February 2011 Archives

First, take a look at this--the ultimate report card.

I've been trying to wrap my head around what a similarly full-featured report card would look like--one that compared student to student, teacher to teacher, or school to school, based on a range of critical indicators of progress and context. Information that would help all of us understand the factors --including the ever-important teacher skill and student effort--that combine to cause (verb used intentionally) valuable student learning.

In addition to the usual indicators of context and progress, suppose we threw in measures like: Does the student have a library card and use it regularly? It's always good to suggest variables that might lead to improvement, after all.

In June of 1998, the Detroit Free press did something like this. They hired economists to create a multiple regression analysis--a statistical technique familiar to all graduate students in social sciences--and looked at statewide assessment scores, per-pupil expenditures and other key data, to determine which districts were providing best bang for the buck. It was a revealing piece of journalism, to say the least.

I can't find the Freep piece online, but here's Education Week's description:

To measure the effects of poverty and other nonschool factors on achievement, the Free Press and other newspapers use such sophisticated statistical techniques as multiple regression analysis. Such methods can determine to what extent variations in test scores are related to differences in such factors as family income, student mobility, or limited English proficiency. The findings are used to create projections of likely test results for a school or district based on its student population.

Schools or districts whose actual test scores are much better than predicted are judged to be particularly effective at serving their students. Based on its study, the Free Press concluded that the Detroit public schools were beating the odds, while some wealthier suburbs could be doing more.

Many elementary schools have created comprehensive reporting systems to give parents a clear picture of their child's academic strengths and weaknesses--long checklists, carefully calibrated rubrics, deconstruction of separate skills involved in reading for meaning, and so on. And many of those same schools have later reversed course and gone back to simple report cards, including letter grades for young children.

In other words, don't confuse me with all this information. I don't care about decoding, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary and voice. Can my kid read? At grade level (whatever that is)? And--is he going to school with other kids whose parents care about reading?

States have created report cards for public schools, too--vastly oversimplified and reassuring to parents in the "right" neighborhoods that their hefty mortgage payments are worth the strain.

Now we have John Merrow suggesting that teachers should be evaluated in whole-school groups (as if that were a brand new concept, rather than the driving force behind the selection process advantaged parents use when seeking a school for their child):

The days of what I think of as trade union dealing are over; teachers have to bargain for more than pay and privileges. They need to be in the forefront of connecting their evaluations with student achievement. They need to be at that table, and I believe they ought to be arguing for school-wide evaluations. If it's just teacher-by-teacher, we will end up with even more bubble testing in more subjects. If it's school-wide, then everyone -- down to custodians and secretaries -- has a personal, vested interest in student success.

Well. I taught in a school with a high percentage of dedicated, intelligent teachers--and competent secretaries and kindly, caring custodians who lived in the community (until the district let them go and privatized the custodial staff). Way before test scores "measured" the effectiveness of my school, employees had a personal, vested interest in school success. We accepted responsibility. Without tests.

What Merrow's missing here is the key reason we assess students. The purpose of testing students is to inform further instruction. It's how we find out where the weak spots are--and develop a plan to address them. As long as we're testing students only to evaluate their teachers--or their classroom aides and the cafeteria ladies-- there will be gaming, even when we're using the school as unit of measurement.

There are better ways to evaluate teachers. Aren't there?

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

As the shouting continues over public school employees--and other public servants--I've been thinking about what private school teachers make of all of this. I asked my friend Bill Ivey, Middle School Dean at Stoneleigh-Burnham School in Springfield, Massachusetts to weigh in, and he shared the blog, below. He also urged me to consider the words of another esteemed private educator, Fred Bartels:

For people in leadership positions, in any educational institution in the US, to stay silent while billionaire funded neo-conservative reactionaries attack public education is to my mind unconscionable; an abrogation of responsibility that calls into question their leadership.

Thanks to Bill and thoughtful educators everywhere, for not letting divide-and-conquer tactics get in the way of our mutual mission of educating all kids well.

"Patience is a virtue we must all strive to possess." - Miss Dmytryk

My fifth grade reading and writing teacher, Miss Dmytryk (de-MEH-trick), was one of the most significant teachers in my life. She supported and nurtured my creativity, reading and commenting, week after week, on stories that used all 25 words on my spelling list in context. And yes, she helped teach me patience.

Most of us can name at least one Miss Dmytryk, one of those special teachers who saw us as we were and as we could be, whose faith in us becomes a part of who we are. Would I have persisted in thinking of myself as a writer through my first couple of decades as a teacher had I not had Miss Dmytryk's words ever present in the back of my mind? Would I be blogging today? I'm honestly not sure I would have.

Miss Dmytryk is not the only continuing influence of Marks Meadow Elementary School in my life. Fifty Nifty United States, learned in Mrs. Logan's 3rd grade class, continues to serve as my touchpoint when keeping track of all the license plates I see when I make my regular 12-hour drive to Virginia.

Mr. Byron's breezy Will Bill Cody from my 4th and 5th grade years reminds me of the need all students have to know their teachers and feel a connection to them. I still have a scalloped-edged black and white picture of Mr.Byron and Mrs. Light, who were so important to me that I overcame my natural shyness and asked them to pose outside the school before running around front to catch my bus before it took me home and away from Marks Meadow forever.

Marks Meadow also provided me the base for much of my teaching philosophy. It was the lab school for the UMass School of Education. During our last half-year, several of my friends and I were taken entirely out of formal groups, freed of all schedule restrictions, and allowed/encouraged/told to follow our own desires and inquisitiveness in reading, writing, researching and math. I read everything I could get my hands on, produced one of the longest research papers of my life, and found myself well prepared for the academic and organizational demands of Junior High without so much as a single orientation workshop.

Public education has fallen on hard times since those long-ago days when my school and my teachers helped make me who I am. Or so it would seem, if you listen to what politicians and pundits and much of the general public have to say. The reality, I am sure, is rather different. I know literally hundreds of dedicated, effective, beloved teachers through my school, conferences, and the various online groups to which I belong.

Polls show that the overwhelming majority of parents approve of and support the schools where their own children go, have a lower but still generally positive opinion of other district schools, but believe overwhelmingly that the state of other schools in this country is rather poor. Meta-research shows that our performance on test scores compared to other countries has been relatively stable for the past 40+ years. I'd never pretend all is well and there isn't a need for improvement, most notably in schools of poverty. I'm a teacher. To borrow on the old Lexus slogan, "the relentless pursuit of perfection" is what I do.

But to my mind, we need a sharp slap in the face and a good dose of perspective. Let's acknowledge the key role of poverty in the lives of children and how affects their readiness for learning. Let's work to alleviate those effects. Let's look honestly at what research tells us works, look for pockets of excellence (they are all over the place for anyone who makes the effort to check), and support schools in implementing proven best practices. And let's acknowledge that the overall state of public education is, in reality, a heck of a lot better than most people believe.

Public education, free and available to all, has always been seen in this country as one of the most important paths to success for any child, anywhere, living in any circumstances. These days, we as a country are being forced to confront whether that is just lip service or something in which we really, truly, deeply believe.

In my case, even as-- perhaps especially as--an independent school teacher, I believe it is an imperative. Public schools, like the kids who populate them, do not need mindless "tough love." They need understanding and support. As with our own students, it is incumbent upon us to provide it. Miss Dmytryk regularly counseled patience to us fifth graders in her classroom many years ago. But in this instance, I think even Miss Dmytryk might admit that patience isn't always a virtue.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

There is no group on the planet I like more than teachers. But sometimes, I wish teachers would stop being so polite--so thoroughly restrained and moderate in their approach to conflict-- and start intelligently and zealously defending the profession they love.

Teaching is complex intellectual labor. It has widespread, measurable value to society. It efficiently undergirds the political economy (especially when adequately supported by public dollars), and improves the communal quality of life. Done right, it's difficult work-- as Lee Shulman once said, teaching is impossible.

So why would any teacher waffle when asked to clearly define what they need to be successful-- or shy away from overtly demanding control over their own working conditions? If my house is on fire, I want skilled (and adequately compensated) firefighters. I'm not about to insert my own Foley catheter, should the need arise--I want a well-trained nurse. For my children, I want self-confident teachers who can articulate their own values, goals and essential tools. Teachers who aren't afraid to get angry and speak up when they're maligned, misunderstood or mistreated.

Item: Education Writers Association brings outstanding teachers to New York and talks at them, instead of with them. Session Topics: Improving Professional Development, Teaching Teachers (Ed Schools and Alternative Pathways), Recruiting and Hiring, Strategic Management of Human Capital. Number of teacher speakers on panels: zero.

Item: The Wisconsin State Teacher of the Year speaks lucidly and forthrightly for her colleagues, making several good points about state budget negotiations and the impact of loss of public funding on small towns (and there are a lot of small towns in Wisconsin). Then she says: I am in no way a political person. Truthfully, all I really want to do is close my door and teach. Oh, I hope not. We need every smart and articulate teacher out there advocating. The issues are huge and go way beyond collective bargaining rights and health benefits.

Once, in conversation with a neighbor (a staunch Republican), about teachers, he noted that while he certainly appreciated and admired scores of wonderful things public schools and teachers had done for his four children, he thought the teachers' union was destroying growth and business prospects in Michigan. I reminded him that no union is an entity separate from its members.

He was unconvinced. He saw teachers as productive citizens and friends (including me), but public unions as forces of socialism, greed and mediocrity, a position that seemed kind of schizophrenic to me, given that all the teachers who caused his children to love school were part of a strong teachers' union. Our conversation went nowhere. He was absolutely unable to attach a human face to any aspect of teacher unionism or action--including high-road issues that his own kids had benefited from: class size, mentoring for new teachers, time set aside for shared professional learning.

If the only time that teachers get angry, en masse, is when their financial stability is threatened, the public may have difficulty seeing teachers as passionate experts, fighting for best practice and better policy. Deborah Meier, speaking about the human need for dignity, says:

Yes, "children first." But I believed then as now that young people should not be surrounded by fearful, timid, obedient adults. They needed to witness adulthood as something worthy of aspiring to.

Dignity implies the obligation to advocate--with conviction and courage--for what is right and necessary.

It's been a week of advocacy, conviction and courage. Can it continue, across the country? Will dignified and articulate teacher experts emerge?

*If you are younger than, say, 60 you may not recognize the lyrics to a truly dreadful song, "Johnny Get Angry," which references appallingly sexist values, brave men, cave men and maybe...Marlon Brando. How things have changed.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 9:11 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I admit that I'm a sixties kind of person. I find what's happening in Wisconsin stirring my deepest beliefs about open democracy and well-justified civil disobedience--and part of it is just the sheer exuberance of being aligned with a movement to stand up for principles that made America great: freedom of expression, and the soul of the middle class.

More than once, over the past week, I have literally been in tears, watching Wisconsin's firefighters pushing strollers and led by bagpipers, and seeing high schools students finally moved to care about something besides whether the vending machines offer Twinkies or a prohibition against cell phones in class. More than once, I have thought about what happened when the National Guard showed up on the campus of Kent State.

I keep reminding myself that a lot of the Tea Partiers I saw sitting in their lawn chairs at the Brighton (MI) Mill Pond last summer probably thought they were demonstrating in support of glorious democracy, too--and it certainly must have been a huge effort for them, getting on and off their buses and settling down to hear Joe the Plumber (who got $10,000 a pop for speaking) once again.

What makes this uprising different? For one thing, it's not pre-packaged and funded by billionaires. And it's not a struggle over divvying up the public money pie. Wisconsin educators know they're going to have to make concessions. It's much bigger than that, says Linda Kaboolian, in the NY Times Opinion Pages:

The playbook has been written: block the appointment of Elizabeth Warren who argued for consumer protection against credit card and mortgage predators. Gin up fear about the federal deficit to defund student loans, home heating oil assistance, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Labor Relations Board, federally guaranteed home mortgages. Change layoff rules so better paid workers go first, revoke public sector collective bargaining.

Governor Walker isn't interested in saving money - if he was, he'd sit down with the unions and work out a deal. He's interested in crippling the unions that didn't support him last fall - while protecting the unions that did.

Governor Walker is betting that private sector employees who have seen their wages decline and who rarely enjoy the benefits of union contracts will rise up in disgust against their public sector neighbors. He's betting the images of rallies will disturb those who love order and work stoppages will outrage citizens. What he risks is that other citizens will make common cause with these middle class workers, be inspired by them and join in.

Robert Creamer thinks the demonstration in Madison may have crossed the line from an organized protest--a dramatic event--into a genuine movement.

For many years, Wall Street and its allies on the right have tried to portray labor as just another "special interest." The movement that has followed Walker's outrageous action has redefined the right to collective bargaining for what is -- as a moral question, a question of human rights. It has transformed the frame through which ordinary people view the labor movement. Instead of "big labor" focused only on wages and working conditions, it has once again become a "movement" for social and economic justice -- a movement that inspires our belief that we can take the future into our own hands -- that a truly democratic society is in fact a possibility.

While the general public has heard plenty of negative talk about greedy, lazy unions, not too many parents really want to see little Tyler's kindly and hard-working veteran teacher booted because she wants to negotiate a fair wage and benefit package. Walker has gambled on a shaky hand, holding police and firefighters sacrosanct but betting the public will agree that teachers "deserve" to lose their democratic rights.

What will come of this? Eventually, Wisconsin teachers will go back to school, of course. And unions in other states--including mine--will be prepared for similar gubernatorial power plays. But maybe--just maybe--there may a breakthrough around the restoration of a common mission. On the face of it, all governors and all public schools teachers should (note the subjunctive) have the same goal: improving the educational prospects of students who attend state-funded schools. Rhetorically, they do. In practice, not so much. Says John Thompson:

The beauty of our constitutional democracy is our culture of the "loyal opposition," where we see our opponent as an opponent and not as an enemy.

Here's to the concept of the loyal opposition, which has extricated many a politician from a bad situation. And here's to the teachers of Wisconsin for modeling peaceful protest.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Reading about the celebration--real-life and editorial--around Twenty Years of Teach for America, the Power and the Glory, I had a personal epiphany: I myself am wholly inadequate in the prestige department.

I got my bachelors degree at No-Name Regional University (the only school that gave me full-ticket scholarship help, something a first-generation college attendee values over all other qualities). I taught school for 30 years. It wasn't until I was admitted into one of the nation's top Ed Policy schools for doctoral work that I experienced the omnipresent jostling and unwritten rules for academic status.

At orientation, Big U told us how "select" we were--a novelty for me, but not, evidently, for the other students in my cohort, fresh off internships in public policy, master's degrees from Universities Everyone Knows, or stints with Teach for America. (Big U actively recruited Teach for America alums with full fellowships, and rejoiced as each prospect was snagged.)

This was the first time I understood that professors--and students who were already hip to the game-- judged research reports, journal articles and opinion pieces by their authors and university, without actually reading them. In-class discussions were filled with name-dropping and speculation based on somebody else's "data," rather than personal experience. Even in the informal and supposedly democratic world of blogs, this kind of credentialing seems to matter, a lot--including blogs that are not much more than whining.

Ed Policy School is not an easy place to be a veteran teacher. One young doctoral colleague remarked that he failed to see how any sentient person could be a teacher for 30 years. Another student in my department told me that her (small, celebrated) undergraduate college was "not the kind of college that had an education department."

What kinds of colleges do have undergraduate education programs? Not our kind, dear. This is certainly what lies under resentment of Teach for America. It's not about ed schools' intransigence in keeping weak, cash-cow programs going, or low-performing districts' refusal to acknowledge that we desperately need bright, committed young teachers, and now.

It's the idea that no sentient person would prepare for or commit to a career in teaching. Distinction is how we order and make sense of our world. If our most esteemed universities devalue education as a scholarly discipline or life choice--isn't that somewhere between irony and lunacy?

How does this play out in American public schools, where the intellectual proletariat dominates the profession of teaching? In Schoolteacher, Dan Lortie notes that for several decades, teaching represented the career of choice for first-generation college graduates seeking to move into the middle class: "Teaching has attracted many person who have undergone the uncertainties and deprivations of lower- and working-class life. It has provided a significant step up the social class ladder for many Americans."

Conversely, William Deresiewicz, in The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (in The American Scholar), pokes at prestigious IHEs, suggesting that elite universities "teach students to believe that people who didn't go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren't worth talking to, regardless of their class" and "inculcate a false sense of self-worth." His main argument: those attending select colleges are authority- pleasers, gathering credentials, measuring personal value through standardized rankings, winning competitions and admission into a perceived club of meritocracy--rather than pursuing genuine scholarship.

Up by our bootstraps or riding on classist coattails? I do believe that smart, capable people turn up everywhere in the teaching profession, regardless of where they took their degrees or why they decided to teach.

Alma Mater is not Destiny.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Filmmaker Ken Burns subtitled his wonderful video love letter to our National Parks "America's Best Idea." Burns traced the history of National Parks, from genesis through a checkered history, as the plan for full public access to exquisite natural vistas and parklands was conceived, tended, neglected and even exploited.

And so it is with another one of America's best ideas, public education.

Public education: the ideal of a free, high-quality public education for every child in the United States. The American common school, where children of immigrants, laborers, merchants and town fathers would learn civic responsibility and principles of democracy. The last, best hope for equity of opportunity.

You know--that public education. The action arm of what Martin Luther King called a "promissory note to which every American was to fall heir:" life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, embedded in the Declaration of Independence, and our Constitution.

Hold on--I do recognize that the Founding Fathers didn't include K-12 schooling (with free transportation on big yellow buses) in the documents that shaped our national government and civic goals. But they laid a template--a revolutionary template--for an entirely new model of governance and human advancement. One that would depend on a knowledgeable citizenry dedicated to working out the challenges of democratic equality.

James Madison said, in 1822: Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

And, nearly two centuries later, Tony Wagner said: The future of our economy, the strength of our democracy, and perhaps even the health of the planet's ecosystems depend on educating future generations in ways very different from how many of us were schooled.

What's happened to that ideal of a free public education, to strengthen our economy, our national identity and our contribution to global well-being? It's been enlarged, contested, ignored and even--lately-- attacked. It has survived westward expansion, lack of resources including qualified teachers, sexism, classism, and bigotry, and Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education.

Public education has lasted despite misguided attempts to sort students into deserving scholars and academic lesser lights based on surnames, addresses and ethnic stereotypes. It has had amazing successes--like the G.I. Bill--and embarrassing collapses, like the high schools in Detroit where 75% of students who don't graduate.

Now, public education faces the challenge of transforming itself--immediately--into a flexible institution that prepares children for a future of barely imagined challenges and opportunities.

That doesn't mean pushing the poorest kids--those with no advocates--into cheap, standardized, basic-skills programs in crumbling buildings. Public education is not a money-making prospect for entrepreneurs and privateers. It's not a way to "insanely leverage" public monies to provide a handful of lottery-winning children a traditional education--with a side benefit of great PR for would-be benefactors. Public education must not ever become our solution of last resort for the most vulnerable children in our great nation.

Who could be opposed to aggressive investment in our long-standing and valued principle of a fully educated population, built on genuine equity? Excellent question. Worth considering: What's just happened in Egypt has come as a result of a youthful and educated citizenry acting on idealistic principles and supported by networking tools.

Despite its warts and weaknesses, I'm not ready to give up on public education. I still believe. If you believe, too, join the efforts to preserve what's good in public education and speak out against policies that weaken America's best idea.

Save Our Schools March and National Days of Action.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

"I am finally realizing that one of the main thing that divides reform-y types from career educators is the thought that reform could make things worse rather than better. This possibility might seem hard to believe for reformers, many of whom can't imagine things being any worse (and many of whom, it should be said, have yet experienced few major setbacks in their own lives). But for those with a longer perspective (historical, personal, professional) the possibility of things going from bad to worse is real; they've seen good but wrong-headed ideas take root before, sucking energy away and wasting a lot of time, and they know that there's no guarantee that the current status is a baseline below which nothing worse can happen." ~ Alexander Russo

Thanks to Alexander Russo, for nicely summarizing one aspect--not the only one, but a salient one--of what it's like to be a grizzled veteran educator: the proverbial pendulum swing of education reform and its impact on daily life in schools.

For some of us--teachers who fell in love with the classroom early on and continue to fine-tune daily--"reforms" can be good (the National Writing Project, for example, or professional learning communities) or merely annoying (incessant changes in special education classifications and paperwork) or downright destructive (much of what appears in the Blueprint to refine and reauthorize NCLB).

A decade or more in the classroom gives teachers broad perspectives. It's not only the stoicism of "been there/done that/wait until the next Big Thing arrives." There's also the benefit of experiencing the exhilaration of terrific, effective lessons or units--and the solid evidence of real learning generated by that work. Or the collaborative creation of a program to address local issues--graduation rates, challenging the gifted, tweaking pre-school options, whatever--and having it yield good results.

It's axiomatic to say that teachers seldom excise ineffective habitual practices, but simply incorporate the new requirements and programs, layered over the old. There's a lot of blah-blah about how fidelity to spiffy new programs is the key to raising achievement scores and if only the stuck-in-concrete old teachers would see the necessity of sticking to the script. And there certainly are some teachers who are at this very minute standing at the copy machine, trying to get those c.1980s dittos to print legibly.

But-- it's excruciatingly hard to let go of something that works. A policy that guts good and useful instructional practice created by teachers (and believe me, this happens all the time) is going to be resisted. Not because it's impossible to change. But because it's not helpful. Often, changes are imposed from a considerable distance.

Since 2002, with the passage of No Child Left Behind, federal intrusion into classrooms has been unrelenting. Control over local issues has diminished and states, beleaguered by increased NCLB requirements and hoping to get some of the $4.3 billion dangled in the Race to the Top, have passed an array of legislation that directly impacts a dozen different things that teachers cope with every day: The reading program. Test prep. The elimination of social studies--and recess. The loss of the core group of engaged parents to a new charter school. Worry over whether their poor urban school will face turnaround, shattering all the work they've done. Whether their name will appear in the paper as "less effective" when they volunteer to work with ESL kids.

Thanks, AR, for the opening.

Here's wishing every teacher a day in which nothing worse can happen.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I have a master's degree in education. Like many career educators, I accrued credits for my advanced degree mostly in the summer, when there were lots of teacher-courses to take and it was easy to find a parking place on campus. It took about five years. I was prompt in notifying my district every time I collected another 10 credits, because it meant a modest salary bump. The first time I jumped a "lane"--to B.A. plus 10--I was able to give up my second job, because I could now afford rent for my one-bedroom apartment on my salary alone.

Did my master's degree make me a better teacher?

It certainly made me a more informed and thoughtful teacher. The core courses in educational foundations, philosophy and research enriched my thinking about my work. They are, of course, the very subjects that are scorned as mere useless theory--as if it weren't important for a teacher to understand the history or purposes of education in America, or develop constructive tools for inquiry into their own practice.

But did the master's make me a better--more effective--teacher?

Depends on the definition of "more effective." Does a master's degree help educators understand the disciplinary content they teach at a deeper level? Will a master's degree fill teachers' pedagogical toolkits or push them to see the big picture of education in America? The best graduate programs in education do exactly that.

Can a graduate degree help teachers leverage increases in student achievement, based on standardized test data?

Ah. There's the real question. And it's a genuinely important question, because that's the way teacher effectiveness is currently measured. As VAM proponents are constantly saying--hey, our tools are not perfect, but they're the best--and let's not forget cheapest--means of measuring learning (and evaluating teachers) right now. If we're going to pay teachers for advanced degrees, they should be yielding tangible, numeric results (a word I have come to loathe, in edu-speak), not simply more knowledgeable and professional teachers.

Or so says Arne Duncan (who doesn't appear to have a master's degree). Michelle Rhee (who does) thinks so, too:

We're spending billions of dollars nationally for master's degrees in education for teachers. There's no correlation between having a master's degree in education and student gains. So why would we pour money down there?

My favorite part of the interview with Rhee is the comments. I particularly like this one:

It's a hoax, repeated by teacher organizations to justify higher pay. More education doesn't make better teachers.

More education doesn't make better teachers? Kind of encapsulates our national ambivalence about the value of education, doesn't it? It's no wonder that we're always looking for cheap, short-cut answers to the persistent, looming question of how to better educate kids in poverty. If only we could do it without those annoying and expensive teachers, schools and resources...

How did I learn to be an effective teacher, master of my own educational domain? First, I fell in love with teaching. I paid attention to the results I was getting in the classroom. I read constantly, and became part of a lively, networked discourse around critical issues. I took classes and went to workshops. I also sat for National Board Certification, which was the single most productive professional learning experience of my career.

Most good teachers develop an effective practice that way: part formal learning, part collaboration with colleagues, and a whole lot of personal initiative.

Does a degree in Public Policy make one an effective policy-maker? Does a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership make one a leader? Hardly. I know this from unpleasant personal experience. But college degrees are how we confer distinction, and universities are places where we study the important questions. Including critical questions about our education system.

Reducing teaching to a technical job, one that can be done with minimal "training" in how to raise test scores, says something distasteful and shallow about our social values. Improve graduate programs in education across the board? Absolutely. Re-think the way we compensate teachers for graduate coursework? Sure. But let's not throw the educational baby out with bathwater.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

So, more harangues about last-in/first-out (LIFO) policies, tenure due process, seniority and how much fun Joel Klein had firing teachers. Do veteran teachers need protection against unfair dismissal? Some--to ensure that we keep the good ones? Or none at all? And who are the good ones? In my experience, one parent's genius teacher who finally tapped little Tyler's passion for writing is another parent's weirdo with a ponytail.

Back in the 80s, a downturn in the auto industry forced many families in my district to leave the community. Enrollment dropped. The district had too many teachers. We had a RIF--a reduction in force, resulting in a process familiar to anyone who's taught under a union contract: bumping. The middle school physical education teacher was bumped into a high school chemistry slot (because she minored in general science). The promising third-year chemistry teacher was laid off.

Parents were upset to find out that their kids' 7th grade gym teacher was now trying her hand at chemistry. The physical education teacher was upset, too--she was looking at a miserable year where she was never more than a few days ahead of the kids, scrambling to pull together lesson plans and assignments, and dependent on the other chemistry teacher who wasn't happy to see her enthusiastic young colleague walk out the door.

You might think the story is the perfect illustration of the folly of LIFO policies. The district should have let that P.E. teacher go, and kept the chemistry guy, right? Except that in doing so, they would have riffed an extraordinary educator--one who wrote their reproductive health curriculum and later became a Disney Hand Teacher.

In going after all teacher tenure and seniority rules, policy-creators are advocating drop-forge solutions when they should be working with scalpels. The goal is keeping the most valuable, versatile and productive staff, by hiring the right folks in the first place and encouraging them to burnish their talents over time. Reading the national conversation lately, you'd think that all first- and second-year teachers are icons of pedagogical expertise and anyone into a double-digit career span is probably burned out.

Some things worth considering:

• LIFO has different outcomes in a small district, where teachers must do double- and triple-duty to cover a broad curriculum than it does in mega-districts where there's almost always someone standing by with the correct certification requirements. Flexible procedures are key when the teacher force must be reduced.

• Since the research is pretty clear that most teachers don't hit their instructional stride (based on achievement data) until their third or fourth year, as a general strategy LIFO is probably targeting the "least valuable" employees. Lots of exceptions to that rule of course. But letting the least experienced employees go protects investments districts have made in professional development for long-term teachers.

• None of this has much to do with tenure, which is the right to due process before dismissal. The chemistry teacher had just received tenure, which meant that he could only be laid off for cause--including an enrollment-based reduction in force. Tenure and seniority rights are two very different things.

It's very easy to jump to the bottom line here: some teachers cost more than others. Eliminating seniority rights altogether brings the school workplace into line with many businesses. You keep inexpensive new staff and let the pricey teachers go. Efficiency. It's happening every place else, why not in schools?

Not valuing experience, time-honed skills or wisdom is a particularly American trait. We're Wal-Mart Nation, home of the lowest price, no matter what the real cost. Hard to say which has diminished teacher quality more: valuing longevity over talent, or the wages and working conditions teachers must routinely accept.

Smart districts and unions develop language to hang on to their best teachers when money is short. "Highly Qualified Teacher" language in NCLB has also forced many schools to re-structure their bumping procedures. Things worked out for us--the chemistry teacher eventually returned, and later became the district's Teacher of the Year as well as the chief negotiator. Ironic.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Almost two decades ago, I drove across the state with a well-known leader of the state Chamber of Commerce, en route to a speaking engagement. The man was the embodiment of "straight arrow:" flag pin in suit coat lapel, hair sprayed into immobility and fluent in the language of capitalist sound bites. Although we didn't agree on lot, the conversation was friendly, and he was very knowledgeable about school policy issues.

We fell into a discussion about a policy that didn't exist at the time in our state. Both of us agreed was a good thing: public school choice. We talked about how things would be if parents had genuine options in choosing the best free public education for their kids, regardless of where those kids lived. He turned, grinned and uttered a phrase that I'm certain had never crossed his lips before: Free the people!

Valerie Strauss is currently taking considerable heat for suggesting that Ohio mom Kelly Williams-Bolar is not, in fact, a latter-day Rosa Parks, but a small-time cheater who got caught falsifying public information, albeit for a defensible reason. Most people would agree that the punishment and humiliation Williams-Bolar has suffered are totally out of whack for someone who was arguably just looking for a better deal for her kids. Aren't we all looking for a better--although legal--deal for our kids?

Seems like the right principle, but the wrong vehicle. We need to find a way to close the dangerous and growing gap between advantaged schools and dysfunctional schools without elevating creative dishonesty.

Rosa Parks' act of defiance was public, civil disobedience in response to discriminatory legislation. Kelly Williams-Bolar did not publicly demand equity for her children; she privately lied in an attempt to subvert an admittedly inequitable system. Her bold act was not her initial cheating--it was resisting and challenging authorities once she was caught. She has become a symbol of another kind of Tiger mom--one willing to be arrested and incarcerated for the sake of her children's education. Whether she set out to be that symbolic hero--or whether she was talked into it to advance a cause--is unclear.

The solution sought by Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights movement was, in part, a change to discriminatory laws. What's the solution to Kelly Williams-Bolar's grievance? Better schools for all kids, not just those who win a lottery or have the good fortune to live in the right neighborhood.

How to get that? It's not just a matter of "free the people" choice policies-- it's a change of minds and hearts. We've had economically segregated public schools forever, supported by tax policy and enrollment zones. If there's a choice between excellence and equity, parents choose excellence. There has to be something for everyone in building a truly equitable system, or it will never be built. When open access to quality education requires fraud, we're all in trouble.

Is Kelly Williams-Bolar the next Rosa Parks? No, but her story is important, a cautionary tale about what happens when the system denies opportunity and reinforces inequality. Williams-Bolars's was only one of about 40 families crossing ethical boundaries in the desire to access good schools for their kids.

That's a red flag, waving.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend