assessments calculated -- well heck, somewhere I am sure there are actuaries involved, at this rate -- to let us know what to buy and what to sell, and when, perhaps, to exercise our options?  And what, pray tell, are those options?  Do we really want our kids learning, as this would seem to be, by checklist?  Today, you will get a 90% and then you've met your goal.  All learning can cease.  Check, check, check, list is done!  No.  These constant checklists and benchmarks send the WRONG message about learning.  Not all that is worth doing in a day can be quantitatively measured, and I don't want my childrens' days determined by only that which can be quantitatively measured.  Setting daily goals is important, but we need qualitative ones as well, and we don't need checklists on the desks to press home the point that we're all working towards a goal.  What I fear these checklists convey is that we're working towards passing some test, as opposed to learning and growing and becoming better readers, or better at math, or better at writing.  Do tests measure that?  Sure.  But we don't need to frame every single day's goals in terms of tests and cutoff scores.  We need to learn (no, I am not so trite as to say, "for the sake of learning," though I'm close to it) and learn and learn, and the test scores will follow.  "Goal" test scores should not dictate or determine our learning plan. 

I know we're data-driven right now, and I know that in many ways value-added methods provide a much-needed antidote to teachers who don't belong in a classroom.  Yes, it can help us show "cause" to get rid of the obvious bad apples.

I'm just not sure that the good outweighs the bad.  I don't like this classroom of the future one bit.  Not one. Little. Bit.

Here are another few excerpts for you to gnaw on while I head to bed.  We come back to the law of diminishing returns, which I think I've mentioned before on this blog (and if not, which I will certainly discuss in the coming days), what to do when your kids are already at the top, and what to do when the evaluation method fails.  Enjoy. 

Because the data predicts a student’s future performance based on past results, teachers have better insight into how their students should be scoring in class. If a student isn’t on track, the teacher can offer remediation. It also allows teachers to work with their colleagues to address weaknesses revealed by the data. For example, if one fourth-grade teacher isn’t “adding enough value” in math, and another fourth-grade teacher’s students aren’t scoring well in language arts, the two might swap classes for one subject.

...

But in some areas — including classes of highly advanced students and students moving from Spanish to English — a teacher’s true impact isn’t showing up in the test data, she said.

“We do have some principals who say, ‘My best teachers in these certain areas are not being identified as good teachers, but we know they are,’” Stevens said. “We’re trying to run the numbers, investigate and see where this is a problem, and where it is a perceived issue but not a real issue.”

Darilyn Krieger, a physics teacher at Carnegie Vanguard High, a Houston school for gifted and talented students considered one of the best in the nation, said she is proof value-added data can be misleading.

Krieger said last year she earned almost $6,000 because of her student-growth scores. But this year, the data showed her students didn’t learn a year’s worth of information, even though 100 percent are passing and doing college-level coursework.

That’s because the district uses a test that doesn’t measure what her students learned in the current year. Instead, it’s an exit exam designed to measure what they have learned in science over 11 years. Her chief concern is the value-added data’s lack of transparency — it isn’t specific enough to show where her students did not meet expectations.

“I am being measured and told I didn’t do my job, but they can’t tell me what I did wrong,” Krieger said. “I don’t care what my scores were. I don’t care if I get a dollar on this stupid award. I want my kids to do well because they know the material.”

...

Supporters of using student test data to rate and pay teachers almost universally agree that it can’t be the only factor used in decision-making. In Georgia, 50 percent of the evaluation of teachers in “core” subjects — those covered by standardized tests — will be based on the growth scores; the other half will come from classroom observations, lesson plans and student surveys. Core teachers, such as those in math and writing, make up about 30 percent of the educator workforce.

Note:  this article is entitled In a Texas Classroom, Big Lessons for Georgia.  It was written by Jaime Sarrio and appeared as the front-page story on April 3, 2011.  Here's a link, though I am not sure it is a permalink:  http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-politics-elections/in-a-texas-classroom-895675.html

I opened my "mouth" on Facebook ...

A friend of mine had a simple status on Facebook this morning: "When did teachers become the bad guys?"  It led to a small discussion, part of which I joined.  As an afterthought, I added that if anyone cared, I had a solution.  Another friend of mine said she'd be curious to hear it.  What?  You, too?  Great, because here is what I wrote:

Compulsory education only until 8th grade. After 8th grade, everyone can try high school, but you don't have to. If you choose to stay, you are choosing to NOT be a disciplinary problem. If you can't handle that, you are no longer invited. (Now, I don't mean we won't have fights or what-have-you. But we will not have chronic issues, because those children will be asked to leave.) In my utopian system, there will be alternative schools available.

Likewise, if you are in high school and want to drop out, by all means, drop out. The catch is, you can't go on welfare; you have to get a job. If, after twelve consecutive months, you decide you really do want an education, then you can come back. Except we'll have "night school" for you. After one school year there, you either graduate, or you are eligible to move back to regular day school. Or, you can choose to stay. The education is the same, but there are no extra-curriculars, etc. It is 100% academics-focused. Some kids just DO better in alternative settings, and this will be their chance. The difference between night school and day school is not so much punitive (although you DO have to earn the right back into day school) as it is that one setting is no-frills and the other has all the traditional accoutrements of high school.

In my system, a child can "age out" of eighth grade. You get two tries. After that, you must leave for twelve months. Last year, I taught eighth grade math. I had a student who was SEVENTEEN. He was in his third round of 8th grade -- and he was failing!! C'mon now. Really? What kind of influence do you think HE had on his classmates? Even better, what kind of influence do you think he had on the 6th graders at that school? Unacceptable. As a PARENT, I would not want this "adult" around my 6th-grade child; but the law said we had to let him. Ridiculous. And you can only begin to imagine, I'm sure, how some of the girls thought he hung the moon. Let's just say it was a terrible situation and if I had a sixth-grade daughter, I would have been beside myself with the fact that the "system" allowed this phenomenon.

In "The World According to Jen," we will also stop trying to push down classes like algebra into seventh and sixth grade. We will bring back recess, and gym, and let kids be kids. Then, when physiology and science and age together indicate that they are ready for abstract reasoning (right around 9th grade), we will teach more abstract stuff ... and we will STOP trying to cover everything a mile wide; instead we'll try to make sure that what we do teach, the kids actually learn. There's no race to finish the textbook, and no constant interruptions for standardized testing. I want our students to LEARN, not to learn how to bubble. OUr local schools here lose TWENTY DAYS a year to standardized testing in various forms. Um, did anyone count?! That's an entire school month spent on testing! Unaceptable. Won't happen in Jen's Utopian World.

Also, I think we need to go back to what we all had in school -- at least Longwood -- where we all had both academics and trades available to us. There shouldn't be this distinction of BOCES or trades as being somehow lesser than a "traditional" education. Trades are invaluable, and our society has made them second-class. Nope. EVERYONE should have to take some trade class, just like we all had to take tech-ed; I wish it had continued into a high school requirement!

Now, do I pretend to have all the answers? No, and this system of mine surely has issues. I haven't even gotten to special ed!

BUT -- this system eliminates chronic discipline problems, and I believe with all my heart that the root of every problem in our schools today starts with discipline. I don't care what anyone's home life is, or what disadvantages they have, etc., etc. If they are chronically disruptive and we allow it to continue, we ruin everything for everyone. Our schools today pander to the lowest-common-denominator. Our success rate is abyssmal because we leave behind the very kids who are capable and want to be successful. We throw them away to try -- often in vain -- to reach the bottom kids. I have asked this over and over and over again: WHY? (I am not talking about special ed kids here. I am talking about kids who don't WANT to do; not kids who aren't ABLE to do.)

Bet you're sorry you asked now, huh?! ;)

Math Education

Here is a link to a neat article in the New York Times about a young non-mathematician who is making math fun, or at least, making the fun-if-ication of math her goal.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/science/18prof.html?_r=1&ref=education

I admire Ms. Hart, and certainly her intentions, as I have also aspired to such a goal. 

But here is what I really took away from the article, and it was delightfully refreshing:  What I especially appreciate is that neither Ms. Hart nor the Times, though they lament the too-frequent doldrums that a typical math class often is, purport to be able to change that with the typical suggestions of "group work," "investigations," and so forth.  Because to me, so much of the richness of those types of activities can only really come when you've had a primer in the content.  It's a little bit of the chicken-and-the-egg conondrum, but not entirely:  you have to learn a little of the math to be able to explore it.  I liken it to tinkering, really.  My grandfather used to tinker with anything electronic.  He knew enough of the gist of it to fiddle, and all his fiddling taught him more.  Same for mathematics.  Same, I imagine, for anything worth tinkering with.

So, thank you, Ms. Hart.  You're right -- too many math classes are boring, dry, and miserable, and you're doing your part to show that math, in and of itself, need not be.  And thank you again for not insisting that we can fix that with dog-and-pony shows instead of math classes. 

Now, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could convince the curriulum gods to (a) slow down, so kids can study fewer concepts, but really learn them, and in slowing things down (b) build in some time to let us explore what is, really, the beauty and magic of mathematics?

Shouldn't that be part of any -- nay, every -- math curriculum?

Early Childhood, Baltimore, and "Changes at the Margin"

Go ahead, yell at me.  I promised to write more and actually managed to write even less.  I am clearly still working out the kinks of establishing a blogging schedule -- and failing miserably!  So I won't promise, again, to write more regularly.  But I will say with a smile, "I'm baaaa-aaack!!" 

Saw this article in the NY Times today.  It is actually from Tuesday. 

Here is the executive summary:

• The achievement gap, a well-documented enigma, exists.  It's proven itself largely un-fixable despite countless efforts.
• A new study says that believe it or not, it's worse than we thought, and part of where we need to fix will be unpopular for a lot of reasons:  the correlation is more than just poverty, but rather what happens at home in the early childhood years. 
• Baltimore has done a great job seeming to close the gap, and in fact had the dropout rate of black students lower than that of white students.
• The Baltimore schools head attributes this NOT to "changes at the margin," but rather to staying on top of the kids, where they are and what decisions they are making, IN REAL TIME. 

This is interesting.  (And not just because it's a story from the NY Times that doesn't blame teachers for all that is wrong in education today, and doesn't point to anyone else who does so!)  In fact, in two separate places, the article seems to point to the kinds of things I've often lumped together as "common sense," but which of course go far beyond that moniker.

First -- we can do everything in our power to change what happens at school, and before and after school, and we can adjust for single-parent and no-parent homes, but until and unless we can change what happens because of what is considered normal in raising the youngest children, we likely can't make as much of a difference as we'd like.  A person who doesn't know (how or even whether) to talk to an infant, or read to a toddler, or teach proper grammar to a child who is learning to speak, is likely not going to raise that child to survive our schools, to be literate or even functional.  I suppose you can say that one can teach what one doesn't know.  We all know that our actions speak louder than our words, and we raise our children (at least to some extent) how we were raised, following what was modeled for us.  When what has been modeled is universally agreed to be not just non-ideal, but actually a failure of society, we need to have the discussions about how to change what has been generationally embedded. 

Second -- the highly-touted "solutions" of closing failing schools, lengthening the school day/year, increasing the prevalence of charter schools, and increasing teacher quality, are actually not much of anything.  They are, according to the study, not really shown to make a difference; and according to the Baltimore schools chief Andres A. Alonso, they are the "changes at the margin" -- the things that don't make as much of a difference as they make a headline and a stink.

Here's the article.  If the link is expired, leave a comment and I can update to a pdf version.

A Reporter's Thoughts on Necessary Qualities for A School Board Member

If you haven't been able to tell by now, I regularly read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's education blog, Get Schooled.  It's a pretty decent way to see some "hot topics," and the discussion can occasionally be enlightening.  Maureen Downey is the blogmaster/author/what-have-you, and she does a pretty good job of posting regularly, even occasionally participating in the discussion.

In Sunday's print edition of the AJC there was a special pull-out section on metro-Atlanta school boards.  If you've seen any of the news around here in recent years, some prominent counties in metro Atlanta have become notorious for their school boards' dysfunction; one district even lost its accreditation.  Following this section, Ms. Downey posted a blog entry about what she thinks ought to be minimum requirements for school board members anywhere.  It was a thoughtful post; generally she writes an intro based on her experiences with the topic at hand and then shares a related news story, but in this instance she opened with the news and took an opportunity to write her opinion.

Here  is a link to the blog itself, and reprinted here (in italics, to distinguish her writing from mine) is her list of requirements.  I am pleased to say that I agree with most of them.  I've got to step away from the computer for now, but I intend to come back later to comment in more detail on some of these requirements.

In evaluating school board candidates, here are some considerations that I think are important for voters:

— What’s been their historic involvement with the schools? Can they name the schools in their districts and the principals? As surprising as it may seem, some candidates can’t list the schools in the areas they want to represent.

This should be agiven.  In a big enough district, I don't think a candidate needs to know every principal's name, but if you don't even know the schools in your district, you can't possibly hope to represent them.

— Have they attended school board meetings on a regular basis? Potential board members don’t have to show up at every meeting, but they have to attend enough to understand what the board does.

This is a great point.  When I "ran" for the school board position this summer, I had not attended meetings regularly (to be fair, I hadn't attended at all).  I was pretty naive, really, in this respect, and will surely attend meetings regularly when we "land" someplace where we intend to live.  That being said, it is entirely possible to be very involved and yet unable to attend meetings regularly.  I agree with the last sentence 100%: you might not need to attend every meeting, but you sure ought to know what goes on and how.

— What are their plans to improve student achievement? At some forums, candidates never address student achievement except to complain that it’s not high enough. But they offer no ideas about how to raise it.

One of my biggest pet peeves. Can we start, please, with a definition of achievement?  Then, let's talk about what we mean by improving it?  THEN let's see if the candidate has a plan.  Anyone can stand up and pontificate on how we need to improve student achievement (sheesh, it seems everyone already does!); no one ever seems to define it -- nevermind to lay out a plan other than "train our teachers."  Let's not get me started here ...

— Be wary of candidates running because of a private gripe with the district over how their child was treated. Such candidates may be great advocates for their own kids, but lack a broader interest in the success of all students.

Never thought about this, but I agree.  On the other hand, if a personal gripe got a person motivated enough to run and to want to make a difference, who am I to say that they won't take the entirety of the job to heart?  Be wary, I agree; but don't write them off.

— Can the candidates work as part of a team? Everyone loves a rebel, but at some point board members have to work together to pass policy, hire superintendents and create goals for students. A board overrun with mavericks provides great drama but few results. And somebody usually ends up in court.

What if the board is already rife with mavericks?  A person who is abrasive and contentious likely won't get the position to begin with, so this one seems to me a bit ridiculous.

— Can the candidates put forth any proposals to improve student learning that don’t require piles of cash? Because there won’t be piles. Anywhere. For a long time.

Amen.  But again, can we please, please please define "improve student learning"? Anyone?

— Listen carefully when candidates talk about their goals. Are they compliance-driven — do they talk about meeting the mandates set by the state Department of Education? Or are they performance-driven — do they focus on how to get students achieving not only to the state bar, but to national and international levels? You don’t want schools that just comply; you want schools that perform.

True enough.  But one needs to first comply, and for a district that is far enough from compliance that this is an election issue, I'd prefer someone with a plan for getting back on track than someone with a lofty goal for "once we get there."

— What is their broader vision for the schools? And how will they hold the superintendent accountable for acting on the vision? Candidates ought to spell out specific sets of measures they’d use to assess whether superintendents are doing a good job.

THIS has been a particularly important issue for the system in which I applied for the position, and tricky at best.  I don't know that any one candidate can have this solved, but to have not given it any thought would be a big red flag.

— What do they know about the range of programs offered to students? For instance, are they aware of the state’s Virtual High School? If so, can they tell you how many high schoolers in the district are taking Advanced Placement courses online? Can they report how many kids are taking AP classes, period? Do they know why it’s important for students to not only take AP classes, but to take and score high on AP tests?

Again, perhaps too detail-focused.  I'm okay with a candidate knowing the gist of these figures.  Anyone can say "we need more kids taking AP courses."

— Do they have other sources of income or are they regarding the school board stipend as their livelihood? As a rule, people with dire money problems — houses in foreclosure, no clear source of income, collection agencies at their heels — don’t make effective boardmembers. They ought to straighten out their own finances before they manage a district’s finances. (One tip: If a candidate’s phone has been disconnected, he or she is not a good bet.)

Yikes!  In this economy, and for personal reasons, I am perhaps more forgiving of imperfect credit than many folks might be.  But a disconnected phone?!  There's a difference between having had a rough time, and being in trouble presently or persistently. 

— Is the candidate a current or retired school employee? In concept, boards are supposed to give parents a hand in their local schools, but they’ve come to be dominated by educators. That skews the focus of boards from student concerns to teacher concerns. Look for candidates without financial ties to the school system, either their own or family members.

As a former teacher, I have not seen this as a problem, only because I've not seen it.  I'm not a teacher-union kind of person to begin with, but I have actually often thought we need more former teachers on the boards, and not fewer; too many things are blamed on and forced on teachers without any real understanding of the day-to-day implications (or whether it will even make a difference other than to push paper)!

–Watch for the perennial candidates who envision a career in politics and are looking for any foothold. School boards require people willing to slog through reports, scrutinize budgets and read the fine print. Don’t waste a vote on someone who sees the board as way to get their name in the paper on their way to the Legislature.

Amen...

— On the other hand, beware  of lifers. After two decades or more, a member ought to step down and make room for new voices and ideas.

... and again.

A Little Bit About Tenure

Let me begin by saying that although I have taught in systems that offered tenure, I have never stayed in any one place long enough to be eligible for it.  So I am writing this as a chronically, if you will, non-tenured-but-not-unhappy teacher.

My husband and I were driving the other day and flipping among a few Sirius Satellite radio stations.  At one point we lingered on Fox News (if you have to criticize me, hey, at least I'm being honest here) and caught an interview with a gentleman from California.  The subject was teacher tenure. For the life of me I can't remember his name, or who the interviewer was, so forgive me for that.

The Fox interviewer seemed hung up on bad teachers who have tenure and are forever employed, and are hurting our students.  The gentleman from California tried in vain to explain that tenure does not mean that your job is guaranteed, but rather that you're entitled to due process.  Shame on the reporter, because she wouldn't listen to the man, and she was, dare I say it, quite wrong.

So, let me explain this:

ALL TENURE MEANS IS THAT YOUR EMPLOYER HAS TO HAVE CAUSE TO FIRE YOU, AND YOU ARE ENTITLED TO DUE PROCESS.  THIS IS IN CONTRAST TO EMPLOYMENT-AT-WILL, WHERE YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO KNOW WHY YOU ARE BEING FIRED, OR TO ANY APPEAL.

I have no idea why this is so difficult for everyone to understand, and I struggle with the idea that "tenured teachers are the root of all evil," as that particular Fox News interviewer would apparently have us believe.

So let's break this down.

First:  People think that tenure means you are guaranteed your job forever.  Please see the bold, above.  As far as I know, the only person on this earth who is guaranteed to hold his job 'til death is the Dalai Lama.  If you are a tenured teacher, that means that in order to fire you, the school system needs to show just cause, and you are entitled to due process.  In English, that simply means that you are entitled to know why you are being fired, and to some sort of an appeals process.  You still can be fired.

Second:  In reality, though, it is probably true that many teachers with tenure correctly consider themselves "unfire-able,"  not because they can't be fired, but because school systems won't/don't fire them.  Schools and administrators have been historically lax about starting the requisite paper trail to provide cause.  Yes, this is anecdotal evidence, but until the past few years, every administrator with whom I have discussed this issue had the attitude of "we know so-and-so could be better, but to really document it all would be so much work, it's not worth it."  So the lousy teacher who just so happens to have tenure, gets to keep at it.

Third:  There are many "offenses" which people would think count as cause, but which in reality are not.  A prime example of this, and something I've heard tossed about more and more lately, is the hypothetical teacher who chooses to serve none of his or her assigned duties.  Folks, unless this is a line-item in your contract, it's not a fire-able offense.  I worked in New England where every expectation was defined in our contract, and if it wasn't there, we couldn't be required to do it, and that was for a non-union position!  I am quite positive that unionized systems define job duties even more specifically.  I've also worked in Georgia and Alabama, where we had the catch-all on our contract, "and other duties as assigned," which I always found to be beyond b.s., and likely unenforceable.  Did they mean to tell me that if the principal told me I was suddenly to scrub the toilets every afternoon, I would have to do it?

Fourth:  Just because someone is tenured does not automatically make them a lousy teacher!  The news media seems to make this straight-line connection, and it's simply not correct.  Are there lousy tenured teachers?  Of course!  Are there lousy non-tenured teachers?  Yep!  And guess what, folks?  The non-tenured teachers get to keep changing systems -- they are still teaching, just the same as the tenured teachers!  It's not tenure that's the problem, it's the poor teachers.

Moral of the story: if you want to be able to fire tenured teachers, and you most certainly can, you need to change two things.
One -- Change the attitudes of administrators, so that documentation is not a nightmare, and the requisite paper trail is started early.  (In fairness, the paper trail aspect is starting to change, with our teacher accountability and documentation frenzy, administrators need to be able to point to teachers who don't pull their weight, and have evidence all along.  They shouldn't realize a problem and then need to begin compiling evidence from that point forward.)
Two -- If we think certain things, such as attending meetings, being part of committees, or serving duties, should count as "cause," we need to clearly define them in the job descriptions.

Teacher Loses His Cool in Nashville

I hope this link still works. Please let me know if it doesn't.  A teacher in Nashville was filmed (undoubtedly on a cell-phone camera) essentially losing his cool.  The footage starts out where the teacher is trying to regain control of an already-gone class, and the footage ends with the teacher throwing a desk.  According to news reports, the tirade escalated to his actually throwing a desk out a window (Hmm.  Intentionally damaging state property.  Felony?) and being taken from the school in handcuffs.

I can't say I defend this teacher, and I wish the footage continued so we could all see a little more of what unfolded, and how.  I'd also like to know how the class got to this point of unruly-ness as the class period went on.

But I also can't say I haven't felt like this before, and certainly can understand how a problematic class can go from sunshine to storms in a millisecond.  I have had classes like this, and those classes have certainly and regularly had days like this, and in those instances I've called our school police officer.  In fact, in the beginning of the video I'd argue the teacher is actually trying to reason with the students, and perhaps going off the deep end -- at least a little -- in an effort to shock them into listening for at least a half a second.  They don't seem to want to do that, and his efforts backfired.  But that's my hypothesis, and I don't know that I am right.

As I can see it, the difference between me-in-my-experiences and the gentleman here, is that I called the resource officer and sat down at my desk.  (Did I want to quit?  Sure.  Was the chronic, unpunished behavior a systemic problem big enough for me to not want to come back?  Sure.  Did I quit?  No.)


(Note:  There is a not-insignificant difference between thinking to yourself,  "I am angry and frustrated enough to throw a desk!" and actually throwing said desk.  I have infrequently been the former, and never done the latter.)

Diane Ravitch

I'm reading her book.  I've had it since it came out, and I am very far behind in my personal reading.  In the meantime, check out this link.

More on this soon.

Teacher Evaluations and a Study that says ...

... at least part of what we already know or think:  that basing teacher pay in part on student performance is not effective.  Unfortunately, public education is not a miniature of a free-market economy, so that type of logic won't always work.

Here is the link to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution education blog post that explains more about it.  The links I was able to find to the actual study were broken earlier today, but here is a link to the document that explains how teacher bonuses (and eligibility for bonuses) were calculated for the POINT (Project On INcentives in Teaching) experiment.

In the meantime, here are my concerns about pay for performance models as I've seen them proposed.  I'm not opposed to them per se, but I've never seen a model that answers my questions below.  I don't have time to elaborate at the moment, but I'll break these down in future posts.

1.  Who says which teachers get the good students, the ones who will do FINE on the tests regardless of their teacher?

2.  Who says which teachers get the students who won't pass the test to save their lives? 

(and how can we guard against political or retaliatory decisions playing roles in 1 and 2?)

3.  Who will control for teachers who just teach to the test and nothing else?  It puts teachers in a moral quandary:  to do what is RIGHT (that is to say, to teach the material richly and without regard for some arbitrary test), or to teach how to take a particular test?  I truly believe that one day, we will we look back and think we have failed this round of kids even worse than, say, "whole language," because all these kids know how to do is eliminate obvious wrong answers, to work backwards, and to bubble.  This testing frenzy in which we find ourselves today really scares me.  I am worried about the product we're generating.

4.  People talk about the "Value Added Model" as a solution to question 1, above.  But no one seems to talk abou the law of diminishing returns:  At some point, a teacher who has a class who is already performing at the 95th percentile, or with a 95% pass rate, or what-have-you, may not be able to increase that significantly, through no fault of her own.  I've not seen a model that addresses this (valid) concern.  Is the trade-off that "you get the good kids, you earn less?"  If it is, that's fine -- but no one has said that.

I am not opposed to a system of merit pay.  In fact, I worked under one years ago and, though it needed some tweaks, I really really appreciated that I made a difference in my salary -- and by the same token, idiots and freeloaders were making that choice, with consequences, as well.  (As compared to the public schools in which you can completely shirk off hall duty, or what have you, because there are virtually no meaningful consequences.)  I absolutely support merit pay.  I am just not sure how we can get there with the element of test scores.  I really do think about this a lot, because I hate to complain without proposing a solution.  I'll keep thinking.  I want to be a part of the solution.

New Jersey's Going to Test its Teachers

A Facebook friend posted  this link about education reform efforts in New Jersey.  Governor Christie "unveiled a tough-love reform package that will make classroom achievement — not seniority or tenure — the basis for pay hikes and career advancement in Garden State public schools."  


One of the things the article mentions is that teachers of kindergarten through fifth grade will actually have to pass tests in reading and math in order to be certified.  I am sure there is going to be quite the backlash about this.  No one wants to say that their teachers don't need to be smart or knowledgeable, but the argument will be that elementary school teachers need not be experts on higher-level math;  rather, they need to know how to teach basic concepts.  It will go along the lines that an elementary school teacher doesn't need to pass a calculus exam, for example.  


I'll be honest:  I am on the fence about this one.  


Why?  Simple: we don't yet know the level of the tests.  Too easy and it's just a hoop.  Too difficult, and we fall into the argument above.  I definitely believe in testing our teachers.  But New Jersey already requires the Praxis.  See here.  What will this proposed new exam do differently?


The same anti-content argument is often given for high school math teachers who are getting their masters' degrees:  Why do they need to take graduate-level math courses?  Why not take courses on pedagogy in high school content areas such as Algebra 2?  


I happen to agree that we need more education courses that focus on "how" to teach.  Conferences and workshops are expensive and most teachers don't get to go to them with any regularity.  Why not incorporate that type of dynamic learning-how-to-teach with more frequency and depth than most programs presently offer?  Great point.  But I still want teachers know fundamentally know their material.  


So, let's separate these issues.  


First:  Ideally, all teachers would have content-area expertise.  But if you're working with a finite number of courses that fit within a degree program, the "one or the other" decision is often the issue.  


Second:  If I have to choose, I'd rather have a competent teacher who has a proficient knowledge of the material he or she is actually teaching, and expertise on how to actually teach it, as compared to a teacher who knows the material and took x, y, or z upper-level classes, but who would have benefited more from a more practical methods, practicum, or workshop-style class.  


Elementary school kids are in comprehensive classrooms most of the time:  they have one teacher for all subjects.  It simply is not practical to expect the teachers to have graduate-level knowledge of history, reading, math, and science.  They do, however, need to know how to reach kids with the most basic of concepts -- stuff we as adults take for granted is often quite difficult to teach.


And let's not forget, we don't yet know what level of competency New Jersey elementary school teachers will be expected to have.  Kindergarten teachers may not need to pass calculus tests, after all.  But a functional literacy would be nice, and I don't think we should stop with math and reading.  We need to test the four basics: reading, math, science, and social studies.  Quite frankly, I have seen dishearteningly many elementary school teachers who don't have even that.  The teachers can't competently teach fractions because they barely understand them themselves.  I have neighbors whose daughter routinely brought home letters from her teacher to her parents, and the letters were rife with grammatical errors.  I do not think it's too much to ask for an elementary school teacher to know when and how to use an apostrophe, or the difference between "there" and "their" (nevermind "they're"!).  


So, where do I stand?  I support competency testing.  I like New Jersey's approach, and it will be interesting to see what level of knowledge the teacher-candidates are required to have.  I am also very curious about how this will affect their current Praxis requirements, and whether it will be redundant.  It is imperative that our teachers are literate, and too many are not. But I also think that we need more "how to teach," and if it comes at the expense of upper-level content-area work, well, for today, that's a trade-off I will take.  


On a personal note, I had to take a basic skills test to get my teaching certification in Alabama.  I was offended by the ridiculous level of the questions.  Things along the lines of "Read this memo from a manager to a group of employees."  At the bottom of the memo it would say "Be sure when moving inventory that you do not use the red cart."*  Then the question would ask "Which piece of equipment should an employee not use when taking inventory?"  The test was a waste of my time, and to paraphrase Billy Madison, I was stupider for having had to sit through it.  But people failed.  And that is scary.


*I made this question up completely.  But it is similar in style and difficulty to the questions I was asked.