This week President Obama held a town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire. His main focus was jobs and the economy, but one of the six questions he took was from a woman named Judy Loftus, who is a teacher at Nashua South High School, Nashua, New Hampshire. Ms. Loftus asked the question that has been on our minds for months. She got a very intriguing response. (Click here to watch the exchange.)

Judy Loftus:
What are you going to do about No Child Left Behind? We have a lot of legacies from the last administration, and as an educator, I've seen the impact in my school, and it hasn't been a positive impact. We're focused more on testing and worrying about test scores than what's right for kids.

President Obama:
We used to have the best, and now we have pockets of the best, and then we have mediocrity, and then we schools that are just terrible. We've got to make sure EVERY child is getting a good solid education. And what that means is, we continue to invest in early childhood education, as my budget does, so our kids are prepared when they start school. It means we help schools with their basic budget, and the Recovery Act prevented a lot of layoffs, and really patched holes in a lot of budgets. It's not sexy, it doesn't get a lot of credit, but it made a huge difference. We've got to make sure though that the single most important factor in an elementary or secondary school education is fulfilled, and that is that we have got excellent teachers in the classroom, and that they are getting a good salary and the support that they need.

Traditionally, the debate between the right and the left over the schools has said, the Left just says "We just need more money in the schools, and everything will be ok." You know, for new equipment, new computers, smaller class sizes - that's been the argument on the liberal side. The conservative side says "The whole problem is bureaucracy, teachers unions, you gotta blow up the system." What my administration believes is, it's not an either or proposition - it's both-and. We need more money, but we need to spend the money wisely and we need to institute reforms that raise standards that push everybody in a school - principal, teacher, student, parent - to pursue excellence.

So last year we started with something called Race to the Top. It's a pretty simple proposition. We carved out a little bit of money that doesn't just go to general revenue - you know, Title 1, the general federal support for schools. And we said, "this money, this Race to the Top money, you get it only if you are working to make for excellent teachers, you're collecting good data, to make sure your students are actually making progress at the schools, you're dealing with the lowest-performing schools in the district, you've got ideas that are showing concrete results - in improvement - not in absolute test scores, but in the progress that that school is making, we're going to fund those improvements." And we've already seen reforms across 48 states, just because we incentivized reform. That's a good thing.

This year is when reauthorization for what's called No Child Left Behind would be coming up - as part of the broader education legislation that's up for reauthorization. And what we're saying there is, on the one hand, we don't want teachers just teaching to the test, on the other hand, we also want to keep high standards for our kids. And I think the best way to do that is to combine high standards, measurable outcomes, but have an assessment system that you work with teachers on, so that its not just a matter of who's fillin' out a bubble and you're also taking into account where do kid start, because not every kid is going to start at the same place, so you want to see where do they end up (applause) at the end of the year.

I just had a meeting with my team this week about this, trying to find ways that we can improve the assessment system, so we're still holding schools accountable, we're still holding teachers accountable, but we're not JUST holding them accountable for a score on a standardized test, but we have a richer way of assessing whether these schools are making progress. So that's the answer on the No Child Left Behind front.

Here is what I think: I think we are seeing the first sliver of hope for change. President Obama is calling for more authentic assessments of student learning, and he appears to be beginning to act on his promise to shift us away from standardized tests. He says teachers need to be involved in the process of developing these assessments. I think we need to take him up on this challenge and develop some clear proposals for the kind of assessments that would, in fact, be richer and more meaningful than our current tests. We will need to continue to organize and put pressure on every level and in every state, but there may be some room for our ideas to be heard.

Note: Our Facebook group, Teachers' Letters to Obama, now has 850 members, and active discussions are underway focused on our ideas about authentic assessment and other aspects of school change. Come join us!

What do you think? Do the President's words offer us some hope? What sorts of assessments would you like to see used in place of the current tests?

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Last month I published a guest post from Chuck Olynyk, a veteran teacher at Fremont High School in Los Angeles. Our education leaders have decided that one way to improve low performing schools is to shut them down, and make everyone working their reapply for their jobs. Education Secretary Arne Duncan did this to 60 schools in Chicago, and has plans to put the 5000 lowest performing schools in the country into a process that could lead to reconstitution.

This week we hear once again from Chuck, who allows us to witness this process as it unfolds. Things are heating up in LA.

Today is Day 152 of my time remaining at Fremont High School.

The workshop on "How To Transfer" really drove home how serious this situation at Fremont, which means other "loser" schools in LAUSD has become: ninety minutes on how to move out or be evicted from a place you dedicated the past sixteen years to. The library was packed, the facilitators bombarded with earnest questions. It's funny how we talk daily about doing it, about strategies like not reapplying, of signing petitions (or, more properly, pledges, I guess) not to do so, then the inevitable that comes with such gestures.

"I don't want to leave." Picture a whining voice in your ear. "I want to stay here..." Yeah, guess what? We all do (well, mostly). A number of us envisioned finishing out our careers here at the Mont, but Superintendent Cortines would have it otherwise in his grand publicity stunt. Yes, Dr. McKenna (III, in case you need to figure out which one) "encourages" us to all "reapply," if you were at Tuesday's meeting. Does it actually make sense to ask us all to reapply if having us all together is such a bad thing for Fremont? Oh, wait, I remember... "Just because it doesn't make sense doesn't mean it's not logical." Yes, Mr. Balderas also is asking us to reapply. Can you blame him? What might look like a dream-come-true for a principal--hand-picking your faculty--is really a nightmare, with a bunch of us with experience saying, "Okay, pick a school for me, since I suck so bad and have no idea what I'm doing." My sister is an M.D. and she likens having the majority of experienced people leaving to staffing a hospital with interns and medical students; sometimes experience matters.

"I'm not worried. I'm so good I know they have to hire me back. Only the bad teachers have to worry." Assuming you are re-hired, under what working conditions will that be? Dr. McKenna says that it's "a work in progress, subject to revision." So you want to sign on, while the "contract/compact" is under revision? If so, can I get you to sign a blank check for me? Won't you already be committed to working here and THEN you find out what the conditions are? What do plan to do then--leave? We need to know what the conditions are--and one of the conditions is that WE stay. (I think I'm channeling Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen--"This is one time we're going all the way with the Army's starting line-up?" "Even Maggot?" "Even Maggot.")

If we are all being encouraged--no, begged--to remain, then we cannot be the problem. But if we are not the problem, then why the wholesale forced exodus, why the Trail of Tears, why the Stalinesque deportation to an educational Siberian gulag? Dr. McKenna, you need to stick to one story. If we're being removed from Fremont because we have created a "culture of failure," then why are we being encouraged by you to reapply? Why has it become so important for us--teachers, counselors, clerical staff, food services, security, school police, custodial, and assistant principals--to reapply?
--Chuck Olynyk

Note: This was written over the weekend. Today, I got an update from Chuck:
Lots going on at Fremont. Thursday is Parent Conference Night, so we've got networking with parents going on. Saturday, there is a neighborhood walk scheduled, with teachers going door to door. Tuesday will be a rally in from of the Mont after school. Thursday there will be another meeting on our football field.

And the petition/pledge now has something like 120 out of 240 (more or less) faculty, who will not be reapplying.

More news on this battle can be found at the Save Fremont! web site.

What do you think? Would you reapply for YOUR job if your school was reconstituted?

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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is preparing to invest $45 million on research to discover what makes a teacher great. This week, retired teacher James D. Starkey offered his list of ten qualities in an Education Week column. I am going to offer my own suggestions here, and invite you to offer yours as well, but first I must make an observation about the hubris involved in this enterprise. Our definition of what makes a teacher great is a Rorschach test revealing our own philosophy of education. So the most important part of this process would be an in depth review of our cultural values to determine what education should be, because a great teacher is only great in the context of these expectations. And what is great in one setting might be disastrous in another. Our current system of measuring student achievement missed this step and we are paying a huge price as a consequence. We should not make the same mistake in defining teacher quality.

So I offer my own suggestions, explicitly stating the values that drive them.

First Value: The Interests of our Students come First
Great teachers place the interests of their students first. That means they consider their future lives when making decisions about how and what to teach them. They look at each of them as an individual and try to shape that child's experience to help him or her succeed. I just heard a wonderful story on This American Life (in the episode titled "2010") about a child named Lewis, who was struggling earlier this year. Typical 6th grade boy troubles - difficulty focusing on his work, distracting classmates, etc. Then one day he asked for five minutes of "Lewis time" in front of the class. A light bulb went on for his teachers, who from that day forward, would allow him five minutes every morning to hold forth, sing songs, tell stories from home, and teach the class whatever he wanted. But only if he earned it the day before. With this connection, he became far more able to focus and learn. We need to be constantly on the lookout, as teachers, for that hook that we can use to engage, motivate and focus our students. And we should evaluate every choice we make to see what is in their best long-term interests.

Second Value: A Passion for Learning
Great teachers needs to be able to transmit to their students a passion for learning about the world. Whatever the subject, we need to make it come alive in our classroom. We are not learning because something is on a test. We are learning because this is fascinating! Each of us has our own special area of passion - it might be music, or math, or biology. If we are lucky we get to spend time sharing that excitement with our students. A great teacher finds ways to build on that and take the students deep into the subject. I love turning students on to evolution, and I have a whole collection of fossils, including a genuine dinosaur egg, that I bring to class for the students to hold in their hands. That spark is infectious and is a precious thing. Great teachers feed those sparks and keep them burning by ongoing involvement in their subject - as a science teacher taking part in field research or real laboratory work, as an English teacher reading and writing literature, or a history teacher conducting research into the past. And the best thing is when we can connect our students to this work in real ways, getting them involved in projects where they are interviewing elders for history class, or doing field research themselves.

Third Value: Community Building
Each classroom of students is either a collection of 32 individuals, or a community of learners actively supporting one another. A great teacher can build a functioning community that learns together, and the students who are a part of that community will learn a great deal more as a result. They will learn more of their subject matter, because they will share their knowledge and help one another, and they will also learn the precious skill of collaboration. A great teacher knows how to structure teamwork so that individual effort is still required and recognized, but the groups nonetheless produce work that is greater than the sum of the parts.

Great teachers extend their sense of community beyond the walls of their classrooms, to collaborate with peers across the school and district -- and even country. They share curriculum, project ideas, and other resources, and actively collaborate with peers to conduct teacher research, do lesson study, or serve as mentors.

What do you think? What values and characteristics come to mind when you think of the great teachers you encountered in your life? What do you do that makes YOU great?

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My blog post last week (What will it take for Teachers to be Heard") suggested that we ought to work with our unions to advance the cause of educational reform. This comment from edudaddy took issue with my view:

Anthony, you write, "I would hope the leadership would go back to basics -- to the members they represent. And I hope the membership does the same thing -- go back to the organizations we created to defend us and advance our cause and that of our students." But can you really cite a single case where any of our unions came to the rescue of just one of our students? If you can, then I will cite hundreds of cases where our unions, instead, came to the defense of a teacher who was the perpetrator of a crime against a student. My job will be easy, a quick Google search of current educational news.

What if students did have a union to protect them, however? Can you imagine the impact on teachers and schools if these students now had legal resources to demand respect for their rights to learn? Their only nemesis would be the teachers' unions. After all, the interests of students and teachers (in this current system) are at 0dds with each other. Imagine a student going to his/her union and demanding the removal of a poor-performing teacher...or with an abusive teacher, or a drug using teacher, or a flat-out stupid and unqualified teacher? Would any of our unions support that student--even if ultimately to do so would be in the best interest of our entire profession? It's not about the kids. SPJ is right.

My response is too long for the comments section, so I am posting it here:

edudaddy,
First of all, I think a union for students is a fantastic idea, and one that I would wholeheartedly support. I agree with you that student interests are not identical with the interests of teachers, and that students deserve to have their interests represented more powerfully than they currently are in our system.

I think, however, the interests of teachers and students are more closely aligned than you suggest. I believe the vast majority of teachers entered the profession because we care deeply about our students, and I think our unions often act in the interests of both teachers and students. For example, teacher unions have been in the forefront of efforts to reduce class size and create better conditions for learning, because that is what teachers want more than anything -- to be able to teach.

But the issue of the legal defense that teacher unions provide for teachers accused of wrongdoing -- this is really an unfair charge. The unions, as the collective bargaining agent for the teachers, are required to negotiate a contract that includes due process for teachers accused of misconduct. Then the unions are legally REQUIRED to represent any teacher so accused, and ensure that the process is followed. Those processes do NOT prevent teachers from being terminated.

I worked as a Peer Assistance and Review coach full time for two years in Oakland, so I was on the front lines of the evaluation process. My district, like many in California, has several ways to deal with teachers who the administration believes are not serving children well. First of all, someone who commits blatant misconduct - and this is all spelled out in detail in the Education Code -- can be immediately suspended pending an investigation and hearing. But if someone is just plain incompetent, there is an evaluation process that allows the administrator to identify the areas in which the teacher needs to improve, and a PAR coach to work with them to meet these goals.

The union's job in this case is to make sure that the teacher in question gets a fair process. The union checks to be sure the teacher was actually observed by administrators the way they were supposed to be, and that the evaluation was done properly. As a PAR coach I was in the referred teacher's classroom at once or twice a week to observe and take notes on what I saw, and to offer support, resources and guidance to the teacher.

There was a range of responses I got, from complete indifference to an openness to my suggestions and a willingness to embrace change. In the Spring, I prepared a detailed report that described evidence I saw about where the teachers' practice was in relationship to the areas their administrator had identified as needing improvement. This report was submitted to a review board composed of four teachers and three administrators. That board would then make a recommendation as to whether the teacher had improved so as to successfully exit the program, or whether they should be exited unsuccessfully, in which case they could be terminated according to the contract.

In many cases my report was not flattering. In many cases the teachers were, in fact terminated, or forced to retire. As a union member I felt it was my responsibility to make sure that the teacher was evaluated fairly and given a chance to improve. But my top priority as a PAR coach was to make sure those students got the education they deserved.

In one case a teacher I had observed for the better part of a year was terminated and appealed his termination through the union. I was summoned to a deposition to testify. The union lawyer asked me questions, and I answered, describing the rather poor instruction I had observed in the six months I had been in this teacher's classroom. I heard later that following this, the union had counseled this teacher to retire, which he did.

But the union is there to prevent unfair terminations as well. We saw several good teachers who had run afoul of willful principals, and received poor evaluations as a consequence. In this case, we would also observe and document their instruction, but the outcome would be different. The whole Peer Assistance and Review process provided a set of checks and balances to the evaluation process, giving teachers a chance to improve if they were in fact faltering, and allowing an external audit of the evaluations done by administrators.

Unions are absolutely required to provide legal representation to members accused of misconduct, and that is fine with me. Just as the public defender should not be blamed for crimes, our unions should not be blamed because they make sure due process is followed.

But I think our unions would do well to be more outspoken advocates for educational reform - to be clear advocates for changes in schools that go beyond wages and benefits. As I said at the start, the most important changes teachers want are completely aligned with the interests of our students. We want:

• Smaller class sizes so we can give more attention to individual students.


• More time for collaboration and professional development, so we can build strong learning teams at our schools to better serve our students.


• More meaningful evaluations, connected to solid opportunities for professional growth, so teachers are given useful feedback and resources to improve and grow.


• Solid systems to respond to issues of discipline so that we can build effective learning environments in our classrooms.


• Better systems of accountability, including more meaningful assessments, and less pressure to constantly raise scores on multiple choice tests.


• More opportunities for teacher leadership, so our expertise on each of the issues above can be drawn upon.

All these things are beneficial to students, and all of them should be high on our agenda as members of our unions.

Even the bread and butter issues of salary and benefits are related to the interests of our students. Our students deserve teachers who choose teaching as a career, and invest their hearts and souls into becoming the best teachers they can be. This is tough to do if we must work second jobs to pay the bills, or cannot afford to send our own children to college.

And my colleague Renee Moore in Mississippi has pointed out that teacher unions in the South are very weak, due to the right-to-work laws there. If unions are the source of such great corruption, how is it that schools there do not seem to have vanquished incompetence? The answers are a great deal more complicated. If we are going to succeed, we are going to all need to work together for the interests of our students -- and hopefully help students gain power to act for their own interests as well.

What do you think? Do our unions help or harm our students' interests? How can we help students gain a stronger voice?

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This week I received a provocative question from someone who cares about schools. In response to the often heard complaints about No Child Left Behind, he asked "why can't teachers be creative and still raise test scores? Why do tests have to get in the way?"

A great teacher in Sacramento named Larry Ferlazzo just posted a piece next door entitled "Giving Classrooms a Purpose," in which he argues that it is essential that we have develop a sense of our mission with each class that we teach.

I agree with this 100%. When I was teaching the question that sometimes stopped me cold was "why are we learning this?" or even colder - "Why do we HAVE to learn this?" So I developed an answer that I would discuss early on in the year. I was teaching them to understand the natural world. I was teaching them to answer their own questions - to be investigators of the world around them. We were learning about things they were curious about - and I made sure of that by frequently asking them what they wanted to study, and giving them as much choice as possible in the assignments I gave.

However with the drive towards test-centered accountability we have created a different mission. The answer many teachers would give, explicitly or implicitly, is "we are learning this because it is on the test." There are a number of problems with this.

First of all, there is a great temptation to only seek to learn the subset of knowledge that is actually on the test. So we see teachers giving students "release items" from the test bank, so they know the sorts of things they are likely to be asked. A test is supposed to represent a sample of what has been learned. The more we zero in and teach precisely what is on the test, the less accurate it is as a representation of the body of knowledge students have learned. This is one reason why many state test scores rise even though actual student learning has not increased, as is revealed when we conduct an outside test like the NAEP that has not been prepared for. So the tests become less accurate the more pressure you place on them.

Second, and getting back to the idea of the mission we are on, the idea that we are learning in order to pass a test is an intellectual dead end. I have certainly studied for tests before, and understand that it is reasonable to occasionally be expected to show up and demonstrate what we have learned. But these tests should be occasional and incidental to the learning process. They should not be the goal. The goal should be for us to understand and be able to apply what we are learning about. If my answer to the question "why are we learning this?" is "Because it is on the test," then I have missed the point. Because why do we need to pass the test? So we can pass the grade and move on, and then move on to more tests, and more classes. It becomes circular. We pass the test so we can take the next test. And we are learning not so we can be powerful shapers of the world around us, not so we can understand the mysteries of the natural world, but because we need to please whatever entity is imbued with the power to bestow that all important grade or certificate upon us.

And when you have a student who is already alienated, as many of our students of color are, and you hit him with "you have got to learn this so you can pass the test," you will find that it is likely he will become even more alienated.

We need to be able to meet our students where they are. If they are alienated and bored, we need to look to kindle the spark of imagination and motivation from within. The whole approach of "you need to learn this to pass the test" is ultimately coercive. It is based on a series of implied threats. If you do not learn this, you will not pass the test. Fail the test, you will fail the class. Fail the class and you will fail high school. Fail high school and you will be condemned to a life of poverty. Fail to graduate from a four year college, and likewise, you will be poor.

But in order for this to work, students have to believe in the converse: Pass the tests and you will pass the class, you will graduate from high school, you will graduate from college, and you will get your ticket to the middle class. But students are well aware of the reality we are seeing unfold around us. The middle class is crumbling. Access to college is going out of reach of poor and working class students as fees climb and tax revenues fall. They do not see role models from their neighborhoods succeeding, so why should they believe that this ticket we are offering will actually work?

But of course that does not mean we give up and say "tough luck, you're screwed." It means we actively interface with their reality, rather than deny it. It means we seek to help them learn things that are of real importance, and show them how that knowledge can empower them to interact with the world around them. This might mean doing projects where they learn about the impact of lead poisoning in their neighborhood. When they learn about the chemistry of lead, it is part of understanding and changing their community.

None of this is easy. And it is much easier to give everyone the same fifty questions about valence electrons and ionic bonding to determine what they learned about chemistry. And the students SHOULD learn about these things, even if it is in a context of understanding how heavy metals impact our community. But when you put all the pressure on test scores, there is a way that this becomes the mission for everyone, and I think that fundamentally, that is a dead end.

What do you think? Do the high stakes attached to tests get in the way of creativity in the classroom, or can we raise scores and still be true to our mission?

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We spend so much of our energy responding to silly or downright destructive educational policies -- we rarely take the time to develop our vision of what we want instead. Our discussions over at the Teachers' Letters to Obama Facebook group have recently taken a turn towards the visionary. We have been pondering; What would an effective and wonderful education look like? Here is the response the question provoked from me:

The greatest challenge we face is in meeting our students where they are. So often we are so set on delivering our agenda, our learning targets or standards we are trying to hit, that we do not take time to understand our students, and what motivates them, what interests them.

As a science teacher I believe in the innate curiosity of the human mind. Give a child a windup toy and he is likely to pry it open to see how it works. This curiosity is rewarded by discoveries and understandings. My job as a teacher is to provoke that curiosity and give my students the tools they need to satisfy it. These are the tools of science: careful observation; taking notes; making drawings; asking questions about what we see; making hypotheses; testing those hypotheses through careful experiments; recording and communicating our results.

My favorite instance of this was an investigation into dry ice that I developed some years ago. I began by giving students a chance to explore this new material in a pretty unstructured way. I provided a few safety warnings, then handed out chunks of dry ice to every table of students. They played around for a few minutes, and then I gave them a cup with some water. That allowed them to see the gas pouring off the chunks of ice even more directly. Then I gave them ziplock bags, and triple beam balances. They were able to capture the gas, and some of them tried to weigh it. I was not expecting systematic experiments, but I thought this might help make some more provocative discoveries. I encouraged them to record their observations.

After about twenty minutes the dry ice was gone -- vanished into thin air. I asked students to write down as many observations as they could, and then we shared them as a class. I asked them to come up with at least three questions they thought we should investigate. I collected these questions.

The next day I had about 100 questions from my students. But some of them were like "how is dry ice made?" or "why is dry ice so cold?" These are not questions we can answer with an experiment. Others, however, were more useful. For example, one student asked: "Will dry ice gas make a balloon float or sink? If it sinks, how much heavier than air is it?" There is a question we can build some experiments around! So I challenged the students to separate the 100 questions into one group we could answer with an experiment, and another group we could not. Then came the real challenge. Can you actually design an experiment to answer one of these questions?

Students got to work and developed their own procedures for answering these questions. They had to specify their hypothesis, the quantities of materials needed, the procedure, and the way in which the results will be measured. I collected their investigation plans, and the next day, the students were doing their own experiments -- following instructions developed by themselves or their classmates.

We spent several days working through the experiments they had developed, collecting data and deepening our understanding of dry ice. But as they were learning about dry ice, the students were learning something a great deal more important -- that they could actively engage with the natural world, and like "real" scientists, actually learn from their own investigations.

Great education, for me, is all about awakening the spark of curiosity in students, and giving them the chance to explore and discover for themselves. I want them to develop a strong sense that they have the ability to think and investigate for themselves. We benefit a great deal from our ability to read about discoveries that came generations before us, but for me, firsthand discovery is what brings science to life for our students.

What do you think a great lesson looks like? A great classroom? A great school? Please post your comments here, or come over and join the discussion at the Teachers' Letters to Obama group.

Juicy Sidenote: An unusual debate occured a couple of weeks ago on Los Angeles radio station KCRW, between prominent NCLB critic Dr. Richard Rothstein and the Assistant Secretary for Communications for the Dept. of Education Peter Cunningham. Rothstein pointed out that the narrowing of the curriculum has continued under Duncan. Cunningham agreed. Rothstein pointed out that charters are no better, on average, than regular public schools -- once again, Cunningham agreed. Altogether remarkable! Perhaps we are being heard after all. Listen here.

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This week I received the following essay from Maryland teacher Dave Russell. It offers us a fresh lens, questioning some of the assumptions that lie under our education reform paradigm.

The Myth
A pervasive myth has caused havoc in public education for far too long. The myth is the belief that the academic achievement level for each child in the country can and should be controlled by the government, through public education.

Our country is a democracy with specific rules that guide the development of our laws. Many of these laws are created with the intent of providing equality and freedom to our citizens. Public education can only require specific behavior from its students and families, if a law or regulation that dictates it has been created and accepted through our democratic process. In education, some of the laws or lack of laws are very significant to student achievement. For example, there is no law that requires a child to engage in anything educational before he/she enters kindergarten. The law in most states, permits students to drop out at sixteen years of age. There are no laws that require a student to graduate from high school or even to reach a defined level of knowledge in any specific subject area. There are no laws that require students to complete homework, complete summer school work, or accomplish anything educational outside of the school day. The laws for truancy are fairly strict, only permitting ten unexcused absences a year. However, absenteeism is still a major problem. Truancy is not regulated sufficiently and some parents or eighteen year old students simple write excused notes for each absence. It is futile to try to assume control over a student's behavior or academic achievement level, without the establishment of laws that approve of it and enforce it. That is like trying to require every student and family to eat nutritious meals and exercise everyday. It may be a desirable goal, but our citizens have not agreed to institute a law that supports it.

Students and families do not have to agree with or strive to achieve every goal that public education or the government have deemed essential for our country. Nobody has been given the authority to supersede our democratic process and create their own requirements for citizens, even in the name of righteous goals.

Now What?
We need to make a paradigm shift in the current way we determine the competency of public education. Public education needs to be measured by its ability to provide every child with a high quality education that is capable of producing high achieving students, who think for themselves and contribute positively to our society. Capable is the key word in the definition. Educators and schools can possess and apply all the qualities that are needed to produce high academic achievement. However, they can not and should not ever hold the power to completely control their students' beliefs, behavior, or academic achievement level. Public education's only power lays in its ability to influence and provide knowledge to the children who attend school.

Technology has created extremely effective ways of collecting data in education. This data can be very helpful in producing effective educational practices among educators, schools, and communities. However, data is only useful if it is being applied appropriately. Student achievement on math and reading tests will never accurately reflect the competency of public education. Measuring overall student achievement in every subject area would give only a small indication of whether an educator or school is competent. Measuring the achievement growth of every student over the course of each year would be an improvement, but is still grossly inadequate at verifying educator or school competency. Currently, there is no precise way to confirm what knowledge a student has learned from his/her educators or school and what knowledge a student has learned from parents, siblings, tutors, personal determination, or any other external factor. Perhaps the most overlooked problem is the lack of an effective way to determine each student's effort or motivation when taking a test.

The government needs to be accountable for providing the resources that all children need both in and out of school. It also needs to provide the competent educational workforce that will give every child the opportunity to receive a high quality education. Families, schools, communities, and local/state/federal governments can use incentives to help influence or motivate children to reach specific goals. However, each child will ultimately decide which goals he/she will strive to achieve.

Every child is an individual. Every child, parent, educator, and school is unique. The progression of learning fluctuates from individual to individual. Although many people believe that each child's academic potential is limitless, each child will not reach the same level of achievement at the same time. Educators, parents, and schools need to help each student progress at the pace that is appropriate for them. This means that all students will not reach the same learning standards at the end of each year. Some students will need more resources or educational time to reach each standard, because they may lack support or need support in a particular area. Other students will accelerate through each learning standard and they may want or need to graduate ahead of schedule.

The current gap in achievement between underprivileged or minority students and White or Asian students can be justified as long as the underprivileged or minority students are given the resources and time that they need to reach the potential that they or their family desire. This may mean a longer school day, longer school year, or more than the traditional thirteen years of school. The same will be true with non English speaking students, special education students, and students who have inadequate parental support. These students may need considerable help outside of the school day. Educators and schools need to facilitate each students learning from whatever part of the continuum that the student is currently on. Public education should be held accountable for meeting the academic needs of its students, not for trying to ensure that every child reaches a specific level of academic achievement.

Final Thought
To continue to allow this Myth to dictate educational policy is to continue to live a lie. No matter how honorable or desirable the goals may be, operating under a false premise will only end in failure. As children develop their own values, priorities, and critical thinking skills, they will ultimately decide what they want to achieve in school and in life. Our schools should support all children in the pursuit of their individual vocation or calling in life, their true potential. The longer our country uses public education in an attempt to control each student's academic achievement level, the more misguided our students, families, and schools will eventually become.

I am a product of The Howard County Public School System in Maryland. After spending 5 years at Oakland Mills High School, I finally graduated in 1989 with a cumulative GPA of 0.6. I never took the SAT's and required remedial reading and writing courses when I attended Howard Community College in Maryland. I graduated from Towson State University in 1995 with a Bachelor's degree in Education. For the last fourteen years, I have taught for the Montgomery County Public School System in Maryland. I am the father of two daughters, who I believe are receiving an excellent education from the Howard County Public School System in Maryland. My goal is to create positive change in education. I can be reached at daverussell12@yahoo.com.

What do you think of Dave Russell's point of view? Should schools be accountable for students achieving at a predetermined level? How can schools be held accountable when students cannot be compelled to learn?

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In this wonderful post from two weeks ago, Teacher of the Year Anthony Mullen vividly captured our collective frustration with the nature of much of the national dialogue regarding education reform in the 21st century. Anthony Mullen was able to send those at the table into embarrassed silence, but they did not then turn to him for guidance. Perhaps the reason we are so rarely asked for our views is that those in power do not wish to hear us. We are, after all, not hard to find. We even have organizations that regularly make our views known.

So what must we do to actually influence policies that affect us and our students?

First, we need to engage in an active process to share and refine our views. We need to become well-informed about education policy, research, and the implications of our own ground-level experiences. We need to actively debate these issues among ourselves and with our allies and partners on this journey - parents, students and members of our educational communities. We must arrive at some clear viewpoints on the issues we face.

Second, we need to continue to develop our vision of what education should be. We so often find ourselves in a place where we are reacting to one travesty after another, and in reaction we rarely stop long enough to develop what we believe a school should be. How can we structure a classroom so that all children are served well? How can we engage students in creative, critical thinking? How can we tap the divergent interests and imaginations of a random assortment of children from different races and backgrounds? We need to share these visions with one another, and with the public at large, because that is the real source for our inspiration. I am not here to fight standardized tests. I am here to celebrate real learning and all that nurtures it.

Third, we need organization! We have a new group gathered around the Teachers' Letters to Obama project, where we are discussing these issues. In California, we have a group called Accomplished California Teachers, that is working on some reports on educational policy, and gathering teachers for discussions and action. We have the Teacher Leaders Network that brings together teachers from around the country. There are excellent professional organizations such as the National Science Teachers Association, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and the National Council of Teachers of English and the National Council for History Education. And we have the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards that has created the process by which many of us have become certified as accomplished teachers. We need to be involved in such organizations and use them to advocate for classroom teachers and students. There are also more activist-oriented groups, like FairTest, which advocates for better assessment practices, and Rethinking Schools, which explores many of these issues through a great magazine.

But the most powerful form of organization we have by far is our unions. Two thirds of America's teachers belong to either the NEA or the AFT - about four million strong, the largest unions in the nation. Teachers are professionals, but we are also workers. Our work is directed and controlled by administrators, and overseen by distant policymakers who do not care much what we think. I believe that one of the main priorities of the "school reform" movement is the de-unionization of teaching. They are going at this by aggressively expanding charters, which have the power to completely re-write union contracts, eliminating protections for tenured teachers, and expanding hours and duties. They are also working hard to portray unions as defenders of the incompetent at the expense of our students.

But our unions are the most important organizations we have as a profession. Without our unions, elementary school teachers, mostly women, would still be paid significantly less than high school teachers, as they were at the turn of the century. Our unions are fundamentally democratic. We may not always agree with the leadership, but they are elected and we can get involved if we choose to.

Over the past decade a disastrous split has developed between those who advocate for teachers, and those who advocate for children. George W. Bush and the architects of NCLB took advantage of this wedge, and it is the fundamental problem we face as a profession. We MUST be solid advocates for children, as well as for our profession. We cannot be seen as being selfish about our own interests at the expense of children -- that has been the devastating critique embedded in NCLB and most of the current school reform efforts.

Our unions are in somewhat of a bind when it comes to defending those who are incompetent. They are legally obliged to represent and defend individuals, and advocate on their behalf. Union leaders have taken the stance that it is up to the administration to identify and follow procedures to help such teachers to improve, or to terminate them. However, in many districts, including my own, principals are often overwhelmed, and incapable of following through with a solid evaluation. As a result, incompetent teachers may stay on the job for years, harming hundreds of children. Traditionally union leaders have said, "That's not our problem." But if we want to behave as a profession, we have to make that our problem, otherwise we find ourselves in the situation we are in, accused of sheltering crummy teachers.

I think we need to work with our union leadership to expand ways that teachers take responsibility for our professional standards at a school. We need more peer observations. We need to make evaluations more meaningful -- connected to good teaching standards. The purpose should be for improving our practice, and we should connect the process to opportunities for professional growth. That could include collaborative projects at school, teacher research, coursework, or seminars. We should be creative and pro-active in proposing such changes, rather than sitting on our hands and waiting for the administration to come up with ways to improve teaching. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued a challenge to us to engage in this process on January 12. We need to look closely at the proposals she is making, and figure out how this can be implemented in constructive ways. I think we are losing the battle if we sit on the sidelines.

It is true that as a profession we are getting very little respect. In part that is because we have some real latent power in our unions, and there is a drive to diminish that power. Unions give us the power to act together, and that is the single greatest power we have. No matter how articulate and insightful we may be, the power of our insight is very weak compared to the strength we have when we act -- and even strike if necessary -- together.

We need to expand our dialogue around the issues we face so as to figure out how to tackle real problems like the creation of effective evaluation processes, authentic models of assessment, and stemming the problem of drop-outs and student alienation. And we need to work to strengthen our unions, and other organizations that speak for us. The only way we will get that seat at the table, and more importantly, influence over our destiny as professionals, is when we have clear solutions and the power to enact them.

What do you think? How can we get our voices heard as teachers? How should we get organized? And how should we relate to our unions?

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Chuck Olynyk thought he was doing a good job. He was recognized by the Fulfillment Fund with an award for Excellence in Education. But now he must reapply for his job.

From Los Angeles we hear of the cutting edge of school reform -- reconstitution of "failing" schools. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan plans to take on the 5000 lowest performing schools in the country as part of his drive for reform, and remake them, using strategies up to and including reconstitution. This, in spite of the fact that his Chicago experiment along these lines yielded few gains. But LA Superintendent Ramon Cortines is ahead of the curve, and plans to reconstitute Fremont High school even sooner.

How does it feel to be a teacher at such a school?

Chuck Olynyk teaches history at Fremont High. He brings his subject to life with his students every day. He explains:

I use historical reenactment, living history as its were, to teach world history, and this appears in the documentary. So I construct and wear armor, costumes, even get down to making the shoes to match; music for the time period is played (a "now playing" board helps the students connect with the music). I've taught them how to start a fire with flint and steel, how to dance medieval and renaissance dances, what goes into making various artifacts, how to use them.

Today I received his thoughts upon the news that he, along with the entire staff at his school, will have to reapply for their jobs.

In 168 days my time at Fremont High ends.

It's been a month since Superintendent Cortines assembled the faculty and staff in the auditorium and told us, with armed school police officers present, that we were responsible for a "culture of failure." In that month, while people prepared for and celebrated holidays and fellowship and good cheer and we were inundated with stories about homeless shelters and "be good to our fellow man" stories, I've been doing a lot of soul-searching, sorting out my feelings, looking for answers as to "Why? Why is this happening? Why us? Am I really a bad teacher, lazy, not dedicated to my profession? Is it really just a 7:30-3:04 job?"

Obviously we're talking, if only in small groups. When I was on campus 1/11, I saw teachers and other staff talking quietly. There was something oddly familiar about it. You see, I used to be a case manager for Federal inmates, before I found what I feel is my true path. What I saw reminded me of what I saw in the yard, inmates passing along information

I'm using this to think out loud, my feelings changing like a compass gone mad at the North Pole while I try to remain true to my course. Often it is easier for me to think on paper. I'd spoken with a couple of you about showing this, allowing the editing to take place before I sent it out like some educational manifesto, but I decided to go naked to the world and show you, a larger audience, how I'm sorting out my feelings, for I feel that many of you are probably doing the same.

Well, not the ones who applauded when the Superintendent spoke... And certainly not some of those administrative types who wander around D7 (that was done for any Trekkies and fans of DS9) debating just how many educators (not teachers--that crowd never calls themselves by such an old school word) can dance on the head of a pin. (Sorry, sometimes, well, actually often, I prove to be my own worst enemy when it comes between sharing--some might call it inflicting--my opinion on the world...)

Superintendent Cortines defined the culture of failure as years of low test scores, of poor attendance rates--he states the average student misses 25 days of school per year; that tallies somewhat with the figures I've kept--on the average, my 10th grade students miss 14 days per 74 days of an 81-day semester. Somehow we are responsible for that absenteeism, according the superintendent, NO EXCUSES, and that we are to go out into the streets to find our lost children.

When am I going to do this? I have 178 10th grade students in my five periods of World History (more than the number of days I have left at Fremont), plus another 25 in my advisory period, half of whom wander in twenty minutes late in a 28-minute period. Exactly when am I supposed to track them down? And how am I supposed to achieve this educational search and rescue?

We were told that "Fremont" misspent the vast amounts of money that comes to the school, that he did not know how it was misspent (yeah, right), but the implication is there that we did it. Yeah, that's why I spend $35/month on paper, buy my own pens, pencils and whiteboard markers and even have to lock up the overhead projector because adult school and Saturday school steals my stuff (We won't discuss how much I've spent on armor and costumes and music for use with my lessons...). I don't like being called a thief, especially when I see fellow teachers spending their own money to make copies and suchlike in their classes, when so many of us DONATE time--before school, after school, weekends (I'm at school 5:30 every damned morning and usually leave sometime around 4:30, and am damned lucky if I can go the faculty cafeteria to forage and even damned luckier if I find food there). Hey, wasn't an audit being conducted around the time of
the bombshell being dropped on Fremont? Interesting timing, that, eh? (Since we're talking money, hey, anybody remember when we became a "Digital High School" and we had 5 computers in every class, 4 for student use?)

Why not find out who signed off on how the money was spent? Someone had to sign off, and that someone had a supervisor who had to approve it. Blame them, not the ones spending their own dwindling money while looking at a 12% pay cut and investing their time. Stop implying that we are thieves feeding at the public trough, when it is others stealing from the future--our students.

And now we have to re-apply for our jobs, come cap in hand and kiss a ring (or something else) in order to stay at this school. I've been teaching since 1983, in LAUSD since 1987 (Edison Junior High, then Middle School), and have been a Pathfinder since we reconfigured in July 1994, adding the 9th grade and going year-round all in the same day. I guess that makes me a veteran (or, as some would have it, old).

Of course a veteran at FHS is often defined as someone lasting a year or two, and often they're gone after that, as are any administrators who trained here. I'd guess, according to some, those who remain are the ones who couldn't get positions in "better schools." There is at times a stigma for those of us who choose to remain at "urban schools," despite what we do.

Some of us like the hard fights. When I make my students stand at the window of Room 225 and look downtown, I point out the buildings to them and we discuss money and power--with education--and how for many that is all that is respected. Then one discriminating student points out, "You don't care about that stuff." True enough. I tell them I'm trying to make a change, tell them of a Ukrainian proverb that even a drop of water can wear a hole in a stone; then I point out a number of my former students have been teaching with me. I ask, "Did they come back to the neighborhood and the school because of the big bucks? The tremendous respect we earn from LAUSD and the LA Times and even the students?" They answer no and tell me, "They want to make a change." And how many others will they in turn influence?

No, I don't want to leave Fremont. I want to finish the fight here, not because some might label me a screw-up, lazy teacher who settled into an "urban school" because it was "easier" and that "the standards are lower in places like that." In the war on ignorance, the front line is here. We are changing--in a positive way, despite what some of the D7s (one of our co-workers refers to them as "the empty suits") think about us; one of them had written in an email that he'd worked with Fremont and this bold move of Superintendent Cortines is just what Fremont needs--I guess he must not be very good at his job if he's worked with us for years and his own work wasn't good enough to change us losers, eh? He also said that what is needed is a core, dedicated group (sorry, doing this from memory) of something like twenty teachers, who are willing to do whatever is necessary...

That's pretty much when I'd stop listening. Dedicated? There's a bunch of you who show up well before 6:30 every morning and stay after until 4:30 or 5:00 and come here on weekends and throw pizza nights and roller skating nights and talent shows and help pay some of the senior dues, or just don't go to lunch because some kids need help... Yeah, I can see where you guys need to be more dedicated; that D7 suit must be right about those lazy, untrainable Fremont teachers who get PDs every week and are still burdens to LAUSD... (That last part was a bit of heavy-handed sarcasm, if you don't know me.)

I know my feelings will change--kind of like the grieving process--but I reached a point where I mulled over the application process. I thought about CST scores (and I'm sure periodic assessments will be a part of that anyway, even though we've been told otherwise), even when 50% of my 10th graders are 9+s and not testing at their social studies grade level for CSTs, and how this will be a factor in considering whether I'm good enough for the New Fremont (kinda like, "This is the new Germany"). I've thought about the attendance rates and how this, too, is a factor. And "volunteerism," whatever that is supposed to mean. And a whole host of other factors in the hiring process (maybe I'm supposed to bring copies of weather reports for the past 5 years because, Lord knows, I'm responsible for the weather and my coffee-maker for global warming--oh, wait, I forgot, that one's a myth, my bad...)

Yeah, I thought about going cap in hand with all this "evidence" that I think I'm not really responsible for and which the powers-that-be can gather easily (you mean to tell me that they don't have a file on me or copies of previous Stulls?), when I have not received a bad evaluation, wear a vest and a tie that's not a costume on a daily basis, and ask for my job.

I think that participating in this process only validates the accusations of Cortines. To be a willing participant is to say, "Yes, we as Fremont misspent vast sums of money. No we are not working hard enough. Yes, those fine educators who run PDs are geniuses, but we just are dumb as dirt and barely trainable and have been milking the system for years. Yes, yes, it's all true, and I'll do whatever you want and commit to Fremont for 5 years and take whatever you give me in those 5 years and never complain."

Agree to be treated differently from all the other schools in the district? Sorry, the historian in me just flashed on the Thirteen Colonies after the last French and Indian War (the Seven Years War to o the rest of the world), and how the folk in the Colonies were not treated like the other British subjects, which lit a fire. Sign on for 5 years? Does "indentured servitude" mean anything to anybody?

I don't think I can re-apply for a job I did not do anything wrong in, to be at a school where I will be treated differently than I would be at other LAUSD schools. I don't think I can do it and look at myself in the mirror. It's wrong. To participate validates and perpetuates this. When Superintendent Cortines says he has the right to do this, I've often found that when someone says they have the right to do something, it often has nothing to do with right. To aid and abet someone in the act of wrongdoing is itself wrong.

Feel free to share this amongst yourselves, to pass it along, for I'm just throwing ideas out there. We're still allowed to do that, eh?
--Chuck Olynyk

Update: Further news and perspectives from the author about this ongoing battle can be found here, at savefremont.org.

What do you think of this? Is this a valid way to cure low-performing schools? How would you feel if you were reconstituted?

image by Chuck Olynyk, used by permission.

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Last week week I posted Part 1 and Part 2 in a series of responses to a list of education policy challenges posted by my friend Nancy Flanagan. Nancy publishes an excellent blog (Teacher in a Strange Land) Please join me in thinking about and discussing our response, as teachers, to the issues she raises:

Here is the next Obama/Duncan policy she cites, followed by my thoughts:

Merit pay: Will performance pay change teacher effectiveness? If not, what will?

First of all, we should agree that it should be possible to come up with new ways of paying teachers that will enhance the work we do, and encourage things that are associated with better student learning. However, as the many aborted teacher pay experiments attest, there are many ways to do this wrong, and in an era of scarce resources, we need to take the time to get this right.

Before we try to reward effectiveness, we need to agree on how to define and measure it. One of the reasons so many of us resist many proposals for performance pay is that they often equate effectiveness with the ability to raise test scores. When this objection is raised, we inevitably hear "Oh yes, we know these measurements are inadequate, but they are what we have, and so we have to use them until something better comes along." I am sorry, but that is not good enough for our students. By attaching high stakes to test scores we systematically devalue everything else. I have seen the results firsthand in Oakland, where many elementary schools do not even teach science. In the middle schools, when math and science are taught together over two periods, many times the science is taught one hour a week, and the math nine hours a week. Because that is what counts on the test.

If we want performance pay to result in better outcomes for students, we need to reach agreement on what those outcomes should be. Then we should figure out ways to encourage teachers to engage in the processes that yield those outcomes.

David Cohen's comment on my last post gives us a snapshot of what these practices should look like:

At my school, when we're having productive conversations about student achievement, we're talking about many skills that can't be measured by standardized tests: student writing, students' work habits and habits of mind, discussion skills, research skills, and creativity all come to mind. Now someone will come along and say "you can't measure creativity" - and they may be right, and I don't try to. But when I give my students options to show their reading skills in creative ways, I can evaluate the result using the same old state standards as my benchmark.

When an entire class or grade level has the chance to do a similar project, then the teachers are using good teaching practices - research-based practices that improve motivation and engagement - and then gathering useful information about student learning which can then be used to inform instruction and further improve student achievement. Where we can improve is in gathering this information in a more formal and systematic way, with some procedures or protocols built in as controls - someone outside, a neutral observer with a critical eye.

This is the sort of practice that should be rewarded. And we must make sure that any system we design rewards collaboration and cooperation, because this is what teachers value most, and this is what drives improvements in practice and allows them to be shared. Teachers who lead these processes should receive extra compensation. Teachers should also receive additional compensation for mentoring novices, for conducting teacher action research to improve their practice, and for leading professional development.

In the TeacherSolutions report on pay for performance from a few years back, we wrote about the value of teachers taking on hybrid roles, where they teach part time and use part of their time for leadership activities.

Lastly, author Daniel Pink has recently reminded us what teachers have known intuitively all along, since we are the original experts on motivation. Carrots and sticks are poor substitutes for intrinsic motivation. He says in this interview with Claus von Zastrow;

There is 40 years of science that says that for complex, conceptual, creative tasks--the sort of things that most white-collar workers are doing now that the more simple routine work can be offshore or automated--carrot and stick motivators don't work. Or I should say they rarely work, and they often do harm.

Pink suggests:

The way that money is most effective as a motivator is to take the issue of money off the table. Pay people enough so that they are not focused on money, but they are focused on doing their job well. My experience has been that 85% of teachers out there just want teach and do right by kids. If you raise their base salaries and give them some autonomy, they'll do that. If you also give either building principals or superintendents the ability to get rid of--and I am just estimating here--the 10% or 15% of teachers, like the 10% or 15% of any profession, who are duds, I think that is a simpler solution. It is not perfect, but it has far less collateral damage than tying [pay] to standardized test scores or doing these elaborate performance measurements.

What do you think about performance pay for teachers? What do you think should be rewarded?

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