Posts Tagged ‘Education Reform’

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Miracle schools, vouchers and all that educational flim-flam

April 17th, 2011

is the title of this piece by Diane Ravitch. It appeared at the website of Nieman Watchdog of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, as part of the “Ask This” which is subtitled “Questions the Press Should Ask.” Oh if only reporters and writers on education were knowledgeable enough about education to ask questions such as those posed by Ravitch, perhaps we could cut through all the misleading and inaccurate information, the attempts to manipulate the public discourse on education to exclude the voices of those – including both Ravitch (a personal friend) and myself – who say that our supposed pattern of educational “reform” is like the emperor’s new clothes – there is no there there, as Gertrude Stein once opined of Oakland.

You should read Ravitch’s piece. To whet your appetite, let me offer Diane’s first paragraph here, and then explore a bit more below the fold:

Be skeptical of miracle schools. Sometimes their dramatic gains disappear in a year or two or three. Most such claims rely on cheating or gaming the system or on intensive test prep that involves teaching children how to answer test questions. These same children, having learned to take tests, may actually be very poorly educated, even in the subjects where their scores were rising.

Please keep reading.

Diane offers some very tough questions to consider. Understand that as an educational historian and as someone very involved in policy questions, the questions she poses are derived from the record, from extensive reading/research into the information that is actually available. For example:

When a charter school reports miraculous results, be sure to ask about the attrition rate. Some highly successful charters push out low-performing kids and their enrollment falls over the years (and the departing students are not replaced). Recently Arne Duncan hailed a “miracle” school in Chicago—Urban Prep—where all the students who graduated were accepted into college. But 150 students started and only 107 graduated. The 107 graduates had much lower test scores than the average for Chicago public school students. The school did a good job of getting the students into college (perhaps that was a miracle) but they were not better educated than students in the regular public schools.

In another instance, one of the “amazing” schools singled out by the 2010 documentary “Waiting for Superman” admits 140 students, but only 34 graduated. That’s a 75 per cent attrition rate. Some miracle.

Or try the brief paragraph before what I just quoted:

Whenever a district has a dramatic increase in test scores, look for cheating, gaming the system, intensive investment in test prep. Testing is NOT instruction. It is meant to assess instruction, not to substitute for it.

Take this points one at a time

cheating – explore the recent USA Today examination of test results in DC public schools under Michelle Rhee

gaming – the so-called Texas miracle on their state tests, given in tenth grade, was accomplished by holding back lower performing kids in 9th grade. Some were held back several times until they dropped out, and if they said they MIGHT get a GED, they were listed at having transferred to an alternative educational program, not as dropouts. Or perhaps after having been held back one year they were skipped to 11th on the grounds they had made so much progress. In either case, they were not tested. All this was documented BEFORE No Child Left Behind was passed into law, and people in Congress cannot say they were unaware. Walt Haney of Lynch College of Education at Boston College wrote about it, as did others, and a number of us passed on the literature to key people in Congress. Yet somehow Rod Paige won a superintendent’s award and got promoted to Secretary of Education, in part because of a claimed 90% graduation rate in Houston schools, when in reality only a bit over 40% of those entering 7th grade graduated with their cohorts.

intensive investment in test prep – these seems to be the pattern in a number of charter schools and some public schools claiming significant gains. But what evidence there is that the “gains” on tests are not maintained in subsequent grades, and students as they ascend the educational grades arrive less and less prepared to do the kind of work necessary to be successful even in a high school course of students, to say nothing of what is necessary in colleges, which is why post-secondary institutions have had to expand the number of places in remediation courses.

Ravitch remind us – at least those of us who have been paying attention – that improving pass rates on state tests may mean merely that states are manipulating their cut scores. It is possible to pass some state tests with less than half the questions answered correctly. Since all that are published are scaled scores, converted from raw scores, unless one can see the conversion formula, the scaled scores are subject to manipulation for all kinds of reasons, including the state (or school district for district wide tests) wanting to be able to show “success” or to avoid the politically unacceptable prospect of large numbers of students not being promoted or not graduating from high school.

Not all “studies” are peer-reviewed by independent scholars. Some are not even rigorous, as Ravitch points out about the claim by Carolyn Hoxby that students who spent 9 years in a NYC charter could close the achievement gap differential between, say, Harlem in inner city NY and Scarsdale, perhaps the wealthiest of the New York suburbs. As Ravitch writes:

The press gave that study huge attention and credibility, but no one noticed that there were very few students who had attended a charter in NYC for nine years or that Hoxby did not provide a number for the students who had closed the gap. It appears that her study was an extrapolation, and it was an extrapolation based on NYC and NY state’s inflated and unreliable test scores (see above). When NYC’s charter scores are reported, they range widely from very abysmal (a six per cent pass rate) to exceptional (100 per cent pass rate).

Ravitch also reminds us of the wisdom of the words spoken by Hal Holbrook in “All the President’s Men” – Follow the Money. In the case of education, we have the likes of Philip Anschutz, a billionaire who advocates for free market solutions (and for whom, I might mention, Michael Bennet worked before becoming Superintendent in Denver, and then a US Senator, and now apparently the successor in waiting to Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education). He was a funder of “Waiting for Superman” as was a man “previously CEO of a string of for-profit postsecondary institutions.” Similarly, the so-called Democrats for Education Reform has a board full of Wall St. hedge fund managers and big real estate moguls. Ravitch suggests asking why they are so interested in charters, and how they are connected with other ‘reform’ groups such as” Education Reform Now, Stand for Children, the state CAN organizations (e.g., ConnCAN), and a host of other groups promoting privatization and de-professionalization?” She also reminds us, as she did in her book, about the influence of the ‘billionaire boys’ club” of foundations such as Gates, Broad and Walton.

No high performing nations, as Ravitch reminds us, are pursuing the kinds of approaches we are seeing advocated by such groups and foundations, and unfortunately by the Obama administration. She challenges the administration with a number of questions, on continuing Bush administration accountability problems, on school choice, on merit pay (which lacks any supportive research base in education or in industry, and has clearly been shown to have no effect on test scores, which of course are the measurement of choice of the so-called reformers). Given the President’s recent remarks at Bell Multicultural High School in the District, in response to a question from a student, it is worth noting this question from Ravitch: Why does the president publicly say he is against standardized testing at the same time that his administration is demanding more emphasis on standardized testing?

Read Ravitch. Perhaps pass on the article to the editors, editorialists, and reporters dealing with education at your publication of choice.

Ravitch concludes her piece with simple statement:

Principles for reporters: Be skeptical; don’t believe in miracles; follow the money.

Perhaps were these principles followed, we might actually be able to have a meaningful public discussion on how to address the real needs and issues confronting our schools and our students.

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Emerging Trend: Superman Snubs the Justice League, Lex Laughs to the Bank

September 18th, 2010

NBC’s Education Nation confirmed their list of panelists for the upcoming education summit – none of whom are teachers and all of whom seem to take snaps from the same ed reform playbook. All except for the lone Randi Weingarten. She will play the role of Dissenting Voice in an ed reform narrative that is being ballyhooed across the nation. (Except where it’s not.)

It was important for event organizers to give Randi a place on the panel. The basic ed reform thesis, chronicled in the upcoming “Waiting for Superman,” begins with the idea that the school system & schools are broken, and that unionized teachers are where the faulty rubber meets the road. The trouble is, if the powers-that-be were to directly cast teachers as Lex Luthor their plan might backfire.

Who’s willing to place the failure of the American Education System on little old Mrs. Newton, teaching 2nd grade to generations of tots that loved her? That won’t sell well or bring in votes.

Enter unions stage left. Randi, as president of the American Federation of Teachers, has been a vocal critic of NCLB, RTTT, & the Fire-(Teachers)-At-Will squad of trigger happy reformers. As a teacher representative, she’s become the de facto Lightning Rod in the plot line that pits unions (as antagonists) against the great teachers the ed reformers (as protagonists) would deliver if only meddling teacher advocates would step aside.

For the NBC organizers, she needs to be a panelist in order to give the Gates’ League the whipping boy (girl) it requires.

The story goes like this: the unions enable the hordes of bad teachers who are responsible for keeping students from achieving. All the while the benevolent market forces of goodness & quality do their darnedest to right this wrong through superhero feats of privatizing, hiring & firing, and incentivizing teaching to the tests.

We are asked to buy into this plot-line and then jump to reformers’ same conclusions. Effectively, we are asked to leap these tall buildings, each in a single bound of reasoning:

  1. If we weigh the cattle more often, they’ll get fatter.
  2. Non-union teachers teach better.
  3. Charter schools = silver bullet against poverty & lack of parent involvement.
  4. Merit pay will be enough improve teacher “performance”. (A recent Vanderbilt study concludes otherwise.)

These unproven assumptions need more than super breath to blow me over. I’m just not convinced that these measures will lead to more professional educators & greater access to quality learning environments for all students.

The Bottom Line Variable

But what if they are wrong?

What if the fear mongering and hyperbolized “broken” metaphors that the media outlets have bought-into & hyped are the machinations of private stakes and bottom lines, rather than deep insights into poverty, parenting & learning? (That’s not to say there are not deeply rooted problems that need transforming. But “broken”?! That seems a slap in the face to the thousands who work in our nation’s schools.)

On his site, How the University Works, Marc Bousquet brings this point to light:

I’d like to see a few more of us start to question the objectivity of The New York Times and Washington Post, both corporations with increasingly large hopes that profits from their education ventures will prop up sagging journalism revenues. The Post, which owns Kaplan and shocked readers by blatantly pushing Kaplan’s legislative agenda in print and in person is already an education corporation that owns a newspaper as a sideline.

What is curious is that even Fox & Friends has discovered what the Chamber of Commerce and the Washington Post knew a long time ago: The Obama/Duncan algorithm for improving our nations’ schools has a hidden variable — profitability.

Non-union teachers + prepackaged curricula + (test x test x test) = Corporate Bling Package

Standardizing content across the country simplifies what all teachers teach, making it easier to . . .

Increase class size and save moola on teachers (especially the union-free teachers in charter schools who get paid less & have fewer benefits), which frees up money for . . .

Buying curricula in bulk from major textbook companies (which are more profitable to produce in larger numbers) which will necessitate. . .

Buying tests designed specifically for those prepackaged curricula, which will be justified because it will help  prepare students for . . .

Super-sized multiple-choice assessments to determine if teachers are teaching, which will . . .

Earn testing companies stacks of benjamins for administrating & scoring those tests, and has the added benefit of . . .

Determining which teachers should be fired, so newer, cheaper teachers can be hired, and more curricula can be bought to raise scores.

The private sector’s opportunity to profit handsomely from this brand of standardization has stockholders salivating & lobbyists scheming. The Chamber of Commerce, at the behest of former FL governor Jeb Bush (whose younger brother, Neil, profits from NCLB & RTTT), has become a testifying standard anywhere education reform is on the legislative docket.

It all makes me wonder if ed reform is being driven by Superman, or Lex Luthor.

What if we are asking the wrong questions?

What if the propagandized central conflict, Unions vs. Good Teaching, isn’t the central conflict after all? What if it is just a sub-plot? What if the problem is much more complex than that?

What if the central argument, “Pay great teachers for student achievement and great teachers will flock to the classroom” doesn’t hold water? What if the actual teachers we want teaching and shaping our youth are not the ones attracted by promises of pay for performance?

What if wooing and keeping great teachers requires a different sort of honey altogether?

Unfortunately, no-one is asking what it takes to attract (and retain) the truly innovative educators who can provide the transformative learning experiences that transcend race, gender, and socio-economic status. It seems assumed that bonuses, based on centralized high-stakes tests, will be enough.

In a tweet-versation with RiShawn Biddle (@DropoutNation), an education journalist and ed reform advocate, I asked if the current slate of reforms was likely to narrow the curriculum and decrease educator autonomy. He replied that it would, that it was necessary.  This made me wonder what it would take to attract and keep the best and the brightest (the most ambitious and well educated among us) to the field of teaching. So I asked him.

His response?

They need more than a paycheck. They need an environment which allows them to utilize their skills in new and creative ways. In essence, they need autonomy and the flexibility to work in a professional atmosphere where they have latitude.

And therein lies our paradox. We want/need the best and the brightest to embrace teaching as a profession, but our brand of ed reform vinegar (high stakes testing, value added firing, & standardized everything) is a hook without a worm. It doesn’t attract and/or keep the very candidates we need flocking to our schools.

Superman & the Justice League

We seem to hope that by testing the kryptonite out of students Superman will arrive. However, him being faster than a speeding bullet doesn’t make him a silver bullet. We’ll need more than Superman if we aim to make meaningful, relevant, and lasting changes to our national school system.

We’ll need the entire Justice League in order to effectively address the central conundrums of transforming our schools into learning environments of equality where students are engaged, enabled, and empowered.

Our villains are many:

  • Poverty
  • Lack of parent involvement
  • Untenable dropout rates
  • Too few high achievers in the field of teaching
  • Overly specific centralized learning goals
  • Undervalued teaching profession
  • Inaccurate measures of teacher effectiveness
  • Overuse of high stakes assessments as a cure all
  • Elitism

To tackle these villains, we must recruit & engage every one of the Justice League heroes, many of whom are dedicated teachers who’ve been asked to stay quiet and do as they’re told for far too long.

The Justice League is supposed to be a collection of people banded together in mutual cooperation.

Too bad they’ve been left off of Superman’s panel.

Thanks a lot, Man of Steel. You could’ve gotten a teacher on the panel if you wanted. After all, with that cool x-ray vision thing you got going, you should be able to see through their shenanigans.

This post was originally published on Ecology of Education.

Justice League Image: OSU Department of Statistics
Lex Luthor Image: Prodigeek

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Posted in Accountability, Arne Duncan, Big Idea, Collaboration, Duncan, Edreform, Education, Education Reform, educational reform, Jason Flom, Merit pay, Michelle Rhee, NCLB, Schools, Teacher Evaluation, Teacher Pay, Teacher's Unions, Testing

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Lives well lived, as well as facts well learned

June 28th, 2010

Submitted here on Monday, June 28th, 2010, in response to this and this.

Dear Governor McDonnell,

I write to urge you to spend an equal amount of political capital on establishing new charter schools in Virginia as you do on attracting national charter operators to the state. Organizations like KIPP offer college-prep curriculums augmented by extra time and stringent expectations of student compliance with rules. However, they do not in and of themselves offer models of project-based learning and student-centered pedagogies that better develop students’ collaborative and problem-solving skills – skills students will need to lead their own communities, businesses, and service organizations.

Consider Microsoft’s Educational Competencies, or compare the Top 10 Reasons to Work at Google with KIPP’s Five Pillars. We have schools like KIPP that reflect strict adherence to traditional instruction; do we have school’s that reflect the cultures of our world’s information-age pioneers? How do we develop those schools?

We develop them by taking advantage of Virginia’s relative inexperience with the national charter movement to innovate truly new types of schools. As state and local school boards partner with national charter operators that focus on replicating traditional notions of college preparedness, we should develop in parallel charter schools that research, develop, and share-out innovative cultures, communities, and practices – practices that allow students to discover new learning while still enrolled in public schools. Imagine schools that allow students to contribute to their communities, not just to graduate from them. Imagine schools that empower students to teach adults, not just to follow them. Imagine schools that inspire students to create and discover, not just to accept and cover.

As you search for viable models of charter education in Virginia, please look to programs like the Maine Farm Enterprise School, the New Country School and our own Blue Ridge Virtual Governor’s School for models of assessment, community, curriculum, and instruction that take students’ learning outside the classroom.

Virginia communities have wants and needs addressed by programs like KIPP. Be certain, though, that our children need more than academic preparedness to lead joyful, fulfilling lives of service to their communities, state, nation, and world. To serve others students must feel strong enough themselves to seek out new solutions to the problems with which we’ll leave them. We need schools that help students realize their potentials as artists, designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, leaders, volunteers, and visionaries – schools that don’t accept the limits of a college-prep curriculum – however effectively delivered – as the limits of teaching and learning. We need schools that look for the results of lives well lived, as well as the results of facts well learned.

Please use your political capital to lift up children and new models of education that serve them and their communities through innovative, project- and community-based learning and new assessment measures that accurately capture the results of this work. Please help Secretary Robinson to continue his efforts to do the same. It was wonderful to visit with him at my school, the Community Public Charter School, in Albemarle County. I enthusiastically invite you both to visit my classroom and to join with me in talking with Virginia’s students, parents, and educators about why we educate our children, as well as about how we can educate our children better.

Sincerely,

Chad Sansing, NBCT

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Problem X: eXploring and eXposing Problems In Education Reform

April 22nd, 2010

Albert Einstein famously said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

When it comes to the problems of education reform, there has been a lot of great thinking done by a lot of great people. Ask a thousand educators, students, parents, researchers, business people, or politicians what the problems of education are in America today and you are bound to get a thousand different answers. Ask these same people how to solve these problems and you will get a thousand different solutions.

The problem of education in America today is not just a simple problem, or even a complex problem, but a wicked problem. But it’s more than a wicked problem… it is an X-problem.

Adam Richardson of frog design coined the term X-problem in his new book Innovation X.

Adam explains that most organizations or systems face 4 types of problems.

Simple Problems: These are problems for which both the problem and solution are easily defined.

Which budget should be used to purchase supplemental materials? Which grade level will require an additional teacher next year? Who is going to teach the new section of Latin? Which classrooms need instructional aides?

Complex Problems: Here the problem is known, but the solution is not.

How can we get students to complete their homework? Which technology is best to introduce into an elementary classroom? Which curriculum will best meet the needs of our students who are two years below grade level? How do we create a system that allows for student input? What is the most effective assessment of reading comprehension for English Learners? How can we increase teacher collaboration and trust?

Wicked Problems: The challenge here is that neither the problem nor the solution is known. How can you define a good solution when cannot even state what the problem is?

The wicked problem was a term coined in the 1960′s by mathematician and planner Horst Rittel. He described them as messy, confounding, and aggressive. In 1968, C. West Churchman detailed the issue of wicked problems in an issue of Management Science.

Churchman describes wicked problems as, ” a class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.”

There is no definitive statement of the problem, and each solution reveals new aspects of the problem.

How do we fix public education? What is the problem? Which part is broken?

Take the issue of technology. Is technology essential in education? Do we need more technology in school? How much technology is enough in school? Which technology should we focus on? Who decides? How do we measure it? How do we pay for it?

Or take the issue of creativity. Do we attempt to teach creativity or let students use their own creativity? Can creativity be taught? If so, who should teach it? How do we measure it? Is there good creativity and bad creativity? Is creativity in school even a problem?

Or how about the questions of making students go to school longer. They do they go more days or should they go longer each day? What about breaks? Should they go to school on Saturday? How long is too long? Do we pay teachers more for the longer day or just for more days?

Each one of the problems opens us another can of worms as you dive deeper into it. There are so many factors involved with each. What does the research say? What do the parents think? What is best for the brain? How will it impact the budget? Who makes the final decisions? Who is in charge? What is best for our society? Which will ensure success in the future? Is it scalable? Who should be involved in crafting the solution?

As you try to answer these questions more questions arise. It really gets…wicked.

None of these “problems” can be explicitly stated as a problem statement, because, they may or may not even be problems. It all depends on your perspective.

Since there is no definitive problem, there is no definitive solution.

Can’t fix it if we can’t point out exactly what is we need to fix.

Each wicked problem is risky because it is unique, and it’s hard to test or simulate solutions ahead of time.

There is no way to simulate a new public education system in America, without actually building a new public education system in America. Simulating a school model here or there does not provide solutions or the same experience as a new system of public education. The scale is simply not comparable.

There are many stakeholders with different perspectives on the problem and how to resolve it.

Teacher, parent, student, administrator, union official, county official, state official, federal official, education researcher, business person, school board member, elected city, county, state, and federal politician, statistician, economist, sociologist, technologist, etc. They all have a different definition of the problem and a different solution.

But there is a problem even more difficult to grapple with than the wicked problem.

It’s called the X-problem. Why X-problems? Adam shares his thinking on why X represents another level of problem.

X is extreme: X-problems are extreme in risk and complexity.

Educating an entire country’s population and building a system that does it in the most effective way is a risky proposition. You can’t build the wrong system. You can’t make a mistake.

X is mysterious: Every X-problem revolves around questions that have never been asked before, or challenges that are unprecedented.

Solving the “problems” of education and doing so in a way that meets all the needs of all the stakeholders now and in the future is going to create some questions that we have never encountered of thought of.

X is a crossroad: A crossroads is a place where things converge together—and diverge outward. At a crossroads one must make a choice among paths, each of which could entail risk or opportunity.

Do we take the road of creativity, technology, brain research, etc? Saying yes to certain solutions requires that we say no to others. Which do we choose?

X means opportunity: X marks the spot for treasure—the winnings that come from finding the problem and capitalizing on it before others can.

In the global competition for knowledgeable, creative, innovative, caring, informed, collaborative, cooperative, and intelligent populace, the country that can figure out which problems to solve and which solutions to choose will have an advantage in the future.

See what I mean? This is not easy. It’s not a simple, complex, or even a wicked problem. Education reform is an X-problem.

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Teacher Uprising 2010: It’s About Collaboration, Not Merit Pay!

April 21st, 2010

Critics of Gov. Charlie Crist’s veto of Sentate Bill 6 sensationalize it as “a real setback”, “putting the brakes on progress” & squandering of “an opportunity to improve teacher effectiveness.”

Across the nation editorial boards have sounded in on the debate raging down here in Florida, including the Chicago Tribune, which headlined their ed as, “Status Quo 1, Kids 0″.

To this I say, “I don’t think so.” (My Letter to Ed response here.)

More like — Representative Government: 1, Status Quo: 0

The Real Status Quo

For far too long the status quo has been to enact reform upon teachers, rather than alongside them.

The prevailing wisdom has been, legislators and bureaucrats alone know what is best for our schools, not the teachers with years of experience serving in the classrooms. As a result we have been summarily left out of many conversations, SB6 included.

If we were as well heeled as other professionals — doctors, lawyers, bankers — we might swell the pockets of lobbyists and gain access to the closed doors behind which such legislation is cooked up. But we aren’t well to do. We are paid a pittance and expected to accept whatever comes down the pipes at us.

(One might say that SB 6 would pay us more, but look at the reasoning from this group of Republican FL legislators, who opposed the bill, and you’ll see that it is just not possible without raising taxes or class sizes or cutting programs and/or teachers. The district funding doesn’t grow. There is no more money. Plus, additional funds will be funneled away from districts to the testing industry. What fuzzy math — and/or gall — leads policymakers to conclude there will be more money for teachers?)

The one group lobbying on teachers’ behalf, unions, are villainized as impediments to growth, barriers to progress, and reviled for their opposition to legislation such as SB6.

However, while unions played a role, Crist’s veto of SB6 is not of their doing. This is a victory of the people who spoke up for themselves, as is their democratic responsibility. This “victory” is a testament to the power of voice in our representative democracy.

Crist’s veto, even if politically motivated, demonstrated that if enough of us shout loud enough, someone’s gonna hear us.

The Teacher Uprising of 2010

The Teacher Uprising of 2010 was organized by we, the people: teachers, parents, and other concerned citizens, some union members, some not. (For the record, I am not in a union, but am a proud member of the teaching profession.) We organized through Facebook, Twitter, and cell phones to pushback against SB6.

The volume and clarity of we, the people, showed that the sort of business as usual that crafts and railroads such legislation is no longer an option.

We will not be left out of the education reform process any longer.

That’s the status quo that must be changed first, before there can be any meaningful reform to our schools! Once we are brought to the table, then lasting & effective reform can be envisioned and implemented.

A New World Order

If our leadership wishes to capitalize on the Teacher Uprising of 2010 for increasing teacher effectiveness, it needs to begin by talking and listening to the best teachers. (And despite assumptions otherwise, these teachers are not hard to identify. They are the ones with National Board Certification, who daily engage their students in complex lessons and offer substantive ideas in teacher meetings. They are the ones our kids talk about at home around the dinner table.)

Education policymakers need to ask such teachers some of the following questions:

  1. What is your blue sky for schools?
  2. What would increase your job satisfaction?
  3. What gets you inspired? What limits your inspiration?
  4. What would attract more teachers of your caliber to the classroom?
  5. How can we scaffold the profession to ensure there are new levels for the eager and innovative to aspire toward?
  6. How can we increase the success rate of new teachers?
  7. What would it take for you to teach in the schools most in need of your passion, expertise, and energy?
  8. What are the most significant limitations you face while teaching in public schools?
  9. What would a fair and equitable teacher accountability system consist of?
  10. What is the most important thing you do to set your students up for success?

If they ask, listen, and collaborate with us, I have no doubt we can move our schools toward the 21st century and not only increase teacher effectiveness, but cultivate life long learners in the process. It’s a win-win-win.

Image: Empowering Lives Tour

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Making the Shift, Part 1: No More Objectives

August 6th, 2009

The following statement preoccupied my thoughts for several hours: “As a result, a large gap separates the skills and strategies taught in school from the executive function processes needed for success there and in the workplace.” The basis for this conclusion, the cause, is education’s focus “on the content, or the what, rather than the process, or the how, of learning.” Our teaching frequently fails to emphasize executive functions—the cognitive processes that enable goal setting, problem solving, organizing, attention shifting, and metacognition.1

In introducing the Purview Project, I wrote about the shift to a more thinking-centric emphasis in education, and in a recent post focused on thinking within the disciplines, I described how researchers illustrated the difference between knowing what and knowing how by contrasting AP social studies’ students and practicing historians results on differing types of assessment. Despite the recent discussion of national standards in the US, I believe this shift is underway, necessary, and inevitable.

A shift in what we emphasize requires shifts in our own thinking about teaching and learning. If we teach more process and less content, textbooks will either change or become obsolete. If we emphasize how rather than what, assessment will need to engage students in demonstrating how to do rather than what to memorize. If we want to develop students’ executive functions, we need to reexamine every aspect of our practice. We need to close the “large gap,” beginning with one of our most ingrained ideas: objectives.

What we know and believe about objectives depends somewhat on how long we’ve been educators. I was trained to develop “behavioral” objectives that specified what students would specifically do and to what percentage of accuracy they would do it. Wording was a major concern and everything had to be measurable. (You can still see this philosophy being emphasized in current discussions.) Researchers then divided behavioral objectives into three types: cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. We were told to display the objectives for students to see. Then, for a time, behaviorism and its objectives became “yesterday’s news” and “outcomes” became the focus. These were followed by objectives addressing student “emotional quotient” or “EQ.” Next came different objectives for each of the learning styles and/or multiple intelligences, and objectives based on various taxonomies of thinking. In many schools, more emphasis was placed on form and wording than imagination.

That’s right, imagination. Einstein famously said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”2 School-based learning happens as a teacher’s envisioned future becomes a student’s reality. If we are shifting to a greater focus on developing students’ executive functions, our notions of objectives need to be replaced with something more imaginative, something more forward looking than what we can measure tomorrow.

But what? What can provide a guiding vision that will focus our teaching?

In his book Think Better, Tim Hurson introduces the concept of “Target Future,” an “imagined future” so “powerful and compelling” that it generates motivation to achieve it. It generates “Future Pull.”3

That sounds great, but how do you develop one? Hurson suggests an act of imagination; he suggests telling yourself a story. Before you succumb to the temptation to write this off as too involved or requiring too much time, allow me ask a simple question: When you envision your students using the thinking processes you’ve taught them, when they’re applying such thinking on their own, what do you see? Stretch that vision, seeing your students utilizing the thinking they’ve learned in multiple scenarios outside of the classroom. Hurson suggests making this vision, this story as “vivid and sensory” as possible. How would your students feel? How would their use of the thinking influence their work and their interactions with others? Imagine all this as reality. That’s a “Target Future.” That’s what you’re teaching for—what you work to make real.

What’s the difference? Objectives tie us to schools, to classrooms, to limited contexts for our students to put their learning to use. “Each student will be able to answer two-digit addition problems with 85% accuracy.” See how that pulls you into the classroom. We feel like we are teaching for a classroom-based assessment that features an easily determined rate of accuracy. The problem is that we are not educating students to live successful lives in a classroom. We’re trying to close the “large gap” between school and successful living in the real world.

Wording a “Target Future” so that it satisfies those who insist on objectives may be a challenge. (Something for which you can offer suggestions in the comments!) However, we won’t educate for the real world until we envision our students operating within it, using the executive functions we’ve helped them develop.

In future posts, I hope to explore additional shifts we as teachers can make that will aid the inevitable shift to more thinking-centric education. For now, consider opening your next lesson with, “Students, let me tell you a story, a story in which you are the main characters…” Then use all your teaching ability to make that story their reality.

  1. Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), xi-xiii.
  2. Einstein, A. Albert Einstein Quotes, http://thinkexist.com/quotation/imagination_is_more_important_than_knowledge-for/260230.html
  3. Hurson, T., Think Better, (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008), 127-141.

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Institutional Constraints: Administration

June 11th, 2009

By jerrid kruse –   Teaching as a Dynamic Activity

In my last post, I introduced how resistant institutions are to change and labeled the specific roadblocks “institutional constraints”.  In this series I will provide some strategies and ways of thinking that I have found useful for navigating the political hurdles of implementing reform-based instruction.  This post will focus on working with/around administrators.  Ideally, we would want our administration to have the same goals as us, but even those who claim to have lofty goals for students often say very different things with their actions.  I feel very lucky to have the support of my administration in my current school and hope some of the strategies below will help you gain administrator support.

Initially, you want to try to gain your administrators support, don’t assume you have an uphill battle if you don’t.  Have a lesson of which you’re particularly proud? Invite your principal or other admin to stop by your class to see what your students are doing.  Don’t wait for “evaluation day”.  Inviting your administrators in allows you to demonstrate that you take pride in your teaching and you have confidence in your own competence. Are you an education blogger? Tell your admins about your site and encourage them to visit.  I have always felt blogs are an excellent reflective tool.  Now use your reflections to demonstrate your desire to continually learn and improve your practice.  Still at school 2 hours after “contract time”? Stop in the office to “check your mailbox”, and if an administrator is still there, stop in to say hi/goodnight.  Some of my best conversations with administrators have happened in instances like this – the hectic day is over and the office isn’t buzzing with people.  Of course, you’re also demonstrating your high level of commitment.  These actions are not dishonest or manipulative, you are just working to draw your administrators’ attention to the positive things you are already doing!

Volunteering can get you onto administrators’ good side as well. Volunteering for committees or curriculum teams not only shows your willingness to be “part of the team”, but also places you in positions to help move your entire building toward reform.  Yet, you want to be careful in these committees (dealing with colleagues will be a future post).  One last action is to ask permission for things you might assume you wouldn’t need to.  Want to hang students’ work throughout the building? Ask your admin’s permission, not because I think you should need it, but because you will be sending a message about yourself and the level of respect you have for the people running your building.  Additionally, you draw their attention to your students’ work – further highlighting the great things you do in your classroom!

Perhaps you have taken the above steps, but your administration has some expectations with which you disagree.  Or you want to do some things in your class or building that makes your admin uneasy.  This situation is when 4th order thinking comes into play (see previous post).  First, consider how what you are doing or want to do fits with the administration’s expectations and how you can convince them of that.  Instead of choosing to oppose your administration, choose to seek ways to meet your goals within their expectations.  For example, my district expects objectives to be written on the board for students each day.  These objectives are supposed to tell students what they will be learning that day.  Ok, I personally don’t like objectives for students because 1) the learning in my class can change quickly based on student feedback and 2) if you need to be told what you have learned, have you really learned it?  I see two ways around this expectation.  The way that I chose is to have a question written on the board for students to think/write about when they come into class.  This question serves as an indication for what the class topic will be and gives me some insight on student thinking when we discuss the question.  I have been able to convince my admin that the question serves the same purpose as the “objectives”, but it more closely lines up with my goals for students – critical and reflective thinkers rather than being told what to learn.  Another strategy I thought of trying is having students write objectives as a class at the end of class.  Kind of a “what did we learn today” task.

Of course, you may find yourself in a situation where you cannot get your admin’s support and you cannot work within their expectations and still work toward your own goals.  In this situation, the classroom door is a powerful tool, shut it.  However, these are not ideal working conditions so you may need to re-evaluate if you want to be a part of that district.

Please leave comments sharing your own ideas how to work with or around administrators with whom you do not see eye to eye.

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United Teachers of Los Angeles Rally Around Teachers Being Laid-Off

June 5th, 2009

Each year around this time, Californians begin hearing a familiar story coming from Sacramento. Revolving around the state’s budget, it is a story of stalemate. California’s State Legislature consistently fails to pass a working budget by the established deadline. It is an ideological deadlock: the political Right would like to minimize taxes and government spending; the political Left would like to strengthen public infrastructure. The unique constraints of California’s Constitution (California is one of only three states that require a two-thirds vote of the state legislature to pass a budget and raise taxes), ensure that any approved budget will address in significant ways the ideological concerns of both sides.

Even before the current recession the nation is facing, California was facing a budget deficit. Since the state passed Proposition 13 in the late 1970s, the funding required for public infrastructure and the revenue collected by the state have been out of balance. In 2009, this shortfall is multiple billions of dollars. The budget being currently submitted for approval proposes to make up this shortfall by cutting approximately $10 billion in education funding.

At the state level, the ongoing budget dilemma is a crisis of ideology. At the local level, it is a crisis of practicality. California’s public schools are funded at well below the national average. California ranks 46th in the nation in per pupil spending. For many years, education spending has been one of the first areas to be cut from a budget. To balance the 2004-5 budget, governor Arnold Schwarzenegger borrowed $2 billion from education funding that has yet to have been repaid in its entirety.

As news of this new budget and its cuts to education became public, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) made clear that they would not take these cuts lying down. On Thursday, January 29th, 2009, thousands of teachers rallied in protest of the cuts to education in the budget being put forward by Schwarzenegger and the state legislature. Teachers assembled at the Los Angeles Unified School District’s (LAUSD) district office in downtown Los Angeles and marched through the streets to Pershing Square.

Facing this perpetually deficient funding, the LAUSD adds fuel to the fire in the way that it manages the funds it receives. District employees receive perks such as car and phone allowances. Consultants are regularly used in lieu of district employees and are generally paid considerably more. According to LAUSD’s estimates, nearly 10% of State Tax Dollars do not make it to the individual school sites, but these numbers are difficult to corroborate and may be much higher. Recently, this sort of thing has been a common story when it occurs at Goldman Sachs or General Motors, but the profligacy of LAUSD management has remained largely anonymous in the traditional media. It has been some time since the District’s accounts were audited. Former Superintendent David Brewer was the highest paid School District Superintendent in the nation at $300,000 per year. When he was asked to resign early this year, he was given a $500,000 severance package.

UTLA consistently calls upon LAUSD to trim waste in the way funds are spent in the management of the district. UTLA voiced outrage at Brewer’s golden parachute. UTLA’s outrage was magnified when, facing a $10 billion cut in education funding statewide, LAUSD presented a solution to UTLA that called for the elimination of more than 8,000 jobs, the majority of these jobs being classroom teachers. As we follow the path of tax dollars from policy to practicality, the large cuts in education spending in next year’s budget resulted in approximately 5,500 Reduction In Force (RIF) notices being sent to LAUSD teachers. “The similarities to the corporate bail-outs are numerous,” says Cathy Garcia, a UTLA chapter chair at Crenshaw High School and member of the Progressive Educators for ACtion (PEAC) coalition within UTLA, “Why is CNN not talking about this? Why is no one paying attention?”

Having a left-leaning executive in the White House has changed the landscape slightly. Barack Obama’s stimulus package has sent a considerable amount of federal dollars to LAUSD. Where before, the UTLA line was “cut district waste, cut district waste, cut district waste”, UTLA is now calling on LAUSD to trim the waste in their operations and to specifically use the stimulus funds to prevent any RIF notices from being sent out. Currently, about 35% of the stimulus funds are being used to save teaching positions, mostly in math and science classes. UTLA believes that if 50% of the funds are used, every teaching position currently being downsized could be saved. LAUSD believes that this year’s budget is a harbinger of things to come and would like to save the majority of the funds to make up shortfalls in next year’s budget.

All of this discussion is still very macro-oriented. The real questions are, What do these RIFs look like at schools? What do they look like in classrooms? How do they effect individuals? Near the end of May, LAUSD announced that it would be canceling the bulk of its summer school program. According to Garcia, at Crenshaw there will be a summer school in place, but it will only be offering class that are high school graduation requirements. Students who need courses that may be required for admittance to college, but are not required for a high school diploma may find themselves out of luck. “It’s an issue of access and equity,” says Garcia.

As for the fall offerings at Crenshaw, these RIFs will cripple the school’s counseling department. Crenshaw currently has five counselors and two program coordinators serving the counseling needs of its seven small-learning communities (SLC: all students at Crenshaw are enrolled in one of seven small learning communities). Of the fourteen RIFs served at Crenshaw, four of these were delivered to counselors. This would leave Crenshaw with one official counselor serving approximately 2100 students. More likely is that it will leave four SLCs without a counselor. The counseling needs of these students (course programming, graduation progress, college preparation) will fall to the teachers and administrators within these SLCs.

Of the ten teachers receiving RIFs, seven of these are in English Language Arts and three of these are in Social Studies. The loss of these seven positions in English could drive class size as high as 46 students per class. This number bares repeating: 46 students per class. This is Crenshaw’s first year of its reform plan around taking the school to a complete SLC program. These cuts will cripple the young program, if for no other reason than by eliminating the courses that define each SLC. In the school of Social Justice, the first class to go will most likely be a popular African-American literature course.

Having held a peaceful rally and march, it became clear to many in UTLA that a more aggressive stance would be required. The PEAC coalition within UTLA, whose members include chapter chairs at many historically underfunded LAUSD schools, became a loud voice in calling on UTLA to take more direct action against LAUSD’s proposals. According to the negotiated UTLA contract, any RIF notice i.e. pink slip must be delivered to a teacher by March 15th of the contract year. The LAUSD school board was set to vote to approve these notices on March 10, 2009. UTLA assembled en masse at the school board meeting of March 10th.

Prior to the meeting, UTLA spoke to LAUSD’s school police force; if arrests would be made, they should be made by school police. The plan was to create an unauthorized filibuster. If UTLA could prevent the meeting from taking place, LAUSD would not be able to vote to approve the RIF notices and they would miss the March 15th deadline. As the meeting came to order, UTLA president, A.J. Duffy, stepped to the microphone, completely out of order. LAUSD board member, Monica Garcia, often a UTLA ally, asked Duffy to step down. “Monica,” Duffy told her, “You know I’m not leaving from this podium.” Duffy’s microphone was shut off. By this time, the School Board Chamber was filled with teachers wearing UTLA red. Teachers began chanting and singing, even taunting members of the school board. If the teachers had a say in it, this meeting would not continue.

The School Board adjourned the meeting to a private chamber. The room was told that they would be able to watch the meeting via closed circuit television in the District Office’s cafeteria. When the Board had left the room, School Police informed teachers that if they did not disperse, they would be arrested. UTLA defied the the Police to arrest them. School Police asked media present to leave the chamber. Teachers began chanting, “Let the media stay.” No media left the room. No arrests were made. In a private chamber, the School Board voted 5-2 in favor of 8,000 Reductions in Force.

As RIF notices were distributed throughout the district, plans for a next wave of action began to take shape. Many in the union were calling for a one day strike in protest of the layoffs. At the end of April, union membership authorized the strike. The day would be Friday, May 15, 2009 and it would be known as Pink Friday.

According to the contract negotiated between UTLA and LAUSD, the union can not legally strike over layoffs. Although the members approved the strike, it would be technically illegal. Based on this stipulation in the contract, LAUSD pursued and was granted an injunction. There has been some recent historical precedence of union’s striking in the face of an injunction The members of PEAC called on UTLA to strike anyway. UTLA’s leadership voted to stage a small protest of about less than a hundred protestors in from of LAUSD’s district office. About 40 union members, including A.J. Duffy and Vice-President Josh Pechtalt, were arrested for peaceably blocking traffic. The majority of union members went to work that day. Many people did a sick-out.

Jose Lara is a UTLA chapter chair at Santee Education Complex, a high school located in the historic south Central Avenue District. According to Lara, when the strike was called off, it was a big blow to union morale. “Duffy told us that the union would strike if it was necessary,” says Lara, “Everyone thought this was going to be a strike year. It’s a contract year. Our salaries and benefits are up. When the budget cuts came, chapter chairs were prepared for strike.” Teachers at Santee passed a vote of “No Confidence” in their union leadership. Teachers at Lincoln High drafted and signed a letter of “No Confidence” to union leadership.

Santee Education Complex is a young school and has always been a hot bed of action. Just a few years ago, students, teachers and parents rallied successfully for the removal of an unpopular principal. Many students had been following closely the actions of their teachers. When the strike was called off, student leaders at Santee began to organize their own actions. Early in the week following Pink Friday, students gathered in the morning outside Santee. As more students arrived, they did not enter campus. As classes began, students began marching around the campus, calling for a halt to the teacher layoffs. School administrators were finally able to convince students to enter the school with the enticement that LAUSD Superintendent Ramón Cortines would meet with students to hear their demands. When Cortines failed to show at the scheduled meeting, students upped the ante.

On May 22, 2009, approximately 400 students gathered outside Santee around 8:00 a.m. These students marched three miles to LAUSD’s District Office. Marching around the District Office, students chanted for Cortines to meet with them. Finally, Cortines came to speak to the students. In front of the District Office, Cortines commended the students for speaking up and letting their voice be heard. Later reports on local news quoted Cortines as saying he was “disappointed in the adults who may be misleading the students. Walking out and coming to the district headquarters will not affect the budget in any way or prevent the layoff of individual employees.” Similar walkouts took place at Crenshaw High, Dorsey High, Los Angeles High, Manual Arts High, Cochrane Middle and West Adams Prep schools.

In the face of large public protest, it was clear to many within the union that the actions of union leadership were not nearly enough. When a UTLA House of Representatives turned into a cacophony of arguments and complaints, a group of union activists decided to do something about the situation. This group, which included chapter chairs at Santee, Lincoln High School, Liechty Middle School, and West Adams, began brain-storming ways that the fight could be continued and expanded. The ideas that stuck were a hunger strike and a camp-out. The hunger strike began immediately. Calls were put out for volunteers to man the camp-site and the Hungry for A Better Education campaign was launched. Visit their website at: www.LAhungry4Ed.com

Launched on May 26, 2009, the campaign’s demands are simple: 1) Protect students’ education by NOT increasing class size and 2) Protect the future of education in LAUSD by NOT laying off our new teachers. Well into its second week, supporters have been camping each night around the area schools needing the most support. In response, Cortines has been quoted as saying, that he thinks their time would be better spent gaining the attention of Sacramento rather than starving themselves. Meanwhile, Sacramento is coming to the strikers. On June 3rd, State Senator Gloria Romero paid a visit to the strike and camp-out.

In the beginning, UTLA’s officers did not back the Hungry for Ed campaign. UTLA has since begun to embrace the campaign. While UTLA had a plan for a hunger strike, it was never acted upon. As media coverage expands and momentum grows, chapter chairs from around the city have been calling fasters, interested in holding their own camp-outs and solidarity hunger strikes. According to Lara, the fasters have been receiving calls from national labor and social justice organizations and even a teacher’s union in Puerto Rico. Says Lara, “The word is out about the resistance happening in LA. It is inner city schools who are being affected the most and looking for leadership the most. Every time the leadership brings up the vote, the effects on the [San Fernando] valley schools are considered first. They’ve got to take a stand and and do what it right.”

One of the most exciting aspects to the leaders of the Hungry for a Better Education campaign is that the leadership is coming from below. Jose Lara is a first year chapter chair. Julie Van Winckel is a first year chapter chair. Gladys Mazariego-Hamdi is a first year chapter chair. These young leaders have been willing to stand up for their schools regardless of what the union leadership says. “We believe that the union should be lead from below,” says Lara, “The campaign is in it until a compromise is reached. We are looking for a compromise that keeps our class sizes at their current levels and reverse the layoffs. Then we regroup, reorganize and get ready for the battle next year.”

Follow Jose Lara on twitter: @josedelbarrio

Follow Cathy Garcia on twitter: @cathodexray

Follow UTLA on twitter: @utla2009


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Institutional Constraints: Introduction

June 3rd, 2009
By jerrid kruse – Teaching as a Dynamic Activity

The inertial power of institutions is daunting. Unfortunately, the inertia of the educational institution seems more often at rest than in movement. For teachers trying to implement reform there exists many roadblocks (or landmines). Importantly, our institutions are fueled by people. Administrators, colleagues, parents, and even students often resist change. Most people are quite happy with their current states and being confronted with alternative views can result in visceral negative reactions.

In my first year of teaching, within two weeks I had sufficiently ruffled enough feathers that I had been called into the principal’s office so he could express the concerns of other teachers (that’s right, they went to the principal on me!). A group of teachers were concerned that I was not sticking to the curriculum, trying to change team meetings, not giving the same tests as other teachers, and that I should “listen more”. Needless to say, I learned a lot that year about how resistant to change the education system really is.

This series on “institutional constraints” will provide my insight/suggestions on how to navigate the political hurdles that exist for those teachers working to implement effective teaching in less than ideal professional environments. I must stress that if you can work collaboratively with other professionals in your school, that is best for all parties: yourself, your colleagues, and your students. Unfortunately, ideal conditions do not always exist. We cannot use these less than ideal conditions as an excuse to not move our own practices forward. I hope this series will provide you with some strategies to move forward even in the face of resistance.

To provide some framework for my future posts I want to introduce the concepts of 3rd and 4th order thinking. 3rd order thinkers take their cues from outside sources. For example, “the principal says I am supposed to do X, therefore I must do X”. There is nothing wrong with being a 3rd order thinker, but I want to encourage you to become a 4th order thinker. A 4th order thinker sees themselves as the authority and operationalizes other input sources (ie: the principal) as objects that can be used, ignored, or manipulated to suit their personal goals. For example” “the principal says I am supposed to do X. How can I use X in a way that will satisfy my principal and promote my own goals for students?”

An example from my own experience is using the same test as other teachers. I could have simply accepted the fact that I had to give my students the same multiple-choice test as my colleagues. Instead I used the other teachers’ tests as either review activities or pre-tests that could guide my instruction. Then, for my summative assessment of student learning I used the essay-based tests that I feel provide better indication of students’ understanding and ability to apply knowledge. While this might seem deceitful, I have abided by my principal’s wishes. I can demonstrate my use of the “common” test, and I have promoted my own goals for my students.

Realizing that you are your own authority is key to becoming a 4th order thinker. Being able to see those who stand in the way of effective instruction as objects you can work with or work around is necessary to thrive in an institution that resists change so fiercely. In upcoming posts I will provide strategies to work with/around specific institutional constraints such as: administration, colleagues, students/parents, and standards/standardized tests.

(Originally posted on Teaching as a Dynamic Activity. Follow on twitter: @jerridkruse)

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