Teachers’ Advice for President Obama in His Second Term

José Vilson

Dear President Obama,

What I often feel with the plethora of open letters sent to you in this venue and others is the presumption that you won't really read them. It's the disenchantment that anyone who's ever written a letter to a high-ranking official has felt. We've gotten the dozen e-mails a week asking for contributions, the robo-calls (especially in so-called swing states), the flyers, the stickers, and the slick logos at every change of the channel. We've seen the pictures of the family, the impromptu moments between you and the first lady, and the measured yet potent speeches you've given time and again, especially on education matters.

The collection of these things makes your constituency feel like they know you personally, even when the majority of us have never met you.

What it also means, though, is that your primary supporters feel like they should have a seat at your table from the very beginning when they don't. At least not consistently. This dynamic matters especially with regard education, where the collective experience of participants and practitioners on the ground matter just as much as those who set the policy, if not more so. We bear the burden of the errors, yet get little of the credit for the successes of said system. The policies we currently abide by (e.g., Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind) inspire less collaboration amongst all vested members than finger-pointing in the name of accountability.

Teachers, students, and parents often get placed in very different tables, and often way after all the decisions have been made.

So let's all work together. Rather than addressing us as separate entities, let's work on assuring that schools have functions that support everyone involved. I get that people want results, but we can't even talk about results without talking about schools becoming more humane places. We keep driving schools towards meeting numbers, but we generally don't drive people to meet each other to develop real community.

To my mind, there is no more pressing matter than the ways and means with which we educate children. The conditions we set for teachers to teach, students to learn, and parents to support dictate whether our educational system will produce the sorts of innovators and promoters we need. Let's sit at the table. Let's eat together. Let's give thanks that we have an opportunity to do this now.

There's no better time to be thankful than the present.

José Vilson is a math teacher, coach, and data analyst for a middle school in the Inwood/Washington Heights neighborhood of New York.

Posted by José Vilson at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Ryan Kinser

I promised concrete steps for the president's second-term education agenda in my first post, confident that my classroom experiences with both high-needs and affluent students make for a unique vantage point. But I realized I need to answer a big question first.

What role should the federal government play in education?

According to the Department of Education itself, the answer is, as "a kind of 'emergency response system,' a means of filling gaps in State and local support for education when critical national needs arise." By that rationale, I don't think standardized testing, arbitrary accountability systems, and competitive grants apply.

In my first post, I suggested President Obama's administration should focus instead on the root causes of poor academic outcomes. If we don't build strong communities out of this economic recession, our schools will not improve.

Paul Tough suggests as much in his recent New York Times Magazine article, "What Does Obama Really Believe In?" In the course of the article, he quotes the president's comments during a speech in Anacostia, a high-needs neighborhood in Washington, D.C., where, ironically, I started my teaching career.

If poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community.

$100 million for Promise Neighborhoods, an increase of $40 million from fiscal year 2012. This program will continue to support projects that significantly improve the educational and developmental outcomes of children and youth by providing a birth-to-career continuum of rigorous and comprehensive education reforms, effective community services, and strong systems of family and community support - with high quality schools at the center.

Instead of proposing $534 million for School Turnaround Grants that will not succeed until communities like Anacostia or South Chicago's Roseland improve from the inside, might I propose that the administration and Congress put the dollars where they make sense—in Promise Neighborhoods or programs with similar objectives?

Ryan Kinser is a Teacherpreneur at the Center for Teaching Quality and teaches English at Walker Middle Magnet School for International Studies in Tampa, Fla.

Posted by Ryan Kinser at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Bill Farmer

I am always encouraged by the insightful discourse that transpires between educators in forums such as this. It is evident that we approach these conversations by prioritizing the needs and interests of our students. Since entering the profession nearly 10 years ago, I have yet to experience a federal education policy that has enabled me to better meet my students' learning needs. In fact, it has been my general experience that the impacts that eventually trickle down to the classroom usually inhibit my ability to effectively do my job. If improving student outcomes is the primary objective, this would suggest to me that the U.S. Department of Education needs to consider revising its approach to education reform.

Accountability has been the dominant force driving recent federal policies and it has led to an overemphasis on high-stakes standardized testing. NCLB was in its infancy when I began teaching, but the impacts were immediate. Schools were sorted and ranked based on student performance on a single test administered each year. Failing to make adequate yearly progress caused a school to face escalating consequences. As a result, valuable instruction time was hijacked and redirected towards test preparation.

Even now, as schools are seeking relief from ineffective and burdensome NCLB policies, our nation remains fixated on test scores—except now they want to use them to evaluate individual teachers. At first glance, particularly from a perspective outside of the classroom, linking student performance to teacher evaluation seems like a common sense practice that should have been implemented a long time ago. Upon deeper analysis, however, it becomes clear that student learning is inherently complex, and developing a standardized test that can accurately measure a teacher's contribution to student progress is even more challenging. Unfortunately, schools now find themselves having to devote large portions of their limited and often-shrinking resources towards the testing machine that has emerged out of federal policy.

To make matters more confusing, current reform efforts are sending conflicting messages. While public schools find themselves having to rapidly adjust to new federal and state guidelines, there is a simultaneous push for the expansion of charter schools, which are granted the freedom to operate autonomously. Why can't all public schools be trusted to make decisions independently to address the needs of their unique student populations?

Even though recent headlines in the news suggest that our U.S. Secretary of Education doesn't plan to deviate much from the reform tactics administered in his first term, I would like to remain optimistic that the voice of educators will eventually be heard.

Finland is often touted as the exemplar model for public education and I believe that one of the key components contributing to its success is the respect bestowed upon its teachers. As professional experts, teachers there are trusted with the authority to make the instructional decisions necessary to prepare their students for life beyond the classroom. I hope that we consider allowing educators to guide our public schools forward.

Bill Farmer has been teaching biology and chemistry for nine years at Evanston Township High School in Evanston, Ill.

Posted by Bill Farmer at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Sarah Henchey

In my previous post, I encouraged President Obama to articulate the purpose of education within our society and evaluate his administration's policies based on this understanding. I also called upon my fellow educators to consider how they would scaffold and support the president's learning.

However, it is not enough for only our leaders to participate in this inquiry—we must all explore this essential question.

Just as the classroom stretches beyond a school's walls, learning extends far past a formal education. Presidents, policymakers, and the public must come together to address the realities of our current system and create purposeful and transformative reforms. And our teachers, working as partners in learning, will be there to support and guide this exploration. After all, just as we call upon expert professionals to advise us in complex disciplines, including economics and medicine, so too must we recognize the training and experiences of our nation's practicing teachers and researchers.

So, where do we start? How do we go about answering the question of what role education plays in our society? Conversations like those featured in this blog present a solid jumping-off point for our research.

Let's begin with a few initial questions to focus on as we investigate expert sources:

• How can education meet the needs of our children growing up in low-income environments? Starting source: Last month, expert practitioners provided insight into addressing the learning needs of our students in at-risk and low-income environments.


• How can we leverage the strengths and talents of our teacher leaders to meet the needs of our students? Starting source: In the first dialogue featured in this space, educators came together to reimagine the roles of teachers within a school.


• Where does education take place within our society? Starting source: Teachers explore strategies for engaging parents and families in the schools.

The links above represent a small selection of sources to begin consulting as, together, we seek to create and support policies that align with our vision. Where else might we look for guidance? What other research or resources should we explore?

Sarah Henchey is a National Board-certified teacher and has taught middle school for seven years in North Carolina's Orange County school district.

Posted by Sarah Henchey at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Matthew Holland

Whenever there is a call for the federal government to move out of the sphere of education, there is undoubtedly some level of resistance. Often those who are resistant to dismantling the U.S. Department of Education focus on two main areas: funding and discrimination. They tend to say that the federal education oversight is needed to ensure adequate money is directed towards education and to safeguard against institutional discrimination within our educational system. They often say, "Without the Department of Education, our children would suffer." While their arguments sound good, they are not supported by the facts.

In 2000, the Department of Education (backed by the recently enacted No Child Left Behind legislation) dramatically increased federal spending on education in order to influence assessment, curriculum, and instruction across the United States. According to the department's budget history documentation, appropriations for the Education Department programs increased by 9 percent from 2000-2001. This increase was a sign of bigger things to come. Since the inception of No Child Left Behind, the Department of Education's budget has ballooned by nearly 64 percent.

The Education Department's spending has topped the $100 billion mark twice since 2000—once in 2006 when the federal government spent $100.04 billion on education, and again in 2009 when the federal government earmarked $138 billion for education. Currently, for FY2013, the budget for the Department of Education is just under $70 billion.

The Department of Education and many of its supporters insist that more and more tax dollars must be spent in order to improve our children's education, especially considering how poorly our education system fares in comparison with those of other countries around the world). This comparison and justification is often made by examining United States students' results on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

So what has this out of control federal spending produced? Judging by the PISA results, it is clear that increased federal spending on education is not improving our education system. From 2000-2009, according to data compiled by the the National Center for Education Statistics, U. S. students slid from 15th place to 17th place in reading. From 2003-2009, U.S. students slid from 24th place to 31st place in math. From 2006-2009 U.S. students slid from 21st place to 23rd place in science.

We are providing more federal funding for education than ever before. Is this an effective use of our money?

Supporters of the federal role in education also contend that the Education Department is needed to address inequity and discrimination within school districts across the United States. But this argument is not supported by facts, either. Since the inception of NCLB, students and families have been allowed to abandon low-income and underperforming schools at high rates through the federal school-choice provision. This migration has pushed money, resources, and most importantly of all, caring parents, away from schools in need. Federal policy moves them instead towards schools already are already high-performing, adequately funded, and in some cases, charters.

In other words, de facto segregation has been the unintended consequence of the Department of Education's misguided policy. Ironically, while the Department of Education has created de facto segregation, de jure segregation in districts across the United States is being addressed by the U.S. Department of Justice. Why continue to support an agency which promotes disparity when a legitimate agency already exists to combat it?

As stated in my original post, I would encourage the president to abandon the failed federal oversight of education within the United States. States and local school divisions should make the decisions pertaining to assessment, curriculum, and instruction in education. Citizens of those states and districts would be responsible for the success or failure of their schools.

Posted by Matthew Holland at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

José Vilson

During the presidential debates between you and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, you mentioned that you'd hire thousands more math and science teachers to boost this country's status as an economic power. Jennifer Martinez reported on your statement in The Hill newspaper:

"If we've got math teachers who are able to provide the kind of support that they need for our kids, that's what's going to determine whether or not new businesses are created here," Obama said during the debate at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla. "Companies are going to locate here depending on whether we've got the most highly skilled workforce."

As a math teacher, I understand the sentiment. Some of us have felt for far too long that we as a country haven't prioritized competency in math. Far too many people in our country have devalued math, asserting that children only need to know the basics. If they know how to read a graph or calculate a tip, they've mastered all the math they need in life, and any advanced math above that should be left for specialists and enthusiasts.

Yet, Robert Moses, a civil rights leader and the founder of the Algebra Project, saw the connection between 21st-century citizenship and mathematics a long time ago. I understand the economic imperative of assuring that our students, especially our most disadvantaged students, have the opportunity not only to survive but prosper, with a wealth of career options in engineering, computer science, economics, and statistics, amongst other professions.

With that said, even if we reach the lofty goal of getting 100,000 more math and science teachers into classrooms, the problem will most likely not be recruitment but retention. Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, recently cited new research re-confirming what so many of us have known all along: Math and science teachers leave the profession at or around the same clip as every other teacher does. Some of this is due to retirement, but they also tend to leave for higher salaries and, yes, working conditions.

This especially affects schools like mine: high-poverty schools where the system leans far too much on them without proper compensation.

We still have too many schools where teachers spend thousands on their own supplies, where principals have to choose between firing a teacher in the classroom or a set of school aides to help with the flow of the building, where students feel less like they're learning how to be an active participant in democracy and more like automatons filling out paperwork. Much like the rest of us do.

I'm inclined to say it's not all bad, either. Teachers generally love their students and want them to excel, and do so despite the challenges and turmoil present in schools. But the barriers are high and growing. From on high, we can act like the realities of the classroom matter very little, but these little pieces add up to an issue that pervades classrooms all over the country.

If you want to increase the amount of problem solvers and doers, you need to assure that you promote the conditions for your nation-builders to come there and stay.

Best,
José Vilson

José Vilson is a math teacher, coach, and data analyst for a middle school in the Inwood/Washington Heights neighborhood of New York.

Posted by José Vilson at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Bill Farmer

President Obama, during your victory speech on election night you proudly stated that "We want our kids to grow up in a country where they have access to the best schools and the best teachers." You probably didn't hear my enthusiastic cheers from the far end of the convention hall, but I was there celebrating your reelection with several fellow Educators for Obama who share your passionate vision for an excellent public education system for all students.

As you transition into your second term, I would encourage you to engage in a reflective practice that mirrors what teachers do every day. It begins with lesson planning, a process that involves establishing desired learner outcomes, designing strategies to teach their objectives, and developing tools to assess the effectiveness of their instruction. This advanced preparation is really only the beginning because teachers quickly realize that even the most well thought out lessons can, and usually do, have significant flaws. A skillful teacher can patch up some of these imperfections on the fly to salvage the lesson, but more often than not several trials and revisions are necessary to yield an effective final product.

It would be my hope that your administration reflects and reassesses its approach to education policy reform in a similar manner to ensure that public education is moving forward for our students by utilizing best-practice research in conjunction with feedback from educators like myself. This thoughtful and collaborative approach would go a long way toward repairing the strained relationship that has evolved between many educators and policymakers.

I believe that primary strengths of your domestic policy agenda are your desired outcomes for public education. Under your leadership, your administration has sought to build and maintain a highly qualified teacher work force, been an advocate for equity in access to both early education and higher education, and pushed for the overhaul of NCLB to support struggling schools rather than punish them. These are among only a few of your objectives that should be maintained into your next term.

Teacher quality is a fundamental pillar of any education system. So let's examine your policy objective to recruit, train, and retain exceptional teachers from my critical lens as an educator. One of the primary policy mechanisms with the aim of bolstering teacher quality was the Race to the Top program. We can use your home state of Illinois, where I happen to teach, as a case study to examine the impact of this federal policy.

Dealing with a state budget crisis, Illinois was eager to compete for federal dollars by rushing through the Performance Evaluation Reform Act with minimal input from educators. One positive result of the legislation was that our teacher-evaluation system, which was long overdue for a comprehensive overhaul, received attention from state lawmakers. Unfortunately, many of the policies promoted by Race to the Top were largely untested by current research, including the linkage of teacher evaluation to student-growth measures and the expansion of charter schools. In fact, recent studies have questioned the reliability of incorporating student-growth metrics into teacher evaluations. Studies have also emerged that suggest charter schools are fairing no better than public schools.

Fortunately, Mr. President, just as with the rough initial implementation of a new lesson plan, there is an opportunity now to regroup and refine policy strategies to move your public education vision forward. Alternative approaches to enhancing our teacher work force can be considered, such as creating incentives for higher education institutions to admit and recruit prospective teachers based on workforce demand and to strengthen their teacher-training curriculum.

Currently, many teacher preparation programs are churning out graduates in disciplines that already have an overabundance of teachers, while high-needs vacancies in areas such as science, special education, and bilingual education are left unfilled. Your administration could play a role in promoting and funding programs that allow higher education and their state agencies to elevate professional teaching standards and provide more comprehensive student teaching experiences. Perhaps I could even boldly suggest that student teaching be modeled after medical residencies to provide more on-the-job training.

Educators have a wealth of ideas and collective knowledge, and we are eager to help grow our own profession and provide the very best educational opportunities for our students with the support of your administration.

Bill Farmer has been teaching biology and chemistry for nine years at Evanston Township High School in Evanston, Ill.

Posted by Bill Farmer at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Sarah Henchey

"Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity." — Lyndon B. Johnson

Essential Question: What role does education serve in our society?

Learning Task: Learners will utilize their understanding of the federal government's role in education in order to propose policy recommendations that support the role of education in our society and learning of the American people.

Imagine you've been challenged to explore the above essential question through the described learning task. How would you approach this charge? What core understandings would support your success? What resources would you turn to for guidance?

Learning opportunities such as this are precisely the authentic experiences encouraged by the Common Core State Standards. These standards call for students to analyze primary and secondary sources, assess claims made by authors, and evaluate understandings based on textual evidence. Under these circumstances, students are immersed in learning and encouraged to pose questions, draw conclusions, and push their thinking (a stark contrast to the passive learning famously portrayed in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off").

Yet this type of learning and discourse should not be confined to the brick-and-mortar walls of our high schools. Nor should we retire this question, presuming it has been answered once and shall remain a static truth.

To craft intentional reforms and transform our schools, we must all return to this core question and engage in the dialogue and learning modeled by our teachers and their students. We must draw upon historical documents, bipartisan expertise, and the strengths within our system. And, most importantly, we must use the information gleaned from our inquiry to inform the policy and laws enacted.

So, Mr. President, as a starting point, what role do you believe education serves in our society? How have the policies of your administration furthered this ideal? What steps need to be taken to move toward this vision and what lessons can you learn from your predecessors? Please remember to cite specific textual evidence to support your analysis.

And, for you teachers, how might you scaffold the president's learning? What anticipated outcomes would you expect?

Sarah Henchey is a National Board-certified teacher and has taught middle school for seven years in North Carolina's Orange County School district.

Posted by Sarah Henchey at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Ryan Kinser

In his first term, President Obama treated education issues like symptoms of an undiagnosed disease. His administration led our nation through initiatives to overhaul teacher evaluation, introduce new state standards to promote college/career readiness, and offer competitive funding opportunities for states to innovate. Each of these reforms was a Band-Aid approach that overlooked a fundamental issue: schools fail when communities fail. Our top students are still receiving an education on par with any in the world. It's just that not enough of our students have that opportunity.

Perhaps the bubbling cauldron of recent education issues can be reduced to this one focal point for the president and the federal government. Improve communities first. Schools and teachers will follow.

The president may not have much power to change collective bargaining rights, NCLB waiver ramifications, or the fallout of publicized teacher evaluations, but he absolutely can shift gears to salvage his policies. Why not veer from debates about teacher effectiveness (inherently a local issue) or school accountability and instructional standards (which should be state issues), and instead focus on equitable federal education funding?

Our new Common Core State Standards won't accomplish much if teachers like my colleague Renee Moore in the Mississippi Delta continue to face a dearth of resources unlike the relative windfall of options I have at an affluent Tampa magnet school. One of the key reasons nations like Finland and Singapore outperform us on international tests isn't because their students or teachers are smarter. It's because their support systems are better designed to combat poverty through equal opportunity, as Arthur Camins argues in The Washington Post more eloquently than I can in this space.

I would also invite President Obama to consult a few pages from Teaching 2030: What We Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools Now and in the Future. Why not see the school as a community hub providing stability so parents don't have to choose charter schools across town? Isn't that how we rebuild an economy and first-rate educational system—one neighborhood at a time?

I've taught in urban Washington, D.C., and now I teach at a school striving for International Baccalaureate certification. As a reverse-magnet program, my school buses students from dilapidated neighborhoods in the hopes of offering the same opportunities they might not get at home. But how does this approach strengthen the neighborhoods of our commuter students so they can experience their right to a quality education near their homes?

In her 2007 Urban Sites Network Conference speech, Gloria Ladson-Billings spoke about the "educational debt" our nation has accumulated. This is where I would urge President Obama to start his second term education agenda. Instead of letting states fight for the scraps of an overextended fiscal policy, I'd implore the president to take a closer look at how he can reallocate an education budget to level the playing field. I'll offer some concrete suggestions in my follow-up post.

Ryan Kinser is a teacherpreneur at the Center for Teaching Quality and teaches English at Walker Middle Magnet School for International Studies in Tampa, Fla.

Posted by Ryan Kinser at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Matthew Holland

With all due respect, the president should get out of the education business. Period. Let the profession be run by the professionals who work in our nation's classrooms.

Over the past 11 years, we have seen policies come out of Washington that seek to improve our nation's education through a game of numbers. The policies under President Bush had our nation's schools chasing ever elusive number in math and reading. We see the same with President Obama's policies on education. Now the ever elusive numbers game is spreading into more subject areas while children continue to be viewed as nothing more than percentages, subgroups, and a statistical means for closing gaps that exist in all aspects of our society. No longer are we simply leaving kids behind in education, now we are actually racing away from them in the quest to get to the top. The top of what has yet to been seen.

If I had the president's ear for a few moments (presumably I wouldn't hold an audience with him for long after telling him to get out of the business), I'd ask two questions. The first would be: "Why this fascination with numbers in education?" These numbers are not demonstrating that kids are enjoying learning, they don't indicate that teachers are good teachers, and they don't demonstrate that schools are successful. They are meaningless numbers which don't address real needs. Educator Jim Trelease was right on the mark in 2008 when he said the government's obsession with testing our kids to close gaps and show progress is paramount to "weighing the cattle more often to make them fatter." We are not producing better students or schools through this testing.

My second question would be: "How meaningful are these numbers that we are chasing?" The numbers often cited by the President and others when discussing the need for education policy tend to be our nation's results on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). According to PISA, we are ranked about "average." Yet, as an "average" nation, consistently produce Nobel Prize laureates year after year. As an "average" nation, we are the sole nation to put humans on another body in our solar system. As an "average" nation, we have successfully landed a rover on Mars and are in the process of mapping the world's oceans. Average according to PISA seems to be working for us.

After posing my questions, I would again implore the President to get out of the business of education. The interests of our children are not best served in our nation's capital, but are rather best met in the classrooms and school board rooms of our local communities.

Matthew Holland is a public school elementary school teacher in Alexandria, Va.

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