December 2011 Archives

The usual end-of-year Janusian posts are springing up everywhere in Ed Blog world this week--the best and worst of 2011, bold predictions for the upcoming year. List-making draws readers. But I don't really have the heart to revisit the terrible and wonderful year just past--nor do I want to be embarrassed by my own starry-eyed prognostications, come December 2012.

I do like the idea of "Ten Things I Know to be True"--ideas that represent genuine reality, in my world, a roundup of verities. Try as I might, I couldn't come up with ten.

#1) Real school reformers do not spend their days perusing blogs, obsessing over their tweet numbers, engaging in online catfights or handicapping states' chances to win your tax dollars by being more compliant than other states. Real school reformers are mediating squabbles on the playground, revising an unsatisfactory lesson plan during their planning period, or meeting with the PTA to figure out how to get new books for the library since the budget was slashed. Again.

#2) Education and schooling are two completely different things. School is where most children spend time during the day with their peers, resulting--one hopes-- in credentials that society deems necessary to the next phase (more schooling, jobs, etc.). Education is something else entirely. It's the sum total of what we've learned, absorbed and can apply to the challenges of living. Best-case scenario, school is a useful piece of the lifelong process of education.

#3) There are good-guy organizations out there, on the education reform front. But it's getting harder to tell who they are, as seductive edu-rhetoric and policy-advocacy advertising obscures truth. One (not infallible) clue: who's funding the organization.

#4) A lot of the rhetoric about education being the civil rights issue of our generation is just that: grandiose but empty talk. The civil rights issue of our generation is that shameful and increasing income gap. It's going to take a lot more than charter schools which teach kids to walk in straight lines to fix that dangerous economic chasm.

#4a) A corollary: We need more minority voices in the ed-reform debate. We also need more female and youth voices. The most dominant voices, right now, are men representing their own perspectives. And the people doing the actual daily work of investing in and improving the education system--by this I mean students, parents and grassroots-level educators--are largely female and minority. Some of my best friends are white male educators with gray hair. Still, the dialogue is very unbalanced right now. Move over, John Merrow.

#5) We aren't going to solve our education problems with technocratic solutions. Not by alternative governance. Not by omnipresent, high-tech data analysis. Not by legislation or competitions. Not by carrots, sticks, levers, advertising or exhortation. Not even by tough mandates. And certainly not in the marketplace. We will solve our education problems via careful investment in people and practice, over time.

#6) Many American teachers feel powerless. They've never had their intelligence, dedication, qualifications or career choice challenged like they have in the past decade. Teaching is a vocation of service; it's not pursued as a way to hit the big-time, in terms of personal profit or fame. So asking teachers to take the risk of getting publicly political makes some of them queasy. Wisconsin in February of 2011 was proof that teachers who are angry enough are a potent force for change.

#7) The movement to reclaim public education will catch fire when school leaders decide they have agency and the moral fortitude to push back against policies they know are harmful to kids. We've seen some of that courage emerge recently in New York State. Patron saint of gutsy administrative bluntness: TX Superintendent John Kuhn. You know that leadership video where one crazy guy starts dancing, and eventually is followed by a whole crowded hillside of dancers? If school leaders would get over their reservations and start dancing--speaking powerfully from their hearts and minds--we might have a chance to turn things around.

#8) We can have both excellence and equity in public education. Equity is not a matter of evenly dividing limited resources--it's about individually crafted opportunity for every child. And excellence has many faces; it's a lot more than upping the percentage of college degrees. Our rich country has the resources to provide a free, high-quality education for every child. The fact that we don't is a matter of political will and preference.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Alexander Russo,

So here I am, with the final hours of bleak December ticking away, casting about for the right hook to write about Education Reform in 2011: The Big Picture.

Go with a top ten list? Ten signs of hope? Pushback against dark corporate forces? Bright and cheery? Down and dreary?

While I pondered, weak and weary, came a Google alert winging (flinging! singing!) to my inbox. Alexander Russo labeled me--and other progressive education thinkers-- Goliaths! Says we're dominating the on-line fight against slingshot-wielding "Davids." Two of these feisty, underfunded David exemplars sprang to mind for Russo: StudentsFirst and Stand for Children.

Right.

There are several ways to understand/respond to your recent post, Mr. Russo. I'm not sure why you're trying, once again, to position school "reformers" as small, scrappy start-ups bravely challenging the mighty, mighty public education monolith. I'm pretty sure you've cast the wrong actors in starring roles in the David vs. Goliath narrative. But--some observations:

First thought: Thanks for acknowledging a handful of the swelling cadre of articulate educators and parents who are mad as hell about what's happening to their public schools and just not going to take it anymore. We like it when our efforts are noticed and shared.

Second, a question: Does Russo seriously misunderstand the distribution patterns and naked influence of cash in education "reform?" Highly doubtful. He's the trained professional education journalist, presumably always alert to tracking the money trails-- I'm just a retired teacher.

I have, however, been paying attention to the increasing list of ed-organizations whose survival depends on going with the (funded) reform flow. And I'm seeing Gates Foundation and a number of others--a lot. One at a time, the big-boy funders are picking off nonprofits (not to mention the federal government) and re-shaping their work toward a reformy mindset. A little anti-LIFO here, a bit of merit pay there, a heavily subsidized "innovation charter," the repeated concept that grant funding and privatization are the only routes to genuinely raising the bar. If you want the pay, you have to play.

They may have even lured the NEA over for a quick drink with their youngest and hottest teacher recruits.

Third theory: Education entrepreneurs know how to talk to young teachers. It's a seductive line: your youth and energy are what we need, your special smarts trump veteran teachers' experience. You're not a "regular" teacher--you're a leader! All of this rhetoric is fine until you find yourself alone in an out-of-control classroom, where some of that honed-by-fiery-trial pedagogical skill and commitment to your students might come in handy. (If you don't plan to remain in teaching, it's not such a big deal.)

Creating magnetic sound bites is now an essential part of what used to be the reform discourse, more important than actual evidence or learning your craft over time. And nobody does that better than an organization with hundreds of millions to spend on branding and message-crafting.

Fourth question: Does Russo really believe that all genuinely progressive educators know each other, and are partnering in a grand strategy to thwart "reform?" I like a good conspiracy theory as well as the next guy, but on this one, he's wildly off-base. There may be more on-the-ground teachers and parents blogging these days--and making more persuasive, data-based arguments. But, no, Mr. Russo. There is no secret "reform critic" handshake. There are more people speaking out against "reform" because--well, because they're finally mad as hell and...etc.

And finally: Mr. Russo says he's not taking sides. Just reporting. And maybe his entire blog is simply bait--throwing out some names and opinions and hoping to engage, start a conversation. But--Russo's piece feels like projection/flipping to me: taking whatever tactic you're using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. Best defense, good offense, and so on.

This Russonian digression didn't get my Big Picture blog written, alas.

How about: Top ten trends in market-based reform? Nevermore.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 8:16 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

When I was growing up, my family's (exceedingly modest) Christmas record collection was composed of LP compilations, the kind you get at the Marathon station--ONLY 99 CENTS WITH FILL-UP!! I loved those albums and played them over and over, listening to Johnny Mathis back-to-back with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the banality of the Mitch Miller Singers followed by the massive chords of the New York Philharmonic. To me, the records always seemed like the musical counterpart to the actual experience of December: a little sacred, a little commercial, a touch of rock and roll--a glorious mess.

When I left home, my mother gladly relinquished those albums, and I started building my own collection. In 1984, I created a mix tape of my "greatest holiday hits" and gave it as a gift to my teacher colleagues. It became an annual tradition, a built-in excuse to buy lots of new music every year, and drive my family nuts auditioning versions of "Greensleeves" for the annual Holiday Tape (and eventually, CD) in October. I suspect my holiday CD gifts are like fruitcake: some people really love them, and some just thank me politely.

My collection now tops 800 holiday LPs, tapes and CDs (and yeah, I realize this is no longer a hobby, but has probably crossed the line into a sickness). There's a little bit of everything--bluegrass, Motown, jazz, klezmer, folky guitars, brass, exquisite vocal ensembles and the odd bagpipe. The advent of iTunes moved my obsession to an entirely new level; everything's digitized and categorized, so custom CDs can be created and shared throughout the year.

My holiday collection is a more than a bit unusual, not the annoying, ubiquitous, holly-jolly stuff you're involuntarily subjected to in the produce aisle at the grocery store, beginning November first. In fact, I never listen to 24/7 Christmas channels on Sirius. Frankly, Burl Ives gets on my nerves. Somewhere along the line, I developed taste.

I used the mix tape as a mental model for nurturing that aesthetic judgment in every student musical performance I directed, for 30 years-- a little syrupy pop, a classical melody, a lively folk tune-- to whip up a diverse smorgasbord of music, around a central theme. Selecting music--like choosing literature, films, hands-on experiences with nature, debate topics--is part of the art of good teaching. In fact, that's one of the things that worries me most about the Common Core-porate Standards: the reduced opportunity for teachers' creative autonomy to expand artistic discrimination in the student populations they teach. Every year the same. Standardized. Kind of like the radio channels where holiday playlists never vary.

Here's the other thing I fret about: we're losing our cultural roots. Seasonal music draws from deep cultural wells located around the globe, from the distinctive societies and environments we came from, as well as our common beliefs. Playing familiar melodies every year (in the richest sense of the word "play") lets us bend and adapt iconic tunes with new elements of music. A jazz-rock flute tootling through "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" is spanning two millennia of Western music history and technology, from the ancient story about "Bethlehem, in Jewry" combined with thick jazz harmonies and electric amplification of sound waves.

Kids don't have time to explore their musical heritage. And it's not on the test.

I don't know what it is that makes music so powerful, capable of pushing us to catharsis and delight. We have always banded together against the darkness of December--the season of grace coming out of the void, and possible miracle cures. If we leave a little room for wonder and joy in our music-making, we follow in the footsteps of the ancients. Isn't that the very definition of education?

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

In a holiday-themed archetype of legislative overreach, Alabama passed an ethics law earlier this year forbidding K-12 school teachers from accepting expensive presents. Previous legislation set a $100 limit on individual gifts to public workers, but the new law specifies that gifts to teachers be limited to those of nominal value. The stated purpose: to reinforce ethical practices by state employees.

This was such a big deal that the AL Ethics Commission was receiving about 25 calls a day from parents who didn't want to get their children's teachers in trouble. The Ethics Commission released a detailed report, letting parents know that cookies, hand lotion and mugs are OK. What I found interesting was what was forbidden. Four examples: hams, turkeys, cash and "anything a teacher could re-sell."

I was a classroom teacher for more than 30 years. I received hundreds of Christmas and end-of-year gifts over that time. And I never got a turkey or a ham. Maybe that's an Alabama thing?

Nor did I ever get cash-- and if I had been slipped a card with cash, I would have returned it immediately. In fact, I don't know any teacher who would accept cash or an extravagant gift, especially if they thought the gift came with strings attached. The teachers I know have a whole shelf full of holiday mugs with "from Brittany, 1998" written in Sharpie on the bottom.

Besides the obvious issues of unenforceability and heavy-handed mistrust of those charged with educating Alabama's most precious resource--the whole brouhaha has kind of cheesy self-righteousness about it. Does a $25 Starbucks gift card come with expectations built in? What if it's given by a shy first grader who noticed his teacher often brings a Starbucks cup to school? When does the impulse to give a hard-working teacher a nice token of appreciation morph into a calculation of what special favors might be granted through a generous present?

Jim Sumner, director of the Alabama Ethics Commission, is in favor of clamping down on all public workers. No gifts, period.

"It takes away the sense of entitlement that people have built up over the years that people serving the public need gifts," Sumner said.

Sumner said that about 25 states have laws limiting the gifts that public employees can receive. About eight states -- South Carolina being the closest -- have even tougher rules, not even allowing public employees to get a free cup of coffee.

According to Kerns' research, public officials and employees are rarely influenced by a meal paid for by a lobbyist or by a gift. But states send a message with firm ethics laws, she said, and build confidence among the public that leaders can't be bought.

Here's what I wish I could tell Jim Sumner: Teaching offers many very rewarding experiences, but it's not and never has been about the great swag. I'm not sure I ever had a "sense of entitlement" as a public worker-- but then, I never came in contact with lobbyists and don't think most people consider non-elected teachers "public officials." I'm not sure I ever had anything--like a legislative vote--that could be bought.

Ethics Director Sumner: " if [a parent] said, 'I don't care what the new law is, I'm going to give them a cruise," that's a different case ..."

A cruise? I can't speak for legislators--who, after all, can change much more than a mere grade--but I'd be hard pressed to find a teacher who regularly went on international junkets, courtesy of Pearson, the way state education officials have. And don't we have much bigger fish to fry, educationally speaking, than fretting about setting strict guidelines for what parents can spend on a present?

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley called the new law silly--and is pushing for still more clarification. Given the fact that we're right at gifting time, perhaps he doesn't want to hear from any more parents. Happy Holidays.

The whole dustup feels sad to me, however-- part of the impulse to punish and control something that happens rather naturally everywhere: kids giving presents to their teachers. All presents from students are good presents. They're appreciated, but the sentiments under them are what's treasured.

Thinking back over all the gifts I got --there must be 50 music-themed tree ornaments-- one stands out. I had a kid in my 6th hour jazz band, who came to class the day before winter vacation with what looked very much like a tightly wrapped bottle of wine. "My mom says don't open it until you get home, and keep it in your drawer," he said, all innocence.

When I got home, I unwrapped it. It was a bottle of wine--a very nice bottle, in fact. I saw the boy's mother in the grocery store over holiday break. "About the gift..." I said and she held up her hand. "You absolutely deserved it," she said. "We won't speak of it again."

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 10:15 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Congratulations to the 6000-plus teachers who achieved National Board Certification recently. In this Era of Bad Feelings about teacher effectiveness, National Board-Certified teachers are the real deal. A significant slice of them will receive some kind of annual bonus, from a modest $1K to a percentage salary increase, for their recognition as exemplary practitioners--and I say bully for them. They deserve it for demonstrating, via the best available standards-based measure, their commitment to student learning and a willingness to critically examine and fine-tune their own practice.

Full disclosure: I am a National Board Certified Teacher. Several years ago, I was discussing teacher compensation with a colleague from North Carolina, also an NBCT. I paid my own registration fees and pursued National Board Certification even though neither my state nor district offered a salary incentive--but NC paid her fees and gave her a 12% raise for certifying.

I righteously declared that I was attracted to national certification because I was passionate about teacher professionalism, defining good practice through rigorous standards, yada yada. Really? she said. I just needed a new car. And then she pointed out that I was making more money, working in a collective-bargaining state, than she ever would, bonus or no bonus.

I think that anecdote sums up what there is to know about teacher compensation:
• Teachers don't make very much money, in general.
• Teachers who are permitted to collectively bargain make a little more.
• Teachers are often pleased with relatively small boosts in compensation.
• Teachers want to improve their practice for the right reasons--but they are not averse to getting paid for adding genuine value to their personal skill set. Because they need the money and feel they deserve it.

Last summer, at a National Board conference, Arne Duncan said in a keynote that he thought "good" teachers--like the ones in the room--deserved to make $150,000. While his speechwriters doubtless thought the remark would be a big applause line, it landed like a leaden weight in front of the podium.

You can't fool smart teachers. They knew that dangling big bucks--and $150K is huge, for teachers--in front of "recognized" educators was an attempt to divide them from their colleagues, to suggest that some teachers were worth three times what other teachers make. The Secretary was trying to motivate already-wonderful teachers using competition and rewards.

Daniel Pink, in Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us could have diagnosed the problem with Duncan's strategy. Pink's book--which has deep implications for education policy--argues that autonomy, mastery and purpose are the core ingredients in motivating people to do their best work and to innovate.

Teachers don't want to make $150K for successfully employing a curriculum scripted by an outside "expert," ignoring their own hard-won mastery of content and pedagogy. Worse, they don't want a salary increase for the questionable purpose of mentoring novice teachers in the fine art of preparing kids for ever longer and more "important" standardized tests.

Since mentioning Finland is now de rigueur in every blog, it's worth noting that Finnish teachers are not paid more than American teachers, but enjoy considerable leeway in designing their own lessons--autonomy. They are also much admired by their fellow Finns for the important work they do. It isn't about their impressive salaries. It's about their contribution, their professional expertise.

American teachers have always been willing to take on complex and time-consuming extra duties, like sponsoring clubs or coaching volleyball. The teacher who gets $500 for directing the middle school play ends up earning about 99 cents an hour (and fronting his own money for sets and programs)--but also the knowledge that he's created an indelibly positive memory, an experience in teamwork and imagination. You hear these teachers grouse, annually, about all the time they're spending--but the next year, there they are again, holding auditions in the cafeteria.

In America, we're stripping teachers of much of their classroom autonomy, and questioning their mastery. Once we remove teachers' intrinsic purpose, no amount of money will pull promising candidates into long-term careers in the classroom.

Will raising salaries without changing conditions get us a better teacher workforce? What do you think?

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Writing a blog about education for the gifted pretty much guarantees a lot of attention. If you follow the party line (We're ignoring our most talented kids!), the piece will be widely distributed and praised. If you come at the issue from a different perspective--well, see comments on "Cheating the Gifted?" below.

This was not my first column on how we deal with bright kids in traditional school settings. And the arguments have not changed significantly, since I started thinking and writing about the issue, shortly after I earned a masters degree in gifted education.

Let me be clear. Yes, there are genuinely gifted students. Yes, they do have unique pedagogical and emotional needs-- I spent several years trying to find optimal curricular and instructional strategies to address those needs. And no, I don't think the gifted will do just fine left to their own devices, because they're smart.

The blog wasn't about that. It was about the political utility of these arguments to advance other agendas, in a post-NCLB era: The argument that test scores scientifically measure potential value to society. The argument that tracking should return in full force, because it appears to give bright kids a 6-point advantage on those same tests. And the odious argument that we've been taking from the rich and giving to the undeserving poor, neglecting our best and brightest in the process.

These are morally contentious policy issues: allocation of scarce communal resources for greatest good and accurate identification of who represents best use of these resources. Honestly, I have never met a parent who said "Well, nobody in my family is gifted, but I fully support a special teacher, classroom, budget and field trips for the gifted kids. Because those kids are going to be the leaders of tomorrow--not my children."

We all espouse fairness and equity, and we all believe our own children have gifts to offer the world. So I'm deeply suspicious of talking ed-heads who utilize a kind of modified "shock doctrine" to impact school practice and policy: We're in crisis! We don't have enough resources to serve all kids well, plus a decade of trying to close the achievement gap hasn't worked, so let's focus on the top tier. There is plenty of vocal parent advocacy for the gifted (evidence below). If those parents can be convinced that traditional public schools are voluntarily ignoring their children's needs--well, score one for the privatization movement.

Accountability and privilege are thus inextricably bound into the national discourse about the gifted. Good teachers who employ differentiated instruction, recognizing and challenging bright students, now find themselves penned in by standardized test-prep curricula, as rigid, data-bound accountability trumps their responsiveness to individual needs.

I fully agree that we're losing the potential contributions of exceptionally capable children, especially in low-achieving schools. My point was that we shouldn't automatically blame their teachers, who are the first and most cost-effective line of defense in uncovering and addressing the needs of the gifted. Before we start developing rationales for which kids "deserve" special attention and programming, let's take a critical look at federal lawmaking and "reforms" which increasingly identify and separate winners and losers in public education.

All kids deserve an education tailored to their unique needs. It's not just gifted children who are "bored" in school. When kids get open-ended assignments, rich and relevant curriculum and targeted coaching from their teachers, they all benefit. When we address a range of student talents--not just what shows up in intelligence/achievement testing--society benefits.

There's a lot more to say about the parameters of who, precisely, is "gifted" and what effective programming for gifted kids looks like. There are reasons why these issues aren't settled after decades of heated dispute. But that's another blog.

The leaders and skills we need will come from all strata of ability and promise. Pitting one group against another is a mistake and ethically damaging. We need to invest in serving diverse students well, for the simple reason that we need them all.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

It's an argument that seems to bubble up cyclically. It doesn't matter what the hot policy idea du jour is, someone is bound to assert: What we're doing right now does not serve the needs of the gifted!

The question was raised in the Rising Tide of Mediocrity era: What were we doing to nurture those promising leaders who would keep America #1? Debates about tracking have never gone away, pitting "low-achieving" students against "America's brightest." Even the recent flurry of interest in Finland's great results is accompanied by little yeah-but digs: "High-flying students might get neglected in a system set up to improve the bottom and the middle."

After a decade of federally mandated accountability, predicated on closing the achievement gap, Michael Petrilli is now fretting that Poverty Warrior educators haven't been honest about their motives: "Their slogan has been 'leave no child behind' when it's really closer to 'take from the rich, give to the poor.'"

And where do we find all those "gifted" students who are being neglected as we focus on "low achievers?" Is this the Robin Hood Theory of Gifted Education: take back from the poor because the rich are really more deserving?

It's a question of equitable allocation of resources, beginning with the (erroneous) assumption that there's only so much to go around, so we're better off as a nation performing a kind of triage, helping the most academically worthy. It's also about identifying merit. Who deserves an extra helping of resources? Why, the high flyers, of course. And who are the high flyers? Well--let me pull out the data.

In a nation as technocratic, standardized and competitive as the United States, it's not surprising that both Petrilli and Rick Hess would reference studies showing that bright kids lose 6 test-score points when they're thrown in with the intellectual rabble, whereas struggling kids get a 5-point advantage from going to class with high achievers. What to do, what to do?

It's also no surprise that special education for the gifted came into being at the same time as standardized testing. When we evaluate students' potential--their prospective value to our diverse society--on the basis of numbers, we're heading toward what you might call a reckless meritocracy. One where low test scores early in life keep kids slogging along in the basement, their unique human promise unacknowledged, even unrecognized.

Besides, there isn't much evidence that we should count on academic superstars to fix our social problems. Being brilliant intellectually is no guarantee that your social consciousness or emotional maturity will support leadership, innovation or problem-solving--in any realm. A quick look at our most gifted leaders--Americans whose work has saved or enriched millions of lives--tells us that being identified as "gifted" is never a prerequisite for world-changing discoveries or great statesmanship.

While there are excellent reasons for nurturing all students' unique gifts and talents, claiming that we could be overlooking the next Einstein without special resources for the academically adept is a specious argument. There are happy dog groomers with IQs in the 150s and influential legislators whose academic gifts might kindly be described as below average. And the hedge fund managers and Wall Street con artists who weaseled trillions to bail themselves out? Smartest guys in the room.

Increasing the numbers of good, sharp teachers who are committed to all their individual students' learning needs would help motivate and focus bright kids far more effectively than labeling them or separating them from the pack. We can have it all--challenges for our brightest kids (who are not necessarily our best kids), and rich opportunities for everyone.

Posted by Nancy Flanagan at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend