Living in Dialogue

There has been a great deal of speculation about President-elect Obama’s choice for Secretary of Education. Obama has called for a new era of mutual responsibility in education, and it will take an extraordinary leader to rally educators and the nation at large to this task. Many names have been mentioned, but I am going to write about two with whom I am acquainted, and open up the discussion for your ideas as well.

One candidate is Dr. Pedro Noguera. I attended UC Berkeley with Dr. Noguera back in the 1980’s, and worked with him on various projects, including a campaign to get the university to withdraw its investments from businesses involved in the apartheid regime in South Africa. He emerged as a strong leader in that movement, and went on to become a professor of sociology at the university.

He became active in the Berkeley public schools, where his children were enrolled, and served on the school board. His book, Unfinished Business, took a close look at the dynamics of race and achievement at Berkeley High School. He is now an NYU education professor, and has written several books focused on closing the achievement gap, urban education and the particular challenges facing African American boys in school. He has written critically about No Child Left Behind, and spoken widely on education reform.

Another leading candidate for the post is Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond. She has been one of Obama’s primary advisors on education issues, and represented his views in a debate with a McCain representative held last month.

I first learned about Dr. Darling-Hammond’s work ten years ago, when I read her book, The Right to Learn.

In it she wrote passionately about the need for a stronger teaching profession, and provided a powerful critique of the status quo:

It has taken nearly a century to discover that, as a form of organization, bureaucracy lacks the tools to manage complex work, handle the unpredictable, or meet distinctive client needs. By its very nature, bureaucratic management is incapable of providing appropriate education for students who do not fit the mold upon which prescriptions for practice are based. As inputs, processes, and measures of outcomes are increasingly standardized, the cracks through which students can fall grow larger rather than smaller because the likelihood that each accumulated prescription is suitable for a given child grows smaller with each successive limitation upon a teachers' ability to adapt instruction to students' needs. Bureaucratic solutions to problems of practice will always fail because effective teaching is not routine, students are not passive, and questions of practice are not simple, predictable or standardized. Consequently, instructional decisions cannot be formulated on high then packaged and handed down to teachers. Nor can instructional problems be solved by inspectors who make occasional forays into the classroom to monitor performance and dispense advice without an intimate knowledge of the classroom context, the subject matter being taught, the goals of instruction, and the development of individual children.

Instead of “bureaucratic solutions,” Darling-Hammond has been a powerful proponent of a strengthened teaching profession. She actively supported the creation of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and created the National Board Resource Center at Stanford University, which has helped hundreds of candidates (including myself) achieve certification over the past decade. She has written extensively on how teaching and learning actually work, looking in-depth at how we can identify and promote teacher quality. She has been critical of No Child Left Behind and the emphasis on “testing rather than investing.”

An online petition has been started urging President-elect Obama to select Dr. Darling-Hammond.

From my point of view, either of these individuals would be an excellent choice, because both of them bring a powerful dedication to the needs of our students, and will be forceful advocates for school improvement. They are both, like Obama himself, articulate and passionate in their beliefs, and could offer us the fresh start we need.

Whom do you think President-elect Obama should choose for this job? Why?

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In his speech on election night, President-elect Obama said

I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

Our schools will be remade this same way, classroom by classroom. We are fifty-four years beyond the ruling by the Supreme Court, Brown vs. Board of Education, which struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine that had sanctioned school segregation across the land. The National Guard was sent to Little Rock, Arkansas, fifty years ago, to protect nine African American students brave enough to integrate a previously all-white high school.

Ten years later, when I was ten years old, I was a participant in the Berkeley public school’s voluntary school integration program, which mixed students from different neighborhoods across the city. A decade further, as a college student, I worked with my peers to push for greater opportunities for students of color. The better part of decade later I started my career teaching in the Oakland public schools.

But we still have a long way to go. We have a vague aspiration, as a nation, to provide equal educational opportunities to all of our children. I do not think I need to document the many ways our schools still fall short. From the achievement gap, to the dropout rate, to the outrageous number of young people we incarcerate, to the appalling turnover rate among our teaching staff, there are plenty of indicators that tell us we are far from where we ought to be.

The approach taken by the Bush administration with No Child Left Behind has had a paradoxical effect. In a strange way, unfairly focusing so much responsibility and blame on teachers actually has left us feeling LESS accountable. After all, if goals are set impossibly high, we simply shrug our shoulders and accept that there is no way to succeed. Instead of motivating us to reach higher, we wind up becoming cynical and demoralized, less able to accept responsibility for our results.

President-elect Obama has described a fresh approach. Speaking to the National Education Association last July, he said:

I am tired of hearing teachers blamed for our problems. I want to lead a new era of mutual responsibility in education. One where we all come together, parents and educators and the NEA and the leaders in Washington, citizens all across America united for the sake of our children’s success.

Obama has also spoken forcefully about the need for parents to make sure their children are doing their homework. And he has made it clear that expanding early education is a high priority that will not be sacrificed even when the budgets get hammered.

This is a completely different accountability structure. For the first time in a long time, it feels as if teachers are not in this struggle alone.

What will this new era of mutual responsibility look like? We know we have a big set of responsibilities as teachers. We are aware that an effective teacher can have a huge impact on the success of her students. We know that when teachers collaborate, support one another and share their expertise, we can create powerful learning communities at our schools. We know that student achievement grows when we assess learning and provide focused, timely feedback. We know our students do much better when their families are actively involved in the process. A greater engagement between school and community means we put a priority on demonstrating student learning, through public displays of academic excellence.

Our schools need to be reorganized to create space in a teacher’s day to expand these professional activities. We cannot simply add these responsibilities to a ten-hour workday. If we value collaboration, there must be time and compensation provided for it. We should also be willing to consider redesigned pay systems to provide incentives for teachers to expand leadership roles, to gain new skills, and to teach in underserved areas.

Mutual responsibility also means our communities expand their engagement in the educational process. More volunteers can step forward to help our students learn to read and write, and explore the arts in ways that reflect the values and aspirations of our communities. Businesses can actively engage with our high schools, to provide role models and internships to show our students the real-world value of their educational opportunities.

President-elect Obama’s election-night speech last week was sober. He warned,

This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other.

That sounds like a good deal to me.

So what do YOU think of President-elect Obama's approach? What might "mutual accountability" look like to you in your community?

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I was born in 1958, and grew up in Berkeley, California, in the 1960s and 1970s. It was a tumultuous time, and my parents were deeply involved in the affairs of the day. But we did not even own a television until the spring of 1968, as the Democratic convention approached. The country then was in fear. We were in the midst of the war in Vietnam, and the Civil Rights Movement was unfinished business. In April of that year, Martin Luther King, Jr, was murdered by a white supremacist.

Richard Nixon won that election – having roused the “silent majority” of voters who feared the social changes under way, and thought he might stem the tide and preserve “law and order.” He, ironically, became the first president forced to resign for his own criminal activities.

This election we are sensing a seismic political shift. Our students, as usual, have been ahead of the rest of us. USA Today reported that Obama won national student polls by 18 points, 57% for Obama to 39% for McCain.

In 1968, Walter Cronkite brought the Democratic convention into our living room in black and white. This year in my home, the TV is tuned to CNN and MSNBC, and on my laptop, I check political blogs for the very latest tidbits, polling results and analysis.

The election results in 1968 and 1972 reflected an electorate that wanted to stave off change. The result this year is not in as I write this, but if the poll of our students is any indication, we may have an electorate ready to embrace change, and I have never seen people – especially the youth -- so excited and motivated about an election.

How does this election compare to others you have experienced? How have your students been reacting to the process? What do you think the election results tell us about the direction of the country?

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One of the most intriguing initiatives in urban school reform, taking large schools and shrinking them to create more humane and flexible ones, is at a crossroads, and education leaders in Oakland have some tough decisions to make.

Six years ago the Oakland Unified School District was in a financial crisis, and was forced to borrow $100 million from the state. Teachers agreed to take a four percent pay cut, and a state administrator was appointed to run things. The District also faced declining enrollment. Every year we had several thousand fewer students – and our funding is directly tied to the number of students we teach. The District also faced chronic academic problems, with many schools way below state average on their test scores.

The District had already embarked on a path led by the “small schools movement,” and the state-appointed administrator supported this direction. With leadership from the Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools, and millions of dollars from the Broad and Gates Foundations, each year new small schools were launched. The District went from about 90 schools to more than 140 in just the past eight years.

Many of these small schools have been academically successful where the schools that preceded them were not. Some have implemented project-based learning, and all have worked to personalize the learning environment. At the secondary level, the small middle and high schools have increased graduation rates.

Unfortunately, small schools are inherently more expensive to run than larger schools, for obvious reasons. And the dollars that once flowed from foundations are now elsewhere – small schools have lost their allure. It should be noted that other areas, such as Portland and Seattle, where the Gates Foundation likewise supported the creation of new small schools, are undergoing similar challenges. According to this June article in the Seattle Times, “Gates Foundation leaders also have grown impatient at the uneven results when big schools break into small ones. This fall, Gates probably will switch the focus of its grants for fixing high schools to target teaching and raise teacher quality, says Vicki Phillips, who directs Gates' education initiatives.”

In Oakland, our District still owes the state $84 million, and enrollment has continued to decline. The District has gone from 54,024 students down to 38,852 during this time. As a result, the District is researching school closures as a means of saving money to repay the debt and to make sure the schools that remain open have adequate resources.

So now the District is embarking on the painful process of examining which schools should be closed, and which should remain open. Widely respected education policy expert Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor at Stanford University, is working on a report, and shared preliminary results last week. Community meetings have begun to discuss the criteria that should be used in deciding which schools ought to be closed. This article in the East Bay Express describes the controversy.

School closures are highly disruptive and painful, so the decisions must be made very carefully. The process allows us to focus on some questions we should be thinking about anyway.

What are the critical variables in the success of a school? Here are some of the variables at play in our schools:

Size
Age
Design
Ethnic composition
Economic status
Teacher experience
Teacher leadership
Administrative leadership
Community involvement

It will be interesting to read Linda Darling-Hammond’s report and see how these various factors play out in the evaluation of the effectiveness of these schools. I will share her results when they become available.

In the meantime, what do you think? What are the critical variables in the success of a school? Are there intangibles not on this list? What about student performance? What measures would you use?

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This week I listened to an episode of the public radio program “This American Life” entitled “Going Big.” The lead story was about a community organizer in Harlem named Geoffrey Canada, who became frustrated with the lackluster results of his work, and decided a major shift might help. He convinced his organization to launch a major new initiative called the Harlem Children’s Zone. He decided to focus his organization’s efforts on a 24-square block section of Harlem, and work to create a network of supports for the children growing up there, starting as young as he could. He knew from current research that the first three years of a child’s life are the most critical for their future. The group created a “Baby College” to teach young parents crucial parenting and communication skills, so they could nurture curiosity and literacy in their children.

The first generation of those children are now in the third grade of the project’s charter school, and performing at high levels. As the New York Times explained last month, this project is part of a national movement to find creative solutions to the problems confronting us in raising our children.

The idea of Thinking Big got me reflecting on some of the limitations of my own thinking recently. My last couple of blog entries have focused on the flaws of No Child Left Behind, and the havoc wreaked by narrowly focused high-stakes testing. I am going to continue to flog that beast until the rotten carcass is removed. But as teachers, we need to look beyond the confines of the paradigm that has afflicted us for the past decade, to envision the schools and our profession in the ways we would like them to be.

We need to dream! We need to think big!

Here are some of the challenges I believe need the genius and special knowledge of America’s teachers:

What do we, as educators and part of the fabric of our society, truly value in an education, and how can we restructure our schools to better deliver what we value?

How can we connect our K-12 schools to the efforts to strengthen the essential nurturing and learning children need from birth?

How can we reshape our assessment practices so that we, as classroom teachers, have ongoing, current awareness of our students’ strengths and weakness so we can help them grow?

How can we make complex student learning visible to our parents and community, so they become aware of how our students are performing in a deeper way?

How can we reshape the school day so that teachers have time and space to collaborate, reflect, plan together, give one another feedback, and build strong learning communities?

How can we make teacher evaluation a valued means of growth for each teacher, whether beginner or veteran?

How can we as teachers do more to guide our own professional development so that it honors and draws on our expertise?

How can we deepen our ability to connect to students from different ethnicities and cultures so as to build the relationships and communicate the high expectations needed for success?

How can we actively contribute to the body of knowledge regarding our profession?

How can we build stronger connections between our classrooms and the parents of our students, and the community at large?

How can we effectively mentor the new teachers, and build a strong career ladder so that growth is expected and rewarded throughout one’s life as a teacher?

How can we actively engage with the education policy arena so that the wisdom of the classroom practitioner can inform the change process?

I’m eager to hear any big paradigm-busting thoughts you might have about any of these issues. What would you add to this list? What is the biggest challenge you see for teachers in the months and years ahead – and what big idea would you propose to meet that challenge?

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The modern educator’s life often feels as if it is driven by test results. Test scores are now used to compare students, to compare and give grades to schools, and even to compensate teachers. But have we staked too much importance on test scores? Harvard professor Daniel Koretz, who teaches educational measurement, has taken on the task of educating us all on what test scores can tell us – and what they cannot.

His book, Measuring Up, was published recently by Harvard University Press. I read the book, and Dr. Koretz answered my questions below.

1. What is the problem with teaching to the test? If the tests and standards are sound, what is the problem?

Many people believe that if you have a high-quality test aligned with sensible standards, teaching to the test must be fine. They are wrong. Some degree of teaching to a good test is desirable. If a test shows that your students are quite weak in dealing with proportions, you ought to bolster your teaching of proportions. That’s why we test. But even with a test aligned to solid standards, there is a very real risk of excessive or inappropriate teaching to the test. To see why, you have to go back to ground zero, to the basic principles of testing.

As I explain in more detail in Measuring Up, a test is a small sample of behavior that we use to estimate mastery of a much larger “domain” of achievement, such as mathematics. In this sense, it is very much like a political poll, in which the preferences of a very small number of carefully chosen people are used to estimate the likely voting of millions of others. In the same way, a student’s performance on a small number of test items is used to estimate her mastery of the larger domain. Under ideal circumstances, these small samples, whether of people or of test items, can work pretty well to estimate the larger quantity that we are really interested in.

However, when the pressure to raise scores is high enough, people often start focusing too much on the small sample in the test rather than on the domain it is intended to represent. What would happen if a presidential campaign devoted a lot of its resources to trying to win over the 1,000 voters who participated in a recent poll, while ignoring the 120 million other voters? They would get good poll numbers if the same people were asked again, but those results would be no longer represent the electorate, and they would lose. By the same token, if you focus too much on the tested sample of mathematics, at the expense of the broader domain it represents, you get inflated scores. Scores no longer represent real achievement, and if you give students another measure—another test, or real-world tasks involving the same skills—they don’t perform as well. And remember, we don’t send kids to school so that they will score well on their particular state’s test; we send them to school to learn things that they can use in the real world, for example, in later education and in their work.

Nothing in this process requires ‘bad’ material on the test. The test can be very high quality and well aligned with solid content standards. The risk of score inflation requires only two things: that the test be a small sample of the domain, and that important aspects of the test are somewhat predictable. The first is always true of tests that measure large domains, and the second usually is.

So, what how can you teach appropriately to a well-designed test? I suggest two guidelines. First, focus on the big picture, the knowledge and skills the test is intended to represent, not the details of particular test items. Second, ask yourself whether your forms of test prep will give kids knowledge and skills that they can readily apply, not just on your state’s test, but also in novel situations, including other tests as well as real-world applications. If your answer to the second question is ‘no,’ alignment will be no protection against score inflation, and you need to change how you teach to the test.

2. Why shouldn’t you use test scores to tell which schools are doing better than others?

Two reasons: scores reflect some things you don’t want to count and exclude others that you should. Many things other than school quality—for example, students’ family background—strongly influences on test scores. If one school scores higher than a second, that difference may reflect educational quality, irrelevant non-educational factors, or both.

The second reason, less often discussed, is the incompleteness of achievement tests. Even a very good test measures only a modest proportion of what we value. Schooling has goals other than achievement, such as motivation to learn and to an willingness to apply what one has learned in the real world. Tests don’t measure these. Most testing systems measure only some subject areas. In my state, a student must pass tests in mathematics, English, and science to get a diploma, but the state does not test history or government. Within tested subjects, such as mathematics, we test some content but not all, leaving out some important but hard-to-test material. Therefore, tests provide limited, specialized information about student performance—very valuable, but not comprehensive.

In the current context, another reason is score inflation. Inflation can be very large, and it tends to vary a great deal among schools. That means that sometimes, schools that seem to be doing very well are simply coaching more effectively. If you were to use an uncorrupted measure of learning, some high-scoring schools would not look so good.

3. What do you think about the Value Added Methods gaining prominence as means of measuring the contribution of individual teachers to student achievement?

Value-added methods, which evaluate how much the achievement of individual students has grown over a period of time, is in several ways a big improvement over the alternatives. First, value added is more appropriate. It makes more sense to hold educators accountable for growth while students are on their watch then to hold them accountable for students’ average scores or the percentage ‘proficient,’ both of which reflect in large measure what students bring with them when they enter a grade. Second, value-added models do a better job—but generally not a complete job—of controlling for the non-educational factors that influence achievement.

However, value-added methods are by no means a silver bullet, and they pose some very serious difficulties of their own. For example, estimates of growth in individual classrooms in a single year are generally very imprecise, which is to say that they bounce around a good bit because of irrelevant factors. The result is that in any given year, many teachers will be misclassified. A second problem is that the statistical models employed are complex, and the field has not yet agreed which methods are best. These different methods can rate teachers differently. The rankings can be quite sensitive to decisions made about how to test a subject or even how to scale test scores. Even at their best, value-added methods tell us only how much students have grown; we can’t be confident about the share of that growth that is properly attributed to the effects of the teacher. And value-added methods do nothing whatever to address the core problems of poorly designed test-based accountability: inappropriate test prep and score inflation.

The literature on value-added modeling is highly complex and is difficult for people without a very strong statistical background to understand. In response, I recently wrote an article that explains the pros and cons of value-added approaches in plain English, which you can download here.

4. In California, we have a high school exit exam that all students, including those with special needs, must pass to gain their diploma. Last year 46% of special needs students failed this test. The State Superintendent said: “Special-education students deserve a diploma that has real value and real meaning.” What would you say?

The principle is right, but the policy is problematic. The policy came about because advocates for students with special needs argued that if we don’t hold schools accountable for their achievement—rather than just for their placement and so on—many of them will be shortchanged and will not live up to their potential. As a former special education teacher, I strongly agree with that argument. However, the simple fact is that kids differ tremendously in terms of their achievement. This is true throughout the world, even in more equitable societies, and it is true of all kids, not just those with special needs. Some students, even given ideal educations, will perform relatively poorly on achievement tests.

This leaves us with a dilemma. Let’s say a student with a substantial disability—one that would lead to a prediction of low scores—gets a good education, works very hard, and ends up scoring much better than expected, only a few points below the “proficient” standard. What is the best thing to do? Is it better to give him the same diploma as kids who passed the test? A diploma that is in some way different? Or no diploma at all? This is policy problem, not a technical one. Personally, I would choose the second option over the third.

5. Your book suggests we should approach setting goals “that reflect realistic and practical expectations for improvement.” Do you have suggestions as to how educators and policymakers might approach this process?

We have to stop setting entirely arbitrary performance targets, and we have to stop insisting that the same targets are appropriate for all schools under all circumstances. We should aim for moderate rates of progress over the moderate term, allowing for bad years as well as good. There are a number of ways we can get information about what is realistic. For example, we can look at historical trends, at evaluations of particular programs, and at the progress shown by exemplary schools (being careful to avoid mistaking score inflation, which can be very rapid, from meaningful gains in learning).

However, I should add one more caution. Our current policies assume that test scores are sufficient and that there is no need for any human judgment in the evaluation of schools. I think that is a serious mistake, and it affects the setting of targets as well. Consider two schools that have identical, unacceptably low scores on their state test. The first school has a highly transient and severely disadvantaged student population, with many students who arrive not speaking English. The second school has none of these disadvantages: it is in a stable community, and almost all of its students are native speakers of English. Wouldn’t it make sense to expect more rapid gains from teachers in the second school?

What do you think of what Dr. Koretz has said? How should we be using information from tests? What current practices should we be challenging?

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A fresh report in the journal Science confirms what many of us have been saying for years. California schools are on a collision course with NCLB targets.

The Science Daily tells us

The researchers report in the Sept. 26 issue of Science that mathematical models they used in their analysis predict that nearly all elementary schools in California will fail to meet the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements for proficiency by 2014, the year when all students in the nation need to be proficient in ELA and mathematics, per the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" (NCLB).

In January of this year, I published an op-ed in the Sacramento Bee that raised this same red flag. I wrote:

A few years back there were some who warned about the trouble we were headed for in the home mortgage industry, but we still have had to wait until millions are facing foreclosure to act. California schools are heading for a similar fate, and once again, we seem to be waiting for calamity rather than looking ahead to avert it.

This calamity is the full impact of No Child Left Behind on our schools. Up until now, the brunt has been felt largely by schools attended by poor folks and immigrants, so few have objected to them being labeled “failing schools”. But there is a big shift about to begin. NCLB demands that all students be proficient in English and mathematics by 2014. Currently, only 43 percent of the state’s six million students are scoring as proficient in reading, and 41 percent as proficient or better in math.

Student performance has improved slightly over the past six years, according to state test data, but most schools are about to start hitting a wall. That’s because California’s NCLB targets require proficiency levels to increase substantially in each of the next six years, in order for all students to reach proficiency.

Another article in the San Francisco Chronicle this week reveals a second facet of this looming crisis. The process of restructuring which is imposed on schools that fail to hit their targets simply is not working, according to a study published by the Center on Educational Progress.

The study, released today, found that the number of schools failing to meet achievement goals nationwide under No Child Left Behind jumped by 50 percent since last year - with California leading the way.

California now has more than 1,000 persistently failing schools forced to undergo drastic restructuring, the study found. That's more than any other state, yet few are being helped by the mandated process.

Schools that fail to meet targets two years in a row enter “Program Improvement.” The study discovered that few schools ever move out of this purgatory, and state funds have declined so there are few resources to help them do so.

My column touched on this as well:

In Oakland, we are in the second generation of reconstituted schools. The first round of schools opened to replace those closed five years ago has hit the fourth year of missing achievement targets, and a number of them have closed. Some of the new schools are innovative and meeting the needs of their students, but even these are likely to crash into the NCLB wall soon.

I concluded:

There is little doubt that California schools are on a collision course with NCLB mandates. We can wait until we crash into the wall ahead and then deal with the wreckage. But our students will be much better off if we take a deep breath and realize there might be a better way.

What would that better way look like? First of all, we will need to put standardized assessments in their proper place as one of a number of indicators of school performance. Other indicators such as classroom-based assessments should be used as well. Second, we need to shift the emphasis away from punishment and the removal of resources, and look to bring a broader range of resources to bear to get schools on track. As the Broader and Bolder initiative suggests, we cannot treat schools as if they can shoulder this burden alone.

It does not look like much will be happening regarding NCLB in the next few months. Let's hope that we can pick up the pieces once a new administration is in place next spring.

What do you think? Are schools in your state hitting the NCLB wall as well? Is restructuring resulting in success – or merely giving the schools a few years before they fail once more? What steps do you think a new administration should take to support education reform?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Marco Iaboconi’s recent book, “Mirroring People: the new science of how we connect with others”, suggests we are wired to connect with people we find to be similar to ourselves. When we meet people, we look for commonalities, and try to see if they are “like” us. When we want to make a good impression, we unconsciously (or consciously) mimic those we want to impress.

This explains a lot of the social conformity we see. We do not NEED someone telling us we must dress the same way. We do it because the drive to be accepted is so strong. And if someone “looks different,” whether adult or child, they are likely to be ostracized. I remember when I was in the fifth grade a new child entered the school after the year had begun. She dressed shabbily and could not make any friends. Her crime was that she looked different.

So as we watch this presidential campaign, we can see both sides trying to make the opposing candidate “different” from the majority of voters. Obama is described as “different” because his skin is a different color, he grew up in Hawaii, his father was an African, and he spent several years in Indonesia as a child. None of these things should, on a rational level, disqualify him from consideration. In fact, I would think that they would enhance his stature as someone comfortable on the world stage – a powerful thing for a presidential aspirant.

But when we listen to the voters ponder Obama, in person and in various media, we find echoes of fears rooted in his differentness. “He might be a Muslim.” In spite of the controversy over his Christian pastor, some 15% of Americans still think Obama might be a Muslim. Fox News contributed to this misconception early on, but there was a well of suspicion already available to be tapped.

Of course Obama is not “different” from everyone, and many find they can readily identify with him and his story. He has, after all, written two books describing his past and his approach to politics, allowing us to enter his world and understand it. Many African American voters certainly identify with him, and in my work in Oakland I frequently see evidence of support for his candidacy in the homegrown t-shirts being sold in the neighborhoods.

On the other side, Senator Obama’s supporters also try to highlight the ways in which John McCain is different from the rest of us. He owns seven homes from coast to coast, and 13 cars – clearly he does not share our problems and cannot understand them, they insinuate. This was not a problem four years ago when John Kerry was the Democratic candidate, with his weathy wife and multi-millionaire running mate.

The truth is we tend to like people with whom we can identify. As teachers, this leaves me wondering about how we relate to our students. I try not to “like” one student more than another, or to allow my affection for any of them to affect how they are treated. But I know there are some students that remind me of the bullies who picked on me in elementary school. There are others who remind me of myself in those days, and I feel myself coming to their defense.

As I reflect on this natural tendency, I think the answer is not to stop identifying with some of my students, because I think my empathy comes from this identification. Rather, my goal is to empathize, understand, and identify with each of them, regardless of their background or behavior. This is much more easily done with those who share my background, but I have found I can understand, empathize and identify with others as well, -- even the bullies. That does not mean I tolerate bad behavior or cruelty. It means that when I correct those behaviors, I do so with some understanding of the insecurity that drives it, and in ways that help the students understand that I am trying to help them all learn and be successful. This is especially important when we seek to reach students with an ethnic background or gender different from our own.

This phenomenon also works in the other direction. Our students can relate to us much better when they can identify with us. I have found my students fascinated when I share experiences I had when growing up, or when I talk about my own teenage sons. They need some commonalities to build on as well. This underscores the value of a diverse teaching force. It is possible for students to build strong relationships with teachers from different backgrounds, but I think it is important that when students look at the faculty of a school, they see themselves represented. This makes it possible to bridge the tendency towards alienation.

I think we need to be conscious of the inclination to prefer those the same as ourselves, in our political decisions and in our classrooms. We should be judging candidates on their how well their policies will serve our country, and get beyond how similar to us they happen to be. In our classrooms, we can find ways to identify and empathize with all our students. It will take more work with some than others, but the best teaching occurs when we can make strong connections with all of our students, even -- perhaps especially -- those most “different” from us.

What do you think? Are voters influenced by factors that make them “different” from the candidates? As teachers, are we influenced by how “different” our students are from ourselves? How can we bridge these differences?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I get the feeling sometimes that the rest of the country sees California from afar as some sort of Bohemian enclave, with grapes on the vine and iPods in the vending machines. So as we head into the fall, I am here to give you a bit of an update from the land of milk and sunshine.

California schools improved their scores on the state’s reading, writing and math tests, but the achievement gap persists for African American and Latino students. Furthermore, even though more schools raised their scores on the state’s Academic Performance Index, more of them FAILED to meet increasingly demanding federal targets, which are ratcheting up as we approach 2014, when, according to NCLB, all students are expected to be proficient.

Nearly ten percent of the state’s high school seniors – almost 46,000 students -- did not receive diplomas last year because they failed the high school exit exam. That was a big jump from the six percent that failed to graduate the year before, because for the first time, the numbers included special education students, who are required to pass the test as well. Among this group, 46% failed. Our State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell, insists that these students should be held to the same high standard, stating "Special-education students deserve a diploma that has real value and real meaning." Unless, of course, they fail the test, in which case they apparently deserve no diploma at all.

California schools, we are told, have the “highest standards in the nation.” That’s why the state Board of Education, at the behest of Governor Schwarzenegger, recently decided to require all 8th graders to take Algebra. The State Superintendent Jack O’Connell responded by submitting a $3.1 billion request to the governor to pay for smaller class sizes, teacher training and summer programs that such a shift would require. Not that any such money will be actually provided – this is jousting, you see.

Meanwhile, due to a $15 billion deficit, our state legislators and governor have failed to meet a July deadline to pass a budget, and the schools are receiving only about 70% of the funds they are due, causing severe hardships, including crowded classrooms.

As an educator in this state, I have to admit that these conflicting mandates and divergent indicators make it difficult to know if we are on the right track. State tests show we are improving, but the Feds say we are losing ground. One board says everybody should get Algebra in the 8th grade, but clearly many of our students are not ready. Meanwhile, the state has no budget, and the schools are getting less money than ever. How can we reconcile this confusion? I think many teachers look around and see chaos, and rather than getting involved, they simply hunker down and try to weather the storms. This is a big loss, in my view, because classroom educators have an important voice on all of these issues. Teachers should be involved in setting coherent and achievable goals, at the federal, state and school district levels. Middle and high school math teachers should be consulted before Algebra is mandated for all 8th graders, and a serious plan should be developed to improve instruction and build the scaffolding needed to reach such a goal.

Policymakers have become accustomed to issuing mandates from on high, and teachers and students subjected to these mandates have not raised our voices loud enough to be heard on those lofty heights. Reform policies will not succeed if they are not grounded in the realities of the classroom, and if they do not engage the active and enthusiastic participation of teachers and students. Barack Obama suggests that change comes from the bottom up, and I think he is right. Our schools will improve when teachers and students are inspired by a vision of their own capacity to make them change.

What do you think? Is California unique? Is there any direction emerging from current efforts to reform schools at the state or federal level? How can we get some clarity and unity of purpose?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 7:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week I summarized the education policies of Republican candidate John McCain. This week, let’s take a look at Barack Obama. Please share your response below. After reading both posts, who will win your support this November?

Obama’s official site lays out his policies in detail. It states:

Obama believes teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests. He will improve the assessments used to track student progress to measure readiness for college and the workplace and improve student learning in a timely, individualized manner. Obama will also improve NCLB's accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.

As a senator, Obama voted in favor of increased funding for after-school and special education programs. He also voted to increase funding to support Title I programs.

When he spoke to the National Education Association in July, he spelled out his views:

We don’t have to accept an America where we do nothing about 6 million students who are reading below grade level. Or only where 20% of our students are prepared to take college level literature class and English, math and science. This kind of America is morally unacceptable to our children, it is economically untenable, and it is not who we are as a nation. And I am running for president of the United States to guarantee that every child has the best possible chance in life. I am tired of hearing teachers blamed for our problems. I want to lead a new era of mutual responsibility in education. One where we all come together, parents and educators and the NEA and the leaders in Washington, citizens all across America united for the sake of our children’s success. Bringing about that future begins with fixing the broken promises of No Child Left Behind. I got some applause here on that. Now I believe that the goals of this laws, or the rights, making the promise to educate every child with an excellent teacher is right. Closing the achievement gap that exists in too many cities and rural areas is right. More accountability is right. Higher standards are right. But forcing our educators, our principles and our schools to accomplish all of this without the resources they need is wrong.

My sister is a teacher, I know how hard she works, you are the people who stay past the last bell, spend your own money on books and supplies and go beyond the call of duty because you believe that’s what makes the extra difference and it does. That is why we need to recruit a new generation of teachers and principles to replace the generation that is retiring and those that are leaving. My plan includes service scholarships to recruit top teachers and residency programs to prepare them to serve in high needs schools. And because too often undergraduate debt discourages our young people from choosing education as a professional. I will make this pledge to all those who sign up, if you commit your life to teaching, America will commit to paying for your college education.

In that speech, Obama took a controversial stance on pay for performance:

Under my plan districts will be able to design programs to give educators who serve as mentors to new teachers the salaries that they have earned. We will be able to reward those who teach in under served areas, they take on that added responsibility. And if teachers learn new skills that serve their students better or they consistently excel in the classroom, that work can be valued and rewarded as well. In some places we have already seen that it is possible to find new ways to increase teacher pay that are developed with teachers, not imposed on teachers.

He has also taken irresponsible fathers to task. Speaking on Father’s Day at an African American church in Chicago, he said, “They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. ” He said parents who are proud of a child with B grade should push for more. “All Bs? Is that the highest grade?” Obama said. “It’s great that you can get a B, but you can get a better grade. It’s great that you’ve got a job, but you can get a better job.

And in Texas, in February, he told his audience:

It's not good enough for you to say to your child, 'Do good in school,' and then when that child comes home, you got the TV set on, you got the radio on, you don't check their homework, there is not a book in the house, you've got the video game playing.

So turn off the TV set, put the video game away. Buy a little desk or put that child by the kitchen table. Watch them do their homework. If they don't know how to do it, give them help. If you don't know how to do it, call the teacher. Make them go to bed at a reasonable time. Keep them off the streets. Give ' em some breakfast. Come on. ... You know I am right.

This analysis in the New York Times suggests Obama is embracing an approach to education that focuses on poverty as a root problem, and calls for a more comprehensive societal response. Obama is quoted saying:

If poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can’t just treat those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community. And we have to focus on what actually works.

What do you think about Barack Obama’s stands on education? What do you agree with? What do you disagree with? When you compare the two candidates, who do you think will be better for education?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)