The "so-what"

We could continue down this road of simplistic and too-narrowly focused solutions – charter schools, “higher standards”, state graduation exams, pay for performance, the elimination of tenure, etc.. And while there may be some merit to each of these ideas, none of them will get us where we want to go.

As I said last time, so what?

Several weeks ago, I stumbled across a segment on the Newshour that described the Easton, PA school district’s effort to connect teacher compensation to student test scores. (This was in order to meet one of the criteria of the federal “Race to the Top” grants.) This went along predictably, with the teacher’s association responding less than enthusiastically to the school board’s initiative. But what struck me was this comment by a school board member: “the problem is, there’s just not enough trust.”

There’s the so-what.

If we’re going to succeed at the highly complex and interconnected undertaking of reforming America’s schools, it’s going to require all the stakeholders – teachers, students, parents, administrators, community members and policy-makers – to push in the same direction. And that’s going to require a level of trust that cannot be imposed from Washington or Harrisburg.  Trust has to be built locally.

As Anthony Cody put it in his terrific blog, The Missing Ingredient in School Reform, “Trust is perhaps the single most important element in a successful school.”

For me, the issue of school reform – perhaps “transformation” is the better word – boils down to how we answer two questions:
·    What does every student need to know and be able to do in order to be successful?
·    How do we create the best learning environment for that to occur?

As I see it, the learning environment – or “school climate” - is the obvious, but often overlooked foundation for everything else. And if a positive school climate is the foundation of school reform, then trust is the cornerstone.

In many places, that would require a different way of thinking.

Take, as just one example, contract negotiations. The traditional view is that the teacher’s association sits on one side of the table, trying to get the best deal for their members, while the school board sits on the opposite side, trying to give away as little as possible.

The problem with the traditional – confrontational - approach is that it doesn’t help to create an atmosphere in which teachers will feel inspired to go above and beyond the call of duty for their students. (In this sense, it is neither cost-effective nor aligned with organizational goals.)

But in highly-functioning school districts, the goal is to come to an agreement that everyone sees as fair - admittedly, easier said than done, and an unrealistic expectation unless you’ve spent time working on the foundation.  In order for any “side” to think beyond its own self interest, there has to be a fairly significant level of trust – enough that people begin to believe that we’re all actually on the same side.

This atmosphere needs to be developed and sustained throughout the entire organization. In fact, developing a climate of trust and collaboration around a common goal is the central task of school leadership.

Ed Policy, part 3

The last decades’ rhetoric on standards has also allowed us to ignore the important impact that “equity” has on educational quality –conveniently giving politicians an excuse from having to make tough decisions. Politicians, after all, are responsible for how our resources are distributed.

(To his credit - on this issue - Governor Rendell has been an exception.)

But it is ridiculous to suggest that educational quality is unaffected by money. Upper-middle class suburban taxpayers don’t enjoy paying taxes more than anyone else, but they’re willing to do it because they believe good facilities and well-paid teachers give their children a competitive advantage.  And they’re right.

Children learn better – or more accurately, they have better opportunities to learn – in classrooms with adequate heat, good air ventilation, indirect lighting and good acoustics. On the other hand, money alone won’t fix anything. Well-paid teachers and great facilities won’t compensate for the lack of engaging, focused instruction and supportive parents.

Still others have suggested that the “solution” is to “pay for performance”. Well, maybe – but here’s the problem with that, as I see it. For teachers - particularly the good ones - it’s not about the money. Numerous teacher surveys – most recently by the Gates Foundation – have come the same conclusion: “supportive leadership” and “time to collaborate” are more important to teachers than “higher salaries”.

While teachers should be treated as professionals, and paid accordingly, the vast majority of teachers are motivated intrinsically – whose life did I change today? - not extrinsically.

Plus, to think that you could create an accountability system without input from teachers (i.e., NCLB) is just crazy. It’s not that teachers don’t want to be held “accountable”; they want to be accountable in ways that are meaningful.

Finally, I should mention the two ideas that have been the core of NCLB: “higher standards” and “highly qualified” teachers. First, the research has been clear: so-called higher standards hasn’t improved education for most students. As Darling-Hammond recently put it, “just telling schools that they (have to reach a certain standard) is not going to get them to do it better. We’re assuming they’re able to do better, but are unwilling.”

This is particularly problematic when the “standards” are unconnected to the skills and knowledge that students will actually need to be successful employees and citizens.

Unfortunately, “highly qualified” was all about teaching credentials, not teaching skills. Sure, it’s important for teachers to “know the material” - but being a Math major in college doesn’t prepare you to teach math to a group of fourth-graders of varying interests, abilities and learning styles.

And so, I’ve come to this sobering but somewhat obvious conclusion: providing every child with a quality education is a highly complex undertaking, one that defies easy and simplistic solutions.

Well, so what?

Ed Policy, part 2

A recent Newsweek article suggested another approach to education reform: we should make it easier to fire incompetent teachers. That’s a reasonable and probably necessary idea, but we haven’t thought this through, either.

First, most schools have some really good teachers, some poor teachers, and a lot who fall somewhere in between (since human behavior generally conforms to that normal curve distribution). Making it easier to fire “bad” teachers may fix the problem at one end of the curve, but it does nothing to address the skills of all the teachers in the middle - the ones who teach most students. Plus, the fact that some schools appear to have far more than their share of “bad” teachers points to a systemic issue that has little to do with the teachers, themselves.

(A good example  is the recent case in Rhode Island where the entire faculty of a school was fired. Is it possible that all fifty of those teachers were “bad”?  Where does one find fifty good teachers to replace them? If those teachers are so good, why don’t they already have jobs? If we don’t fix the system, where will these teachers be in five years?...)

The vast majority of teachers enter the profession wanting to be successful. But the profession’s 50% five-year “drop-out” rate is largely the result of a long tradition of placing teachers in classrooms, on their own and without adequate support - or preparation, a whole other issue.

Then there’s the widely held belief that “good teachers are born and not made”, which the authors seem to blindly accept. This, however, is nonsense; in what other profession is it true?

In fact, Teach for America has spent years studying the issue of teacher effectiveness. They’ve concluded that the two best predictors of an effective teacher are 1) perseverance, and 2) the willingness to change when a strategy doesn’t appear to be working. In other words, teachers become “good” teachers by continuing to work at it.

This doesn’t occur in a vacuum. “Quality teaching depends … on the environment in which teachers work; a curriculum focused on higher-order thinking; opportunities for teachers to plan with and learn from one another; and regular occasions to evaluate the outcomes of their practices.” (Linda Darling-Hammond)

More on this later.

National Education Policy, part 1

For the last few weeks I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the Obama Administration’s “blueprint” for the re-authorization of ESEA (known formerly as No Child Left Behind). Their proposal has generated a lot of conversation about what direction school reform should be taking – which has, to me, the look of the proverbial seven blind men trying to describe an elephant: many people have a piece of the puzzle, but we seem to lack a vision of a coherent whole.

This is important because it will probably be another seven years before we get another shot at this.

Among educators, the general consensus appears to be “encouraged but cautious”. The President and Secretary Duncan have said the right things - they’ve acknowledged the need for balanced assessments, and the importance of the arts and sciences – but there’s a concern that the federal role will continue to be more coercive than helpful. However well-intentioned, no one’s quite sure that they can trust the Obama plan.

Hold that thought.

For starters, the administration appears committed to promoting “charter schools” as a key component of school reform. I’m not opposed to this conceptually - on the theory that relieving charter schools from some bureaucratic requirements allows them to explore educational innovation that could replicated elsewhere.

A well-designed charter school encourages parental involvement, is run by a relatively small group of committed educators and has the appeal of being smaller, and more manageable, than most urban public schools.

But we haven’t thought this through. Suppose Chicago were to create 1,000 charter schools, all of them excellent. (We know this won’t happen because the research is pretty clear that charter schools are not a panacea; some charter schools have been very successful, but many have not. But just suppose.) Under the best scenario, you will have drained financial resources (vouchers?) educational resources (the most motivated teachers) as well as the most engaged parents away from the public system – leaving what? Separate, but unequal?

The problem is that there’s no mechanism for taking what you’ve learned from these experiments, and bringing them to scale. (Under Pennsylvania law it’s not even possible.) This suggests a missed opportunity. There are a lot of successful public schools that have the resources and will to innovate. Why not give them the same freedom?

And then there’s this problem: when given the charter school option, relatively few parents make that “choice”; they don’t want their kids to go to another school, they want their school to be better!

Finally, a lot of people have pointed to KIPP charter schools as a great success story, particularly noting that KIPP does not “select” their students – which conveniently overlooks the fact that KIPP is actually very selective: only students having the good fortune of highly engaged and committed parents are admitted. That’s a big deal.