June 2010 Archives

Readers of this blog know I have been involved in a group called Teachers' Letters to Obama, which started last November after I posted an open letter to the President suggesting he reconsider his education policies. The steering committee of the group recently came up with the following statement of principles, which we believe represents a consensus view.

Dear President Obama, Secretary Duncan and Members of Congress,
Several members of Teachers' Letters to Obama recently had the honor of sharing with Secretary Duncan our concerns with the direction of federal education reform's Race to the Top initiative. Subsequently, various publications reported Department of Education assertions that teachers support RTTT. This claim is expressly contrary to this group's position statement and does not reflect the sentiments of thousands of teachers who have reported corresponding with you, Mr. President. We would like to clarify our position as follows:

We believe:

1. Meaningful education reform must embrace a range of assessments. The RTTT emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing necessarily reduces the education of our students to "test prep" focused on passing multiple-choice tests of unproven reliability. We oppose the use of so-called "merit pay" based on standardized test scores.

2. Teachers must be held accountable through rigorous in-classroom evaluations by trained evaluators. Schools must hold teachers to high and meaningful standards of performance.

3. Teachers must work collaboratively to improve pedagogy and create thoughtful curriculum. Basing teacher evaluation on standardized tests is a pseudo-accountability strategy that divides teachers as a result of variables beyond their control and misconstrues how best to motivate them. Teachers must share in the process of defining their own work and accountability should never be arbitrary or divisive.

4. Teachers become invested in their work when they are given the opportunity to participate in school-wide decision-making and to be creative and thoughtful in their classrooms. Many public schools work well and are resources to guide us in the improvement of all schools.

5. Our public school systems must be fully funded. Charter schools must be held accountable to the same regulatory oversight and should not be inequitably funded at the expense of our most challenged public schools.

6. Any vision of effective education reform must assume that skills be taught in a way that induces critical thinking, encourages curiosity, inspires the imagination, and emphasizes discussion. Music, art and technology are an essential part of this vision. Students should love learning, feel empowered by their educations, and should not experience schooling as something punitive.

7. Improvement or "turn-around" programs for struggling schools must be flexible and participatory. Teachers, students, and community members need to be involved in discussions and problem-solving. Moreover, we do not believe the current four options are adequate and recommend instead the strategies in the Strengthening Our Schools proposal now before Congress.

To give all of our children the quality education they deserve, we must honestly confront the challenges of the classroom in a society characterized by deep social and economic inequality. The reality of classrooms and schools is complex and requires the knowledge and expertise of teachers who have the experience to know what works. Curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment are integral to our daily classroom experience and qualify us to help formulate education policy.

Teachers who have participated in TLO want to join with this Administration to implement a progressive vision for education. We want to engage in constructive debate about the best way to teach students and to organize schools. This national discussion needs to move beyond the panaceas and shortcuts that have characterized it thus far.

In this, we ask no less of our political leaders than we ask of our students. We are eager to participate in the hard work of creating great and transformative schools.

Congress is considering reauthorizing ESEA (NCLB). We are hoping that the wisdom of teachers may help them craft better policies.

If you agree with these seven principles, please this petition.
We would like to share the basis of our beliefs, from as many teachers as possible. If you would like to contribute, choose one of the seven principles above and write your own letter. Post it to the comments here. We are compiling these letters to submit to members of Congress, just as the original 107 letters we collected were sent to President Obama and Secretary Duncan.

What do you think of these seven principles? Do any of them ring especially true? How would you explain the importance of one of them to a member of Congress?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As we approach the midterm election there are reports circulating of an "enthusiasm gap" between Republican and Democratic party voters. While 59% of voters who associate themselves with the Republican party say they are "enthusiastic about voting," only 44% of Democratic voters put themselves in this category.

The reason enthusiasm matters is that there is a huge drop-off between the Presidential election and the mid-term, and the electorate may shrink by as much as 40 million voters. The degree to which one's base is motivated to turn out to the polls can be decisive.

As one of about six million of America's teachers, I must say I feel decidedly unenthusiastic myself, a year and a half into to the Obama/Duncan administration. I am sure that I will vote, and most likely vote for Democrats, but it will be different this time. In 2008 I walked my precinct during the primary for candidate Obama, and organized a fundraiser focused on teachers that raised about $10,000 for him. I was excited and hopeful. But as readers of my blog have gathered, the bloom is off the rose.

Someone recently told me I would be even less happy with what a President Palin might do with No Child Left Behind, so I should be a bit less critical and get with the program. I imagine President Palin might do worse, but honestly I am not sure how. And at least I would not feel as if I were administering the punishment to myself.

In California we have a microcosm of this dilemma. Jerry Brown is running as the Democratic candidate for governor, and while he has had a decent track record on education, he has yet to spell out his policies in this arena or even feature education as one of the big issues for his campaign. This has left him open to attacks from his Republican rival, which is frustrating. There is a lot of pent up energy among teachers who would be thrilled to have Brown emerge as an advocate on this issue.

Beginning with my open letter to President Obama last November, I have sought to provide the administration with feedback, not just from myself, but from hundreds of teachers. We even delivered our thoughts directly to Secretary Duncan a month ago in a rather frustrating phone call. But when we hear that Secretary Duncan is reporting to members of Congress that teachers support Race to the Top, and the Department of Education's Blueprint for ESEA reauthorization, we feel not only unheard, but actually betrayed. Because the principles that seem to guide Race to the Top and the Blueprint are cut from the same cloth as No Child Left Behind. Build accountability systems based on flawed test score data, encourage pay based on higher test scores, aggressively expand support for charter schools while punishment and ritual cleansings are focused on the poorest schools.

Teachers have a lot of constructive alternatives to these policies. We know what works to strengthen our schools. We need opportunities for teachers to collaborate, to investigate and reflect on their practice, to strengthen assessment practices and figure out what students are actually learning - beyond the standardized tests. We need strong mentoring programs, and decent pay so people can afford to choose teaching as a lifelong career rather than a short-term resume-builder after college. We need deeper and more authentic evaluation processes that contribute to real professional growth. We need to be able to individualize and differentiate instruction, so we meet our students where they are and build on their strengths. If you want to hear more, just come to our Teachers' Roundtable, Assessment Done Right, this coming Monday night, June 28, 5:30 to 7:30 pm Pacific Time. (register here. )

First-term Southern California Congresswoman Judy Chu has emerged as a surprising leader on the issue of turnaround schools. The Duncan team has in place four bad options once a school has been labeled "chronically low-performing." But Chu, who sits on the House Education and Labor committee, has introduced a bill called Strengthening Our Schools, that offers far more flexible options.

This is the sort of leadership that will unleash the enthusiastic support of teachers, who are seeking real reform of our schools, not rehashed NCLB methods dressed in new clothing.

What do you think? How enthusiastic are you about the upcoming election this fall? How do you feel about the way the Obama/Duncan administration has handled our schools?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Michelle Kerr just finished her first year teaching, as a second-career intern. She has some interesting ideas that she shared recently in the Washington Post, (hat tip to Teaching Now). In reflecting on how teachers are paid, she rejects the idea that we should be rewarded for additional education or longevity, but she finds some real problems with merit pay based on test scores. She offers some changes that she believes would make this practice more acceptable:

1. Teachers be assessed based on only those students with 90 percent or higher attendance.


2. Teachers be allowed to remove disruptive students from their classroom on a day-to-day basis.


3. Students who don't achieve "basic" proficiency in a state test be prohibited from moving forward to the next class in the progression.


4. That teachers be assessed on student improvement, not an absolute standard -- the so-called value-added assessment.

First of all, kudos to Ms. Kerr for getting out there with her views on issues affecting her new profession. If every teacher were working on solutions and sharing their views in print we would have a much richer education dialogue.

She also focuses attention on four areas where current merit pay proposals are manifestly unfair. Teachers in schools with attendance and discipline problems face huge obstacles in raising student achievement levels. There are also high levels of transience at many schools. And as she points out it is unfair to hold a teacher accountable for teaching Algebra if you load the class with students who have not mastered fractions.

But I want to take a closer look at the suggestions she offers, not in regards to their effect on teachers, but focusing instead on how they affect students. And let's recall that incentives can have perverse effects.

First of all, attendance. Imagine we implement the suggestion that only students with 90% or better attendance count towards my merit pay. Will low-performing students find themselves marked absent with greater frequency? Will tardies be treated more harshly? Since teachers are responsible for taking attendance, this seems like it could be a very tricky area, susceptible to corruption. It would be very tempting to bias the pool of students on which one is judged by shading the attendance in this way.

Second, she suggests that teachers be allowed to "remove disruptive students." Teachers already have this option. What happens of we enshrine this as a right, and connect it to teacher pay? How much quicker will students with minor behavior issues find themselves languishing in some educational purgatory, with all the other randomly shaped pegs that refuse to fit in the square holes we are insisting on? This is likely to increase the rate at which students are "pushed out" of our schools, and put huge pressure on our site administrators and alternative schools to handle all the pushouts.

Third, along similar lines, we have the idea that we stop promoting students based on age, and instead make sure they have mastered all the pre-requisite content before moving on. This is a complex issue. Demanding that we must have well-prepared students before we can be expected to do our jobs will lead us to reject those students who are behind. That does not serve these students well. The research shows that neither retention nor social promotion are an adequate response to this. These students need a combination of a challenging curriculum, effective teachers, and differentiated instruction that targets the needs of individual students. Tying our pay to their test scores is likely to lead, once again, to the desire to reject or push out students that are going to make us look bad because they are not able to reach the standards.

Lastly, Ms. Kerr offers value-added as a a valid alternative to the system where this year's students are compared to last year's crop. Unfortunately value added compensates for only one of the many variables that make these scores unreliable, as David Cohen described here.

The real problem with tying our pay to test scores is that these scores, even when compared using a value-added model, are an inadequate marker of that which we are responsible for teaching. When our pay is tied to these scores, we will find ways to make the scores go up - but that will not mean student learning has really improved. That is why scores on state achievement tests show steady improvement, while the National Assessment of Educational Progress scores have remained flat over the past decade.

The more we focus on all these incentives, and the means by which they might be made more "fair," the farther we get from the real interests of our students, which are served by teachers whose first concern is their well-being as individuals. We need to be able to accept our students as they are, whether or not they are at grade level, and whether or not they are able to show a year's growth on a multiple choice test. We do need support to cope with disruptive students, but we should not be primarily motivated by a fear that this will lower our scores -- or our pay -- but by a concern for all of our students' well-being, including those with behavior issues. We need to focus on a rich curriculum that challenges our students to think critically, to communicate and collaborate - rather than simply answer questions in a multiple choice format. Once we accept that these tests can be an adequate measure of our students' work we have given up on our own value as professionals to define what learning is all about. This will not serve our students well, even if we are able to raise their scores.

By the way, over at Teachers' Letters to Obama, we are preparing for our first Teachers' Roundtable, where we will hear the views of a panel of teachers from across the country, addressing the failings of our current test mania, and offering alternatives. The event will be held on Monday, June 28th, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm Pacific time, 8:30 to 10:30 pm Eastern time. Registration for the online forum here.

What do you think of Michelle Kerr's suggestions for making merit pay more fair? Will this help our students?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

One of the reasons we were anxious to have our conversation last month with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was to correct any impression that he might have that teachers support Race to the Top. According to the New York Times, he shared with them that he had encountered "zero opposition" to the initiative.

We did our best to disabuse him of this illusion. However, recent reports from Diane Ravitch indicate that he has been telling members of Congress that Race to the Top, merit pay, and the Blueprint for reauthorization of ESEA have full support of the nation's teachers. Supposedly they recently met with 40 teachers who love all their initiatives.

Funny thing. A couple of weeks ago, teacher Magazine posed the question "Does the Department of Education have teachers' best interests in mind?" Of the 48 readers who answered, only TWO replied "yes."

The Department of Education and Arne Duncan have a huge credibility problem with the teachers of America, and pretending we are in agreement is only going to make this worse.

Earlier this week I made some suggestions about how to write to your local newspapers and Congressperson. Here is a great topic for you. Do you agree with Secretary Duncan that teachers support his policies? If you do not, explain why. Or perhaps you might like to share your thoughts with Secretary Duncan directly? His email address is Arne.Duncan@ed.gov.

Or you can reach out to his press secretary, Peter Cunningham at
peter.cunningham@ed.gov.

Please send US Mail as well to:
PETER CUNNINGHAM,
DEPT OF EDUC,
400 MARYLAND AVE SW,
WASHINGTON, DC 20202

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE
1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE NW
WASHINGTON, DC 20500

You might also wish to join us over at Teachers' Letters to Obama, where we are continuing to work to get teachers' voices heard. (On June 28, we will be hosting a special Teachers' Roundtable focused on the issue of the over-use of testing).

What do you think? Do you believe teachers are in agreement with merit pay and Race to the Top? Will you write to correct the record?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

We had an exciting Teach-in last night hosted by Teachers' Letters to Obama, (a recording of which is now available here) featuring special presentations by Yong Zhao, Monty Neill and Doug Christensen. One of the questions that resonated throughout the evening was the desire for our voices to be heard -- and for us to speak out beyond the safe confines of our own teachers' lounges -- those in our schools and online, and be heard in the wide world beyond. The consensus was that we are at a critical time, and if we do not act now to shift the direction in which we are headed, public education could be damaged for generations to come. We have waited for our invitation to the table. We have used our "inside voices." Now it is time for our outside voices to be heard.

One way to be heard is to write for publication. You have special expertise as someone who works in the schools, and you have valuable information to add to the public discussion! Channel your anger and sense of injustice into learning all you can about the issues. Become familiar with the current research in the area, so you can write authoritatively and make powerful connections other people may not have made before.

Teacher Magazine and Education Week offer blogs and a discussion forum where these issues are discussed. Social networks like Facebook are great way to meet others with similar interests. Teachers' Letters to Obama is one place to develop these skills, hone our arguments, and work with one another to influence policies. We will be planning some concrete steps to act together - and coordinated actions are the most powerful ones.

One way to influence public opinion and policy makers is to get published. We are generating some new ideas and creative alternatives to many of the policies currently in place. But the blogs and groups where we are discussing these things are kind of walled off from the public and people making decisions about these things. We may never get that engraved invitation to a seat at the table - so let's crash the party.

As you read the latest news, think about connections to the issues you care about. See if you can come up with an original angle, or an implication others have not thought of. React quickly to hot news with your opinion, and get your piece to the editors fast. When a news story breaks, there is a 48 hour window when editors are looking to keep the story alive and explore the implications. That is your chance, especially if you have a unique angle.

If you want to be published, most newspapers have two avenues. Letters to the editor are limited to about two hundred words, focused on a single point. Many newspapers also publish guest editorials, which can be a bit longer - up to about 700 words. If you go to the editorial section of the publication, you can find their guidelines. Make sure you adhere to word limits, and accept feedback when offered. Develop relationships with editors so they are aware of your abilities and interests. They are not usually going to approach you, but it helps for them to know you as a reliable source.

Take a clear stand. Short letters to the editor can be purely one-sided. In longer pieces you have the space to develop your argument with examples, and respond to opposing points of view. Always try to anticipate and respond to the biggest argument against your perspective. Wrap up your piece by saying what action should be taken.

Be sure to share your piece with the lawmaker who might be able to act upon it. You might even write an open letter to them. Take advantage of your first-hand knowledge. You are an educator, and if you are writing about schools, tell stories that show you understand the situation firsthand. This allows you to bring in a more emotional element that is very powerful. The story you tell about the immigrant who struggled to take the test a month after arriving in the country can be more moving than any statistic you could cite. Combine it with statistical data and you have a powerful one-two punch.

Think about the audience for the publication. Even newspapers have different angles. An op-ed for the Sacramento Bee might emphasize state policy, while one in San Francisco might focus on urban education. If a piece is rejected by one publication, polish it and submit it somewhere else. Topics come in and out of style. Look for the moment when related topics are hot and see how you can work in a fresh angle.

Participate in online discussions to hone your arguments. Add your voice to the comments on blogs, discussion forums or newspaper articles. You can publish your own blog. These venues give you a chance to develop your ideas and respond to the reactions of others. Get used to being challenged. The greatest compliment you can have is a lot of feedback - that tells you that you have hit a nerve. Please add to this advice in the comments below.

What do you think? Is it time for teachers to speak out? Any advice for those of us who would like to have an effect on the direction of our schools?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Over at Teachers' Letters to Obama we have been digging in to the details of education policy. We are unhappy with current policies, but we want to propose constructive alternatives. One discussion recently posed this question: What does a Blueprint that "we can all believe in" look like?

Most education reformers declare the teacher to be the most important variable in the education equation. Unfortunately few actually behave as if teacher's views on reform policies matter. If reforms are going to succeed, they need to tap the imagination of teachers, and draw on the deep knowledge that resides in the people doing the hard work of educating the nation's children. Here are some ideas from the perspective of a teacher.

How about a teacher's NEWprint?
For me a NEWprint would deliver on some core values. First of all, we need to step back from our obsession with low quality data. We have been pushing for increased test scores as the way to measure and improve student learning for the past decade. But student learning has not improved, and I believe the gap between the education that poor students are getting and what more privileged students get is wider, as those in impoverished areas continue to face tremendous pressure to increase scores, while those in wealthier areas have been relieved if such pressure.

So we need a better way to measure student learning at the school level. We know that formative assessment connected to timely and concrete feedback is a powerful tool to promote learning. But rather than seek to externalize and standardize these assessments, we need to empower teachers to do this critical work. In order to provide some check on the quality of instruction at our schools, there are several entirely reasonable approaches. We could reduce the frequency of tests to every few years, and have them function as a rough check on student performance. Then a small team of inspectors could periodically visit schools, and use a rubric to evaluate how well the school is working.

We need to shift the emphasis away from external measurements. This data is not driving us anywhere we ought to be. This is where teacher insight is the most valuable. The Blueprint and Race to the Top have bought into the idea that data (almost always standardized test score data) should have an even larger role in the educational process.

Race to the Top encouraged the use of test score data to evaluate teachers and reward them monetarily, assuming that this will result in better student outcomes. But I believe all the emphasis on test scores fundamentally corrupts the mission of a school, because test scores are a flawed means of measuring learning. The tests measure a specific set of concepts and do so in a narrow way. I work in schools under huge pressure to increase their scores, and although scores on state tests have increased marginally, the NAEP tests have shown little growth over the past decade.

A Teacher's NEWprint would build a sense of accountability among school faculty by giving them real responsibility for learning in their school. Yes, we have a mission to make sure every child can read, write, do math, investigate nature, and understand his history. But we have a broader mission to ensure that our students learn to think critically, to work together to solve problems, to communicate their ideas using 21st century tools. We arrive at these goals not through pressure to raise test scores, but through giving teachers time and responsibility to collaborate - to model these skills themselves as professionals.

What would this look like?
School faculty should be challenged to create a working professional development model that draws on their expertise and builds leadership from within, based on collaboration. There are a variety of effective models in use. Some schools are having great success with Take One!, the National Board's process where teachers can tackle one portfolio entry at a time. Other schools use the Lesson Study model to plan lessons together, then observe and reflect on the result. Some schools use a teacher action research model, where we choose questions to investigate, collect evidence and reflect on what worked. Every school needs the autonomy to figure out the model that works for them, and the chance to work together, make mistakes, and try again.

The faculty need to look closely at evidence of student learning. The work that individual teachers do to assess student work should be shared in collaborative meetings, where goals for the whole school are set, and progress monitored carefully. External standardized tests have a role, as a way of checking to make sure the school has an accurate understanding of where the students are.

Our teacher evaluation process could also be a valuable tool in the growth of our skill. Currently this process is often meaningless or counterproductive. The emphasis on the use of test scores does not improve this. What we need is to connect the evaluation process to real professional growth. What would this look like? How about a fall meeting between a teacher and the administrator - or colleague - responsible for his evaluation. This meeting would be a chance to reflect on how instruction has been, and set some goals for growth in the coming year. We could identify an area for growth, such as differentiated instruction, and some professional development and instructional strategies to drive this. Evaluation could then be part of the professional growth journey, helping guide the reflection and collaboration that is the real engine of improvement. For more details, take a look at the report recently released by Accomplished California Teachers here.

How about struggling schools?
There is no question that some of our schools are not giving students the foundation they need to succeed. However, many of these schools are located in communities where jobs are scarce and most students live in poverty. Inequitable school funding means schools in these neighborhoods are often poorly equipped. The current strategy of declaring schools in these neighborhoods failures and forcing them to fire teachers and their principal is not working. In my district most of the schools recently declared failures were already reconstituted five years ago. These schools struggle with high staff turnover, and what they need most of all is stability and a chance to build a strong collaborative culture.

What about a turnaround strategy that builds on the strengths within a school and community? We need to deliver steady, reliable support to schools that are in impoverished areas. We need to emphasize the elements that lead to stability of a staff, and move away from the high turnover models we have chosen. We need to pay our teachers well, and make these jobs attractive enough to sustain professional teachers with the understanding that these schools are great places to grow. We need to leave behind the revolving door that comes with temporary interns working for two-year long stints. We cannot build a sustained culture of growth when the staff is turning over every two or three years.

Congresswoman Judy Chu has developed a proposal that embodies these principles, offering turnaround schools a far greater degree of flexibility than the four limited options in the Blueprint. She says, "What we need is a system that promotes flexibility and collaboration instead of tying the hands of administrators, teachers, and parents. We must remove barriers to student success instead of ignoring them. And finally, we must support teachers and leaders, instead of breaking them down." More details can be found here.

These are some of my ideas. I invite you to come over to Teachers' Letters to Obama to discuss and debate, and add your own ideas to the mix. We want to be heard when we object to elements of the Blueprint, but we need to get into the details and offer some solutions of our own if we are going to get anywhere.

What do you think of these ideas? What would YOU put into a Teacher's NEWprint?

(illustration by Anthony Cody)

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In Prescott, Arizona, this week, an elementary school mural became the focus of national attention. The students at the school had helped the artist design the mural, which had the theme of "Going Green," and featured the faces of students from the school. But a city councilman and radio personality named Steve Blair complained about the brown skin of the faces depicted, and passing motorists shouted racial slurs as they drove by. Blair said, "I disagree with the whole perspective that you would have a Black guy painted on two sides of that building, when the history of Prescott never had a culture issue." The school administration at first responded by asking the artist to "lighten" the faces of the children, but when word got out, local citizens and people around the country raised their voices in protest.

Yesterday, Miller Valley elementary school principal Jeff Lane mounted a scaffold in front of the mural to admit that school officials had made a mistake, and asked the muralist to restore the original color to the faces of the students. He was joined by school superintendent Kevin Knapp, who said "It is ok that this issue has become a major issue. Prescott is truly my home town, and it's good for the town to stand up once in a while and take a look at itself, and this mural has done that."

The state legislature in Arizona recently passed a law requiring local police to crack down on undocumented immigrants, a move which prompted calls for a boycott of the state by some. Polls showed however, that 70% of Arizonans supported the law.

On Friday I attended my nephew's high school graduation in Healdsburg, California. Healdsburg is a small town in Sonoma County, and the student body seemed to be about half Latino, and half white. The principal, John Curry, spoke about how the school had embraced a commitment to being inclusive through their participation in the Challenge Day process. The national anthem was sung by a Latina, who later delivered a five minute-long speech entirely in Spanish. Hearing this young woman speak her language sent a powerful message. It honored the Spanish-speaking parents and grandparents by expressing to them what the occasion meant to the students. It also explicitly honored the language and culture of the Latino students at the school.

The controversies in Arizona reflect a deep discomfort our society has with the changes we are experiencing. In California this week we learned that while the state's population climbed from 34 million to 38 million between 2000 and 2008, the number of whites declined by half a million, and now are only 40% of the state's population. Hispanics will soon surpass whites as the largest group, at 37% in 2008. In California schools, Hispanics are already the largest group by far, making up 49% of the students last year. Less than 30% of the students here are white.

This brings up a real challenge to the way we think of ourselves as a society. We have tended to talk about civil rights issues as problems with "minorities." But what happens when non-whites become the majority? Our schools are at the leading edge of these trends, and must respond one way or the other. In Prescott, Miller Valley Elementary School chose a beautiful mural to celebrate the students there - but hesitated when challenged by the hostility of some residents. Ultimately the community spoke out and helped the administrators there make the right decision, to return to the original intent of the mural and celebrate all the children of the school. In Healdsburg, the high school has been proactive in recognizing that tensions between adults can filter into our schools, and we need to do some work to make sure everyone feels honored in our school community.

Our schools have a lot to teach, and it is not only the students who can learn.

What do you think of the controversy in Prescott? How has your school community responded to these challenges?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It has been almost two weeks since our conversations with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and several of his top staff.

As I wrote last week, this is going to be the Summer of Teacher Discontent. Teachers are so ready for change, but we haven't seen it yet. So we are going to take the initiative and combine our understanding of the realities of our classroom with some real insights from experts, and figure out a set of policies we can believe in. Teachers' Letters to Obama is the nexus for a series of virtual teach-ins and teacher roundtable discussions.

The Discussion Forum on Teachers' Letters to Obama is already a powerful engine of ideas and understanding. We are going to fuel this engine with even more information and focus these discussions for the month of June on the issue that emerged as the number one concern of the members we polled in preparation for our talk with Secretary Duncan - over-reliance on standardized tests for high stakes decisions.

We are going to begin this with our first Virtual Teach-in: Testing, Testing, Too Much Testing! On Monday, June 14, we will hear from these three leaders:

Monty Neill, Executive Director of Fairtest, has been a clear and consistent voice questioning our obsession with standardized tests. He led the National Forum on Assessment in developing Principles and Indicators for Student Assessment Systems, which was signed by more than 80 education and civil rights groups. He knows, in great detail, what has been done wrong, and what could be done so much better, in assessing student learning.

Doug Christensen: was the state Commissioner for Nebraska's public schools from 2002 to 2008. He led the development of an assessment system that resisted the mandates for standardized tests. He described it this way:

STARS created a system of education where the classroom was the center of the system not the bottom of a hierarchy. It centered the work of the system on what happens in the classroom and clarified that the work of the system was teaching and learning. It placed students at the center of what schools do and placed the work of teachers in a leadership role.

Yong Zhao is a professor of education at Michigan State University. He has offered us the unique perspective of someone born and educated in China, who truly appreciates the creativity and freedom of thought that resides in our culture - but is greatly concerned that this is being destroyed through the emphasis on test scores and standardization.

These three guests will share their insights and advice with us as we delve into some of the problems with current policy, and look for clear alternatives we should be advocating.

Some readers may remember the term "Teach-in" from the 1960s. In the 1950s and 60s, the Civil Rights movement used a tactic called a "sit-in," where a group of protesters would occupy a restaurant or a building to protest segregation.

Then, in 1965, some anti-war activists held the first "Teach-in." The purpose of a teach-in is for participants to learn more deeply about the issues of concern, to clarify our sense of purpose and allow us to reach agreement on our goals. This, in turn, allows us to push for these goals with greater unity.

As teachers - and parents and students as well - we have agreement that we are dissatisfied with No Child Left Behind, and we have yet to see any meaningful changes from the current administration. But we need to have a greater degree of clarity around what we want changed, and offer clear alternatives to the many ineffective strategies now in use.

The teach-in will be followed by two weeks of intense discussion on Teachers' Letters to Obama, and on the blogs of our members. The purpose will be to decide on the policies we want enacted by our legislators, and the actions we will take to push for this. We are clearly capable of writing letters, but we can also write editorials, testify, protest, make videos - whatever it will take to get our message across. The next big event will be a Teachers' Roundtable Forum, on June 28th, where we will bring forward teachers to articulate the key policies we have decided must be enacted.

Our friends at Powerful Learning Practice have offered us space using their Elluminate room to hold our virtual gatherings. Please visit the Teachers' Letters to Obama page to find the link to register. The room holds 100 people, so sign up now!

Monday, June 14, 5:30 to 7:30 pm Pacific time, 8:30 to 10:30 pm Eastern time.

(A recording will be made available afterwards if you cannot make this time)

What do you think? Will you join in the teach-in on testing?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When Newsweek Magazine wrote a couple of months ago that the trouble with our schools are all the bad teachers that are so impossible to fire, many of us reacted a bit defensively. Their article was long on hyperbole and short on constructive solutions, but the truth is, teacher evaluation systems do not work very well. In my 18 years in the classroom, I was evaluated many times, and never received any meaningful feedback on my performance.

I know from my two years as a Peer Assistance and Review coach that there are teachers who do not belong in the profession, and we need to take some responsibility for the quality of education at our schools, not simply close our eyes to incompetence. I also believe that just as timely, concrete and constructive feedback helps my students to improve their work, it can help me and my colleagues to grow as well - but this is usually lacking from our evaluation process.

About two years ago I helped pull together a team of California teachers to take on this critical issue. This was the first project of a new organization we are building, called Accomplished California Teachers (see their excellent blog, InterACT.) This group is a spinoff of the National Board Resource Center at Stanford University, which supported me and many other teachers in pursuing National Board certification. Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond helped guide our work and wrote the introduction as well.

The report we wrote has just been released, and it offers an unusual chance to see how teachers believe we should be evaluated. It is entitled A Quality Teacher in Every Classroom: Creating a Teacher Evaluation System that Works for California, and it can be downloaded here.

We spent months consulting research, sharing our own experiences, and exploring promising practices from schools around the state. We arrived at a set of seven basic recommendations:
1. Teacher evaluation should be based on professional standards.
2. Teacher evaluation should include performance assessments to guide a path of professional learning throughout a teacher's career.
3. The design of a new evaluation system should build on successful, innovative practices in current use.
4. Evaluations should consider teacher practice and performance, as well as an array of student outcomes for teams of teachers as well as individual teachers.
5. Evaluation should be frequent and conducted by expert evaluators, including teachers who have demonstrated expertise in working with their peers.
6. Evaluation leading to permanent status ("tenure") must be more intensive and must include more extensive evidence of quality teaching.
7. Evaluation should be accompanied by useful feedback, connected to professional development opportunities, and reviewed by evaluation teams or an oversight body to ensure fairness, consistency, and reliability.

One of the things California schools have going for us is a strong set of teaching standards. But like many states, evaluation practices vary greatly from one district to another. We learned of some really innovative practices that have been arrived at through collective bargaining. From the report:

Lynne Formigli, a National Board Certified Teacher in science, and a leader in her union local, describes how an innovative evaluation program in Santa Clara Unified School District improved her practices.

In my continuing struggle to improve student writing, I teamed up with a seventh and eighth grade writing teacher. Our focus was on how we teach writing at different grade levels. We each spent time observing each other teaching the writing process. Afterwards, we met and compared our observations. We came away with specific ways to improve our students' writing, as well as ideas for integrating writing throughout all grade levels and subjects.

The three of us presented a summary of what we had done and our reflections on the entire process with our principal. Afterwards, in his formal evaluation narrative he wrote:

At the middle school level, it is beneficial when students can see a common strand run through their instructional day. When something learned in science is tied to something learned in English, both make more sense. When instruction is coordinated from subject to subject and then from one grade level to the next, we not only have good education, we have magic. And that is what Lynne, Lourdes, and Sara created.... Participating in the reflective discussion related to the alternative evaluation project was an evaluation-supervision highlight for me. We spoke about the writing process, genres, cross-grade and cross-subject education, staff development opportunities, standards, the need to share learning experiences, validation, and a host of other things.

Formigli concludes:

I am fortunate to work in a district where the evaluation process is more than a drive-by observation that generates a bunch of paperwork that is a burden to all involved. Instead I am given an opportunity to reflect on my practice, collaborate with my colleagues in a meaningful way, and improve the learning of my students. That's what it's all about.

So much of our school reform dialogue has been poisoned by the assumption that unions (and teachers, by extension) are implacable foes of accountability in any form. What we learned through this process is that most of us already hold ourselves to high levels of accountability, and would encourage evaluation systems that provide us with good feedback and opportunities for growth. This report gives vivid details showing how this might look.

What do you think? Should teachers step forward with ways to improve and enrich the evaluation process? What do you think of the recommendations from this report?
(image used with permission)

Posted by Anthony Cody at 8:47 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend