Motivation, the Elusive Drive

April 21st, 2010 by Kevin Washburn View Comments »

“Come on, you can do it!”

They were wrong.

In my youth I played a sport that makes up a chunk of many-a-child’s early athletic endeavors. My father was passionate about it. My older brother was MVP of his high school team. And I…just didn’t get it. In the final game of my final year of eligibility, by some fluke of fate, I managed two significant plays. In an entire season of mediocrity those two plays were what stayed in the minds of the coaches, and I was named to the all-star team. The “honor” meant practicing beyond the season’s end and playing games against all-star teams from other locales.

My father was proud. My older brother thought, for the first time, that I might follow in his footsteps.

I was miserable. Miserable and unmotivated. Somehow I maintained a pulse despite a lack of heart for the game; I was merely a body filling a position.

My coach and teammates yelled endless go-get-‘em, show-’em-what-you’ve-got’s to no avail. I didn’t get the sport. Never did. It was meaningless to me, and I was definitely the team’s weakest link. Without motivation, I remained in my mediocrity, not interested in learning how to improve. This is the only time I can remember my parents allowing me to quit something I had started, and I’m sure their allowance immediately improved the team.

An Elusive Drive

Motivation is elusive. In part because motivation is idiosyncratic. We all assign different levels of significance and meaning to different things. What captivated my father and brother’s interests seemed like only a time-filler to me. Part of discovering ourselves is finding those things that spur us to action—meaningful, intentionally chosen action. When we find these captivating pursuits, our inner drive kicks in and we act with purpose, passion, and even inspiration.

Students are individuals. What motivates one may not motivate another, which is why a blanket approach, be it “sticks” or “carrots,” rarely works, especially long term. I once used a reading motivational program initiated by a national restaurant chain. I’d set monthly goals for students and if they achieved them they received a certificate to use at the restaurant. For a month or two, I’d have 80%+ of my students achieve the goal. Then the achievement rate took a dip, followed by another and another, until only a few students were achieving the monthly goals. I was trying to motivate individuals with a one-size-fits-all approach, and my use of extrinsic motivation probably negatively influenced any intrinsic motivation some of my students had for reading.

One Hot Potato

Motivation seems to be our controversy of the moment. On one “side” we have famous authors and speakers suggesting that extrinsic motivation is wasted energy. On the other, we have researchers paying students for various academic-related achievements. We can cite research that supports both perspectives, which leaves us arguing over philosophical stances and pragmatic solutions.

Let’s step away from the shouting for a moment and consider principles that can guide our thinking about motivation and learning.

Extrinsic Motivation: Be Specific in the Short-term

Focusing attention on a post-task reward can promote action. For example, I love Boston Cream Pie (which isn’t a pie at all), but it’s not a common dessert here in Alabama where banana pudding is more the norm. Once in a while the urge to taste the delicious combination of cake, cream, and dark chocolate moves my attention and action to the kitchen. I bake the dessert so I can eat the dessert. The reward at the end of the task moves me and makes me move. I don’t enjoy the process of baking enough to make Boston Cream Pie every day, every week, or even every month. But occasionally, the reward at the end is enough to make me don a baker’s cap (at least figuratively).

This example illustrates some important principles for using extrinsic motivation.

First, extrinsic motivation is best used for short-term, measurable tasks. Research suggests that attempts at using extrinsic motivation long-term actually end up undermining motivation. An initial burst of activity is typically followed by decreased drive and achievement. Daniel Pink suggests using extrinsic motivation only when there is no intrinsic motivation that may be undermined.1

Short-term extrinsic motivation can be effective if the task is concrete and measurable. For example, Roland Fryer Jr.’s controversial research found that paying students for high test scores or good grades was far less effective than paying students for each book they read.2 The reason: students knew how to achieve the reward for reading a book but did not necessarily know what to do to raise their test scores or grades. For extrinsic motivation to be effective, the targeted action needs to be specific and the individual needs to know exactly how to accomplish the desired goal.

Daniel Pink describes such tasks as those that “require following a prescribed set of rules to a specific end.”3 The message: offering extrinsic motivation for vague concepts, such as good behavior or more effort, is unlikely to succeed. Using extrinsic motivation for specific, concrete tasks, such as mowing the lawn or reading a book, can be effective, but probably only in the short-term.

That does not mean that short-term extrinsic motivation cannot lead to long-term changes in behavior. If the motivation sustains a change long enough, the individual may develop new habits that persist beyond the external reward. For example, a student offered a reward for a specific behavior, such as returning an item to its appropriate place of storage after use, may develop the habit of putting the item back after each use. Pink warns, however, that offering the extrinsic motivation long term often leads to resentment as the “motivatee” feels manipulated by the one offering the reward. Short-term, specific, and measurable can make extrinsic motivation work without most negative side-effects.

Intrinsic Motivation: Setting the Stage

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a recipe for igniting intrinsic motivation—”Do X and all your students will be passionate about learning.” Yeah, that would be great. We can dream, but the reality is that intrinsic motivation is impossible to generate for someone else. However, we can create environments where intrinsic motivation is more likely to flourish.

First, create conditions in which students experience competence. Humans like to feel capable of meeting challenges, whether it’s working a formula correctly or running a mile. We like to feel like we can be successful, even when it takes work. How do we create these conditions in our classrooms? One of the most powerful modifications a teacher can make is increasing the amount of instructive feedback given to students while they are working on a task. Formative assessment combined with instructive feedback is the heart of effective teaching. As a teacher moves throughout the classroom observing students at work and offering additional challenge and redirection as necessary, students gain confidence in their abilities to be successful. Why? Because someone is there to point the way. It’s that simple. When we are working to learn something new, having someone who knows how to do what we’re trying to learn and who is willing to offer feedback and guidance kicks our intrinsic motivation into gear.

Second, establish an environment that communicates autonomy. Students like to feel like they have some control over their actions. (Teachers do too, by the way!) If everything in a classroom is so structured that students never have options, intrinsic motivation will wither. The choices can be as simple as either A or B. The point is not to provide students with a myriad of options, but to make sure that giving students choices is a regular part of the classroom. Don’t confuse autonomy with independence. It’s not that students want to be left alone to achieve for themselves but that they want to feel like they have some say in how they learn and demonstrate their learning. In fact, given as an option, many students will choose to work collaboratively with others, recognizing that such interdependence has many potential benefits.

Third, provide appropriate challenge for students. Many times increasing the challenge means doing less as teachers. We have a tendency to think and act as though giving students all the new material nicely organized and tied up is the best way for them to get it. After all, putting it all together worked for us as we interacted with the material. That, right there, is the key: we accepted the challenge of processing the material and gained deeper understanding of it as a result. Students need to go through a similar process—to take on the challenge of sorting the new material.

Research supports this conclusion. A study that has been replicated featured two groups both given the text passage to read. For one group, the text was preceded by an outline that had the same organization as the text. In other words, the researcher, or teacher, communicated that this was the way the ideas should be organized. For the second group, the text was preceded by an outline having a different organization from the text. The researchers then gave two different tests to both groups. The first test was simply to recall the text passage. In other words, it measured superficial learning of the text. In this first test, the group that had received the outline that matched the text had the better scores.

However, when the researchers tested deep learning by testing each group’s ability to use ideas from the text to engage in creative problem-solving, the second group, the group that had been given an outline that differed from the organization of the text passage, significantly outperformed the other group.

Why did the results differ for the two groups? Here’s the researcher’s explanation: “The efforts that participants in the second group made to relate the outline to the text reduced their ability to recall the text but increased their understanding of it. This increased understanding meant that they were better placed than participants in the first group to generalize or transfer their knowledge to the creative problems.” The extra challenge of restructuring the outline to match the text better equipped them to transfer their learning or to act with intention in using the new material.4

Dr. Judy WIllis recently presented valuable insights regarding the brain and challenge. When, as students, our brains are not challenged we become bored easily, and boredom is actually a form of stress. When stressed, the regions of the brain associated with “fight, flight, or freeze” become active, generating behaviors often associated with a variety of disorders, including ADHD, oppositional-defiant disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and others. As a neurologist, Dr. Willis began to question the high percentage of children she saw who supposedly had indicators of these disorders. Knowing the numbers seemed far too high, Dr. Willis began to visit classrooms and noticed that, for many students, the questionable behaviors occurred when the child was either unchallenged or feeling incompetent in relation to the challenge.5 Appropriate challenge avoids the extremes that can extinguish intrinsic motivation.

Fourth, help students perceive progress. I love the Nike+ system used with my mp3 player to track my runs. After each run, I can see my progress in relation to personal goals, established standards, previous runs, and much more. I have a visual representation of my progress. Researchers often refer to this as something like the “gamer effect,” gamer being the player of video games. When you play a video game and reach the end of a challenge, you move on to the next level. You always know where you are in relation to the game’s ultimate challenge and conclusion. You can “see” progress.

Would it be possible to help students see their own progress? If we have a series of skills that ultimately enable students to complete some task or reach some answer—could we provide them with a chart that shows the progression? Could they check off “levels” as they master the sub-skills? Think, “How can I represent the learning in a way that students will be able to see progress?”

Finally, help students discover meaning in their learning.

…meaning is motivational. Because the brain constantly strives to make sense of the sensory data our experiences provide, finding meaning triggers the brain’s reward system and increases the likelihood of our retaining the information. “The brain’s determination of what is meaningful and what is not is reflected not only in the initial perceptual processes but also in the conscious processing of information,” claims Patricia Wolfe. “Information that fits into or adds to an existing network has a much better chance of storage than information that doesn’t.”6

Meaning emerges as students blend new learning with past experience (elaboration) and as I see its relevance to their current world (intention). By helping students see the relationship between new learning and their past and present experiences, we can make our instruction conducive to intrinsic motivation.

Remember, there is no magic formula for generating intrinsic motivation or guarantee that even with all these conditions in place that it will flourish. This, however, gives a focus, a place to put our energies so that intrinsic motivation is possible.

In conclusion, let’s consider one more major influence on intrinsic motivation: the teacher’s passion (or lack of it) for the subject matter being taught. We have the responsibility of learning to like everything we teach so that our attitude toward it is consistently upbeat and positive. Many of us likely became teachers because of a dynamic teacher in our past. We need to be that dynamic teacher in our classrooms.

I’d like to pay you $5.00 for reading this entire article, but I wouldn’t want to undermine any intrinsic motivation you may have for implementing its ideas. My continued curiosity about the topic led me to write it—i.e., I didn’t write it for pay! Hopefully it’s generated some ideas worth considering. Applying new learning does have its own rewards!

And who knows? With enough intrinsic motivation you might earn, deserve, and enjoy a post on the all-star team!

Sources
  1. Pink, D.H., Drive: The Surprising Truth Behind What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009).
  2. Ripley, A., “Should Kids Be Bribed to Do Well in School?” Time, April 8, 2010.
  3. Pink, 62.
  4. Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M.W., & Anderson, M.C., Memory (New York: Psychology Press, 2009) 113-135.
  5. Willis, J., “Teaching Students How They Can Change Their Intelligence by Teaching Them a Brain Owner’s Manual,” presented at Learning and the Brain: Using Brain Research to Raise IQ and Achievement (San Francisco, 2010).
  6. Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010) 46-47.
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This could be a very sad day – I choose differently

April 20th, 2010 by teacherken View Comments »

this is not policy per se, but it explains about me as a teacher. For those who do not know, Leaves on the Current is the screen name of my spouse. This was originally posted at Daily Kos

1889 the birth of Adolph Hilter
1999 the shootings at Columbine High School

Either could be an occasion to look back – in horror or in sadness.

Instead I look ahead. To the words of a man born around this time – we do not know for sure when, only that he was baptized on April 26.

And for this day, one set of his words seems appropriate, at least in my mind:

When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon my self and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

The rest of this diary will be a meditation on this, one of my most cherished poems.

When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon my self and curse my fate,

I have, since early adolescence, been prone to depression. I can be very much of a pessimist, seeing all my failures, and how the future may bring events that will dwarf even these. It is easy to look back and weep at the mistakes I keep making, to find myself wondering why I should keep going. When I was younger I had frequent thoughts of suicide, pondering the different methods of disposing of myself. In early adulthood I often felt so alone I wondered that if I died in the small apartments or rented rooms in which I lived if anyone would even notice until my body began to stink.

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,

I was jealous of others. I was never all that popular. I did not have a single date in my first two years of high school. While later I might be able to start relationships, I could not sustain them. Intuitively I knew that if I wanted friends I had to be a friend, but I did not seem to know how to accomplish that. There were things at which I could excel, and there certainly were things I enjoyed but from which I fled, because they seemed to mark me as different, thereby increasing my sense of isolation.

Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate,

I did seek a magic solution. I imagined that I would encounter the one person, the one relationship, that would make everything perfect. Sometimes when I lived in Brooklyn Heights I would take a cab from the upper East Side bars at which I spent too much time and money and have it drop me off on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge and walk across, somehow imagining that in the hours well after midnight I would encounter that person and all would be well – it was rare that I encountered anyone else walking.

And this seeking of a magic solution in one person was in large part why so many of my attempts at relationships failed.

But I said that I choose differently. That is true today. It became true decades ago. I began to accept myself, in part because I allowed myself to feel vulnerable.

The last six lines of the poem could apply to my relationship with Leaves on the Current, begun on September 21, 1974, when she was 17 and I was 28, eventually leading to our marriage on December 29, 1985. She is my best friend, my most trusted adviser, my truest love. And the words would be true, but they would be an incomplete expression of my understanding of them.

Incomplete, not wrong. Because without that relationship, her love, I would never have had the courage to completely change the direction of my life, to follow what my heart had often called me to, but which i feared doing, despite having enjoyed the occasions where I had tried it. Without Leaves, I would not have left a career that paid decently but left me unsatisfied, and become a teacher.

The four lines before the final two apply as well to my teaching – certainly in my writing about teaching my state sings hymns at heaven’s gate.

Many reading this know that I have been honored for my teaching by being my school system’s selectee for the Washington Post’s Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teaching Award. As news of that has gone around people have gotten in touch with me to tell me how happy they are, to assure me it is well deserved. Some have been parents of current and former students. Some are student with whom I have had little contact since I last taught them. Yesterday I receive emails from two students from years ago. One I taught as an 8th grader in 1996-97, the other as a freshman my first year at Eleanor Roosevelt, in 1998-99. Each message is brief. Each is relevant to my meditation on this poem:

I don’t know if you remember me, but I’d like to wish you congratulations on your award. I attended Kettering Middle School in 1996-1997 and remember fondly your history class. I remember how you were always willing to be silly to prove a point. Thanks to teachers like you students like me are inspired to become teachers ourselves.

You may not remember me, but I was a freshman in your LSN Government class for the 1998-1999 school year at Eleanor Roosevelt High School. I am now a 4th grade teacher at Perrywood Elementary School. When I was a student in your class, I enjoyed it immensely! I appreciated your humor and animated teaching style. Being as though history/government have never been my favorite subjects, I always regard your class as my favorite class and you as my favorite grade school teacher. I had a college professor who displayed very similar teaching styles to you at UMCP and because of this, I became his intern for 2 years. Teachers liks you are hard to find, but so easy to appreciate. I am thankful to have had the chance to enjoy your expertise and congratulations again on your recent award! You deserve it among many others! =)

Both young ladies now teach elementary school in our district. I have to admit I cannot picture either one in my mind, although even if I could, I am sure as adult women they would appear very different. I remember both names. I could go to my old computer files and look up their grades, but that does not matter. I do know that I was not especially close to either one, and this is the first contact with either since I taught them.

Perhaps the expression of these two letters might not seem to connect with the final two lines of the poem, but for me they do. Think of the latin caritas which is a caring for the best for the other person, as Paul uses it in 1st Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 13 (and coincidentally I am a triskadekaphile): And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity

If you prefer, you can use the word love instead of charity and then perhaps my application of the final words of the sonnet will begin to make more sense.

Teaching is an exercise in faith – that the young people entrusted to my care will have a future in which they can participate and from which they draw sustenance and in which they can be productive to the society in which they will find themselves, perhaps themselves helping to shape it in a fashion more conducive to love and warmth and leaving the world a better place.

Teaching depends on hope – we as teachers can never know the full impact we have upon those in our care. I know that I make mistakes, but hope that these are outweighed by my intentions and care for those before me, not merely that they may do well in my course, but that they may from having experienced be richer in soul, more believing in their own potential, more willing to be giving of themselves, and perhaps somewhat forgiving to me for the errors I may have committed.

Charity or love – teaching should be full of this. I love the subject I teach because it gives me a window with which to connect with my students. I loved teaching American History – as I did at Kettering Middle – because I could help my students make sense of it, see how it affected them, empower them to make new connections with their own world and lives. Of greater importance, teaching must always include the care of the students before me, wanting to see possibilities for them, so that they can choose who they will be, what they will become.

We can look back at Hitler and see the horrors he inflicted upon the world. As one of Jewish background born in the immediate aftermath of the great war he engendered, living as I did among some who had survived the Shoah of European Jewry, I can never forget nor be unaware at the signs of similar hatred and oppression, in other nations and in my own. As a teacher I can look back 11 years to Littleton Colorado and remember that bullying among adolescents can have tragic consequences, that as a teacher I can not allow a single incident of bullying to go unchallenged.

But I can also reflect upon Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXIX, the last two lines of which read

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Certainly I am enriched by my relationship with Leaves on the Current, approaching its 36th anniversary in September, bound for eternity on December 29, 1985. Those words apply to her.

They also apply to all the students who pass through my care. I am richer than any kind because I have the opportunity to affect lives.

And when I receive, out of the blue, communications such as the two I have quoted, I feel richer than Warren Buffett or Bill Gates. I wish both men well, and hope they will use their riches wisely.

I am rich, I am honored, I am grateful, I am overwhelmed. And if I begin again to look upon myself and curse my fate I can stop. I can return to these messages, and similar ones I am receiving face to face from students currently in the building, from parents I encounter in a Starbucks or a Safeway, from my peers in the building – but of course, most of all always from the students, remember the final two lines of the sonnet, and find myself energized for another day, another year in the classroom.

So I choose differently on this day which could be tinged with sadness. I choose faith, hope and charity. And if Will will allow me, I borrow those final two lines of Sonnet XXIX and offer them to all my students, former, present and hopefully for a future with many years yet to come:

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Peace.

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Looking Past the Spin: Teach for America

April 18th, 2010 by teacherken View Comments »

is perhaps the most important single article to date on what has developed from the Princeton Senior Thesis of Wendy Kopp. Authored by Barbara Miner, it appears in the Spring edition of Rethinking Schools, which if you care about the future of public education you should support (while the material is available online, you can consider contributing if you choose not to subscribe). here is the link directly to the article

A PDF version of the article was circulated among similarly thinkers on education a few weeks before the Spring issue was mailed. I have not written about it until now because I wanted to be certain that it was fully accessible to all I might be able to interest in it, and it was not on the web site (which was being migrated) until earlier this week. It was only on Saturday afternoon that I had sufficient time to do the article justice.

I will be happy if you have already decided to go read the entire article (again, here’s the link), but in case you have not, let me offer some thoughts that might persuade you.

First, before I go further, let me note that I have permission from Rethinking Schools to quote beyond the normal fair use limitations for the purpose of my reviewing the article, which begins with an italicized statement that alerts you to the focus, Most Teach for America recruits are idealistic and dedicated. But who is behind the organization, and does its approach bolster or hinder urban education reform?

Miner begins describing her thoughts as she is driving towards St. Louis for part of her research on the article, which is when we we encounter her writing

Do people honestly think that sending Ivy League graduates into the St. Louis schools for two years will somehow unlock the academic achievement that is seen as a cornerstone of rebuilding our cities? Can the antidote to educational inequity, urban disinvestment, and neighborhood decay really be so simple?

Let me stop and digress a moment. Teach for America goes beyond the Ivies to other prestigious schools, including my own Alma Mater, Haverford College, which will on occasion brag to its alumni about the participation of its graduates. I have on occasion talked seniors out of applying, which has not endeared me to some on the campus. My argument as a professional educator is simple – unless the person going in is willing to be open about continuing beyond the required 2-year commitment, it is unfair to the students and the school, because it takes a while for any teacher to become effective, and too many of the students they will encounter already have experienced adults who simply pass through their lives.

I have been vocal in my criticism of Teach for America (TFA) over the years, to the point that once a VP of the organization asked for a meeting to persuade me they had addressed many of the things I had criticized, and they even gave me access to their internal web-based materials. While I appreciated the openness, what I saw then, and what I have seen since, has done little to change my skepticism about the entire approach. Reading Miner’s article strongly reinforced what I already felt. If that is going to bother you, you can stop reading now and return to Miner, to which I shall also return.

The purpose of Miner’s article, as she notes, is supposed to be about the organization and education reform, not about the abandonment of low income communities of color. Yet when she returns to her home base of Milwaukee after 2 weeks of interviews and research, she is troubled. As she writes,

I have come to distinguish between the generally hard-working, smart, and idealistic TFA classroom teachers, and a nation al organization that is as sophisticated, slippery, and media savvy as any group I have ever written about. TFA is perceived as a major player in the education wars over the future of public schools, and a key ally of those who disparage teacher unions and schools of education, and who are enamored of entrepreneurial reforms that bolster the privatization of a once-sacred public responsibility.

But what exactly is TFA’s role in these education wars? Who is directing the organization and to what ends? More importantly, what is TFA’s role in improving urban education?

For many of us who are committed to public education, the question in that brief paragraph immediately above this are key.

There is no doubt that on some levels TFA, which some critics have labeled as “Teach for Awhile” or “Teach for a Resume,” has achieved “success” (although it may not necessarily be on behalf of the students it ostensibly serves). As Miner notes, in 2009 it received over 35,000 applications, including an astonishing 115 of Ivy graduates, and as of the writing of the article it had 7,300 teachers in 35 locations, some of which have

significant teacher turnover and hire large numbers of uncertified teachers.

The article is too rich to fully cover in a posting like this, which is why I will again encourage you to read the entire thing. Let me note a couple of things that caught my attention. TFA now does more training and support of its candidates, including having relationships with a number of schools/colleges of education (which as Miner notes seems to be contrary to the original goal of taking bright graduates and putting them in with little training in the belief that they could still make a difference). What further caught my attention is that some of the training of their candidates is paid for my our tax dollars: members receive tuition towards a masters through Americorp, to the tune of a $4,725 annual educational award. Now, were those receiving that training all committed to remaining in the inner city schools in which they serve I might not object, but for many even this is still but a step on the way to something else, perhaps business school or law school. Of the three members TFA arranged for Miner to interview in St. Louis (out of the total of 183 in public and charter schools), only one was committed to staying beyond the requisite two years, and even she is thinking beyond the classroom: she will spend five years teaching while earning masters in education and educational administration, then go to law school, and then . . .? As this teacher, Melinda Harris, notes

“I can honestly say, what I have learned I could use in another profession: the networking, the time management and organizational skills.”

And of course the ever-present alumni network will help her with whatever goals beyond the classroom she decides to pursue.

One problem with TFA and how it selects its teachers is the mismatch between teachers and students.

In 2008 about 10 percent of corps members nationwide were African American, and about 7.5 percent were Latino; overall, almost 29 percent are people of color. Figures for the TFA staff are similar. TFA classrooms, meanwhile, are about 90 percent African American and Latino.

In theory, there is not necessarily a stumbling block between having white middle class teachers in a predominantly minority school – I and a majority of the teachers in my school are white, while we are a minority majority school. But there are differences. First, while we have students from a variety of economic circumstances, they are still predominantly middle class. Second, our teachers are committed to the school: an art teacher who passed away earlier this week had been there since the building opened in the 1970s. I arrived at the school in 1998, and in my department of 17 teachers there are 5 who were there when I arrived.

Further, 7,500 is a drop in the ocean of millions of teachers. Even if we look at the needs of inner-city and rural schools with high degrees of poverty, we needs hundreds of thousands of teachers. It is not clear to me, or to anyone who has seriously and dispassionately studied TFA, that it provides any kind of useful model for how we serve the millions of children in such schools. The article includes a separate box which has some remarks from Barnett Berry, who coincidentally is co-founder of the Teacher Leaders Network of which I am a member. Barnett acknowledges that a Teach for America Recruit might well be better than the uncertified substitute that a child in an inner city school might otherwise have, and of course we should encourage bright and enthusiastic young people to take on the task of such educational settings. Let me quote 3 paragraphs from that box, so that you get the full impact of Berry’s concerns:

“But,” Berry continues, “to suggest that TFA is the solution to the nation’s teaching quality gap is misguided at best.”

Berry likens the TFA recruits to sprinters—talented athletes, but insufficient if one wants to build a well-rounded track team. “TFA gets its recruits ready for a sprint, not a 10K or a marathon,” Berry notes. “They look like they are working harder than the veteran teachers. But the veteran teacher has experience and knows that if you want to make a career of teaching, a sprinting pace will burn you out.”

Because TFA recruits aren’t expected to stay, they have two other advantages: they cost less and they tend to do what they are told. “By and large, they don’t raise questions,” Berry notes.

they don’t raise questions – we already have a problem that the voices of teachers are often not part of the discussions about educational policy. Teacher Leaders Network is one attempt to try to change that, and one of my compatriots, Anthony Cody, organized the Letters to the President effort that led to a large Facebook group that is now leading to a conversation with Secretary of Education Duncan. But by and large those of us who are committed to remaining in the classroom have to struggle to get our voices heard. That may explain some of the hostility one experiences from professional educators towards Teach for America – we see those with little teaching experience, sometimes not all that effective, suddenly being turned to as the experts on how to “fix” education when the voices of those whose efforts will be needed for the success of any meaningful reform continue to be excluded.

Teach for America requires a 2-year commitment. The statistics on those completing the commitment are somewhat inflated by TFA – in 2007 only 87% of those who should have been completing the 2 years actually were, and as Miner notes, the completion rate was lower in earlier years. Further, TFA claims that a survey of its alumni (who are supposed to include only those who completed the 2 years) shows “more than two-thirds of Teach for America alumni are working or studying full-time in the field of education.” The accompanying graph shows 50% of these as teachers. But as Miner notes, only 57% of those defined as alumni responded to the survey, and we have no figures on the 43% who did not. Further,

the field of education is loosely defined to include everything from working with a nonprofit advocacy group to getting a graduate education degree. . . . there is no sense of whether those who responded to the survey tended to be recent alumni, perhaps only a year past their initial commitments and more likely to be in graduate school or teaching for a third year, or older alumni who have moved on to other careers.

This is perhaps an appropriate time to remind those of you still reading of Miner’s title, which includes the words Looking Past the Spin. Teach for America has been very successful in gaining favorable coverage from Main Stream Media. I have read the results of the survey to which Miner refers in several major newspapers, both in news stories and opinion pieces, yet I had not before her article seen the details of that survey properly deconstructed and analyzed. The positive spin the organization receives is continued with the reflected glory by its alumni who go on to other challenges that are also often not examined as critically as they should be. Thus we have seen favorable news coverage of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools, founded by TFA alums Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, coverage that has now lead to a positive book by Washington Post writer Jay Mathews, who had previously written about Jaime Escalante (full disclosure – I have known Jay since 1998, and consider him a friend, even though I disagree with his evaluation of KIPP), and of course, former TFA’er and now Chancellor of DC Public Schools Michelle Rhee (whose ex-husband and father of her children, Kevin Huffman, is now Executive Vice President of Public Affairs for TFA and, oh by the way, just so happened to win the Washington Post’s Next Great Pundit contest.

What concerns many of us committed to public education is the outsized influence and voice TFA and its people have. Let me quote two brief paragraphs from Miner to attempt to illustrate the reasons for my concern.

First,

Twenty years ago, before TFA had placed a single teacher in a single school, there were glowing articles in the New York Times, Newsweek, and Time, and a segment on Good Morning America. The media love-fest with TFA has never stopped, extending to soft publications always eager for a feel-good story, such as Reader’s Digest and Good Housekeeping. When TFA founder Kopp calls Thomas Friedman at the New York Times, he not only answers her call, but also quotes her extensively (see Friedman’s April 22, 2009, column).

And then, this:

Some 27 TFA alumni are currently in office, nine more are running for office, and more than 700 are interested in “pursuing political leadership.” TFA has a goal of 100 elected officials in 2010.

Stop and consider that for a moment. A publicly stated goal of elected officials.

I know teachers who have pursued public office directly from their classrooms – both Tim Walz of MN and Larry Kissell of NC were elected to the US House of Representatives directly from their social studies classrooms. Former Rep. Wayne Gilchrest of MD was, like me, both a former Marine and a social studies teacher. We have had presidents who served as teachers – Lyndon Johnson began his work career teaching poor children (largely Hispanic) in Texas, an experience which certainly shaped his agenda in the Great Society while serving as our Chief Executive.

Still, I would hope that we would be encouraging gifted, bright, enthusiastic people who can teach to remain in schools. I think we should be reshaping the teaching profession so one does not have to leave the classroom to make an adequate living. That SOME may go on to administration, or school boards, or even elective or appointive office is fine, but I question if that should be the goal. I wonder how that actually contributes to making our schools better for the children who so desperately need our help.

It seems as if political power is important to those involved with TFA. This became evident during the putting together of the Obama administration. Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford had been one of the principal advisors on education during the campaign, and had headed up the transition team on education. For many, she was a logical choice for Secretary of Education. She had served as an inner city school teacher, and in her years in academia had participated in many important initiatives about teaching and education. But she was the principal author of a study that had been critical of TFA, and she was vociferously opposed by the TFA network. For what it is worth, one does not have to be a TFA alumni to participate in politics, and living as I do just outside our national capital I take full advantage of proximity to develop relationships. I heard both personally and via the internet of the organized campaign against Darling-Hammond, the roots of which were solidly within TFA and its alumni.

Let me return to Miner’s article. I previously mentioned Kevin Huffman. Miner interviewed him. He made clear that the two-year commitment, about which I and so many are critical, is key to TFA’s theory of change. Let me quote two relevant paragraphs:

I struggled to remember media references to this “theory of change.” What was this theory? “That we will bring in great people who will have a tremendous impact on the kids they are teaching and who will go on for the rest of their careers to have an impact on root causes that cause the gap in educational outcomes in this country,” Huffman explained.

I noted that TFA’s theory of change sounded top-down and that it left out the voices and perspectives of the communities who were supposed to benefit. I could sense Huffman’s frustration. “I think that misapprehends our theory of change,” he said. This wasn’t just an educational policy initiative, he noted, because TFA hoped that alumni would enter other fields such as medicine and law and make equally important contributions. “We are decidedly nonpartisan and apolitical about what our alumni are pursuing or pushing,” he said. “We have a belief that our alumni have had an experience that will help them make better decisions.”

By now I hope I have convinced you of some of the riches of Barbara Miner’s piece. But there is much more. She examines the 501(c)4 that is used in what seems a strange fashion to advance the agenda of TFA. She also talks with people on the political and educational left who raise concerns about TFA, most notably Mike Rose and the late Howard Zinn (who is honored in the same issue as this article in Losing our Favorite Teacher). Zinn’s words are important:

“The idea of bringing in ‘great’ people, ‘important’ people, is counter to the idea of a democratic education,” he wrote. “And all the insistence on not taking policy stands, not having an ‘ideology,’ is simply naïve. Not taking policy stands is itself an ideology, and an ideology which reinforces the status quo in education and in society.”

I am firm believer that one function of our schools should be democratic empowerment, especially of those we teach. It is one reason I have explored rethinking (now there’s an appropriate word, eh?) how we design, structure, and operate our schools. One might hope that those who teach in public schools would have similar aspirations for our students, and thus might model it themselves. Which is why a recent study from Stanford is quite illuminating. On the question of civic engagement, the study

found that TFA alumni actually had lower rates of civic involvement than those who were accepted by TFA but declined, and also had lower rates than those who dropped out before their two years were completed, according to a summary in the New York Times.

Miner also follows the money – the sources of funding for TFA. I will let you explore this section of the article on your own. She also explores a study of TFA teachers at which she was pointed by a TFA exec, and which was done by Mathematica. I suppose the exec cited the Mathematica piece because it offered some criticism of the study led by Darling-Hammond which caused such hostility towards the Stanford Prof from TFA circles. Let me offer just a snip from that sidebar:

I went to the Mathematica study and, quite frankly, wondered why TFA was promoting it. I imagined how the Onion might summarize the study: “Teach for America goes up against the worst teachers in the country—they’re both awful!”

Let me offer a couple of other snips to give you a sense of the depth of this article.

In a cover story last fall, Business Week put TFA at the number seven spot in its top 10 listing of “The Best Places to Launch a Career,” just after Goldman Sachs and just before Target.

TFA, meanwhile, actively promotes the value of joining its teaching corps, especially for those thinking of graduate school or immediately transitioning to a corporate job. Its website boasts of TFA’s partnership with over 150 graduate schools offering TFA alumni benefits such as two-year deferrals, fellowships, course credits, and waived application fees. The most popular schools for TFA alumni are Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Northwestern, and the University of California-Berkeley—with Harvard the overall top choice.

Its employer partners, which actively recruit TFA alumni, are equally prestigious and include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, KPMG, Credit Suisse, McKinsey and Company, and Google. TFA partners in its School Leadership Initiative for alumni, meanwhile, include the for-profit Edison Schools. (TFA founder Kopp has nothing but praise for Edison in her memoir. She is also open to the idea of vouchers.)

So, TFA becomes a ticket-punching stop on the way to a more “important” and lucrative career outside of teaching, with the added benefit that the alum can feel as if s/he has done a good deed and is now also an expert on education?

TFA is big business: “TFA had revenues of $159 million in fiscal year 2008 and expenses of $124.5 million.” Remember, this is for a total of about 7,500 actually in classrooms. Do the math . . .

TFA is lucrative for its executives:

CEO and founder Wendy Kopp made $265,585, with an additional $17,027 in benefits and deferred compensation. She also made an additional $71,021 in compensation and benefits through the TFA-related organization Teach for All. Seven other TFA staffers are listed as making more than $200,000 in pay and benefits, with another four approaching that amount.

Let’s return to Kopp’s praise for Edison, Chris Whittle’s failed attempt at a for profit chain of schools in the public sector, which lost contracts in multiple cities for failure to perform, whose stock was about to be delisted by NASDAQ when it was propped up when then Governor Jeb Bush of Florida used money from the pension fund of Florida teachers to buy shares and thus prop up the stock price. Kopp just happens to be married to Richard Barth, a former Edison VP (and TFA staffer) who just so happens to be president and CEO of the Kipp foundation. As Miner notes, the joint salary of this new power couple in education is over 600,000/year.

Miner also examines Wendy Kopp’s memoir, of which she notes that the only time a school child is mentioned by name is briefly, about 20 pages from the end. I want to react to this.

I need permission to use the names or identifying information of my current students, or students who were minors at the time they were in my classroom. Yet if I think about the times I write about education here or elsewhere, it is not at all unusual for me to mention one or more specific students in a piece of 2,500 words or less. After all, as a teacher I believe my focus is the individual student before me: that is where I must start and that should be the standard by which my effectiveness should be measured. It bothers me that Kopp can opine as an expert on education with little reference to individual students. Perhaps that is because the focus of her organization seems to be on the teachers/future alumni more than it is on the children they should be serving. I admit it, that bothers me.

Barbara Miner is a very effective writer. And an effective writer best skewers a target using that target’s own words. I believe the conclusion to Miner’s piece properly frames, using Wendy Kopp’s own words, what is wrong with the TFA model, which requires only a 2-year commitment to teaching.

So let me conclude using Miner’s words, and in advance wish you my final salutation:

Peace.

But what if one accepts TFA’s assumptions—that its purpose is purely to address educational inequity by recruiting the best and the brightest, training them briefly, and having them teach for two years in a low-income school? And that its model trumps the value of recruiting accredited teachers who view teaching as a career?

Given that the revolving door of unqualified teachers is a key factor in the poor performance of many low-income schools, what are the repercussions of those assumptions? Is TFA aggravating a problem that it claims to be solving?

It is Kopp herself who perhaps best answers that question. Speaking in a 2007 commencement speech at Mt. Holyoke College, Kopp said:

What I have come to appreciate is that things that matter take time. We live in an era when it is rare to meet people in their 20s and 30s who have stayed with something for more than a few years. And certainly, in some cases the right thing is to experiment and move on. But in many cases, the right thing is to stay with something, internalize tough lessons, and push yourself to new levels of knowledge and responsibility. Deep and widespread change comes from sticking with things.

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Creative Thinking in the Classroom, Part 2

April 12th, 2010 by Kevin Washburn View Comments »

Time. Is there a greater challenge for educators? It seems like instructional time is often the target of well-meaning but time-devouring programs. Assemblies, pep rallies, fund-raising motivational events, and those intercom announcements eat precious minutes, and these are on top of an already bloated curriculum. As a result, we tend to eliminate anything that has a whiff of being extraneous.

One major casualty: creative thinking. However, as I discussed in Part 1, for the brain creative thinking is not just the predecessor to producing art. It is a means of deepening understanding. In other words, creative thinking is a cognitive gateway to deeper, more meaningful learning. Let’s examine how learning can spark creative thinking, which can lead to deeper learning.

Learning involves four “core processes,” two of which are comprehension and elaboration. If learning proceeds in a straightforward fashion—experience→comprehension→elaboration→application—it can bypass opportunities for creative thinking. This is unfortunate because learning can spark creative thinking:

The resulting understanding prompts a creative curve. The mind says, “Wait a minute! Let’s explore that again, but this time from a different perspective, or with a different reference point, or in multiple dimensions, or by combining it with _____.” Neuroscientist and writer Gregory Berns describes this as “reverse perception.” Creative thinking, claims Berns, “comes from using the same neural circuits used to perceive natural objects,” but in reverse. Instead of perceiving what is and acting on it, the mind seeks what else could be. The individual re-explores the new data, returning to comprehension to disorganize, relabel, and re-sort the data in a different way. This difference may be in perspective, in scale, in dimension, or in any ways that alter initial thinking about the data. For example, the creative individual may engage a creative tool (e.g., drawing an analogy) or explore representational variety (e.g., a multiple intelligences approach, such as representing verbal data in a musical or spatial form).1

This figure shows the “creative curve.”

When given the opportunity to re-explore understandings, the brain often engages in re-comprehension, the sorting of critical details, and re-elaboration, the recognition of new patterns. These new patterns may be new, unique, creative. As the individual examines these new patterns, methods of expressing them may come to mind. These possible expressions are then examined for potential, and if deemed effective, the individual may proceed to producing a creative product. At this point the individual’s skills in the chosen medium come into play—i.e., an experienced and capable painter will likely produce work of a higher quality than the novice. However, both beginner and master benefit from the thinking preceding the expression because it’s the thinking that deepens understanding of the original topic.

Note that learning and creative thinking are actually overlapping processes. Both engage
(re-)comprehension and (re-)elaboration, and as a result, both have the potential to deepen understanding. If deep learning of subject matter is the goal, creative thinking can help achieve it.

Also note that creative thinking requires time and space. If learning proceeds too efficiently, opportunities for creative thinking are lost. Challenging students to revisit subject matter, reorganize its details in different schemes, and explore those reorganizations for new patterns can initiate creative insights. Those insights contribute to deeper learning.

When creative thinking leads to creative products, another opportunity for deepening learning is generated:

…creative works can deepen learning in the classroom. For example, Erica, a middle school teacher, has her students develop a series of symbols to summarize a work of literature. For example, one student summarizes Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in a series of three symbols: a tightly clenched hand, that same hand with three different colored streaks of light surrounding it and a large timepiece in the background, and finally an open hand extending forward. The results become new data for the other students. As they examine the symbols, the students reprocess the details of the literature, consider the connection between the story and the symbol, and make a decision regarding the symbol’s effectiveness. This reprocessing—interacting with the symbols as if they were ‘another person’—mirrors learning’s core processes, engaging recall and thought about the original stimulus. This rethinking fosters deeper learning of the subject matter.2

There are also implications for our teaching. Want to be creative in your instructional design? Your brain needs the time and space to explore the subject matter—to reorganize it, search for new patterns, and apply the resulting insights to teaching plans. Unfortunately this time and space is probably the biggest challenge to our teaching more creatively. One way I deal with this is to look ahead and identify the major upcoming instructional units. This look ahead creates a space between what I’m currently teaching and what I will be teaching and gives my mind time to explore the subject matter in ways that enable creative thinking.

Getting away from my normal work space seems to help. Many of my creative ideas find me during morning runs. Actually, research suggests such a change of scenery increases the likelihood of creative thinking:

Sometimes a simple change of environment is enough to jog the perceptual system out of familiar categories. This may be one reason why restaurants figure so prominently as sites of perceptual breakthroughs…When confronted with places never seen before, the brain must create new categories. It is in this process that the brain jumbles around old ideas with new images to create new syntheses.3

Creative thinking and learning are complementary processes. Learning enables creative thinking, and creative thinking deepens learning. This is why my target-based organization of thinking does not include a separate ring devoted to creative thinking. I see creative thinking as a type of learning. As such, teaching students to think creatively is critical if we seek to develop self-directed learners. Add skill in expression, such as the methods and approaches taught via the arts, and we’ll be graduating creative thinkers with the skills to engage the world through art—or at least bring artful expression to their lives and work.

Sources

  1. Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 231-232.
  2. Ibid., 234-235.
  3. Berns, G., Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2008), 33.

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Why Are 25 Hedge Fund Managers Worth 658,000 Teachers?

April 10th, 2010 by teacherken View Comments »

That is the question Les Leopold asks in this Huffington Post entry.

Here is his opening paragraph:

In 2009, the worst economic year for working people since the Great Depression, the top 25 hedge fund managers walked off with an average of $1 billion each. With the money those 25 people “earned,” we could have hired 658,000 entry level teachers. (They make about $38,000 a year, including benefits.) Those educators could have brought along over 13 million young people, assuming a class size of 20. That’s some value.

Leopold writes

The wealthy will have placed an estimated $2 trillion into hedge funds by the end of this year. (That’s about $6,500 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.)

And there is more. . .

It is now tax time, so consider also this: income from hedge funds is not taxed as ordinary income, but as capital gains, 15%. As a teacher at the upper end of the pay scale,my incremental rate is 28%, or almost twice the rate of the income from surplus funds of the rich placed in hedge funds. And of course I pay 7.65% in payroll taxes, making my burden 35.65% compared to the 15% on the earnings from investments in hedge funds.

I think we face a crisis in this country. This year rather than hiring hundreds of thousands of new teachers to teach our young, the future of this nation, schools will be laying off tens of thousands of teachers, increasing class sizes, dropping electives, eliminating support services, perhaps canceling extra-curricular activities.

But in time of major financial crisis for the entire nation, the super rich continue to get rich, without necessarily contributing anything of value to the economy.

And you and I paid for it. Don’t believe me? Let me quote Leopold again:

The $1 billion each those 25 hedge fund managers netted (for themselves) was impressive — but doing it in the year 2009 was also slap in the face of struggling Americans. That’s because hedge funds would have earned little or no money at all in 2009 had the government not bailed out the financial sector with trillions in loans, asset guarantees and other forms of financial assistance. It was, in effect, a generous gift from we the taxpayers. Much of that money was “earned” by betting that the government would not let the financial sector collapse. Smart bet.

I know of one manager who put tons of money into bank stocks when they were at their bottom, gambling that the government would not let them fail. The money he invested did not contribute to hiring more people at the banks. In fact, the money he invested did not go to the banks at all. It was our money, through the government, which recapitalized the banks (at the same time they still were restricting loans, and slashing lines of credit for companies and individual’s credit cards).

Each hedge fund manager was, according to Leopold, worth 26,320 beginning teachers.

I make more than a beginning teacher. As a public employee, what I am paid by Prince George’s County Public Schools is a matter of public record. My base pay is 83,000 and I get 7,000 for being National Board Certified. If I take that 90K and divide it into the 1 billion averaged by each of the 25 hedge fund managers, I am worth 1/11,111 of a hedge fund manager. Restated as a decimal, as a highly regarded teacher who each year is responsible for the learning of around 180 young people, I am worth 0.00009 of a hedge fund manager.

Now, I am not asking to be paid billions, or even millions. But quite frankly, I think I am actually contributing more to the future of this country than is the average hedge fund manager, unless the only value that matters is wealth, in which case, why bother to have skilled, experienced teachers like me at all, since most of students will never enter the rarified air of the very wealthy?

I can look back a few years at the fascination of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. I see our glorification of wealth and of power.

Yes, we will occasionally recognize those who do good works. We smile and say how nice it is that there are people like that, then as a society we move on – will Tiger win this year’s Masters? How much is Bill Gates actually worth?

Bill Gates. It is honorable that he is trying to use his wealth to make the world a better place. But why should his billions give him a more influential voice on education than the skilled professionals who have been trying to make a difference for years? Yet it does. Gates and Eli Broad have been driving the educational agenda using their wealth. Similarly, the US Department of Education is now using funds through Race to the Top to drive educational policy without those policies being any more vetted and discussed than have been the initiatives funded by Gates and Broad.

I began this diary with a question: Why are 25 Hedge Fund Managers Worth 658,000 Teachers? My answer is simple – they are not. But so long as we measure primarily by money, our values will continue to be distorted, we will devote resources that could be used to improve the lives of millions for the further enrichment of the already wealthy.

Don’t worry. I’m not so motivated by money that I will quit teaching and enter the world of hedge fund management. I would rather see the light go on behind the eyes of a struggling adolescent than be able to add a string of zeroes behind my currently very limited net worth.

The average teacher does more good than does the average hedge fund manager. Too bad our society does not see things that way.

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Teachers’ Voices Fall on Deaf Ears

April 6th, 2010 by Jason Flom View Comments »


Last night (April 5th) I attended the 8 hour Florida House Education Council Committee meeting on House Bill 7189 (HB7189), which is the companion to Senate Bill 6 (SB 6). While I never had a chance to testify, I left feeling both more inflamed by this legislation and more proud to be a member of this profession that I’ve been in a long time.

Over 120 people came to speak out against this bill (which passed the committee and goes to the House floor this week). Most were teachers, but there were also parents, principals, superintendents, and representatives from PTA, School Board Association, and Civic Concern in attendance. There was bipartisan opposition with only partisan support among representatives.

Hour after hour I listened to teachers speak truth to power about schools, learning, and the reality of teaching in Florida. Teachers who have been teaching for 20, 30, and nearly 40 years offered their thoughts and insights, all of them speaking eloquently and passionately. They truly represented the best of our profession.

Common theme in many of their testimonies: Education in Florida is over-mandated and underfunded.

The question every representative supporting this draconian bill should have been asking them was this: How do we get more teachers like you in our state’s classrooms, and then what’s it going to take to get them to stay?

The main proponents speaking on behalf of the bill: Chamber of Commerce representatives, a spokesperson from Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s Future, and Florida’s Secretary of Education, Eric J. Smith.

I wondered why the Chamber of Commerce was so dedicated to this bill.

If they were in this for the best interest of students and the work force they would be citing the latest brain research, talking about creating innovative and engaging learning environments, and encouraging legislators to enact policies that provide students with meaningful learning experiences in which students apply skills in relevant contexts.

Their mantras would be:

  1. Let’s focus on job ready skills for helping Florida compete in a globalized world.
  2. Lets give these kids skills that can’t be shipped overseas.

Then, I found this clue in the evaluation of Florida’s Race to the Top application that shed light on the Chamber of Commerce’s intense interest:

A substantial amount of the resources requested are target(ed) to external vendors and contracted services as opposed to a systemic integration of the work into key functional units of the state department of education as well as other state agencies.

So . . . money will be pilfered from our schools and go to corporations . . .

How much money?

Well, turns out, while this bill does not begin the testing portion until the 2013-2014 school year. However, during the next three years districts are required to allocate 5% of their budgets for development of the measures used to assess teachers in order to reward them.

Code: Development of standardized tests.

This 5% amounts to $900 million dollars per year siphoned from our already cash strapped districts and funneled to private companies. Over the 3 year development period, that amounts to 2.7 billion dollars!

Let me repeat that: $2.7 billion from our schools — our classrooms — handed to the testing industry.

At a time when districts are forced to eliminate programs and services due to budget cuts, teachers are paying for supplies out of pocket, and students are forced to share textbooks because there are not enough for everyone, the legislature is mining schools to help companies profit.

There is a gross warping of education policy going on in Florida.

The Hillsborough Example

One irony in this dark comedy is that we have in our state an example of unions and policy makers working together to create a merit/performance pay plan that everyone can agree on.

Hillsborough County applied (and won) a $100 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create and implement a collaborative plan for differentiating teacher pay and measuring student growth.

In order to not negate the grant, legislators amended SB6 so that Hillsborough county would be exempt during the period of their grant.

Even so, numerous teachers from Hillsborough testified against HB7189 offering their district as an example of what can be accomplished when lawmakers and teachers work together. As a principal remarked to the committee, “Rather than exempting them, we ought to be following their leadership.”

Teachers are not against using standardized testing to measure growth. They aren’t against merit/performance pay.

What they are against:

  1. Being left out of major reform that does not include their input.
  2. State mandates that pillage from local districts’s limited funds to pay private companies.
  3. Reforms that do not promote meaningful learning.
  4. Deaf legislators.

It is time for Florida leadership to see the writing on the wall. This railroading of the bill disrespects the professionalism of educators. And when teachers and districts do not support or stand behind these reform measures recruitment efforts to attract and keep the best and the brightest to our classrooms will be severely undermined.

Image: Bluejayway67

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An Easter Monday Proclamation of Liberation

April 6th, 2010 by Ira Socol View Comments »

cross-posted at SpeEdChange

The General Post Office, O'Connell Street, Dublin, Republic of Ireland.

On Easter Monday, 1916, a group of Irish patriots seized Dublin’s General Post Office and other key, symbolic points in the city, and proclaimed the independence of the Irish Republic.

The Easter Rising Éirí Amach na Cásca lasted seven days and ended with the British Empire murdering the greatest leaders of a generation in Ireland in a yard at Kilmainham Gaol. But those events began not just Ireland’s liberation from Britain but the entire 20th Century of Liberation which would sweep across Africa and Asia for the next 60 years. Tiny Ireland became not just a symbol, but a literal exporter of revolution to the globe -- the leaders of national liberation movements -- from the Jews of Palestine to the Vietnamese, from Indians to Kenyans, came to learn  how to free themselves from their oppressors from Michael Collins -- the Easter Rising survivor who led Ireland to victory in the Anglo-Irish War -- and his lieutenants.

This is not about Irish history, though, this is about education.

On the night of Easter Sunday 2010 a few of us gathered electronically to battle with the Governor of New Jersey, Christopher Christie, an extremely wealthy ex-federal prosecutor elected as a Republican in 2009. The Governor, allowing his $60,000-per-year paid twitterer to spend the holiday with his family, was on Twitter himself, explaining why his first mission as governor is to cut teacher pay and funding for education in his state. (see the conversations, with @mritzius, with @lgesin, with me, and the Gov himself)

The Governor, not unexpectedly, comes across as a series of Fox News talking points, constantly demanding “shared sacrifice” -- though the sharing extends neither to himself nor his class of taxpayers, who typically live in New Jersey to avoid the actual tax bills they’d receive in New York or Pennsylvania, and insisting that New Jersey needs a solution to its extraordinarily high property taxes while refusing to consider any actual solution to that (an increased sales tax or VAT, a rise in the top marginal rates for New Jersey’s income tax). In fact, he is simply bullying the teachers, the group charged with developing New Jersey’s future, because he knows that their commitment to their students makes them unlikely to strike or otherwise really resist.

When “reformers” in America today talk about education, they are, of course, not discussing students or children or learning or development -- they are talking about political economics. They are interested in “efficiencies” not to make schools better, but to make government smaller. They are too often interested in Charter Schools not as innovative examples which lead to new thinking, but as a way to bust some of the last remaining American unions. They are interested in “choice” not for opportunity, but to continue the vicious racial and class divides in the United States. Yes Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, Joel Klein, Mike Bloomberg, Arne Duncan, Paul Vallas, Chris Christie -- I am talking about you.

On the same evening, Pam Moran, a Virginia school superintendent, posted a wonderful statement on the always fascinating Edurati Review on why we need to move our conversations about true educational re-design to the “front channel.” For, in our backchannels, on Twitter and elsewhere, we spend our time discussing re-design, how to make education work for the most kids in the most places, how to move beyond a system designed to fail kids to one which moves kids forward, how to inspire and support teachers to be their best, how to bring parents in -- in all the best ways. And these conversations are great and powerful, but they are hidden, as Pam says, from the “mainstream media” and the current political conversation, and that is a recipe for disaster.

Education is a colonial project -- oh, not always as obviously or viciously as Teach for America or the KIPP schools -- but it is a colonial project. The idea is to take our children and convert them to the uses of our society. And how our schools do that literally determines our collective future. We live in an American society right now in which everyone from the President on down denigrates teachers as somehow greedy, lazy, badly trained, irresponsible people. We send our children off to schools after the President has applauded firing their teachers, after Governors call teachers greedy. We defer maintenance in schools, we close schools, we refuse to equip schools with the technologies used everywhere else on the planet, we reduce education to filling in multiple choice bubbles on standardized tests -- and then we are shocked -- “shocked,” as Casablanca‘s police chief said, that kids don’t care and don’t do well during their school day.

So, today, Easter Monday 2010 we need a new Proclamation of Educational Liberation.

Today we must say that we will stand up for our children and our future. We will do it aggressively and publicly. Today we must say we will challenge our “leaders” -- Governor Christie, why do lawyers in New Jersey outearn teachers? Isn’t teaching, isn’t bringing up our children, the most important thing we as a society do? Governor Christie, shouldn’t you and Bill O’Reilly pay a bit more of your income in taxes so teachers can earn a decent living, kids can go to great schools, and middle class families can afford property taxes? President Obama, can you please stop calling education a “race” -- races have winners and losers, and we want all of our kids to succeed. Texas “Education” Leaders, please stop using schools for indoctrination and use them to help children grow in to critical thinkers. Mr. Duncan, please stop equating test scores with learning.

We need to raise these questions and challenges every day, to every leader, to demand that they break from their talking points and explain what they mean and why they mean it. We need to engage them on Twitter, on blogs, in letters to the newspaper, in phone calls to radio stations, in letters to reporters and editors and TV anchors demanding better conversations. We must bring this all to that “front channel.”

But we have to do more than that. Padraig Pearse played to the grand stage in the Easter Rising and set the spark, but Michael Collins took to the hills and won the war, and we must do the same. Stop being circumspect. Talk to your neighbors, your friends, your families. Speak up at church or synagogue or your yoga retreat. We must change the national conversation not just from the top down but from the bottom up. We must explain our visions of education, and our passion for education, to all who we can get to listen. Because this really, really matters.

Americans have always been conflicted about education and educated people. This might be the only place in the world where we might think someone “too smart” to lead us, the only place where “I’d like to have a beer with him” trumps “how smart he/she is” in electing a president. And without the history of clergy/teachers that Europe and other continents have, Americans have always had minimal respect for teachers. Back in the mid-19th Century Henry Barnard wanted women as teachers because he could pay them less and listen to them less -- and that was a bad start. The other “professions,” lawyers, doctors, architects -- almost entirely male around 1900 -- raised their statuses and their salaries through exclusive organizations, teachers -- mostly female -- were left scrambling to create industrial-style unions to meet their role in industrialized education. So teachers, who have more education behind them than lawyers, work longer hours than lawyers, and are far more essential to the general society than lawyers, get less respect and much less income. And we often build schools as concrete block bunkers because it is cheap, while our restaurants are far more engagingly designed -- thus we are fat and stupid.

So, if there is to be another “American Century” we must be better. We must make education desired, respected, and fundamentally understood. And if we don’t do it, who will?

“We will loft education anew when we generate an ever-increasing ratio of educators who believe in a mission to create spaces of inspiration for learners and learning.  It will take more than 1 or 10 percent of us speaking the poetic and political voices of passion, joy, and drive to create those spaces in which young people and educators can thrive in these contemporary days. Our vision must become a vision of lift, influence, and power that creates a front channel for our voices, shifting us out of the backchannel.  We need our best educational technologists, our courageous leaders, our creative geniuses to create the front channel we must become. It’s our job, and our time, to increase the inspiration ratio in every community in this nation.” -- Pam Moran

Padraig Pearse and his compatriots were shot to death for their efforts. I’m not asking for that -- just for a bit of time, a bit of discomfort, a bit of effort.

This is something we must do.

- Ira Socol

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The Pendulum or the Butterfly?

April 4th, 2010 by Pam Moran View Comments »

What compels us? Pulls us? Catalyzes us? Connects us? Who are we and what are we doing in this profession? In this public sector? In this institution we call school? Why do some of us keep coming back, day after day, year after year, decade after decade until we look back and realize that we accomplished something called a career; even as we watched others go silently into the night across those years? Why do some of us keep pulling ourselves up and off the floor of the ring to continue on to the next round, in spite of our bruises and the blood we spill?

What binds – us – together?

Recent blog posts, twitter conversations, and #edchat discussions center the language of educators who attempt to answer these questions.  Some capture the cadence of our conversation with the sometimes painful, sometimes achingly beautiful words and images of a poet. Others of us debate with impassioned, but crisp, political analysis and question whether we must return to another swing of our own perverse Newtonian pendulum. Or, is it possible, this time, we become the quantum butterfly whose beating wings shift air currents across this nation, creating a learning world that we could never have envisioned in isolation of each other?

Backchanneling as friends and peers, I fear we watch from the outside as the next sentence is being written in the his/herstory of American Education.  We know well the drafting, revision, and editing processes in which our communities, our states, and nation now engage. We understand how mainstream media, political positions, new policy, new legislation, budget deliberations, and public hearings give voice to those who attempt to define the some, the all, of us. In parallel universes, two conversations exist. Ours, a backchannel voice exploring the meaning of words like passion, joy, drive, inspiration, learning, democracy. Theirs, a public voice of market share, votes, rules, money, incentives, brand placement, status quo rhetoric.

The intersection of these voices juxtaposes the pendulum and the butterfly. Both objects of motion- one coldly inanimate, the other joyfully alive. One defined by the freedom to move at will, the other by external control. One mechanized. The other, part of the ecosystem. In most ways, the current story of public education represents our commitment to Newtonian physics, the classical mechanization of the industrial school pendulum that many of us and our public hold dear. But, in the backchannel, our quantum butterfly wings unfold; with each pump of fluid we weigh our potential to take flight.  So, what will give lift to our backchannel voices? Will it be new legislation, policy, funding, political voices? I think not.

We will loft education anew when we generate an ever-increasing ratio of educators who believe in a mission to create spaces of inspiration for learners and learning.  It will take more than 1 or 10 percent of us speaking the poetic and political voices of passion, joy, and drive to create those spaces in which young people and educators can thrive in these contemporary days. Our vision must become a vision of lift, influence, and power that creates a front channel for our voices, shifting us out of the backchannel.  We need our best educational technologists, our courageous leaders, our creative geniuses to create the front channel we must become. It’s our job, and our time, to increase the inspiration ratio in every community in this nation. Otherwise, we must accept again the next push of the educational pendulum and forget the potential of the butterfly.

“If not us, who? If not now, when?” Governor George Romney to the Michigan Legislature (9/20/63)

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Creative Thinking in the Classroom, Part 1

April 1st, 2010 by Kevin Washburn View Comments »

Sirens seize our attention. They scream, “Crisis!” and we scan the horizon or media streams to secure the details.

Despite their obvious function, sirens do little to actually address the emergencies they signal. After awareness is achieved, sirens fall silent while those charged with solving problems shift into high gear. The perp is pursued, the fire is fought, the EMTs and ambulance crew care for the injured. It’s these individuals on the ground who address whatever triggered the siren’s screech across the airwaves.

Creativity has become the target of many sirens, pundits who find purpose in critiquing current educational practices. Some, such as Sir Ken Robinson, go so far as accusing education of killing students’ creativity. (By the way, this is not a criticism of Mr. Robinson. I appreciate his thinking, share his talks with others, and have read all of his books!) These sirens have served a purpose: educators are aware of and talking about the need to develop students’ creative capacities. However, many of us are not shifting into high gear to address this problem because we have not been equipped to do so. Returning to the analogy, if I am the first on an accident scene I’ll do what I can while praying for the EMTs to arrive soon. I’m simply not equipped to deal with serious injuries. And with all due respect, suggesting that more dance or drama be added to the curriculum does little to help the people “on the ground,” classroom teachers, foster creative thinking in students.

To explore creative thinking in the classroom we must first recognize that creativity is broader than the arts. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a HUGE supporter of arts in the schools. Music, drama, writing, architecture, and literature are major contributors to my life, and I’m learning to appreciate the arts not included in that list. I believe strongly that young people should receive regular experiences and instruction in the arts.

However, creative thinking is a valued process in nearly every field. The Root-Bernsteins realized this when they launched their ground-breaking research on creative thinking. From their penetrating study, the Root-Bernsteins identify “thinking tools” employed by creative individuals.1 These tools cross disciplines, showing creative breakthroughs in multiple professional fields. For example, a practicing biologist is just as likely to gain insight from analogizing as a sculptor of abstract artwork. The Root-Bernsteins show us that creative thinking possesses value beyond the stage and easel. Unfortunately findings from the study “Are They Really Ready to Work?” reveal that only 21 percent of American corporate leaders reported excellence in this area among recent college graduates seeking employment with their companies.”2 Nearly ⅘ of the corporate world is dissatisfied with the creativity new hires bring to the workplace. Creative thinking needs to be an emphasis in all of education, not just students’ training in the arts.

To integrate creative thinking into our teaching, we need answers to a few questions: 1) What do we know about creative thinking?, 2) Is there any relationship between creative thinking and learning?, and if so 3) How can we engage students in creative thinking while continuing to teach our required curriculum?

While much of what sparks creativity and the neurological processes that enable it remains a mystery, evidence suggests creativity includes a period of disorganization prior to creation. In the landmark book The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius, Dr. Nancy C. Andreasen hypothesizes:

…that during the creative process the brain begins by disorganizing, making links between shadowy forms of objects or symbols or words or remembered experiences that have not been previously linked. Out of this disorganization, self-organization eventually emerges and takes over in the brain. The result is a completely new and original thing: a mathematical function, a symphony, or a poem.3

My favorite description of this disorganization-reorganization process comes from architect Steven Holl, who writes:

In each project, we begin with information and disorder, confusion of purpose, program ambiguity, an infinity of materials and forms. All of these elements, like obfuscating smoke, swirl in a nervous atmosphere. Architecture is the result of acting on this indeterminacy.4

Perhaps the presence of “obfuscating smoke” is what prevents us from knowing more about creativity. However, it appears that a period of disorganization gives way to a period of defining and organizing, which is followed by a period of associating data with known concepts through which patterns begin to emerge.

If true, creativity shares some cognitive processes with learning. In fact, since learning involves the transformation of data into meaning, some researchers describe learning itself as a creative act. It is possible that these shared processes result, in part, from shared brain geography. As Science writer Greg Miller explains, researchers at University College London found that the hippocampus, a brain structure critical for forming new memories, is also essential for imagining scenes. Such findings “provide experimental evidence that memory and imagination may share neural circuitry.”5

These findings hold potential implications for us as educators.

First, if creative thinking promotes personal and professional success, it is something we should be addressing in schools. Sir Ken Robinson is right: “Creativity is possible in science, in technology, in management, in business, in music, in any activity that engages human intelligence.”6 As such, creative thinking should be one of the portals through which we engage students in our subject matter.

Second, if creativity and learning aren’t completely different languages—if, in fact, they share cognitive processes—then integrating creative thinking into learning should be possible. We should be able to design instruction that engages creative thinking that not only fosters its own development but also deepens the learning of our original subject matter.

We need to find ways to welcome the “obfuscating smoke” into our classrooms! We’ll explore some how-to ideas in the second post on this topic. Perhaps then we can silence, or at least dampen, some of the sirens.

By the way, these ideas are explored in depth Chapter 8 of The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain. Copies are available directly from Clerestory Press or through Amazon.com.

Sources

  1. Root-Bernstein, R. & Root-Bernstein, M., Sparks of Genius: The 13 Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People (Boston: Mariner Books, 2001), 118.
  2. Rappaport, J., Arts Skills are Life Skills. http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/06/12/arts_skills_are_life_skills/.
  3. Andreasen, N.C., The Creative Brain: The Science of Genius (New York: Penguin Group, 2005), 77-78.
  4. Holl, S., Phenomena and Idea. http://www.stevenholl.com/writings/phenomena.html.
  5. Miller, G., A Surprising Connection Between Memory and Imagination, Science, 315, (2007), 312.
  6. Robinson, K., Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative (Oxford, UK: Capstone Publishing, 2001), 10.

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Obama’s Blueprint for Education – Richard Rothstein criticizes

March 29th, 2010 by teacherken View Comments »

cross posted from Daily Kos

I have already weighed in on the Blueprint, in Obama’s “Blueprint” for education – why this teacher cannot support it. Today I want to call to your attention a very important critic by Richard Rothstein, whose current position is as a research associate at the Education Policy Institute, but who spent 1999-2002 as the national education columnist for The New York Times

On March 23 he posted A blueprint that needs more work at the EPI website. His is a balanced examination, but one that is nevertheless more critical than complimentary. I am going to urge that anyone interested in public education carefully read his entire critique. I am going to focus on several issues that caught my attention. I invite your continued reading.

A major focus of Rothstein’s critique is the administration’s emphasis on students being college ready upon graduation from high school. He actually begins by discussing the funding of college, something addressed in the recent reconciliation bill on health insurance reform. He compliments the administration for recognizing the need to make college more affordable/accessible, writing

It would be foolish to try to re-organize elementary and secondary education to make students “college-ready” if college itself becomes less affordable.

But let’s take a look at the goal of having students college ready. The Blueprint calls for all graduates to be college or career ready by 2020. This replaces the requirement of NCLB that all students be 100% proficient in reading and math in 2014. Let me quote how Rothstein embarks on exploring this topic:

The Blueprint’s overall theme is that by 2020 all students should graduate from high school “College and Career Ready.” Administration officials have explained that this entails the ability to gain admission to an academic college program without having to take remedial courses. (The addition of “Career” to “College Ready” is meaningless, because what the Administration intends to convey is that some students may choose to pursue a non-college career, but would still have gained the qualifications to enter an academic college program if they wished.) This is, perhaps, the most disturbing aspect of the Blueprint. It indicates that the Administration may have learned little from the NCLB experience.

He goes on to quote Duncan as describing the 100% proficiency requirement of NCLB as “utopian” and it is worth noting that those in the Congress knew it was not achievable, but did not believe you could move forward with a more achievable goal of say 75 or 80% proficient, certainly not in legislation labeled “No Child Left Behind.” Then after noting that a level of proficiency cannot be simultaneously “challenging” for students at the top and bottom of normal distribution, Rothstein offers three powerful paragraphs, which I think need to be offered in their entirety:

But aside from ridicule, NCLB’s adoption of this goal did great harm to public education. It created incentives for educators to lie to the public and claim that they could achieve something that they knew was unachievable. It created well-known incentives to “define down” proficiency, to make it possible for more students to pass themselves off as proficient. It engendered a culture of cynicism in public education, and it discredited public education in the broader community, as it became apparent that school leaders could not deliver what they were promising.

Any institution that sets an impossible goal runs the risk of such cynicism and loss of legitimacy.

The goal of all students college-ready by 2020 is just as fanciful as the goal of all students proficient by 2014. Today, perhaps 20 percent of all youth graduate high school fully prepared for academic college. It should certainly be higher. Aspiring to make it higher is a worthy ambition. But basing policy on a promise, or even an expectation, that we will quintuple this rate in a mere decade is laughable.

Thus, the key selling point for the Blueprint, the idea that all students will be career or college ready, is as unachievable – or if you will, false – as was NCLB’s goal of 100% proficiency. We are now at 20% ready for college. But basing policy on a promise, or even an expectation, that we will quintuple this rate in a mere decade is laughable. Which in my mind makes the entire proposal laughable.

There is so much more in this superb analysis of the Blueprint. Just on this point, while the administration tries to divert criticism by calling the goal aspirational, Rothstein cuts quickly to the chase. He notes that schools serving disadvantaged children will be most likely to fail this aspirational goal and continue to suffer sanctions just as under NCLB.

For these schools, the same cynicism, the same false promises, the same gaming, will be stimulated as occurred with NCLB.

Rothstein argues that middle class schools will be harmed by this, that the pressue to dumb down standards of readiness will parallel what happened to standards of proficiency, and then warns

Promising to make all students college-ready by 2020 is, in effect, an attack on the quality of America’s institutions of higher education.

Remember, this is on a key selling point of the administration’s education proposal. While Rothstein offers some compliments on parts of the Blueprint – funding some states to broaden their curricula and assessment, providing funds for support outside the regular school day – on the whole he is at least skeptical if not downright critical. Those who have read my post will again encounter criticisms of the administration’s shift away from formula-based programs, especially in a time of economic distress and pressu4e (and Rothstein properly credits the education funding in ARRA for having perhaps prevented the laying off of a third of a million teachers and other school employees).

There is more, much more in this 3219 word piece, which originally appeared as part of the group “blogging” effort on education at National Journal. As noted, I strongly urge people to read it.

In his penultimate paragraph, Rothstein offers this:

We can hope that the Administration thinks further about its proposals, and revises them as they proceed through Congress. It is, in any event, virtually certain that the Blueprint will not be adopted in its present design by this Congress, and perhaps not even by the next.

He may be correct. While the House (Miller) and Senate (Harkin) chairmen of the relevant authorizing committees might be inclined to give Obama what he wants on an issue he has said is important to him, they cannot control what their members think. When Duncan appeared on the Hill, most of the senior members of the House Committee were more than a little skeptical and challenging in their questions and commentary, and there were similar concerns offered by some of the senior Republicans, including ranking members Kline (House) and Enzi (Senate). Further, even if authorized, the proposal would have to be funded and House Appropriations Chair David Obey of Wisconsin made clear in his questioning of Duncan his unwillingness to go along merely because the President wants it. He is a 41 year member of the House, a close ally of Speaker Pelosi, who was trusted to preside over the House voting on the Senate Health Insurance Reform bill.

So perhaps I should end as does Rothstein. Here is his final paragraph:

This suggests an unintended benefit of the Blueprint. For the foreseeable future, Arne Duncan will continue to be responsible for administering NCLB. Having now gone on record that its provisions are seriously flawed and that compliance with them is doing American education great harm, the Secretary will have no coherent choice but to begin issuing wholesale waivers to states from compliance with the old law. If it accomplishes this much, the Blueprint will have done a great service.

In other words, like me, Rothstein really does not think much of the Blueprint.

So, what do you think?

Peace.

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