New Terrain

I'm just going to put it out there if it wasn't apparent already-- I'm a Rhee fan. I believe in focusing our time, resources and brains on teacher competency as our primary way of closing the dire achievement gap, and I believe in plucking the many incompetent teachers from schools and sweeping them far, far away from teaching our children. Anyone's who's worked in an under-performing school knows at least a handful of these teachers. I gladly forgo my own seniority and tenure as a teacher to know that those teachers-- the ones who ultimately make my and my children's work harder-- will be asked to leave by the end of the year at the latest.

And while I watch Rhee's disregard for "finesse" with shock and horror at times (C'mon, at least try to be a little more diplomatic. More diplomacy and tighter public appearances ARE in the best interest of kids. Really!), I am proud of her principles and the changes she's brought about in the district, as uncomfortable as they often are.

So with all that in mind, I read US News and World Report's Op-Ed piece on how Arne Duncan, the incoming education secretary, is going to have to grapple with Michelle Rhee and all the uncomfortable parts that she stands for.

"Rhee wants to take school reform where no other school chief, including Duncan in Chicago, has dared go: sweeping incompetent teachers from their jobs. That's a confrontation with the teachers' unions that Duncan, who aspires to get along with everyone, would undoubtedly prefer to duck."

"What Duncan and other school chiefs prefer to neglect, however, can't be sidestepped in Washington. While Rhee may ping in the lower registers of the emotional intelligence range (what was she thinking in agreeing to pose on a Time cover looking like the wicked witch of the East?), she's not an outlier. Rhee is the pointy tip of a revolution determined to take on what Duncan and other school chiefs ignore: basic teacher competency. For decades, too many teachers have arisen from the hindquarter of the SAT scale. In college, they were steered into flaccid undergraduate programs befitting their campus "cash cow" status (would-be teachers pay the same tuition as, say, physics students, but they don't need expensive labs). Once on the job, their promotions are based on often-pointless graduate degrees. This is the one education reform rock that's never truly been turned over."

Yowzers. Minus two points to Ms. Rhee for her cringe-worthy, very un-diplomatic one-liners and public appearances that pinch people in a really not-good way. But plus 10 points for taking uncomfortable, but critical issues head on and going where no one has yet successful gone before.

Posted by Jessica Shyu at 2:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We are closing the achievement gap before it ever begins.

You heard me. The gap won't have a chance.

It was late summer and I was at a coffee shop desperately pumping up my hesitant first-year teacher for her kindergarten interview. She had taught secondary math all summer and now she had a chance in early childhood. Understandably, she was scared. As someone with only secondary experience, I was mildly terrified too. But if it's where she was needed to be, then let's do it. She just needed a little urging.

Pounding the table with my fist, I explained: Preschool is where 3- and 4-year olds are getting the opportunity to learn their letters and be set up for reading on time. All across the district in Teach For America-taught Kindergarten classes, kids are learning to read at a first or second grade level by the time they enter first grade. Early childhood education (ECE) is where you're putting them, not on the right track, but the better than best track. These children may come from low-income families, but you're giving them an even greater head start in life. We are going to kill the achievement gap before it even starts.

By the time I finished my passionate speech, I was ready to take on a class of 5-year-olds myself. Thankfully, so was my teacher, who went off the next day to interview and scored the job. By the way, despite her (and my) initial fears, her kids (and I) are doing great.

Thankfully, our enthusiasm is not alone. Obama has just pledged $10 billion toward ECE. (1.4% of the $700 billion bailout money, but the biggest chunk of change toward ECE yet!)

The New York Times writes: "Driving the movement is research by a Nobel Prize-winning economist, James J. Heckman, and others showing that each dollar devoted to the nurturing of young children can eliminate the need for far greater government spending on remedial education, teenage pregnancy and prisons."

Popular opinion supports it. Educators, foundations and researchers are all pouring time and energy into it. Early childhood education is in the spotlight more than ever. Let's just make sure we do it right. Let's make sure it's quality (and fun!) education that teaches students developmentally appropriate and rigorous material that sets them up to be not just on-track, but ahead for first grade. This means learning their letters along with playing dress up. It means deliberately being taught how to play nice with others, how to sit quietly during Morning Meeting, and how to draw with lots of different colors of markers.

My pessimistic side is bracing for lots of preschools suddenly sprouting that end up being little more than glorified daycare and little care for quality (and age appropriate and fun) instruction. But it doesn't have to be so. Educators across the country, including Teach For America teachers in DC teaching early education, have made significant and measurable gains for their preschool and kindergarten students. (I'm tooting our own horn, because the ECE team here is pretty incredible.)

According to the recent Education Week article, "During the 2007-08 school year, 124 pre-K pupils in the 49,000-student school district who were taught by TFA corps members learned to recognize all or most of the letters of the alphabet, according to the study by Westat.

The findings are “remarkable,” writes Nicholas Zill, the author of the paper, who recently retired from his post as a vice president of the Rockville, Md.-based research organization, “because getting young children from low-income families to learn all their letters before they start kindergarten is an accomplishment that is not usually achieved in Head Start or in public school prekindergartens serving low-income, central-city families.”

So, Mr. Obama, thank you for the promise of 10 big ones. But please, make sure we use it on quality care and instruction for children and parents like you promised during the debates. Because until we close this achievement gap, it's a rough learning world out there and we need to arm these four-year-olds with all we can before they become a part of it.

Posted by Jessica Shyu at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

For at least one child in DC, the student pay system is working. It's helping to close the achievement gap. Hooray to Roland Fryer and the system he created to pay students $50 for every A earned. (Check out The Colbert Report's interview with the founding economist of the program.)

This child was one of those solid-D, maybe-C students. One of the sweet ones in middle school who didn't cause a ruckus in class, but who straggled to class and needed four reminders to pull out a pencil and follow along with the guided reading notes. He has a learning disability, but the work was modified enough and in rare times of motivation, he had shown he could do it well. The problem was that motivation.

But over the past two months, all that has changed, his teacher told me. He's coming in for extra help, he just needs a quick reminder to stay on task, and he eagerly awaits their weekly reading quiz. He even admitted to studying really, really hard for it. Which would explain that 89% that he received on the figurative language analysis quiz. What changed him around? The student-pay system implemented this year in Washington, DC.

And you know what else changed him around? A really amazing teacher who teaches standards-aligned material that is rigorous, based in literature and uses effective guided notes and assessment practices. I'm typically a skeptic when it comes to fancy systems that seem to be grounded in something so innovative that it seems terribly far removed from actual learning and achievement in the classroom. I'm especially skeptical when the quality and rigor of teacher instruction isn't a major component of the system. I'm more convinced that the student pay system can motivate some kids to study harder-- but what are we doing to guarantee that what they're studying is the right thing, or that they're being taught it at all? Oh right. That's called teacher merit pay.

Posted by Jessica Shyu at 11:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)