February 2010 Archives

Occasionally, I hear teachers repeat what is now an accepted aphorism in the education crowd: schools are not businesses, and children are not widgets coming down the assembly line, subject to quality control. We can't eliminate inferior raw material--rejecting the unripe blueberries--and we have little influence over the conditions under which we create our "product." Therefore-- it's wrong to apply the principles of business management to schools.

Over at Public School Insights, in a discussion about merit pay and other incentives, Roxanna Elden makes an excellent point: People who advocate running schools according to a business model assume that educated children are the product. In reality, test scores are the product.

Test scores have become the product precisely because of their short-term ease of use and transparency. It's simple to track growth--even the euphemistic "value added"-- and compare our students and schools with their "competitors." No more waiting around, encouraging kids to develop into contributors over time--those regular infusions of data let us know how we're doing in this race!

Of course, we are right now watching what happens when a phenomenally successful automobile business, Toyota, loses the big picture and pushes their corporate culture to focus on the short-term numbers. Call it We're-Number-One Syndrome.

Still, schools can learn a great deal from well-run business models. Successful businesses focus on the needs of customers and clients, building long-term brand loyalty, keeping an eye on changing conditions, the road ahead. Slow and steady, with a large dose of creative.

There are still lots of teachers who work that way, too--keeping onerous testing in perspective, and thinking every day about their students' long-term potential, continually analyzing the effectiveness of new strategies and techniques. Will paying them more improve schools?

I'm all for paying the teachers who are doing a great job-- using multiple indicators--much more, simply because they deserve it. Teaching is complex, skilled, intensive work, and teachers are generally underpaid. We don't value their critical contributions to the social order--or to the economic health of the republic--and nothing says that more than our compensation system.

The current single salary schedule doesn't incent the right things. It ties up scarce resources in entitlements based on longevity and credentialing. The trick is connecting extra pay to demonstrable teacher excellence in engendering student learning (measured by a variety of means) and teachers taking--or, better yet, creating--leadership roles and filling hard-to-staff positions. Nobody deserves more money for simply hanging around.

That's what good businesses do. They pay and assign employees based on their own skill needs, plus employee merit and contribution. They reward employees for expanding their capacity and innovating while on the job--because it's good for the franchise. Maybe schools can learn from business models--the right ones.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Heard enough about the mass firing of teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island yet?

It's a story that serves as a convenient vehicle for whatever low-information opinions one may have been harboring about public schools in America: teachers make ridiculous amounts of money (read: more than I make), teacher unions are the embodiment of greed, failing schools are the norm in America, generational poverty and lack of opportunity are merely excuses--every teacher should succeed with every child. Or start packing. Don't let the door hit you, etc.

It's disconcerting to stand at the sidelines and listen to the nastiness. Especially considering that most people know pretty much nothing about the school in question, except that its test numbers are exceptionally low and its teachers decided not to agree to more work for the same compensation. While it's true that ethnic make-up, student transience, language issues and per-capita income should be factors that can be overcome, leading to school success, the headline stories weren't about the influence of such variables or working to find potential solutions. Instead, the torch-bearing virtual mob has been pursuing the monster: bad teachers.

Over at the Huffington Post, Tom Vander Ark wants readers to understand that in some ways, the Rhode Island teachers got off easy--up to half may be able to re-apply and get their jobs back, unlike schools that choose the "restart" option for reviving failing schools under Race to the Top specifications. He suggests more precision around the language describing RTT-funded school turnarounds, and gives props to the Democratic USDOE for taking names and kicking rears. Vander Ark: If you think Central Falls coverage has been hysterical, just wait until RttT funds flow.

Steve Perry and Campbell Brown gave us a muddle of conflicting information on CNN, although the sensational phrase "mass firing" got a good workout. How much, exactly, do teachers in Central Falls make? What, precisely, were the superintendent's demands? You wouldn't know if you watched CNN, where "facts" were hard to come by. Steve Perry, CNN's go-to education expert-- a man who sent 80 kids to college in four years of running a charter school, according to one breathless news story--seemed bent on painting veteran, unionized teachers as the roadblock to reform.

Valerie Strauss, at the Washington Post, raises the obvious question: Who replaces the teachers who get the axe permanently? Recruiting the best educators should be easy, especially when you can offer them life in a very poor town and a job with no security. We can throw the bums out--but replacing them all with dynamic, effective teachers is a fantasy.

My favorite response to the Rhode Island story comes from TFA Teacher Matt Brown who compares the story to what happens when teams in the NBA clean house. Brown's brilliantly named blog--Relentless Pursuit of Acronyms--is well worth the read, a different and thoughtful perspective on what happens when high-paid players aren't notching enough wins, and owners decide to run the franchise on inexpensive but promising rookies. It's all about building a viable team.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here's an important book to put on your must-read list, today: Columbine by Dave Cullen.

An excruciating dissection of every parent, teacher and principal's worst nightmares, the book is the culmination of 10 years' worth of comprehensive research and interviews done mostly on-site in Colorado. Cullen debunks a lot of what most people believe or assume happened at Columbine High School, on April 20, 1999, and leaves us with some uncertainties, speculations and theories about schools, violence, teenagers and the American culture.

After the news this afternoon that there have been more shootings in Littleton, why revisit one of the most ghastly school shooting incidents in history?

Because taking schools for granted is our habit. We expect our schools to change very little and to provide a great deal. We believe that school is where our children will find lifelong friends, where they will participate in soccer, scouting and Lego League. We hope they will get ready for the future--attending the prom, struggling through trigonometry, applying for college. Terrible things happen in urban schools, or schools in deep poverty.

Columbine High School looks like a lot of suburban high schools--about 1700 students, not much ethnic diversity or poverty, parents who generally have a handle on their children's education. How could disaster strike there? What were they doing wrong?

Not much, as it turns out. One of the most striking themes in Columbine is that school personnel behaved admirably. Not just slain teacher Dave Sanders, who literally laid his life down in the library of Columbine High. Teachers worried about the killers' conduct and writing, met with their parents and guidance counselors--showing concern and willingness to act when the boys showed signs of instability.

The principal, Frank DeAngelis, demonstrated consistently intelligent and courageous leadership, grit and humanity--so much that he remains principal at Columbine, a decade later, believing he is still needed to help students have confidence in getting an education there. The story of how the school community rallied to serve kids and their families for years after this unimaginable tragedy is truly inspiring.

So what did happen at Columbine? Cullen thoroughly discredits the myth that the killers were alienated by jocks or part of a "Trench Coat Mafia" cult. Nor were the boys from broken families or dysfunctional, abusive homes. One moving interview is with a young woman who identifies herself as "Goth," but says she understands why Mr. DeAngelis and her teachers always got along better with student athletes and scholars. It's just the way school has always functioned: the more you buy into the program, the more you get out of it.

In the end, the fact that catastrophic violence happened at Columbine High seems almost random. Afterward, local law enforcement officials tried to conceal the fact that parents in the community repeatedly reported one of the boys for dangerously sadistic behavior. Those complaints were suppressed, for years, as were records of secret meetings and dismantled websites. Churches in Jefferson County used the incident to build their attendance numbers, or to demonize certain groups of young people. And the media immediately begin to shape the narrative for maximum impact--as if a disaster of such proportion needed a new, compelling backstory.

It's the media that I'm interested in. Story-telling shapes the way the public thinks about schools. I've read any number of stories about schools that focus on urgent minutiae while overlooking the foundational questions: What is school for--what do we hope to accomplish with this great experiment of free public education for everyone?

Understanding about what matters in education isn't found in stories about the federal budget, re-upping ESEA, Michelle Rhee, or Teach for America. The most important things that happen in our schools often go unremarked or even unnoticed. Until disaster strikes.

One beautiful thread in the Columbine story is Patrick Ireland, a junior at the time of the shootings, known as the "boy in the window." Shot through the brain, he pulled himself to a second floor library window where he was rescued. Ireland was valedictorian of Columbine's class of 2000. In his commencement address, he noted that Columbine had "made the country aware of the unexpected level of hate and rage that had been hidden in high schools." And then he said this:

"When I fell out the window, I knew somebody would catch me. That's what I need to tell you: that I knew the loving world was there all the time."

The Columbine High School website today is the usual crowded jumble of schedules, events, and information. In the corner, however, there is a small logo--a delicate columbine flower--with the legend "We are all Columbine." And so it is.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 8:27 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Reading the end-of-week blogs this Saturday morning, it's clear that the educator crowd is all over the new MetLife report--the one that says overwhelming numbers of teachers and principals believe that more collaboration, more professional growth, and a steady stream of resources will lead us to the Promised Land.

Meanwhile, down in Kentucky, Erik Hanushek is once again leading the charge toward no-excuses policy-making--what Robert Pondiscio calls his "off with their heads" model. Forget class size, professional learning, resource levels. Teachers must efficiently produce test score gains. Or be canned.

We've recently been notified that individual learning styles don't exist--research and Jay Mathews tell us so. But--I'm wondering if a scientifically based investigation might be funded, to determine whether these two diametrically opposed viewpoints on how to solve the "good teacher in every classroom" problem spring from different, inherent and immutable... policy styles.

Students of government know that there are only a handful of forms policy generally takes:

• Mandates (Do it, or else)
• Incentives (Do it, and there's something in it for you)
• Capacity Building (We could do it better, if only...)
• Exhortation (Do it, because you should)
• Systemic shifts (We've been doing it all wrong)

Hey! Maybe we could create a Facebook quiz--a predominance of Bs and you're an incentivist! Mostly Cs? Congratulations--you're a capacity builder! If we had a policy styles sorting mechanism, we'd know how to get the right folks together to make schools better, at last.

When it comes to policy, economists like Hanushek are drawn to carrots and sticks. If we'd just stop mooning over the hopey, changey stuff and analyze the numbers, they think, we could move forward with confidence, ticking problems off our prioritized lists.

Educators often run their classrooms using heavy-duty mandates and incentives (think: assignments, grades, rewards for good behavior). When it comes to big picture policy issues, however, they shift to resource increases, skill-building and pressure to do the right thing for more children, while keeping the basic system intact.

Lately, there's been greater interest in systemic shifts--privatization, vouchers, virtual schools, change in school governance models, abandoning the whole idea of schools as bricks and mortar, let alone community centers. What would happen if we stood back and let commercial and technological interests call the shots? Does the government have a justified, prevailing interest in education or should we scrap the entire system?

A "Policy Styles" quiz might turn out to be very useful...

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 9:20 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Take piano lessons as a kid? Remember your first lesson--when the teacher placed the red book in front of you and said "this is a whole note?" And from there, it was week after week of whole notes and dotted quarter rests and every good boy does fine? And eventually you either got proficient enough to enjoy actually playing the piano--or quit, because the lessons were so boring?

That's the way we teach music in secondary schools, too. We give kids shiny new instruments, and they think--Yes! Drumline! School of Rock! And then we open the book, and there's the whole note and the quarter note. In the most auditory of all disciplines--music--traditional pedagogy focuses first on decoding symbols: visual learning.

We continue to privilege accurate symbolic interpretation in all traditional music instruction--giving highest contest and festival awards to students who are good sight-readers and technicians. Being able to reproduce notated music correctly is an important skill, of course--nobody gets a job with the symphony unless they're a great sight-reader.

Somewhere along the line, however, other capacities--improvisation, beauty, expression, collaboration, creativity, even pleasure--are submerged in the desire to become what music majors call "a demon reader." (Music majors amuse themselves by thinking of new mnemonic phrases for every good boy, too--it's lonely in those practice rooms.)

Classically trained musicians look down on people who "play by ear." Most secondary music teachers will refuse to teach a complex rhythm or phrase by modeling it, disparaging auditory and kinesthetic means of learning musical skills as "rote."

That's how I was trained; the best performance was the one closest to perfect the first time. As a new teacher, selecting beginners, I looked for students reading at grade level or above. When their eyes drifted toward the fingers of the player next to them, I barked "Look at your music!" It was all about the whole notes, quarter notes and not making mistakes. And then--I started playing with Freeman Jones.

Freeman Jones was a rock band--really, a bunch of friends from my college days who played guitars and sang together, on Thursday nights. They were looking for a flute player to do Van Morrison's Moondance. I could also sing, play congas and tambourine--so I was in.

When I showed up, they were jamming on the blues, key of A, and invited me to join in--but I didn't know how. I knew the theoretical underpinnings of a blues chord progression, but I'd never created a blues melody on my flute. I felt unmoored and self-conscious. When I asked them how many beats to hold the D chord, they said "until it feels right to change." The bass player was new, too--and he was learning their song repertoire by watching the lead guitar player's hands.

Nobody in the band could read music. They found the fact that I could write down a melodic line after hearing it interesting--but not particularly useful. Nobody counted, either--they simply felt the rhythmic patterns and flow.

Here's the thing: Freeman Jones was a good, solid bar band. We played regular gigs, had a loyal following, and over time, I learned as much about making music in those Thursday basement sessions as I did in fifteen years of formal lessons and music school. And I started experimenting with other ways to teach my students how to play--and enjoy--music.

I discovered that students who heard and copied passages--before deciphering the counting-- played with as much confidence and accuracy as those who could place the "ee-and-ah" beat divisions correctly on their music. I figured out that teaching "Let's Go Blue" by rote (my school is just north of Ann Arbor) was a better instructional strategy for the first week than any method book. And when I saw Mr. Holland hitting that kid on his (helmeted) head with a bass drum mallet--I could totally relate.

There are many ways to learn--muscle memory, imitation, repetition, feeling the power of the content in your soul. The chief advantage of learning to read music well is efficiently reproducing musical conventions, but plenty of fabulously creative performing musicians have very limited reading skills and knowledge of theory. In interviews, they talk about soaking up influences, being blown away by recordings, working with other great musicians--not scoring a 99 on the highest level state performance proficiency exam (one of my personal claims to fame).

For most of history, music--like language acquisition--was transmitted by listening, practice and memory. The Suzuki musical training method begins with the idea that music is a universal "mother tongue" which children will absorb quite naturally. While Suzuki students eventually learn to read and play classical literature, they begin by simply playing--easy call and response exercises, little performances enhanced by adult accompaniments.

Many nations approach reading and mathematics pedagogy in the same way. Students learn by being immersed in books, blocks and dramatic play, using tools of the disciplines. Abstract symbolic learning involving phonics and numbers comes later, and rests on a solid base of experiential practice. Other nations skip competitive testing, and rigid, age-leveled expectations for learning, as well.

In the ongoing discourse about personal learning styles, constructivist approaches, and scientifically vetted instructional models that yield the best "results," I think we can learn a lot from Suzuki. And Freeman Jones.

Image: Freeman Jones, 1979

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Great Learning Styles Controversy is alive, well and now starring at the Washington Post. Jay Mathews advises us that, based on recent research, experts report that the widely accepted notion that students have specific learning styles is--not to put too fine a point on it--baloney. From there, the Core Knowledge Blog calls out the D.C. Schools for evaluating teachers on whether they address diverse learning styles when designing instruction, since we now have scientific evidence that learning styles are hooey.

This isn't the first time this battle has been fought. I've been a skeptic about those cheesy 20-question quizzes that allegedly determine one's inherent learning style since my middle school spent a half day testing each child--then divided students into style-alike groups to talk about knowing your strengths as a learner. The chief thing I learned from that experience was that about 90% of 7th grade boys believe they are kinesthetic learners. Either that, or they'd rather be shooting baskets than bubbling in a scantron sheet.

However. There are at least two important reasons that this discussion should continue:

#1) Even if students cannot be neatly divided into groups--visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners--all human beings have learning preferences and strengths, our go-to modes. From the WaPo column: "The four authors agree that 'people differ in the degree to which they have some fairly specific aptitudes for different kinds of thinking and for processing different types of information.'" Anyone who's ever noticed that they remember more of what they read than what they hear--or vice versa--gets that. Any math student who's ever shuddered at seeing a page of what used to be called story problems gets it, too.

Plus--every teacher who keeps awareness of multiple paths to "processing information" in mind when creating lessons is closer to enhancing comprehension for a range of learners. I'd even argue that the most important outcome for teachers studying learning styles is identifying their own personal preferences--then understanding that their "best" (read: easiest) way to learn a subject may apply to only a subset of students. (More on that in a subsequent blog...)

#2) Much of the conversation about learning styles has been colored by what can only be called dismissal, even derision, part of the movement to label certain pedagogical tools, concepts and strategies "soft"--and subject to prevailing ed-school philosophy.

Studies that claimed certain learning styles benefited from similar teaching styles were not rigorously randomized. Many of us find the theory irresistible because we like "to be seen and treated by educators as unique individuals." When study areas differ, learning-styles theory has merit. "For instance, the optimal curriculum for a writing course probably includes a heavy verbal emphasis, whereas the most efficient and effective method of teaching geometry obviously requires visual-spatial materials."

Ah. Research trials were not scrupulously randomized--but we shouldn't trust the experience of millions of teachers who have found information on learning preferences useful in their teaching craft? Because it's just a function of their foolish desire to treat students as individuals? And that last sentence--well it just kind of speaks for itself, regarding the value of investigative research in illuminating practice, doesn't it?

I don't want to see school districts wasting money on bogus Learning Styles materials. But let's listen to what teachers, who have spent years observing how students learn, have to say, too.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 11:21 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here's an interesting challenge, for educators: imagine yourself as a corporation. (Lately, that's become easier to do; no need to feel compelled to look out for anyone or anything but Number One.) So there you are--a full-fledged multinational firm with a Board of Directors to guide and direct your actions. (You can imagine a multi-million dollar annual budget, too--why not?)

Which five people would you choose to serve on your Board of Directors, if you could have anyone--living or dead--overseeing your personal mission, providing advice and perspective?

The goals and vision of my corporation would center around teachers taking a lively and critical role in the policy decisions that affect their own practice and schools in America. Therefore, I'd want a mix of people to provide reliable information, deep experience, and pushback against conventional thinking. In addition, they'd have to be people with whom I'd like to have a beer.

My top-of-the-head list had close to two dozen people. After a lot of soul-searching (OK, twenty minutes), I hit on the following five folks, three women and two men to reflect the prevalence of women as practitioners--where the rubber meets the policy road.

#1) Herb Kohl. I've had an educational crush on Herb Kohl since the 70s, when his book "On Teaching" served as touchstone for my first years in the classroom. One of the things he said--teachers should be willing to listen to music and read books their students like, if they expect students to read, listen to and learn from their own selections--guided my teaching for 30 years. The principle of mutual respect.

#2) Jennifer Jennings, a.k.a. Eduwonkette. The smartest and least ideological ed-scholar ever to make statistics sing. I learned more from reading her analyses of complex data than anyone, with the possible exception of the late Gerald Bracey. Jennings cleverly avoided pigeonholing, however. Nobody could figure out whose team she was playing for--a priceless virtue in the highly politicized world of education scholarship.

#3) Deborah Meier. What I love about Meier is the fact that she's done it all--reinvention of schools, documentation of success and disappointment, respectful dialogue about change--and still writes, elegantly, about the things she does not know. If everyone followed Meier's lead, and went around asking good questions instead of broadcasting their beliefs, we'd be immeasurably closer to good and equitable schools for all kids in America.

#4) Howard Rheingold. Every BOD needs an excitable visionary, someone to point to harbingers of Things to Come, and help those of us stuck in our own mental boxes. Rheingold coined the phrase "externalization of the mind" and paints his shoes--but also teaches at various institutions of higher education, places where it's assumed knowledge is proprietary. Gotta love that.

#5) Mrs. Mimi. I just finished edublogger Mrs. Mimi's book, It's Not All Flowers and Sausages: My Adventures in Second Grade, which I found surprisingly profound (especially considering that I'd read nearly every word already, in blog form). I was never one of Mrs. Mimi's comment sisterhood, a place where teachers came to commiserate and dish about the blockheads who populate their schools. But--Mrs. Mimi deeply gets it, when it comes to the power and complexity of being a good teacher, having smart colleagues to share with, the ironies of school governance and policy demands--and how a good laugh and a margarita are essential to staying sane.

Who would you choose for your Board of Directors?

Hat tip to John Norton and Cathy Gassenheimer for this idea.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

This is a blog about charter schools--and how context shapes perception. A few months ago, I attended Michigan's PSA (Public School Academies) conference--and, although an admirer of the "free the educators" principles underlying the charter movement, was more than a little disturbed at how the MI charter hierarchy spent less time talking about exciting charter school innovations than beating up on the public schools and whining about money.

A friend recently sent a link to this NY Times article, with the notation "creepy!" Creepy, indeed. It seems that hedge fund managers--the hot, risk-taking financial cowboys of Wall Street--have adopted charter schools as their charity du jour.

The article is rife with off-putting details: Hedge fund managers play poker while resting their drinks on the artwork of poor kids whose educations they're helping fund! They have eight-figure incomes--and they're compassionate! One guy is so nerdy that he wears fleece and has an outmoded Blackberry! They're such rebels that they named a charter funding initiative the Robin Hood Foundation!

Paradoxically, all of this makes me feel much better about the public school academies in Detroit. There is no Wall Street in Detroit--and our signature industry is underwater and barely breathing. In fact, one of the most exciting charters in greater Detroit is the Henry Ford Academy, where Ford Motor provides support for a creative, cutting-edge curriculum based on design and technology. Nothing like the distasteful hint of noblesse oblige displayed by the NY hedge fund managers (whose own children, naturally, attend the finest private schools).

And that's what bothers me most--the suggestion that hedge fund managers believe they know how to educate children well, and deserve praise and admiration for supporting boutique charters, while ignoring the larger, systemic problem of getting all kids ready for an uncertain future.

Then there's this, from charter school advocate and blogger Whitney Tilson: "[Charters are] the most important cause in the nation, obviously, and with the state providing so much of the money, outside contributions are insanely well leveraged."

Speaking as a person whose TARP tax dollars have recently been "insanely well leveraged" by Goldman Sachs, I'm not certain I want hedge fund managers making decisions about public schooling.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Over at the Core Knowledge Blog, they're having a fine old time skewering Susan Engel, whose Playing to Learn appeared in the New York Times last week. Engel took an informed stand for a constructivist approach to learning--teaching kids to read, write and compute by letting them do lots of reading, writing and computing. She paints an appealing picture of a friendly, bean-bag kind of classroom where kids pursue engaging, collaborative and productive activities that seamlessly lead to skilled, well-rounded citizens.

When I first read Engel's idealistic description (and it's been linked all over Teacher World--with lots of teachers endorsing every word), I thought it was a bit too glowing for prime time policy discussion. It isn't that I've never been in elementary classrooms like the one Engels describes; I have--and am well aware of the enormous complexity of building the knowledge -skills base needed before students can spend hours each day journaling, editing, conferencing, creating games, analyzing data or having in-depth discussions about their favorite books. Not to mention the difficulty of fostering an environment where students expect to make their own decisions around learning, and can do that without going seriously off-track after about four minutes.

But--as with many things in life, just because these models are tough to do well doesn't mean we should never encourage discovery, inquiry or project-based learning. After all, lots of direct instruction (teacher explains/kids listen/tests measure recall) doesn't stick to student brains, after the all-important quiz. Genuine content mastery depends on use--the things we're good at, and understand deeply as adults, comes from "content" we've applied and practiced, in a variety of ways. To paraphrase Paul Simon--when I think back on all the disconnected stuff I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all...

Why should we be working toward incorporating more real-life tasks, carefully structured group work and multidisciplinary projects in our classrooms? For one thing, the countries that are eating our lunch in those international tests use them--and their assessments reflect the higher-level thinking skills involved, too. And because well-done inquiry learning is centered on, reinforces and integrates the acquisition of useful knowledge. Ironically, many homeschoolers take their children out of public schools so they can adopt wholesale progressivism: long-term projects, lots of field trips, passionate pursuit of individual interests.

So why do some people insist--obstinately persevere in asserting--that project-based learning is fluff? That inquiry is an "ed school orthodoxy?" That discovery learning has nothing in common with a rich, planned curriculum? Some possibilities:

• They are confusing disciplinary content with instructional methods.
• They don't believe other people's children are able to construct viable knowledge through interaction with materials or texts; since public schools have become the place "those kids" attend, it's best to stick to narrow, rudimentary and unidirectional teaching.
• They miss tracking, where the brightest and most motivated students learn no matter how excruciatingly dull the lessons.
• They fear a loss of teacher "control" over learning.
• They can't resist the urge to beat up on ed schools--believing good teaching is really about being gritty, smart and with-it, rather than developing instructional tools and competencies.
• They have never seen it done well, and prefer the devil they know--direct instruction--to the devil that sounds like Dewey.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

My favorite part of Bill Maher's Real Time (when I can stay awake) is New Rules--Maher's sardonic take on things that have become part of the landscape, but ought to cease and/or desist.

My personal New Rules, for education:

• No more stories about Michelle Rhee. Yes, she looked adorable with that broom, but all that spunk and moxie are wearing thin. Besides, people in flyover country (where there are even more schools than inside the Beltway) don't know who she is, or assume that she must have more than a couple of years experience in education. You know, a defensible track record of educational leadership or scholarship. There are plenty of knowledgeable experts who can serve as policy spokespersons--choose one of them.

• Stop promoting mayoral control as solution to fixing troubled urban schools. Mayors are no more likely to have good ideas about fixing schools than superintendents, and they have to think about city governance (and getting re-elected). Does anyone think that Kwame Kilpatrick (before his conviction, or course) could have provided innovative and effective leadership for the troubled Detroit schools?

• Quit ascribing magical powers to fresh-faced young graduates of prestigious colleges who want to "give back." They may have knocked the GRE out of the park, or turned down an express ticket to Ivy Law, but that does not mean they are temperamentally or intellectually suited to teaching special education in rural Alabama. In fact, their schooling experiences at St. Alban's or Sarah Lawrence can make it difficult for them to relate to families in generational poverty. Sometimes, the best people to do a tough job are the people who care enough to live nearby, on a permanent basis.

• Let's give up educational nostalgia, too. A friend sent me a video link--"Take Me Back to the Sixties"--the usual compendium of black and white photos, the low price of stamps and milk, plus Beatles music. Suddenly, on the screen: "Our SATs were a lot higher. We had to diagram sentences. Unlike the diluted and politically correct courses of today, we actually learned math, science and geography." Excuse me? Here's another new rule: don't send me any more inane links. Merely explaining what's wrong with that assumption about SAT scores would tax the math skills of your modal link-sender. And I grew up in the 60s. I know better.

• Don't feel compelled to give every educational concept a dynamic, uplifting name. Children are often left behind. Some data-driven decisions turn out to be wrong. The principal is not always the lead learner--sometimes he's the person who makes the buses run on time. And we're not racing to the top--we're just trying to get some money.

OK. Your turn.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In 2006, Michigan adopted a "Merit Curriculum" for all students in public high schools, replacing the previous standing legislation which required only a civics class to graduate from high school. The Merit Curriculum (which is really a set of course requirements, not a curriculum) was touted as a huge leap forward for Michigan, putting us at the leading edge of educational rigor.

In reality, many Michigan schools, especially those in well-heeled suburbs, already had the same demanding requirements in place: 4 years of math (including Algebra II), 4 years of English, 3 years of science (including biology), and 3 years of social studies (including economics). The State Board tossed two years of a foreign language and an "online learning experience" into the mix. Leaving not much room for anything else, including the arts--or the possibility of failing a class.

The big change? All high schools now had the same course requirements, even though they had very different students. "Curriculum" was now understood to be a state-mandated responsibility--although the 550+ Michigan public school systems had been subject to the same core content framework and assessments since the 1970s. The media was convinced that the bar had indeed been raised. Lots of back-patting all around.

And schools did what schools always do when sweeping change comes down: they adapted. Many high schools went to a trimester plan, to build in flexibility for students who had to re-take a class in order to acquire the credits needed to graduate. Trimesters also increased course slots, preserving arts programs. Students who would never have considered taking Algebra II/Trig now had to pass Algebra II to graduate--so mathematics course content (the real curriculum) was re-ordered over four years, and new instructional sequences created to ease unprepared students into Algebra.

There was finger-pointing, too--schools trying to help kids succeed under new rules were accused of watering down classes or backing away from the challenge of difficult content. Career and tech programs-- which were successfully providing job-skill training--were hit hard. In the rush to be "rigorous" and increase college attendance, a lot of informed feedback from CTE teachers about preparation for the workplace was dismissed. There is also new and unsettling evidence that the tougher course requirements have led to increases in the dropout rate.

The first students subject to the requirements are juniors this year. NPR, through Michigan Radio, did a feature story last week on how Michigan students and teachers feel about the changes: not convinced, but resigned.

The bar is now higher. Everyone has the same requirements. Everything is standardized, tidy--except that it's not. On balance, the Merit Curriculum is probably a positive, but there are winners and losers--and unintended consequences. Something to think about as we look ahead to common standards and common assessments.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 8:13 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A couple of years ago, I was on a keynote panel at a regional conference with a high-ranking representative of the USDOE. The conference theme was "Teacher Quality." Ms. DOE noted that NCLB had "solved the problem of highly qualified teachers;" she said the Department was now beginning to address the issue of highly effective teachers--teachers whose work resulted in adequate, measurable student growth. I asked if the Department was looking at scientifically based research on the characteristics of effective teaching--what it is that good teachers do to get that growth. No, she said. We are only interested in results--we are agnostic about teaching strategies.

Note the reduction and dismissal of complex, effective practice as mere "teaching strategies?"

That pedagogy-doesn't-matter principle seems to be the core tenet of the National Center for Teacher Quality's 2009 State Teacher Policy Yearbook, which gives Florida its highest grade--a C--and 43 states Ds and Fs on a range of teacher (not teaching) quality issues.

Lots to chew on in the NCTQ's yearbook, including a suggestion that districts are justified in using VAM data to "deselect" teachers if they are not generating a year's worth of standardized test growth by their third or fourth year in the classroom:

Goldhaber and Hansen find that teachers who start out much better than their peers tend to stay much better than their peers in future years. Teachers who are much worse continue to hover at the bottom. If districts held to their guns and cut the bottom performing 25 percent of all teachers up for tenure each year, student achievement could be significantly improved.

Contrast that with Linda Tyler's commentary in EdWeek, Measuring Teacher Effectiveness, where she lays out a clean, detailed template for building an evaluation of teacher effectiveness. Tyler, a VP at Education Testing Service, long considered the gold standard for educational assessment, says: "We can use multiple measures, including student-performance data, classroom observation, feedback from students, and other evidence, to provide well-rounded, fair, and valid input into important decisions."

There is no doubt that we need richer--and more defensible--means of assessing teacher effectiveness, useful for both large-scale policy creation as well as making decisions at the building level. Researchers head directly toward those large, seductive test data sets and write off what happens in the classroom as a dog and pony show. It's easy to diminish the multifaceted toolbag of effective practice, looking for dispositions (such as inherent "grit") instead--especially if the researcher has never been in the classroom, and experienced the utility of having some valuable instructional and management tricks up your sleeve.

Perhaps low-level teaching toward similarly low-level statewide tests is the real dog and pony show?

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend