December 2010 Archives

Just under a year ago, last January 13, I was forwarded an email authored by a Los Angeles high school teacher, who was writing firsthand about his experiences teaching at a school being "reconstituted." I ran his story on my blog the next day, and in the coming months Chuck shared the gruesome details of this, the epitome of bureaucratic processes. Today I offer you Chuck's seasonal message; not exactly cheery -- but sometimes it feels good to know at least we have company when we worry about what is coming next!

Today is Friday, December 24, 2010 and Day 179 PF. It is also Christmas Eve (well, morning, yeah, but I think Christmas Eve counts for the entire day... besides, it sounds stupid in my ears to say "Christmas Eve Day"...) and the last-minute shopping is pretty much out of the way.

In speaking with a friend and trading war stories about teaching (odd turn of phrase, that, "war stories," but I excuse that because we fight the War on Ignorance), I was explaining something about the way I earned a living prior to falling into teaching, my mind jumping all over the map, like Tom Bombadil telling long tales on a rainy day to four hobbits. My ego would like to compare this to Robert E. Howard's writing of the Conan of Cimmeria stories: Howard said when he wrote the stories, it felt not as though he was creating them, but rather the character was standing by his shoulder, reeling off tales of his adventures in no particular order. Sometimes I do feel like that, and maybe that explains how I can prattle on about the S.C.A., the historical reenactment group where I learned to make armor, do leatherworking, and do full-contact combat, and where I saw chivalry and honor all about me each and every weekend.

As to earning a living, when I wrote the very first post, Day 168 "Somebody Has To Say It", which was supposed to be a letter to a handful of people and it very stupidly went out to something like forty and was reposted the next day by Anthony Cody, I made reference to my previous career of working with Federal prisoners. What has this to do with the privatization of public education and why institutions are seemingly for sale to the highest bidder? The place which housed the inmates was run by a corporation. These were inmates essentially sold to the lowest bidder, not unlike other areas of privatization. And lowest bidders find ways to cut costs.

Your a mean one, Mr.Grinch
You really are a heel
Your as cuddly as a cactus
Your as charming as an eel, Mr.Grinch

Your a bad banana with a greasy black peel...

I wasn't working behind bars. Mission Re-entry was a halfway house, one of several in Southern California, run by the Rube-Span Corporation (I can't believe I remembered their name, surprised I remembered the halfway house, as well). This, and the other sister facilities prepared inmates for release into the world after incarceration. The corporation ran these--I'd imagine still does--no, just checked and I couldn't find them--private halfway houses and contracted with the Federal government, specifically the B.O.P. (Bureau of Prisons) to house and process the inmates, counseling them and preparing them for release. It also did the same for the California Youth Authority, so at one point my caseload ran from ages 16 to 60.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge, ... it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."

"Are there no prisons?"

"Plenty of prisons...

"

Again, why does this matter in a blog about education?

Because here was a corporation contracting with the government, because they could do the work cheaper. An old apartment building was converted into a dormitory set-up. What used to be a kitchen had no cooking facilities; there was a really nasty coffee-maker, though; what the inmates did for food was they were each given X amount of dollars per week they were unemployed and they had to sign out on passes during the day and eat then. By having a B.S. degree (easy, I know that's an opening) in anthropology, I was 50% of the college-educated staff; the program director had her B.S. in political science. We took turns watching the facility, but we each had a caseload, preparing reports (I ended up writing the reports for most people--that noun-verb thing can be tricky and I knew how to type... sort of). It saved the corporation a buck.

Your a monster, Mr.Grinch
Your hearts an empty hole
Your brain is full of spiders
You've got garlic in your soul, Mr. Grinch
I wouldn't touch with a 39 and a half foot pole

Your a foul one, Mr.Grinch
You have termites in your smile
You have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile
Mr.Grinch, Mr.Grinch
Given the choice between the two of you,
I'd choose the seasick crocodile...

Many inmates required counseling sessions as a condition of parole and were labeled S.A.A.C. (Special Alcohol Aftercare Condition--which meant A.A. meetings at the facility), S.D.A.C. (Special Drug Aftercare Condition--which should have been N.A. meetings, but were often run by someone who'd never used drugs, and we'd get to give them urine tests oh joy) and the biggie, S.M.A.C. (Special Mental Health Aftercare Conditions, reserved for the guy who plea-bargained DOWN to kidnapping and you really don't want to know where he plea-bargained from--this was handled by an actual psychiatrist). Unqualified or barely trained did the work of trained professionals.

So the barely qualified oversaw the several months of time inmates had before release into the real world. I could tell tales of drama about facing an inmate with a knife or the inmates who stood around my car, cheering me on as I had to break in, or the Aryan bikers who offered to let me ride their hogs (I declined), being offered tattoos, or the tale of the 350 pound inmate (they were called residents, like at my mom's nursing home) on crutches who escaped (that one wasn't mine), but what I'm getting at is I do not believe anyone who worked in that facility which housed about 24 Federal prisoners and California Youth Authority wards was qualified in any way, shape or form, including me.

Your a rotter Mr.Grinch
Your the king of sinful sots
Your hearts a dead tomato
Splotched with moldy purple spots, Mr. Grinch
Your a three decker sour crout toad stool sandwich
With arsenic sauce...

There was no training. I walked in the door for my interview at the halfway house, was interviewed by the program director (who had only been a caseworker 3 months before being promoted to assistant program director to a full program director after a few more months), was greeting by someone I went to high school with ("G?" "How you doing, Chuck?" "I'm okay. How about you?" "Aw, you'll read my file."), was assigned my caseload, and I went out to meet my charges, one of which was "G."

My moral compass was really whacked out when I realized that if an inmate was written up, they could be restricted to the facility. Three write-ups earned a rescission hearing, in which a kangaroo court was held; a panel of three people, the program director, her assistant, and someone from the corporate office who was usually the retired cop who checked the inmates for needle marks. A staff member acted as the prosecution. Another acted as defense (guess who that usually was?). Again, our qualifications were nil, zip, insert your own words here. If the inmate/resident was found guilty, the parole date was retarded by anywhere from 30-120 days (did I mention the corporation got paid for each day an inmate was housed by us?),

Again, what does this have to do with education?

How many people has LAUSD "let go" or reclassified (need I point out right before the holidays?) in order to save a buck? What was the cost of Central High School #9? What was the cost of the Robert F. Kennedy complex? What was the cost of the original Belmont Learning Center? And how much is being saved by the lay-offs? And who got hired to replace them. Welcome to the worst of the Industrial Revolution.

"And the Union workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir..."
"Those who are badly off must go there."

At the point where you might scream, I have to share an early teaching experience. I started in the Corona-Norco Unified School District in 1983, back when rocks were still soft. I got hired a couple of days into the school year, so the district observed I couldn't be given a contract, because that would imply I worked the entire semester, and a couple of days had already passed. I was hired as a long-term substitute (half-pay, no benefits) at Norco High, teaching three periods of math and two periods of social studies. In Spring I was moved over to Corona High, taking over another position and taught four periods of U.S. History and one of Sociology. During that year, I kept hearing jokes about the "unemployment class of 1984," but nobody explained the joke, I did see a group of teachers looked particularly glum, but they weren't talking.

In Fall of 1984 I was called back to Corona-Norco, to get a semester contract to teach social studies at Norco High again. I noticed the glum teachers were gone. Asking provided me with little information, but there was a new group of teachers straight out of college. In Spring I was transferred over to Letha Raney Junior High and became an English teacher. I saw a glum group and heard the jokes about "Class of '85." Sure enough, they were gone at the end of the year.

Fall of 1985 I was over at Raney again, teaching English again, only this year I was in six different rooms in seven periods and heard much more pointedly the "Class of '86" jokes, I also saw the new teachers, fresh out of college. Eventually someone explained it to me: I was to be part of the "Class of '86." So were two other teachers coming up on tenure. "She always does this," said a teacher of the principal, "she always picks two or three to chase out of the district. We think she's picked you." What was this, a scene out of "Spartacus"? "Every once in a while Marcellus likes to kill a man, make an example of him. I think he's picked you. Better watch yourself." It turned out to be true.

The district made a point of hiring the fresh young faces straight out of college because they were cheaper. Every year they were always understaffed. Every year, there was a mob of long-term substitutes because the staffing just turned out that way. Every year, the majority of teachers coming up on tenure were not rehired because, after all, they had not completed three complete years. Each one that was let go was missing a day or two of those three years.

Which left that district with teachers who struggled at first, then started to gain a sureness of foot, only to be replaced by those who were brand-new to teaching. I imagine, though, this system or policy had to undergo change, because the area grew dramatically and built several new high schools (there were only the two and an alternative school when I worked there). In pursuing this policy, they kept placing less qualified teachers in the classroom.

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

What does that have to do with education now?

Only that Congress redefined "Highly Qualified Teacher," which was a minor sticking point in the No Child Left Behind law. In Valerie Strauss' article in the Washington Post, "Congress approves weird definition of 'highly-qualified' teachers" we see George Orwell's Newspeak come into play again. So now non-credentialed still undergoing training, whose lack of experience or training doesn't have to be revealed to parents, are now considered "highly qualified."

These will be the same parents who watch these new teachers go to a school like Fremont High, which burns out teachers in less than three years, where there is a constant influx of new teachers, and no parent need be troubled by the knowledge that this person may have come in with five weeks of training, as Teach For America does with its idealistic folk.

And they will be sent to the same schools which are under scrutiny anyway, where value-added assessment will hold sway and a standardized test-taking culture is the rule. The platitudes making students "college-ready" will ring out, but the reality will be a sight different. I thought we were done with that when I saw changes in Corona-Norco. It would appear I was wrong. Again.

What sorts of experiences will these "highly qualified" teachers undergo in what will probably be high poverty neighborhoods? They won't all be like Joshua Kaplowitz's experience, I'm sure but while these new teachers are learning the ropes, what will be going on with the kids? This is not to put down the new teachers. They should be welcomed into the profession. They are a resource, but so are the veterans who are being hounded out. When new teachers come in, they are often warned about mingling with the veterans. "You'll be judged by whom you associate with." Come on, confess, how many of you heard in your teaching classes to "stay away from the teachers' lounge" or "teachers' cafeteria"? And yes, there are the burn-out cases there, but there are also the experienced teachers there who can mentor the new ones, who can share the lesson plans and give suggestions.

In some ways I started to see myself as Kat (Stanislaus Katczinsky) the veteran in "All Quiet On the Western Front," who intoned to Paul Baumer and his classmates, "In training camp, they filled your heads with a lot of information on how to be a soldier. We're going to work hard to forget all that. I'll teach you practical things..." Was there a Kat for Joshua Kaplowitz? If one had been there, would it have stopped what happened to him?

Ahh, nothing to worry about, eh? They're all highly qualified now, even if you keep their qualifications secret from parents. Besides, they're going to be teaching in the inner city. You'll still have experienced teachers for your own kids.

Chuck Olynyk taught at Fremont High for 16 years before being reassigned as part of the District's reconstitution plan. He now teaches world history at Roosevelt High School, and blogs at the RememberFremont site.

What do you think? Should interns be classified as "highly qualified" teachers?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 3:36 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Readers,
It has been a heck of a year to be writing about education in the USA. Below I offer a catalog of my posts, organized around the big subjects that were our focus this year. I have authored 100 posts myself, featured two interviews -- Diane Ravitch and Doug Christensen, and 28 guest posts, mostly by teachers from around the country. We have engaged in several extended dialogues, most notably with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. This blog has also hosted debates with proponents of charter schools, value-added models and a Teaching Ambassador Fellow from the Department of Education. One, The Media's War on Teachers, was nominated "Most Influential Blog Post" on the Edublogs Awards. Here, organized by topic, are this year's posts.

Can we get Great Teachers by Firing Bad Ones?

Are Teachers' Unions Bad for Students?

Terra Bennet's Story: Why Tenure Matters (Guest post)

Will the "right teachers" improve our schools?

Who's afraid of the Big Bad Teachers?

Two Lies and a Half Truth: Teachers and our Jobs for Life

Is it Time to Trash Tenure?

Teachers: Must we be Saints or Sinners?

Teachers' Union Leading School Reform? Impossible!

Duncan: "Don't Teach to the Test!"

Obama calls for Richer Assessments, Teacher Involvement

Why can't we be Creative and Raise Test Scores Too?

Should We Try to Make Our Students Care About Test Scores?

The Tale of a Melting Ice Cube: Have we Lost the Story?

Will 49 Techniques Make You a Champ?

Children Perform Best when Teachers are Not Focused on Scores

Unleashing the Dogs of Data

The Lesson of the Lemmings: Schools as Ecosystems

One Parent Acts to Protect Her Son: No Tests for Connor (guest post: Sahila Changebringer)

What Makes a Great Teacher?

Sharing our Visions: What does Great Education look like to You?

Herb Kohl: How About a Race to Equity? (guest post)

What do we Want Instead? Part 1 and Part 2

The Power of a Simple Idea: "Learn by Doing"

"If You Really Knew Me" Blows High School Open

Teachers and Education Reform: Can We Get Beyond "NO!" ? (guest post: David Orphal)

Teacher Collaboration Drops by Half?

Pat Cody, My First Teacher

A Declaration of Professional Conscience for Teachers: Now, more than Ever (guest post: Ken Goodman)

Building Teacher Accountability from the Ground Up

Why Don't Teachers Learn from Business?

Mixed Messages from Duncan: What's Our Message to Him?

Hearsay or Heresy -- You Decide

What Will it Take for Teachers to be Heard?

March 4 Protests against Starving Education

March 4: There's Something Happening Here

March 4: Students and Teachers Hit the Streets!

Diane Ravitch: Organized, We Will Be Heard (interview)

Jesse is Walking to Washington, DC (guest post: Jesse Turner)

They Don't Really Care About Us

Florida Teachers on Fire over SB 6

From Facebook to YouTube: A Teachers' Movement is Born

Trust, the Missing Ingredient in School Reform

An Open Letter to Harvard School of Ed: Three Teachers Write

Dave Russell: Misguided: Education's Biggest Myth (Guest post)

Secretary Duncan Wants to Talk. What Shall we Tell Him?

School Reform: It's About the Students, Not the Teachers

Teacher Power: The New Force in American Politics

An Educator's Despair: Why Aren't we Talking About This? (guest post, Robin Barre)

Teachers Ask: Where did all the Money Go?

Burning Questions from Teachers: Meet Our Realities, Mr. Duncan

Burning Questions from Teachers Part 2: Meet Our Realities, Mr. Duncan

Today We 12 Speak with Secretary Duncan

Talking into a Tin Can on a string 3000 miles long: Our Talk with Duncan

Hello, This is Arne Duncan Calling...

The Summer of Teacher Discontent

Virtual Teach-in Kicks off the Summer of Teacher Discontent

A Teacher's NEWPrint for School Change

Time to Use our Outside Voices!

Does Duncan Really Believe Teachers Support Race to the Top?

Education Policies One Reason for the "Enthusiasm Gap"


These Seven Principles: Our Plea to Congress


Overcoming Despair as we Fight for Our Schools

This is How a Tipping Point Feels

Checkbook Reform Creates Tough Choices for Teachers

Education Reform Has Jumped the Shark

Will the REAL Education Reformers Stand Up?

OprahPaganda?

Education Nation Frustration: Why WERE (some) Teachers and Parents Blocked?

How WOULD a Journalist Cover Education Nation?

Like a Tree Standing by the Water, We Shall Not Be Moved

A Manifesto of Errors: Rhee, Klein and the Gang Strike Out

Likely New Head of House Ed Committee No Friend to NCLB

Schools in a Banana Republic

Doug Christensen: Local Initiative, Self-determination and Leadership are the ONLY Thing (interview)

Guggenheim Gets an Earful

Teachers and Education Policy: Two Voices in Dialogue: Part 1

Secretary Duncan: Here is What Divides Us

Teachers and Education Policy: Two Voices in Dialogue: Part 3

Teachers and Education Policy: Two Voices in Dialogue: Part 5

Jesse Turner: Welcome to the Great American Public School Awakening! (guest post)

Ken Mortland: Education Reform Facts You Rarely Hear (guest post)

Teacher Common Sense takes on Education "Reform" Nonsense

Waiting for Guggenheim: Will he Respond to Teachers?

Anthony Colucci: Rally to Restore Sanity in Education (guest post)

2010 in Education: The Year of the Billionaire

HUGE Cuts Loom for California Schools: How Much Can We Take?

A Letter from Los Angeles: How Not to Fix a School (guest post: Scott Banks)

Fremont High, Day 136: Life Lessons from a Reconstitution (guest post: Chuck Olynyk)

Reconstitution: There has Got to Be a Better Way

The Battle for Fremont High (guest post: Chuck Olynyk)

How does it feel to be "Reconstituted"? (guest post: Chuck Olynyk)

Strengthening Our Schools takes Persistence -- But Firing people is so Satisfying!

A Casualty in the War on Public Education (guest post: Chuck Olynyk)

Judy Chu: Here is How to Strengthen Struggling Schools (guest post)

The Devil in the Details: Hard Lessons from a School That Turned Around (guest post: Chuck Olynyk)

Congresswoman Chu's Proposal for Struggling Schools: Let's Transform, Not Tinker!

What is the Spin on School Turnarounds?

Turnaround Models: The Pathology of Failure (guest post: Sabrina Stevens Shupe)

Stephen Krashen: Children need food, health care, and books. Not new standards and tests. (guest post)

Arizona Targets Immigrants and Ethnic Studies

Arizona Mural Teaches a Lesson about Racism

Achievement Gap Mystery Partly Solved - It's Murder
/achievement_gap_mystery_partly.htmlThe Education Reformers: Willfully Blind

An Education Reformer Responds: "Schools Must Impact Poverty Because Nothing Else Can" (guest post)

I've Worked at Schools on Both Sides Now: Rich and Poor (guest post, Krista Calvin)

The REAL Thieves of Hope: America's War on Teachers

Oprah: Do You Have the Courage to Listen to Teachers? (guest post: Valerie Pientka)

Krashen: Easy Money for Schools, No Strings Attached! (guest post)

Black Boys: When a Spotlight Is Not Enough

How Many of Our Students Live in Poverty?

Teacher Responsibility for Student Learning: What is Our Share?

Do 20% of Teachers Deny a Share of Responsibility?

Competition Can't Beat Collaboration

Performance Pay: What Should It Look Like? (Part 3)

A Quality Teacher in Every Classroom: New Report Takes on Evaluation

Many Wrong Choices do Not Make Pay for Test Scores any More Right

The LA Times: Practicing Educational Research without a License

The Media's War on Teachers
(nominated Most Influential Blog Post on the Edublog Awards)

How Should We Motivate Teachers? The Debate over Incentives

Claudia Swisher: Value-Added Study is a Bait and Switch (guest post)

Why I am NOT opposed to Charters but still don't think they are the Answer

Why do So Many Oppose Charters when They Are Working? (guest post)

The Great Charter Debate, Part 3 (guest post)

The Great Charter Debate: Part Four

You Say Charter -- I Say Semi-Private School (guest post: Steve Neat)

Will Rain Follow the Plow in our Job Market?

Education Reformers Turn Economic Logic Upside Down

Is College-for-All Hitting a Wall?

The Marvelous Tool of Accountability: Solving Society's Troubles

Making Data "Fabulous" for our Second Graders

What do you think? What was your favorite post of the year?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 4:12 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If you listen to mainstream media, you will hear the message repeated daily that our schools are in crisis, and that teacher unions exist to serve the interests of adults, and are obstacles to meaningful school reforms. You probably have NOT heard about a remarkable success story in California. In the year 2006, the California Teachers Association, the legislative arm of the National Education Association, sponsored a law called the Quality Education Investment Act (QEIA). The results are coming in, and are showing that the schools participating in this program are seeing very positive results. I should note that test scores (and the API scores derived from them) are a very inadequate measure of what is actually occurring at a school, but these results show there is some impact by the strategies that teachers and our unions have been promoting.

According to this report,

For the 2009-10 school year alone, QEIA schools, on average, experienced nearly 50 percent higher growth on the California Academic Performance Index (API) than similar, non-QEIA schools. Also, the report shows QEIA is helping to close student achievement gaps. QEIA schools are making "greater gains in API with African-American and Hispanic students, English Language Learners, and socioeconomically disadvantaged students" than comparable lower-performing schools, the report concludes.

The full report is available here.

This program is delivering resources where they are needed most. The report states,

The scope of this intervention program is unprecedented. Over eight years, QEIA provides nearly $3 billion in resources to nearly 500 lower-performing public schools serving nearly 500,000 students. Eighty-four percent of students at QEIA-funded schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunches - compared to 44 percent of students in all other California public schools; 41 percent of QEIA students are English Learners, compared to 19 percent in the rest of the schools, according to the California Department of Education. Hispanic students are 79 percent of those attending QEIA campuses, versus 41 percent in the statewide, non-QEIA population.

I wanted to hear from my California teacher friends firsthand, so I asked if people could share their experiences. Three of my friends from Accomplished California Teachers responded:

Kathie Marshall of Pacoima Middle School in the Los Angeles area wrote me:

Prior to QEIA funding, my middle school increased its API most years but more slowly than district or state rates. QEIA funding is targeting class size reduction, additional counselors, and weekly PD meetings by departments focused on data analysis, writing of benchmark assessments prior to district assessments, and sharing of best practices. In addition, we developed targeted interventions in math and English, as well as advisory lessons focused on vocabulary development, test-taking skills, and individual student meetings to clarify students' understanding of the CSTs and CST scores. Last year we saw the impact of our QEIA efforts in that our API rose by 47 points, getting us just four points shy of an initial goal of API of 700. Students are knowledgeable about the CSTs, understand the school's sense of urgency, and work with the faculty to demonstrate their capabilities in ways that did not exist prior to QEIA funding.

Fellow blogger Larry Ferlazzo, who teaches at Luther Burbank High in Sacramento, wrote,

I can't imagine where we would be without QEIA support. Our inner-city high school is divided into seven Small Learning Communities where three hundred students stay with the same classmates and teachers during their high school career. QEIA funds allowed us to sustain that SLC "purity" and keep those solid and supportive relationships. We also lowered class size average by five students and put a maximum size class at 27. In addition, we've been able to keep a larger number of counselors to help students face their many challenges, and dramatically expanded our use of technology through classroom computer projectors, document cameras, and laptop carts. Our A.P.I. scores have steadily increased, and we anticipate an even bigger jump this year.

Sarah Puglisi, who teaches at Julien Hathaway in Oxnard, writes,

Since accepting the funds we have gone through a budget decimation and our District cut a major amount of teachers in huge class size increases at ten schools. We are the only ones now to maintain 20 to 1 lower grades, 24 to 1 grades 4-5. Class size was NOT our reason for pursuing QEIA, because we did not foresee this happening but as it turns out this saved teacher jobs and more importantly INSTANTLY made Hathaway have something special to offer. I have two, whose parents transferred TO US so their children could be in a 20 to 1 class. I have not in 6 years had a class as interesting, capable, and parent-supported as this one! QEIA allowed me the space to be a professional. I have been supported in Arts work, literacy work, in creative projects and design to a level I think unique in the underperforming schools.

There is a phenomenon in journalism. The dominant narrative is defined, and reporters tend to highlight stories that confirm that story. If you have not read about the success of this school reform project in California, perhaps it is because it clashes with the story being driven by the media. This story paints a different picture. It shows us:

• Class size DOES matter - tremendously. All three teachers I connected with testified to the importance of this. This is all the more poignant as we are about to see huge budget cuts that are likely to send class sizes through the roof.


• Professional growth built around collaboration gives teachers valuable time to develop school-wide strategies to improve student outcomes.


• Unions care about students and have ideas that actually work to improve schools and student outcomes.

(Full disclosure: I am a dues paying member of the National Education Association and the California Teachers Association.)

What do you think? Have you seen instances that contradict the dominant narrative about teacher unions and school reform? What do you think we can learn from the success of the QEIA program?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Governor-elect Jerry Brown has a better understanding than most politicians of education issues, as we discovered last year when he sent some cogent advice to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. However, he can't seem to find a way to conjure $25 (or perhaps now $28) billion out of thin air, and is warning educators that the schools will suffer a twenty to twenty-five percent cut in funding next year.

California already is in 49th place in the nation in terms of student/teacher ratio, and is dead last in the ratio of students to school librarians. These cuts are likely to move us below Puerto Rico and Guam.

Los Angeles Unified, which already has a $142 million deficit THIS year, will lose another $200 million. State treasurer Bill Lockyer said, "Those who wanted less government, you're going to get your wish. In other communities that are willing to put something on the ballot to make up that difference, they're going to have a higher service level." This will mean that wealthy communities are likely to scramble to come up with emergency funding to avoid the worst impacts, while impoverished communities will find their overburdened schools utterly destitute.

One creative proposal has come from Dr. Stephen Krashen, who offers this advice:

California can save a lot of money by eliminating programs that aren't doing any good. A good place to start is the High School Exit Exam. Analyst Jo Ann Behm has estimated that the combined state and local costs of California's high school exit exam exceed $500 million per year.

The most recent review of research on exit exams, done by researchers at the University of Texas, concluded that high school exit exams do not lead to more college attendance, increased student learning or higher employment. In fact, researchers have yet to discover any benefits of having a High School Exit Exam.

Unfortunately, although this is a huge expenditure, it is dwarfed by the size of the deficit.

How did we get here? The sources of tax revenues in California have been greatly limited by Proposition 13, which put severe limits on increases in property taxes, and the collapse of the real estate bubble, which evaporated billions from the economy. Many politicians are now insisting that government live within its means, while refusing to legislate any additional revenue sources. The result is dwindling revenues -- even as the recession places additional burdens on our social services.

This is going to be a very intense spring.

Last Spring it was students who took the lead in organizing a response to budget cuts that were already coming down. Thousands marched in the streets last March 4. This year we are going to see the growth of that movement.

Some of us have begun organizing for a national conference and march in Washington, DC, July 28 to 31. We have launched a new Facebook cause, Save Our Schools: March and National Call to Action, bringing together the efforts of many different groups that have agreed to collaborate on one major mobilization.

Teachers, students and family members are going to need to come together in very large numbers to reverse this trend. We cannot hold together as a society if we do not nurture our young, and we cannot do this if we kill funding for basic education at this level. Cuts of this magnitude are absolutely unprecedented in our lifetimes. This will mean wholesale layoffs, classrooms overflowing, and slashed teacher pay and benefits. For this to occur at the same time our billionaires are blocking even a two percent increase in taxation, and bankers are enjoying record bonuses, is immoral and cannot be tolerated.

This brings to mind a quote I shared recently from 19th Century abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

I believe we are reaching those limits, and it is time for us to start resisting.

What do you think? How will the coming budget cuts affect your school? Have you reached your limit yet?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This, my 36th year of teaching, has been one of turmoil for me -- not in my classroom or even my school. My students and I are having a great year, but every time I read the paper or watch television, I see the conversation about schools and teaching and learning be co-opted by non-educators, folks with lots of money and influence. Folks with little or no teaching experience. Suddenly teachers have become the reason for low test scores, low graduation rates, failing schools. Everyone has an answer to these problems, but no one's asked us teachers what we think. Through the year, I have read everything I can, and have shared books and articles and links and blogs with friends, some of them on Facebook.

Ms. Swisher, having read your posts I have easily learned that you disagree with all of the education reforms that are being circulated to us non-teacher types. Being I'm endlessly curious and I know you have an opinion, I would like to hear your solutions to our current education problems?

I discovered this message from a former student early last week. It stopped me short. No one had ever asked me to explain what I did believe in as I ranted against nearly everything I saw in the media. No one had asked me what I thought about teacher evaluation and education policy.

He made me reach down and share what I would stand behind. I focused on teacher evaluations in my first response. I know the reformers believe test scores can correctly predict my effectiveness in the classroom; I knew it is much more complex than one test, one day. I told him I believed in teacher evaluation that was multi-faceted, and included self-reflection, goal-setting, observations, video-taping, as well as students and parent input. I would support a pre-and post-test of skills as a measure of what happened in my classroom. I believe my lesson and unit plans and my grade book should all be available and open to examination by my administrators. I told him I believe all evaluation should focus on helping teachers improve instruction, so students can learn. It all comes back to having a positive impact on my students.

The idea of student input is intriguing to me. I believe students do recognize effective teaching and not-so-effective teaching. I hope they have the maturity to identify in what ways their teachers help them learn and be successful in the classroom. I think students have much to share with us; in the past I've designed student feedback surveys but haven't created one that satisfies my need to know.

So, finding a recent article in the New York Times, "Students Know Good Teaching When They Get It, Survey Finds," I was elated. I read with interest of a survey used by the Gates Foundation 'Measures of Effective Teaching Project' that showed students can identify the elements of teacher behavior that help them learn. I withheld my skepticism about the Gates involvement, because this seemed to be exactly what I had said to my former student. I hoped I could replicate the survey in my classroom to help me identify areas of growth in my own practice. I posted that piece on Facebook, and my teacher friends and I have had a lively discussion. Others pointed out the subtle statements in the article about the survey being connected to value-added evaluation: tying student scores on a mandated annual test to teacher effectiveness. Rereading the article, my heart sank. There it was, the link between value-added and the survey. That wasn't what I hoped. My suspicions rose. I needed to know more.

I tracked down the study and read the eight-page document, a preliminary report. In the study, the student survey was only used to support the value-added finding, to show the teachers who were perceived as effective by students really had the higher test scores; the survey was not an equal component of a multi-faceted evaluation as I had hoped. This wasn't about student input; it was still about test scores. "...we wanted to know if students' perceptions of the learning environment in a teacher's classroom are consistent with the learning gains they experienced."

The study shared four preliminary findings. The first three were all about value-added evaluations and predicting future test results. There was acknowledgment that value-added evaluations fluctuate, but the study shrugged that off as not important enough to "...undercut the usefulness of value-added." The fourth finding was the only one I felt positive about; it was exactly what I'd said to my student : "Valid feedback need not be limited to test scores alone...it is possible to provide diagnostic, targeted feedback to teachers who are eager to improve (Emphasis mine)." What a back-handed slap at teachers. Are the authors of this study assuming we teachers are not eager to improve? I guess so.

By the time I'd gotten to the conclusion, I was reminded that the Gates Foundation is not necessarily a friend to teachers. The first sentence chilled me. "Teachers will need to open up their practice for review and constructive critique - because that's what excellence requires." Have I not done that for the 35 years I have taught? I don't need non-educators to tell me this. Later: "...we need to be humble about what we know and do not know." I found no sign of that humility in this report, just another way to repackage value-added evaluation, based on student test scores. Instead of inviting teachers to be partners in this study, it's apparent we're to be the subjects. Instead of that multi-faceted evaluation that could help me learn to be stronger, to affect my students' learning, to help us all strive for excellence, I got the same old thing: teachers must submit to the Gates Foundation's vision of school reform.

After finishing the report, I turned back to the first page. The research partners for the study? I didn't see any teachers - many of the names were affiliated with universities or testing companies. Key contributors also did not seem to be affiliated with school districts and schools. Where are the teachers? Why are we being left out of the discussion of our own profession?

My emotions fluctuated through this quest: from wariness to hopeful to suspicious to despairing. This is almost the classic bait-and-switch, and I fell for it. Now, I just feel fatigued. I'm tired of billionaires telling me they know more about my profession than I do.
So, I'm still searching for a student survey that will help me improve my practice. I still know I have much I can learn from my students.

Claudia Swisher a National Board Certified Teacher who's taught every level in public education, k-12, in three states, and seven schools. I have English Language Arts certification, Library Media certification. I'm a Reading Specialist. Her current assignment is teaching an English elective, Reading for Pleasure, at Norman North High School. She works with the National Board support program in Oklahoma, and is a Teacher Consultant with the National Writing Project. She is a fourth-generation teacher, and my son and daughter-in-law are the fifth generation.

What do you think? Does this new study shed any light on the validity of Value Added methods for identifying effective teaching? Or is this a bait and switch?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This was the year of the billionaire in education. And teachers, parents and students are wondering what we need to do to make 2011 turn out a bit differently.

The eleventh year of the new millennium was a rollercoaster ride for teachers. As the year began, we were in the throes of frustration, one year into the Obama administration. Some of us were still hoping to get the administration's attention, still hoping that the voices of ordinary and (and extraordinary) teachers might help redirect policies the deepened our dependence on test scores, and undermined our public schools. We wrote letters, joined Facebook groups, and even got a phone conference with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan himself.

We took the administration at its word when it said it wanted to hear our solutions as well as our critiques. We offered concrete alternatives to their Blueprint for revising NCLB. We described the reasons collaboration and cooperation are much more powerful levers than competition in improving our schools. We offered a well-developed plan for teacher evaluation built around these principles,

After our conversation with Secretary Duncan went nowhere, we shifted our efforts to trying to influence Congress. At Teachers' Letters to Obama, we developed seven principles we felt should guide reauthorization of NCLB. We also endorsed Congresswoman Judy Chu's alternative framework for strengthening struggling schools. I even offered a Teachers' NEWprint for School Change based on our discussions.

But our policymakers were listening to the newest "people" of our nation, the persons previously defined as corporations. The year was defined, unfortunately, by the behavior of the wealthy. As the richest Americans have steadily increased their wealth, they seem to have lost a sense of a social compact with the rest of society, in terms of paying a reasonable share of income in taxes. Some billionaires, however, have used some of their burgeoning funds to seek to control our educational system. This is an opportune time for such leverage, because school systems starved of public revenues are desperate for dollars, and are willing to embrace changes offered by billionaire "reformers."

The Gates Foundation achieved unprecedented influence at the Department of Education through numerous high level appointments. "It is not unfair to say that the Gates Foundation's agenda has become the country's agenda in education," said Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. That agenda is one driven by an ideology that sees competition and economic incentives as the driving force that moves us ahead as a nation. Every aspect of our school system is being reworked to fit this ideology. Secretary Duncan designed his Race to the Top reform initiative along competitive lines, so that states needed to come up with proposals incorporating as many new "reform" elements as possible. Florida led the pack, creating a plan that would tie at least half of teacher pay and evaluations to test score results.

Although studies have repeatedly shown that teachers are actually different from car salesmen, and operate on a different set of motivational drives, our corporate leaders are religious in their faith that we will produce better results if we are incentivized by pay for higher test scores.

Charter schools are given free rein to expand because they offer competition to public schools, and are able to operate using tax-payer dollars without the restraints imposed by needing to negotiate with teachers collectively through their unions. They have NOT been shown to be any better than regular public schools at educating children.

We saw the continuation of the cruel and misguided practice of labeling schools as failures, firing their staff, and attempting to re-open them with a different cast of teachers. Los Angeles teacher Chuck Olynyk gave us a front-row seat on the experience last winter, as he counted down his days as a teacher there. Again, there is no evidence this is an effective strategy, and research revealed that it had been unsuccessful in Chicago where Duncan had done it before.

And although there has never been much evidence produced that we are burdened by an especially high number of "bad" teachers, the drive for systems to rid us of them led the Los Angeles Times to publish "Value-added" ratings for teachers, publicly labeling individual teachers as "less effective" if their scores did not rise enough. One dedicated teacher, Rigoberto Ruelas, took his life after he was unfairly named this way.

The corporate campaign to reshape our schools hit a crescendo in September, when media giant Oprah helped launch the pro-charter, anti-union propaganda film "Waiting for Superman." The Gates Foundation gave the film a $2 million budget for promotion, and NBC signed on for a week of "Education Nation" programming, fully stocked with the heroes of corporate "reform," and largely excluding the voices of teachers who might have raised critical questions.

And most recently, the corporate media's greatest education superhero, Michelle Rhee, has launched a well-financed "grassroots" campaign called "Students First," to promote their agenda in communities across the nation.

In spite of this onslaught, there were some hopeful signs of life from teachers, parents and students this year as well. The Florida law to base pay and evaluations on test scores was so controversial that thousands of Florida teachers and parents became politically active, and showed up to picket and cajole Governor Charlie Crist, who became their hero when he vetoed the law. Michelle Rhee had the mantle of champion of the poor damaged when African American voters rejected Adrian Fenty, the mayor responsible for her position.

Last Spring also saw a tremendous outpouring of student activism around education issues. Our students are affected by these changes more than anyone, and last March 4 they took to the streets by the thousands, in California and across the nation, protesting budget cuts to the k-12 and post-secondary schools.

Connecticut educator Jesse Turner took a long walk from his home state to Washington, DC, last summer, speaking to crowds of teachers and parents along the way. He and others have called for a "Great Awakening" to rescue our schools from their calamitous course. He is working with others on plans for a much larger march and conference in DC next summer.

One of the original advocates of education reform based on standardized tests emerged as an unlikely critic of the corporate controllers. Diane Ravitch, with her excellent book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System," shook everyone up by pointing out the awkward facts that show that NCLB has not improved our schools, and in many ways has made them worse. Ravitch stepped outside the role of academic, and became a true leader as she challenged the dominant narrative and rallied others to resist what she termed the "Billionaire Boys Club."

While the corporate media lavished praise and publicity on Waiting for Superman, two less recognized films won the hearts of teachers and parents across the nation. "August to June" offered an intimate portrait of what a humane school should be. We know what good teaching and great learning looks like - don't let anyone tell us we don't! And the deeply moving Race to Nowhere has shaken up parents and educators by showing how we are pushing many of our children at a tremendous pace, with sometimes tragic results.

As the year closes, we are looking forward to something different next year. Education is intertwined with the fabric of American political life. As our corporations have amassed wealth and influence, they have sought domination even in the public sphere of our school system. But people are beginning to understand the need for socially supported and democratically controlled common institutions like the public schools. We are going to need to fight for these things, in the same ways that people have claimed their power over the centuries.

As the year ends, we should take time to pause and reflect on what we have lost - some of our innocence perhaps. And Rigoberto Ruelas. And Fremont High School. And my mother, my first teacher, who passed away in September.

But we have gained some things as well. The innocence we have lost may have been replaced by an awareness of the seriousness of the challenge we face, and the need to reach beyond our schools and out into the wider communities in which we live. We need to build awareness of the crucial resource our public schools offer. Our schools are not perfect, and they reflect the conditions and struggles of our communities. Our schools are the concrete manifestation of our shared destiny, our collective investment in our future. The next generations will need our schools more than ever, to help bring them together to meet the great challenges we face.

What do you think? How will you remember the year 2010? How can we make 2011 turn out differently?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I received the following post from a fellow member of the Teacher Leaders Network, who shares my frustration about the direction of education policy.

by Anthony S. Colucci.

In a shocking display of ignorance, pay for performance has become reformers' blitzkrieg. Both common sense and research are being ignored while this unsubstantiated practice is being implemented throughout the country. Those of us in the trenches every day are left guessing why pay for performance is being touted as the latest panacea. Is it a sneaky way to further cut funding for education? Is it a tactic to destroy unions? Has the media made teachers the scapegoat for perceived problems in education? Does somebody think this is going to make us work harder? To those questions I do not have the answer.

I will tell you that most educators are not buying into this system. Proponents argue that this is the case because we are trying to maintain the status quo. That simply is false. Most of us would agree with Michael Fullan when he alleged, "It is probably closer to the truth to say that the main problem in public education is not the resistance to change but the presence of too many innovations mandated or adopted uncritically and superficially on an ad hoc fragmented basis." This is a great description of pay for performance.

Each school day, we see why this system is absurd, but yet it is being implemented.
For starters, educators are driven by a passion, a higher calling...we love children and put 110% into our work every day. Paying us more or less money on the basis of a cockamamie scheme is not going to improve students' performance. Far from the reality of children in a classroom, the rallying cry of pay for performance advocates is that there are no excuses for children to not make annual learning gains. Perhaps President Eisenhower said it best when he proclaimed, "Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field."

Politicians and reformers have no conception of the complexities involved in our classrooms every day. They do not understand the laundry list of challenges teachers face. Reformers have never created a marvelous lesson only to have it flop because a room full of teenage girls was in cat fight over a boy. Have they ever tried to teach a math lesson while a nine-year old with an emotional behavioral disorder is screaming and wailing? They have never seen the detrimental affects physical, sexual, or verbal abuse has on a child's performance. Reformers have not witnessed a hungry child stealing food from classmates' lunches. Do they realize that students who don't know how to speak English are expected to perform on these tests?

I will agree that there is no excuse for teachers not to come to work every day with high-expectations and a can do spirit. There is no excuse why teachers cannot provide students the opportunity to learn every day. However, I will bluntly tell you there are excuses as to why students don't make annual learning games. I want you to think back to your childhood. What was your toughest year in school?

For me, that is an easy question. It was fourth grade, and my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a ten-year old, I did not comprehend what that meant. I saw fear in eyes of the adults in my family and heard it in their voices. I distinctly remember my aunt telling me, "your mother may die." As my mother had surgery, lost hair due to chemo, and had little energy to interact with me, my aunt's words saturated my ten year old mind. I can remember sitting in class that year feeling exhausted all the time. Hypochondria came to preoccupy me. We read an article about the emerging AIDS crisis in our Weekly Readers, and I was overcome with a fear that I had somehow acquired the disease. In the winter, I stared at my chapped hands, another sign I was dying. I was not a happy child eager to learn that year, but my teacher was there day after day, week after week, doing her best. I doubt I would have the met state mandated gains that year. Was it my teacher's fault? Not even close. What an outrage it would have been if my standardized test scores prevented her from collecting a full salary. The next year my mother was well. Needless to say, that was a much more productive school year.

We can see that pay for performance is another waste of the education system's time, resources, and money. Teachers know that it is one more example of outsiders dictating bad policy in the name of reform. We can list many more efficient ways to improve student learning such as providing teachers appropriate professional development opportunities, increasing the scope of social services available to our students, and improving school leadership. If the concern of reformers is that ineffective teachers remain in the classroom, I would say the problem is the ability of administrators to effectively evaluate teachers. Even if tenure makes it difficult to fire a teacher, administrators should be able to weed out true incompetence in the years prior to a teacher being granted this status.

Along with thousands of other concerned educators and citizens, I believe we must take a stand against misguided reform. We must deliver a clear message to our newly elected Congress. Save Our Schools Million Teacher March (SOSMTM) is leading an effort to do just that. On July 30-July 31, 2011 in Washington D.C., they are sponsoring a national gathering of teachers, parents, students, organizations, and other concerned Americans in an effort to put an end to the national education crisis. Learn more about SOSMTM on Facebook or at their website. Spreading the word and attending this event is a means for you to do your ultimate duty as a teacher...provide students with the quality education that they deserve!

Anthony S. Colucci, a National Board Certified Teacher, coordinates and teaches the gifted-student program at four elementary schools in Central Florida. He is the author of Copilots, Duties & Pina Coladas: How to Be a Great Teacher, and has earned numerous awards for his innovative and creative lessons.

What do you think? Is incentive pay a waste of money? Do you feel moved to get involved as Mr. Colucci suggests?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A friend forwarded me a video last night, and I am really wondering about the implications. This shows a class of second graders following a protocol apparently developed by the Northwest Evaluation Association, to share "fabulous data" with elementary students. I have not worked with this organization, so I would be interested in hearing from teachers who have.

I am concerned about the focus on numerical scores, and arbitrary targets. I really question what these numbers mean to the students. Are they truly excited about learning? Or hitting their target goals?

In May, this presenter will be back, and, the teacher says "I don't think we'll let her down, because we have been working extremely hard." I have no doubt the teacher and students are working hard. But I wonder if these numbers really are what we should be using to measure learning?

What do you think? Should we be working to get our students invested in their test scores? Or does this distract us from better reasons to learn?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

There is a new blog on the EdWeek block, On Performance, authored by Seattle principal Justin Baeder. The latest post takes on the contentious issue of economic incentives in education. I agree with the author that these issues are important, but I am struggling with where he goes with them.

For starters, he proposes:

...it is intuitive to people in most industries that one's pay should be commensurate with one's contribution to the organization. If you don't produce results as an insurance salesperson, a manager, or an attorney, you'll find yourself out of money or out of a job.

I will agree with this, but the trouble is, with the exception of sales positions, most professions do NOT rely on incremental pay associated with production goals. Most economic incentives offered in education tend to tie compensation to one very narrow measure of that contribution - the amount test scores rise. That creates very big problems, as there are so many other contributions we make as teachers that are devalued as a result.

Mr. Baeder goes on to acknowledge that the teaching profession, like many other public sectors of the economy, has made some trade-offs between security and compensation, but suggests that since life-time employment is no longer the norm,

Accordingly, we can no longer structure the profession on the assumption that all educators are "lifers" with uniformly noble, intrinsic motivation. Career-changers represent a rapidly growing segment of the teaching workforce, and if we pay no attention to the range of factors that motivate people, we risk creating perverse incentives.

So according to this, we have people choosing to teach for shorter periods of time, and they are less likely to have noble, intrinsic motivations. So what are these perverse incentives we must fight?

"...the lack of a direct link between performance and compensation inevitably creates an economic incentive toward mediocrity."

Ok, so we have traditionally relied on noble intrinsic motivations, but as we get more short-timers, they may lack this, and we must shift to pay based more on outcomes lest we encourage mediocrity.

Then Mr. Baeder says:

I don't mean that teachers will work harder and do a better job if we dangle the carrot of bonus pay in front of them, but remain mediocre in the absence of a merit pay scheme (indeed, there is so far no evidence that this works).

Then why bother? If there is no evidence that teachers will work harder and do a better job if they are paid bonuses, then why go through the exercise?

Mr. Baeder explains:

For many, many people, the link between their work (input) and their compensation (output) is extremely important. Being focused on a few, specific goals, and having a tangible mandate (such as a compensation link) can be very powerful.

So which is it? You cannot have it both ways. Either we will work harder with a tangible mandate for outcomes or we won't. Very confusing!

Then we come to a slightly more transparent aspect of the argument.

But, you might say, very few people who feel this way are in education at the moment. Exactly. As Eric Hanushek has said, changing compensation is largely about changing the workforce, not motivating current educators to try harder.

You might also say "I don't want people to be educators if they're motivated by money. I want teachers who are in education for 'the right reasons.'" It seems, though, that results matter more than intentions in today's climate - as indeed they should when students' futures are on the line.

So here we have the real goal of this entire strategy laid bare. Proponents actually WANT to shift the motivational base of the teaching profession away from its noble intrinsic foundation, because this apparently interferes with the results orientation that will yield optimal student outcomes (test scores).

Clearly I am highly suspicious of this approach. But I appreciate that we are getting clearer about the objectives behind this project. The goal is to change the workforce teaching our students. And economic incentives for test scores will help accomplish that goal, I have little doubt. If you make teaching more about test scores and less about the many other reasons many of us chose the profession, you will indeed select a different sort of teacher. I do not think this is a change that will benefit our students, or even our economy in the long run, so I am going to suggest we would be better off sticking with a workforce driven by noble intrinsic motivations than pursuing the mercenary career-changers we are being offered in exchange.

What do you think? Would our students be better off with teachers motivated by economic incentives for better results? Or should we stick with more intrinsic motivations for our teachers?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A few weeks ago I shared feedback that was left by teachers for Davis Guggenheim, who asked us to let him know what we thought about his movie, Waiting For Superman. At the time, about fifty teachers had left comments. Today, three weeks later, more than ninety comments have been left.

Update: Today, December 9, Davis Guggenheim posted a response thanking teachers for their comments. He offers a specific response to two on the 90 plus teachers who took the time to write him with their feedback. See what you think.

Because this film has received such a tremendous amount of publicity (including $2 million to promote it from the Gates Foundation), I feel the response of teachers needs to be heard. Davis Guggenheim said he really wanted to hear as well. However, he has yet to return to Huffington Post to respond to any of us who left our comments. Will he respond? We are waiting for Guggenheim.

Zoey14 writes:
Although I have chosen to send my own children to a public school, I am guilty of choosing a "better" school than that in which I currently teach. The children in my current school come from low socioeconomic backgrounds, have no preschool experience¬s, and have no basic academic or social skills upon entering kindergarten. My daughters have two full years of preschool and are growing up in a print-rich environment in which literacy and academic achievement are emphasized. My colleagues who teach kindergarten at my school consider it a successful day if no one eats a crayon, hits another student, or rips a book apart. My own children have entered school AT LEAST 3 years ahead of these students in terms of social skills and academics. And just getting rid of "bad teachers" will alleviate this problem?? This is what teachers are dealing with. We can't go into the homes of these children and force their parents to read to them. We can't force parents to teach the values of hard work, discipline, cooperation, and other social skills that allow for success in school.

The "achievement gap" in so-called low performing schools doesn't just magically appear because the system is full of bad teachers who can't teach reading and math. It starts much, much earlier and is far more complex than that, and we're doing the best we can with the kids who come to us. As others have stated, we need to deal with the disease - poverty.

Hot Pierogi writes:
You will fall on the wrong side of history. If this charter movement takes tighter hold, more schools will be privatized and run for a profit. The poorest neighborhoods will be robbed blind by big business charter schools who take the average daily attendance money, underpay and overwork young teachers, in order to pay the rest to their top dogs. If corporations were so interested in great schools,they would pay taxes and fund a great society. You appear to be an enemy of labor. You might want to watch an actual documentary, made by people with probing intellect, called "The End of Poverty?" and ask yourself if you really believe that corporations have poor children's interest at heart - over those of us teachers who have lived very modest existences and given our hearts to do the job right. Poor children will be burned at the hands of this charter movement and this test score nonsense, which pushes a type of education that no affluent person would ever subject their children to. You so completely dramatized/staged "reality" in this movie that it caused me to question "An Inconvenient Truth." However, unlike this movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" has actual research and science on its side. This was not a documentary but an often staged piece of reality t.v.

Hot Pierogi continues,
Even if Davis Guggenheim didn't do a lot of research into what it's like to be a teacher, he has gotten a taste of our experience; he has been lambasted on his blog. After having one of your movies picked apart by teachers. Diane Ravitch and more, imagine, Mr. Guggenheim, what it is like, to have your whole career dismissed by people such as yourself -- by people who consider themselves experts on your profession, but have no experience or education in the field. You told us what you really thought, and we have returned the favor. Got anything to say? I hope you haven't given up reading. We've endured years of scapegoating now, even had our names released by the Los Angeles Times as "less effective teachers" for anyone who has ever known us to see, and we're still standing. Do you think you'd have the stomach for our business? To listen to all the hatred for a top price of 70K per year?

What do you think? Will Davis Guggenheim respond to teachers? What do you have to say to him?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The past decade we have seen drastic changes affecting our schools, and many of these changes defy what we know as teachers and parents to be in the best interests of our children. We have allowed technocrats to drive our schools with data. It is high time for teachers and parents and students to challenge the reform nonsense that holds sway.

EdReform nonsense:
Poverty is just an excuse. There is no reason students in poor schools should not perform at the highest levels. If they do not, it must be because the teachers have low expectations. The answer is to set arbitrary performance targets, and if the schools fail to meet them, fire the principal and/or staff, close the school down, or replace it with a charter school.

Teacher common sense:
Poverty matters. When our students' families are in financial trouble it makes a big difference in many ways. That does not mean they cannot learn, but it DOES mean we need to give them extra attention and support. Schools with large numbers of poor students need extra resources and smaller class sizes. They should NOT be punished if their test scores do not go up every year.

EdReform nonsense:
Class size does not matter. Recent speeches by Bill Gates and Arne Duncan have suggested larger class sizes are inevitable and are ok because they do not hurt test scores.

Teacher common sense:
Class size matters in many ways. Why is it that in private schools attended by the children of the wealthy, classes have half the number of students compared to those in public schools? Class size affects a teacher's ability to attend to the diversity of learners, and affects the quality of learning taking place. When students have greater needs, the class sizes should lower, not higher.

EdReform nonsense:
Test scores are the way we measure student learning. If we track test scores over several years, this gives us longitudinal data, and that is how we can tell how well teachers are teaching. Since this is what counts, we can maximize the best teaching by paying people more for better test scores, and we can tell which of the schools of education that produce teachers are doing the best job, and punish the schools that produce teachers that are less effective at raising scores.

Teacher common sense:
When we focus all our energy on this one set of measurements, we miss so many other crucial aspects of learning. Tracking scores over time can be helpful, but it is not a magic formula for success. Rewarding high scores and punishing low ones inevitably leads us to narrowing the curriculum to that which is tested. Some of our schools of education have proud traditions of looking critically at our educational system. They should not be forced to focus on test preparation.

EdReform nonsense:
Reform MUST be driven by external measures such as high stakes tests. If the tests are too clumsy, these deficiencies can be erased by making more elaborate tests, administered by computers, at greater frequencies. We must invest billions in new assessment systems tied to the new Common Core Standards. This will correct everything that was wrong with No Child Left Behind.

Teacher common sense:
Assessments are most useful and reliable when they are closely connected to classroom instruction. Teachers and students can learn best when this sort of assessment is honored. The most powerful reforms are driven by teachers given time and space to collaboratively investigate how their students are learning. This must be done in an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust. At a time when money is short, the last thing we need is to spend billions on new assessment systems.

EdReform nonsense:
Experience does not matter. A six week training course is enough to produce an intern who, equipped with a positive attitude and a toolkit of motivational techniques, can be as effective as a veteran teacher. Seniority protects the tired old veterans, who suck up too much of the school system's resources, without producing the higher test scores that would justify paying them more.

Teacher common sense:
Experience matters very much. Teachers form strong connections with their students and the school community over time, and their ability to teach develops in many dimensions over the years. And test scores are a very limited means of measuring what is happening in a classroom.

EdReform nonsense:
Tenure provides teachers with lifetime jobs, and it is next to impossible to get rid of the deadweight.

Teacher common sense:
Teachers do not have "jobs for life." We have due process. Teachers deserve the right, once they are past probationary status, to have a process by which they are evaluated, and if they are to be terminated, the administration should have to show just cause. This allows teachers to have some professional standing in the school, to speak up when they feel things aren't right.

EdReform nonsense:
Charter schools are deserving of public funds and support. They prove that a no-excuses mentality can yield results, even with impoverished students. For-profit schools can introduce great efficiencies into the education marketplace, showing the public sector how to do more with less.

Teacher common sense:
Actually, charters have not even been shown to have better test scores, on average, than regular public schools. So by the measure chosen by the reformers, they fail. And another thing. We value our public school system. It is controlled by a locally elected school board, not an appointed board of directors. Large amounts of public funds should not be diverted to privately controlled institutions. As we see in the health care industry, the private sector is most efficient at one thing - diverting public funds into their bank accounts. We value the great American common school, the crossroads of the community. We do not wish to see our schools continue to become more and more segregated and inequitable. We must reclaim the neighborhood school as a foundation of local democracy.

EdReform Nonsense:
The heart and soul of a school is in our passion for data. We must have ever more data so we can closely monitor student progress and the effectiveness of instruction. We should protect our data systems from any budget cuts and in fact must invest billions in the next few years for elaborate new assessment systems.

Teacher common sense:
The heart and soul of a school is our passion for children. If we took all the money we are investing in standards and testing, and instead invested it in giving time for teachers to work together, to collaborate and reflect on how students are learning, through processes such as Lesson Study and teacher research, we would be much better off.

What do you think? Is it time for a return to some common sense in our schools?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 7:33 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The number we often hear for the proportion of our students who live in poverty is in the range of 20% to 23%. But Susan Ohanian has flagged some frightening data from the Department of Education's Data Express. The number of students receiving free or reduced price lunches has grown significantly, and in 2008-2009 44% of our nation's students were eligible. In the state of California, 52% are eligible. In Mississippi, 68% are eligible, and the prize for the lowest proportion goes to New Hampshire, with 20% eligible. In the city of Oakland, where I have worked for the past 24 years, more than 68% of the students were eligible.

What does this mean in terms of income? Each state sets an income level that makes one eligible. In California, a family of four with an annual gross income of less than $28,665 qualifies for a free lunch, while reduced price lunches are available for students with a family income less than $40,793.

Is this a reflection of true poverty? Think about your own family's income. I know my California household would have a very hard time getting along on this amount, and there would be no margin of safety if someone lost a job or had hours cut back. We are seeing elements of our societal safety net eroded every week. Several million Americans are about to lose unemployment benefits after having lost their jobs in the recession, and we are being told these jobs may not return. Many of these millions are parents. How are their children going to be affected by seeing their parents financially ruined?

College degrees do not offer much protection from the insecurity that has become the norm, especially for those just out of college. Andrew Sum reports

Young college educated workers, particularly those 25 and under, however, have not fared very well over the past three years. They have experienced rising joblessness, underemployment, and malemployment problems (i.e. working in jobs that do not require a college degree). During the January-August period of 2010, we estimate that fewer than 50 of every 100 young B.A.-holders held a job requiring a college degree.

In films like Waiting for Superman, student achievement in the US is compared unfavorably to outcomes in countries such as Finland. However, Finland has less than 5% of its children being raised in poverty. And the country has a strong social safety net, so that children are not in danger of eviction and deprivation.

As Stephen Krashen has pointed out, poverty is closely correlated to school achievement. Those of us who have worked in these schools know firsthand why this is so. Poverty is associated with poor health, poor nutrition, lousy day-care and pre-schools, dangerous and violent neighborhoods, family instability and even violence, poor access to dental and vision care, and so on.

Our education secretary styles himself a civil rights leader. But Arne Duncan last week gave a speech that called on us to accept that the "new normal" in education will be budget cuts and "doing more with less." This speech before the American Enterprise Institute, was lauded by National Review columnists Frederick Hess and Michael Petrilli, who wrote:

In one speech, this (Democratic) secretary of education came out swinging against "last hired, first fired," seniority-based pay raises, smaller class sizes, seat time, pay bonuses for master's degrees, and bloated special-education budgets. Which means he just declared war on the teachers' unions, parents' groups, education schools, and the special-education lobby. Not bad for a day's work.

When the unions start busing in kids, parents, and teachers to rally against increases in class size or pay freezes, expect a lot of Republican governors to start quoting their good friend Arne Duncan.

Our schools ought to be places of refuge for children in poverty. Often the free or reduced price lunch is their only solid meal of the day. Smaller class sizes allow teachers the chance to give more attention to individual students, who need it all the more when their families are financially stressed. Sadly, Secretary Duncan appears to be doing his best to clear the way for cuts to the schools and attacks on teachers and students. It looks like we are going to need to start handling this ourselves. The group I started just over a year ago, Teachers' Letters to Obama, has decided to join others in organizing a non-partisan conference and march in Washington, DC, next July 28 to 31.

What do you think? How many of your students are eligible for free or reduced price lunches? Does this equate with poverty? Are you ready to get active yourself around these issues?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Today I share the views of a lifelong educator from the great state of Washington. He raises some great questions about the narrative we have been fed by our leaders.

by Ken Mortland.

Is the current claim by critics that America's educational system is in crisis and failing real or a tool to expand critics' control of the reform agenda? Has three decades of reform by thousands of dedicated educators produced no improvement, as suggested by the likes of Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan? Or are Rhee and Duncan choosing to ignore the progress that has been made, lest knowledge of that progress weaken their position and status?

According to Rhee, "kids are stuck in failing schools" and the "glacial process of removing an incompetent teacher". She maintains that no "business in America ... would survive, if it couldn't make personnel decisions based on performance." The former ignores great strides forward in the past three decades and the latter ignores the inability of public schools to control the production process the way American businesses can.

American business models include the ability to specify the quality of products accepted into the production process. If my company is building battery powered, hand held drills, I can demand minimum quality specifications on all parts and materials my company obtains to produce that drill. As a result, I have far more control over the production process than any school system in America could dream of having over its student population. That's a fundamental difference and the reason many business models will never be applicable to schools.

Why would Rhee and her colleagues maintain such an apparently biased claim? The first step in product advertising is to create a need for your product. If Rhee and associates can't convince us that there's still a "crisis in education", they will likely lose their paramount position in the "reform movement".

What are the examples of progress that are being ignored and the bias expressed by reformers?

Graduation Rates?
First of all, it's important to understand that there is no agreed upon definition of a "drop out". According to the Sandia Report of the late 80's, drop out rates "are dropping for all ethnic groups except Hispanics", and the "Hispanic data includes uneducated immigrants, who never dropped into US schools".

On time graduation rates in Washington state are at about 69%, state-wide. Critics say that's outrageously low. But none of those critics are willing to acknowledge that the current graduation rate is at or near its all time high. To acknowledge that fact would dilute their message of crisis.


Test Scores?
Although it remains open to debate as to whether or not measuring effectiveness by test scores is appropriate, Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) passage ratios improved significantly, particularly when passage of the WASL became a graduation requirement. Among the original WASL tests was one for listening. Students performed so well on these listening tests that they were discontinued after 7 years. No one offered any praise to teachers for having done such a good job, training students to be good listeners. The test was just dropped.

In my district, Northshore SD #417, the WASL began in 97-98. I taught junior high, so the tests I saw and administered were for 7th graders. To begin with there were listening, reading, writing, and math tests. In 97-98, 57.04% of our 7th graders in the Northshore District passed the reading WASL, 45.3% passed the writing WASL, and 33.5% passed the math WASL. In 09-10, 75.7% of 7th graders passed the reading WASL, 83.2% passed the writing WASL, and 70.3% passed the math WASL. In 02-03, 8th graders began taking the science WASL and 57.8% of Northshore's 8th graders passed the science WASL. In 09-10, 69.3% passed the science WASL. Neither 7th nor 8th graders would have felt that passing the WASL would affect their chances of graduation, nor their classroom grades, nor assignments to classes the following year. In other words, there was little for them to be concerned about, beyond their own desire to do well and meet the expectations of their teachers and parents.

For graduation purposes, the WASL would be administered in 10th grade. That started in the Northshore District in 98-99, and 70.0% of the 10th graders passed the reading WASL, 63.6% passed the writing WASL, and 54.9% passed the math WASL. The science WASL began for 10th graders in 02-03, when 52.3% passed the science WASL. In 05-06, the 10th graders who would have to pass the WASL to graduate took it for the first time and the scores jumped up. This was now serious business and could be blown off no more. In 05-06, 93.8% of NSSD's 10th graders passed the reading WASL, 92% passed the writing WASL, 73.6% passed the math WASL, and 53.7% passed the science WASL. In 09-10, 91.6% of 10th graders passed the reading WASL, 95% passed the writing WASL, 66.4% passed the math WASL, and 66.9% passed the science WASL.

The last year of reading WASL scores (91.6%) represented about a 31% improvement. The writing scores almost 50% improvement, the math scores a 21% improvement and the science scores almost a 28% improvement.

Now you can argue that the math and science scores could have been better. But you can't ignore the improvements without demonstrating a substantial bias against those who labor daily in classrooms to teach these skills to their students. Yet every day, proponents of new educational reform initiatives continue to describe our education system as a failure.

System-wide Failure?
The claim of system wide failure started in the Reagan administration and continues today, despite decades of hard work and incremental improvements. In the late 80's, the first Bush administration commissioned a study of the American educational system as part of the America 2000 Initiative. The study was done by the Sandia Laboratories in Texas. Their report concluded that, "Much of the "crisis" commentary today claims total system-wide failure in education. Our research shows that this is simply not true."

That report went on to say that claims of failure in the educational system were "nonproductive rhetoric" and involved "improper use of simplistic data" in order to "use the educational system as a scapegoat" and that it was "distracting the nation from actual problems in education."

What data does the Sandia Report use to support their conclusions? Let's start with SAT scores. Critics point to a decade of decline in SAT scores as proof our educational system is failing. Sandia reported that, "since the 1970's every ethnic or racial groups has maintained or improved on SAT scores." Furthermore, Sandia pointed out that, "aggregate decline in SAT scores is largely a product of demographic changes, increasingly higher proportions of students are taking the SAT today." In other words, students who wouldn't have dreamed of taking the SAT in the 70's were lining up to take it in the 80's, and they were not good candidates to be doing so. When the "test taking populations is adjusted to match the test taking populations of the late 70's, aggregate scores actually rose."

Now, you're probably asking yourself, why haven't I heard any of this before? That's a legitimate question. And, it points directly to the bias expressed by those claiming system wide failure. When this report first came out, it so shocked the Bush administration that it sought first to soften the impact by a process called "refereeing". In effect, changing the report (not the data, because that actually came from government sources and couldn't be challenged effectively) to make it less damaging to the administration's agenda. When that didn't work, the report was buried. Today, it takes some serious research to find any of this data. But you can find it in the Dec. 1993 edition of the Kappan Magazine.

Teacher Certification?
Teacher certification has become an issue and some states are proposing changing the certification process from one quarter of "student teaching" to one year of "internship". Sounds like an excellent idea, maybe we should look into that. OH, YES, that's right; we in Washington state already have a one year internship program and have had that program for three decades. This reform was accomplished by a consortium of parties: University of Washington; 5 school districts (including Northshore); and the Washington Education Association. Is anyone interested in acknowledging that? Of course not!

Teachers Unions?
Critics who claim systemic failure of our schools point to teachers' unions as a primary cause. They claim that unions protect incompetent teachers. While it's true that unions protect their members, all of their members (good teachers too); that doesn't address the fact that some schools are doing very well and have unions as part of their structure. Among our foreign competitors, Finland is perceived as being the best. Yet, Finnish teachers are represented by their union. Here in the US,"Green Dot Public Schools" are quite successful and they have unions and a "due process" protection clause and a "four step grievance process" in their union contract. If these schools can succeed with union involvement, then unions are not the primary source of problems in education. But those folks whose political agendas involve trashing unions will refuse to acknowledge this, as it dilutes their arguments and their proposals for radical change.

Conclusion?
These are just some of the facts that are pushed under the carpet in discussions about educational reform. Critics would rather you didn't know about these examples of incremental improvement because these critics must convince Americans their school systems are a failure, despite three decades of hard work by educators. Critics wish to gain support for additional reforms, many of which are experimental in nature and often unproven as answers to the issues at hand. They want us to believe in them and to disregard the voices of doubt that challenge their assertions. Please remember that assertions are not evidence. Demand the evidence! You will learn that the past three decades have brought substantial improvements in schools.

Ken Mortland is a retired teacher from the Northshore School District, Bothell, Washington; having taught there from 1970 to 2007. He has taught junior high special education, language arts/social studies block, reading, and social studies. He was nominated for Civics Educator of the Year in 2007. He is a life long Republican and is a 20 year board member of Mainstream Republicans of Washington. He is the founder of the WEA Republican Educators Caucus (a work in progress), and a charter member of the NEA Republican Leaders Conference. He can be reached at kmort1130@aol.com.

What do you think of the evidence Ken Mortland has shared here? Why don't we hear this side of the story?

Posted by Anthony Cody at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend