When a school district makes a big to-do about the use of "evidence to make decisions about how to help students learn, where to put our resources and how to manage our staff," is it fair to criticize it for implementing unproven and experimental programs? skoolboy supports modest experimental innovations, as long as they are evaluated carefully before expansion to a scale that would encompass an entire population. After all, students and teachers aren’t guinea pigs. The fact that schools are failing is not a justification to do any old thing, on the assumption that any innovation will be better than the status quo.

Speaking of any old thing … The Washington Post reported earlier this week that the Washington, DC Public Schools are abandoning support for National Board certification as a means of teacher professional development, shifting instead to, among other things, the Skillful Teacher program marketed by Research for Better Teaching, Inc. (RBT), founded by Jon Saphier in 1979. The program consists of a series of six one-day workshops; you can buy the book, which approaches 600 pages, for $70 at Amazon.

You might think that an organization that’s been peddling professional development for 30 years, with a book in its sixth edition, would have some compelling evidence of the effects of the jewel in its crown on teaching practice and student learning. If professional development doesn’t result in improvements in teaching and learning, what’s the point? But the RBT website doesn’t point to much evidence, emphasizing testimonials and brief "stories." skoolboy’s favorite is the account of Fairfax County, VA’s implementation, "Making Teacher Evaluation Substantive and Growth-Oriented." "In the first year of implementation, 162 teachers were dismissed or resigned compared to single digits the previous year," the website crows. Now, is that growth, or is it development? Sometimes skoolboy gets confused by the difference.

The blurb for Montgomery County, MD, on which the DC plan is based, touts an independent evaluation by Dr. Julia Koppich of the program’s effects on teachers and administrators, and claims that "in 2001 grade 2 students scored in the 68th percentile in math computation. In 2003 scores were in the 83rd percentile." The inference is that the Skillful Teacher program produced this change, but any reader of this blog knows that demonstrating program impact requires a careful design to rule out alternative explanations of changes over time in outcomes. (It also helps to have a good theory of how a program might plausibly produce particular changes.)

Montgomery County’s own internal evaluations of Studying Skillful Teaching aren’t as positive. Although 3rd grade teachers and Alegebra I teachers who took the course are "more likely to teach mastery lessons and less likely to miss opportunities to positively impact student learning" than comparable teachers who did not (Merchlinsky, 2006, 2007), there were no effects on elementary reading and math test scores or algebra performance.

And lest anyone think that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, The Skillful Teacher isn’t the only professional development initiative that skoolboy, who teaches at the home of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, thinks could benefit from more rigorous evaluations before scaling up.

Posted by skoolboy at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (0)

Why is there so much interest in where Barack and Michelle Obama plan to enroll their daughters, Malia Ann and Sasha, in Washington, DC schools? Probably because most observers think that the choice of a school will reveal something meaningful about President-Elect Obama’s views about schooling in the U.S. Is that so? Heck if I know. Up till now, the Obama girls have been attending the University of Chicago Lab School, a private PK-12 school associated with the University of Chicago with annual tuition and fees ranging from $18K-$21K for students in grades 1-12. (Full-time U of C staff are eligible for a 50% tuition remission.) Michelle Obama serves on the Board of Directors of the Lab School, and a couple of skoolboy’s friends, whose children attend the Lab School, say that both Obamas have been visibly involved in the life of the school.

Odds are that the Obamas will send their daughters to a private school in DC. Like most parents, they will likely want to ensure that their children get the best schooling they can. Few parents would be willing to risk sacrificing their children’s futures to make a point about the value of public schooling. We live in an era in which schooling is seen primarily as a vehicle either to move up the social ladder or to maintain the social standing that a family has achieved. As skoolboy’s long-time friend and colleague David Labaree argued in his book How to Succeed in School Without Really Learning, two once-prominent goals of American schooling—producing citizens prepared for life in a democracy and efficiently allocating individuals to work roles, both of which view schooling as a public good—have been overtaken by the objective of schooling as a means for vaulting over others, which construes schooling as a private good. This privatization of the purpose of schooling, Labaree argues, has resulted in a commodification of schooling, and a decoupling of genuine learning from the credentials that so many individuals chase after.

skoolboy invited some of his students to envision strategies to strike a new balance among the schooling goals of democratic citizenship, social efficiency and social mobility. One provocative idea was to eliminate private schooling altogether. Doing so, a student argued, would reduce both the temptation and the capacity for members of privileged groups to use their resources to maintain their advantages. Provocative, but not feasible, I thought. Eliminating private schooling would run headlong into other firmly-held American values, such as freedom of religious expression, the separation of church and state, and the importance of choice as a political value. One can, I believe, support public education and also envision a role for private schooling in the U.S.

And yet … skoolboy finds it troubling that in so many communities in the U.S., the most advantaged groups choose to opt out of the public schooling system, turning instead to private schools. I analyzed the association between median family income and the percentage of students enrolled in private schools for the 179 census tracts in Washington, DC that had non-zero family incomes in the 2000 Census. At the census tract level, weighted by the total number of students in grades 1-12 in each tract, the correlation between median family income and percentage of students enrolled in private schools was .90. What this means is that in Washington, our Nation’s capital, lower-income families send their children to public schools, and higher-income families send their children to private schools.

The chart below shows this association graphically. DC Census tracts are divided into four quartiles, defined by their median family incomes. In the lowest quartile, median family income is less than about $30K per year; in the second quartile, median family income is roughly between $30K and $43K per year; in the third quartile, it’s between $43K and about $74K per year; and in the top quartile, the median family income is higher than $74K per year. In the lowest quartile, 5% of the children attend private schools, whereas in the top quartile, 55% of the children attend private schools.

President Obama’s salary of $400,000 per year will place the Obama family unambiguously in the top income quartile in the District. I think the only question here is which private school will Malia Ann and Sasha attend.

Posted by skoolboy at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBacks (0)

If you just got laid off from Lehman, do I have an edu-job for you!

Michelle Rhee needs a "safe, prompt, reliable and comfortable driver to assist [the] Chancellor with her daily schedule and a variety of duties. The incumbent’s primary responsibility is the safe operation of DCPS vehicles for the purpose of transporting the Chancellor to and from events in accordance with the daily itinerary of events."

Do all superintendents of big districts get drivers? I had no idea. But just think about the splashy, tell-all book you could write! I'm out of the running as I have no license, but you can find the job posting here. Or if you're in the market for something different, you might apply for the "Critical Response Team."

Speaking of job postings, Juan Gonzalez wrote a column in the Daily News yesterday about the increasing administrative headcount at the NYC Department of Education. Even though there is a hiring freeze, Gonzalez reported that there are 30 new jobs posted at Tweed with precious titles like, "Knowledge Management Domain Leader for Leadership & Organizational Management" ($170,000). It reminds me of college, where there were gazillions of clubs - coalitions supporting homeless guinea pigs and what have you - so everyone could be the president of something.

With an 18% growth in jobs at Tweed over the last three years, I realized that these guys must be running out of catchy job titles fast, and could probably use our help. Plus, Michelle Rhee will eventually need job titles that sparkle, too.

Help these kids out, folks, and submit a job title below. For the first time ever, there is a real, live prize involved (I've been reading too much Roland Fryer, obviously) - the achievement gap tee shirt pictured above. Boys, don't fret - it comes in other colors. Get your entries in by Monday, October 13th at 5pm. Here are some ideas to get you going:

* Senior Blackberry Correspondent
* Director of Achievement Gap Termination
* Truth Squad Captain
* Senior Finder of Efficiencies
* Chief Term Limit Obliterator
* Senior Transcriber of Diane Ravitch's Remarks

Posted by eduwonkette at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Thanks to everyone who's participated in the spirited discussion below on the Art Siebens case. Commenters have raised a number of important questions, among them:

1) Will eliminating tenure increase the quality of teachers in DCPS? Where will this fleet of new exceptional teachers come from? Do principals have incentives to keep the best teachers? Will principals nix “bad” teachers, or will teachers who are outspoken take the fall, too? Might it not be prudent to make investments in improving the teachers that we have, rather than just replacing them in large numbers?

2) What are the implications of arbitrary firing for the teaching profession overall? As John Thomspon wrote, “It does not take many arbitrary decisions to destroy a career before you poison the entire well of teaching talent. Would you commit to a career and buying a house etc. if you had a 2 or 3 or 5% chance per year to run afoul of someone who could destroy your career?”

3) What do we learn from examples like Art Siebens? Is his experience reason enough to abandon the idea of eliminating tenure? How many mistakes are too many? And what kind of appeals system should be in place?

4) When the budget gets tight and the private money runs dry, who is going to pay for six figure teacher salaries?

So join the discussion. I'll leave you with some of the moving testimonials about Art Siebens, of which you can find many examples here and here. And if you'd like to learn more about the effort to reinstate Art Siebens, you can visit this website.

He didn't just teach us the material, he sang it to us. Dr. Siebens, in all of his excited glory, would break out his guitar, forcing us groaning teenagers to sing to the tunes of "I heard it through the Grapevine" (The Nephrons like a Grapevine about the adrenal system) and "Poor wand'ring one" from the musical the Pirates of Penzance (Poor Wandering Bun- a song about digestion). Junior year, Biology was everywhere- in the class, on the radio, and even in my dreams. Can you name a teacher in your lifetime that had this power? - Devorah Flax-Davidson, valedictorian, 2005

When I was a first-time teacher nine years ago, Dr. Siebens took the time to provide me with demonstrations of each Biology lab that I had to use for the entire year. He also provided me with all the teaching materials I needed as D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) did not have a Biology curriculum at the time....Now entering my ninth year as a teacher, I still use his well-crafted and creative Biology songs to engage students with the content of my lessons. To say that Dr. Siebens is a valuable resource to Wilson's staff and students is a gross understatement. - Damian Kreske, Former Biology teacher at Wilson High School

This was not a decision about the children and what they learn; that much is certain. This might be a decision about adults and pecking orders, power over the union, an attack on contract rights, but it is without any doubt not about getting the best teacher in the classroom and giving the students the best possible education. Dr. Siebens is the best example of teaching excellence we encountered in 15 years of experience with DCPS. - Ross Eisenbrey, parent of former student

If a man like this is not a fit, then who is a fit? He obviously, you know, if we listen to the lyrics, he loves his job; He loves kids. I mean, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a nuclear physicist in order to understand the commitment that he has to young people. - DC City Council Chair Vincent Gray

Letting Dr Siebens go is a very bad thing for the school in many ways. It shows teachers that being great teachers does not matter, it will go unrewarded. It shows the parents that you have no understanding of what they think is important - which is the education of the children. But most importantly, it shows the students that you and other grown ups do not really care about them or understand what they think is important when they think about school - that is, good teachers who care about them as students. - Susan Churchill, parent of two current students

Posted by eduwonkette at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (43) | TrackBacks (0)

Reporter: “The teachers’ union is saying that their concern is arbitrary firing…. that it just isn’t possible to give everyone sort of a level of fair scrutiny.

Rhee: “It’s interesting because, I mean, the bottom line is that people are saying, ‘Well, great teachers could be fired arbitrarily.’ My answer to that is, ‘Why would I ever create a system where we were arbitrarily firing great teachers? That would not benefit me or the school system.’” - Michelle Rhee on NPR

All along the Eastern corridor, folks are buzzing about firing teachers. In New York City two weeks ago, the New Teacher Project once again called for the district to put excessed teachers who have not been hired after a year on unpaid leave. Last week in his Washington Post column, Jay Mathews also sang a paean about the virtues of principals firing teachers at will. And in Michelle Rhee’s proposed contract, teachers would give up tenure in exchange for performance pay. Now, she’s moved to “Plan B,” which involves giving “bad teachers” 90 days to improve, or else face dismissal.

In all three cases, the assumption is that principals know best, that they make decisions based on the best interest of students, that “kid issues” will be put before “adult issues” in hiring decisions, and that concerns about fair treatment are retrograde - even passé.

Yet right under Michelle Rhee’s nose, her own theory of action – that principals will always pick the “best teachers” – has been tested by the case of Dr. Art Siebens. Few things manage to keep this groggy, dissertating kid awake once my head’s hit the pillow. But the case of Siebens, a biology teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, DC for the last 18 years who was not rehired when the school reconstituted 20% of its staff last spring, is haunting for the glimpse it offers into the brave new world of unchecked principal autonomy.

By all accounts, Michelle Rhee should be carrying Art Siebens around on her shoulders, because he exemplifies all of the qualities she desires in DC Public Schools teachers:

* Rhee wants to recruit more highly qualified alternate route teachers. With a PhD in Biology and post-doctoral work at Yale and NIH, Siebens has credentials that leave most TFA corps members in the dust.

* Most important to Rhee are test results: “To work here,” she says, “you've got to be a bottom-line person.” In that spirit, Siebens outdid every other AP Biology teacher in the district. During the 13 years in which Siebens taught AP Biology at Wilson, 72% of his students earned passing scores on the AP test (i.e. scores of 3-5). Across DCPS in 2007, 95% of DC Biology AP students with scores of 3-5 were taught by Art Siebens. This is all the more impressive because his courses were no less diverse than other AP courses at Woodrow Wilson High School, and almost all of his students took the AP test. Because of these achievements, Siebens has received an Advanced Placement Recognition Award from the College Board.

* Rhee, often drawing on her own chaotic first year of teaching, speaks of the need for high expectations for student behavior. Siebens was widely known to be a steward of order and discipline, even taking it upon himself to maintain a database tracking compliance with Wilson’s behavior management system, as well as truancy. Moreover, Michelle Rhee personally gave Siebens password access to student attendance data so he could track Wilson’s truancy and tardiness rates. When the district brought in a restructuring guru, he reviewed Siebens’ data to make sense of the school’s climate.

* Rhee wants teachers who are willing to “sweat” - teachers who go the extra mile and don’t just “follow the contract.” Siebens held lunchtime and after school review sessions. He attended his students’ sporting events, plays, and musicals. He composed and performed songs about biology to help his students remember biological processes – songs that apparently work because they’ve been adopted by biology teachers across the country. This fall, his work using music to teach biology has been featured in a five-part series on XM and WorldSpace satellite radio. (You can find archived versions of the first three parts here.)

* Rhee wants team players who will go out of their way to help their colleagues. From the letters of support from other teachers in his school, it is clear that he was the consummate colleague, one who supported new teachers and worked towards the good of the school, not just the good of his own students.

Rhee often says that her motto is, “Ensuring that adult issues never come before the best interests of children.” Why, then, was Art Siebens excessed and then involuntarily transferred when Woodrow Wilson restructured last spring and reconstituted 20% of the faculty?

Your guess is as good as mine. The only peep criticizing Siebens has come from a group of minority parents, who nonetheless maintain that they had no hand in Siebens’ dismissal from Wilson. (They did not respond to multiple attempts to contact them.) Siebens’ former students, their parents, and his colleagues have come out of the woodwork to support his return to Wilson. You can see their testimonials about how he touched their lives here.

In the meantime, we’ve now had an inside look at how Michelle Rhee’s system manages talent. Siebens applied for all open science positions at a hiring fair in June, and was not called for interviews at any of the schools to which he applied. He interviewed at several other schools over the summer, and either was not offered the position or told that “the position has been filled for us.” On the first day of school, Siebens – who has a PhD in Physiology - was assigned to teach 9th grade environmental science, a course he has never taught before. To date, he has not even received the teacher’s edition of the environmental science book, despite asking for it repeatedly.

And the kicker? The Washington Post reported a week ago that Wilson has a science vacancy. Is this what the “strategic management of talent” looks like?

"What I need is for you to have trust, in me and in the school district….I know that trust doesn't come overnight, and I have to earn that trust," Michelle Rhee recently said. What Rhee must realize, of course, is that debacles like the dismissal of Art Siebens eat away at that trust, as does her refusal to even consider that the principal made the wrong call here. Art Siebens has 18 years of data, a PhD, a gaggle of national awards, and a legion of parents and students standing behind him. If this can happen to him, it can happen to almost any teacher in the DC system.

Checks and balances, my friends, are the hallmark of the American system of governance, and I see no reason why we should abandon them in public education.

Posted by eduwonkette at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (69) | TrackBacks (0)