So Much Reform, So Little Change, part 2: the impact of race

Beginning with the first item on our list, (see previous post) one of Payne’s most disturbing observations about struggling schools is how quickly and early students are sorted into two categories: those who have potential, and those who don’t. This is often based on physical appearance, and prior to having any actual evidence! (In modern parlance, this is called having a ‘fixed’ mindset.)  Once so identified, teachers proceed to teach students differently, with higher quality interactions and higher expectations for the ‘smart’ kids.  This, of course, becomes reinforcing; the smart kids flourish (relatively); the ‘dumb’ kids begin to withdraw.

Then it gets worse. By the following year, the next teacher now has ‘data’ to back up her assumptions.  The effect on students is significant and long-lasting: research shows a high correlation between how students feel about their early years of public schooling and how likely they are to stay in school until graduation.

But there’s complicating factor at work here: low expectations on the part of teachers is not entirely unjustified. (Although the ‘sorting’ is.)  Years of experience have demonstrated to teachers that the barriers to success for these students is so high, that realistically, not many of them are going to ‘make it’. Teachers see the entire system as conspiring against their students. The administration is hopelessly inept (the average superintendent lasts less than three years) and the parents are unreachable. Why not invest your (unfairly) limited resources into the few kids who appear to have a chance?

Of course, such a view absolves teachers of responsibility for their role, and this mindset is a huge impediment to implementing systemic change. (That program may have worked where you come from, but it won’t work here, not with these kids!)  Payne refers to this as ‘racialist’ thinking. It’s not really racist in the sense that it isn’t a judgment as to genetic capacity - it’s not the kids’ fault, after all - but the impact is pretty much the same.  And this prejudging is just as common among Black teachers as White teachers.

Payne has a lot to say about race that is especially relevant in our current environment, and he spends an excellent chapter addressing one of the great mysteries of education policy: Why do Black students in relatively wealthy suburban schools not perform as well as their White counterparts? 

There is a common assumption – misunderstanding - by policy-makers is that race is essentially a stand-in for poverty, and that if you address issues directly relating to poverty, ‘race’ is not relevant. And while it is clearly important to address the issues significantly impacted by poverty– including physical health, parental support, the sense of emotional safety, as well as actual resources - the idea that Black students are essentially the same as everyone else, and that they will respond to an intervention in pretty much in the same way as everyone else, ignores the world we actually live in.

The problem is that our cultural environment is essentially poisonous for students of color. 

In our society, we tend to reduce the concept of racism to its most extreme manifestation; that is, when a ‘prejudiced’ persons discriminates in an explicit way. By that definition, racism really is largely a thing of the past; to act in a blatantly racist way has become culturally unacceptable. No one in the public eye gets away with it today. (Even the racists have to pretend not to be racists.)

Here’s one example of the insidious effect of cultural racism. There are years of studies demonstrating that in our society, Blacks are less ‘trusting’ than Whites. (Not surprisingly, since the more vulnerable one feels, the less trusting one tends to be.)  Now consider the impact of this on educational capacity, where the student-teacher relationship is so critical. For example, how willing is a student to ask for help if he’s afraid of reinforcing a cultural stereotype that ‘his kind’ isn’t particularly smart?  Most insidiously, over time, these perceptions get internalized.

But an even larger issue is the degree to which one “trusts the future”; that is, how much control do you think you have over your own fate? Again, not surprisingly, the degree of control that one believes one has is closely correlated to future achievement - more so “than all school-related factors put together.”

Further, this is not an irrational assumption. It is hard to argue that the system isn’t rigged. There are mountains of data that show Blacks are disproportionately disciplined for similar transgressions as Whites, both within the educational system, and without. What’s the point of making an effort if the system is rigged?  We cannot pretend that students are unaware of this.

This dynamic explains why immigrants from predominantly Black regions, such as Africa or the West Indies, often become more successful than African-Americans who have been here for generations. In their formative years, they weren’t poisoned by the cultural water.  A wise person once said, “The sins of the fathers are visited upon their children, even unto the third and fourth generation.”  Think about that. From the time that we begin to address an idea in our collective psyche as false and dangerous, it takes three or four generations to root out its detrimental effects. And that’s if we don’t go into collective denial and take a generation ‘off’.

This goes a long way to explain the ironic sense of nostalgia that many older Black Americans have for the kind of education they received during the ‘good old days’ of white supremacy, even with resources that were typically a third of their White counterparts. They remember those schools as “symbols of institutionalized caring” in which “building men and women” was seen as part of the school leader's mission – and which included an explicit challenge to the notion of racial inferiority. There is something about this education that many older Black adults now wish they could give to their grandchildren. What has been lost is so significant that some still believe that desegregation was a deliberate plot to break the spirit of Black communities. 

More summer reading: So Much Reform, So Little Change

 The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools, Payne

(The first of several posts)

This is a wonderful, important book. In my view, it is especially important because our desire to move education policy away from the current obsession with standardized tests and misguided efforts at “accountability” - and into the 21^st-centruy - is going to remain stuck (at least at the state and national level) until we figure out how to address “the persistence of failure in urban schools”.  Here are the ideas that I found most compelling.

Early on, Payne notes that most school “reform” interventions typically deliver considerably less than they promise, No Child Left Behind being the classic example. Over ten years after the initial legislation, it is hard to find anyone who still believes that NCLB will transform education - with the possible exception of those who are paid to believe it. (I saw this particular dynamic at work at a couple of recent PDE presentations at a PSBA conference.)  How does it go, “it’s hard to persuade a man of something when he is paid to believe otherwise?” (Upton Sinclair, more or less)

While this disconnect between theory and reality is sometimes explained by “political expediency or earnest incompetence”, the larger issue is that “people in leadership positions do not have a systemic understanding of the causes of failure.”  Put another way, discussions at the policy level are often –usually- completely disconnected from the daily reality of the classroom, particularly one in an urban school.

Although Payne shares the widely held concern about our overreliance on test scores, he makes the useful point that it’s very difficult to talk about large-scale change, particularly in bottom-tier schools, without referring to test scores. And while there are other useful ways of measuring progress, such as graduation rates and post-secondary achievement, test scores may have greater relevance in these schools. If over half of your students aren’t reading at grade level - as measured by test scores - that is a problem screaming to be addressed. If you’re at 92%, however, moving your scores to 94% may not be your highest priority.

He also suggests that we can learn a lot more from closely examining a few successful outliers to see what they’re doing differently, instead of looking for modest movements in overall averages - where it’s very difficult to tease out the components that are actually making a difference. In his view, we should be trying to determine the set of conditions that produce an environment conducive to significant improvement.

Here’s a key fact:  the degree to which teachers in a given school “trust one another” is highly correlated with whether the school is improving or stagnating. This is entirely consistent with over a decade of school climate research. “Do teachers care about each other?” “Is it safe to discuss frustrations and concerns?” It turns out that the culture of a school is far more important than how the school is organized.  Another critical factor is the level of trust and respect between teachers and principals.  It should be obvious, however, that there is no quick, easy way to create a climate of trust and collaboration.

Here’s another key point, one greatly at odds with most public policy initiatives: there is no magic bullet, no ‘one thing’ that will magically transform these schools. Rather, a lot of issues have to be addressed, all more-or-less together, because they are highly interrelated and any one of them has the potential to pull down a new initiative. 

     Here’s a partial list of what we’re up against:
·        Teacher skepticism about student learning capacity; fixed mindset
·        Weak pre-professional teacher training
·        Weak sense of teacher agency
·        Inadequate instructional supervision
·        Teacher isolation; unwillingness to accept leadership from other teachers
·        Drive-by, unfocused professional development
·        Disconnect between curriculum and assessment
·        Lack of discipline/ classroom management skills
·        Lack of teacher knowledge about students’ backgrounds and interests
·        Inadequate resources
·        Instability of instructional staff and leadership

And perhaps most importantly:

·        A generalized belief that nothing we could do will actually make a difference.

Tinkering Toward Utopia, part 2 – Lessons learned

So, what can we learn from a century’s worth of experiments in progressive, student-centered education?

One important ‘lesson learned’ is the importance of continuity in instructional leadership – many of these attempts were undermined by high principal turnover and teacher burnout. But perhaps the greatest fault of reformers has been in placing too much emphasis on persuading fellow education experts, and not enough on convincing the greater public of the importance and value of change – and a clear picture of what it might look like. People have a deeply embedded idea of what ‘real school’ is; changing that mental framework is no small task.

Student-centered reform is not the only educational policy to have run in cycles. Back in 1921, a school superintendent wrote, “We all agree that one teacher differs from another, yet few practical schoolmen have attempted to rate and pay them by merit, and most of those … have lived to repent of their rashness.” Teachers have (correctly, I believe) traditionally “viewed merit pay not as an incentive, but as a threat to professional comity” and irrelevant to the intellectual and social growth of their students. ‘Merit pay’ became fashionable in the 1950s, but had almost disappeared by the 1970s. And yet, here we are again.

The fundamental problem with making merit pay work is that there is little agreement on “just what effective teaching is and how to measure it.” Beyond that, promoting competition among teachers is likely to reduce productivity because it incentivizes teachers to conceal their best ideas, and to pursue their own interests rather than the general good.

Another problem is the deep disconnect between what teachers find most valuable in their profession, compared with public perception. In the public’s view, the two greatest concerns for teachers in 1981 were poor discipline and salary. For teachers, however, their greatest concern was the public’s perception of education! (Little has changed since 1981.) Salaries came in fourth. (As I’ve argued more than once, it’s not about the money, it’s about respect.)  The greatest motivating factor for teachers: the intrinsic rewards of seeing their students grow intellectually, and as people. If we really understood this, merit pay would seem like the silly idea that it is.

Reforms that fundamentally hope to alter the cultural construction of ‘school’ won’t succeed without a lengthy and substantial public dialogue about both the ends and means of schooling. (What is the 21^st-century mission of the public school?)  The challenge is to negotiate a common ground of purpose sufficiently compelling that it unifies citizens in support of a renewed vision for public education.

One way we might approach this is to begin by asking people to recall their best experience as public school students. Invariably, they will recall the influence of a teacher who challenged them, made a subject come alive, or provided support at a stressful point in their lives. Which, come to think of it, aligns pretty well with what teachers identify as the most rewarding aspect of their profession. This suggests that the way to frame school reform is that we want to make such encounters between students and teachers more common.

A final note: it is essential that policymakers understand the limitations of what can be accomplished at the policy level. At best, education policy can set the conditions for effective administration and practice. The actual work has to be done by the administrators and teachers who interact with students on a daily basis. 

Book Report: Tinkering Toward Utopia

by David Tyack

Part 1 of my summer reading series

The Carnegie unit was established in 1906, and over a century later it is still the primary means of measuring student academic advancement. It was developed by an elite group of university presidents, who “confident that they had the answers to improving American education, were determined to reform from the top down a system of schooling they regarded as chaotic and ineffective.”  Since what’s good for the universities is good for the country, this system remains fundamentally in place even now.

The presidents group further determined that a minimum of 14 Carnegie credits should be required for university admission, as well as the content of these academic units - the reason most high schools still follow the traditional biology-chemistry-physics sequence. (And probably why we now have a biology Keystone exam graduation requirement.)  It’s also the main reason most high schools are still organized by content area departments. Much of the rigidity of the typical high school curriculum lies in this tie to college entrance requirements.

There have been challenges to this structure every twenty years or so, but none has really taken root because there is just too great of an investment in the current system. Interestingly - perhaps depressingly - a century of reform attempts will sound familiar to modern education progressives.

For example, beginning in the early 1920s, progressive educators in Denver objected to what they saw as domination by colleges of the secondary school program. Regarding the Carnegie unit as a straightjacket, they began to blend subjects, and experiment with time and space.  The Dalton Plan required “that teachers negotiate monthly contracts with their students.”  All students were required to study certain subjects, but it was the responsibility of the students to decide the pace of the work, who to work with, etc. No 50-minute periods, no ‘bells’, no teachers lecturing in front of large classes.

In the 1930s, the Progressive Education Association sponsored the Eight Year study. With a million dollars at their disposal, they were able to persuade over 200 colleges to admit students on a principal’s recommendation alone – GPAs and SATs not required. Freed from the ‘tyranny’ of the Carnegie unit, teachers developed curricula that crossed departmental boundaries, with less emphasis on traditional academic subjects and more time on the arts. Teachers spent less time lecturing, and more time planning – with each other, and with their students. Education became more individualized and student-centered. And much of this was accomplished using the ‘school within a school’ structure.

Any of this sound familiar?

Among the research findings from the study: graduates of these progressive schools did far better in college, on average, than their peers.  But by the early 1950s these reforms began to fade. Why?  The general consensus was that World War II and the specter of the Cold War brought a concern for security that strengthened the cultural tendency towards authoritarianism, in both society and in school. Compounding this, the passage of the GI bill allowed universities to become more selective in their admissions.

In the 1960s, yet another wave of reformers attempted to “overthrow the Carnegie unit … the teacher-dominated traditional curriculum, passive styles of learning, and the isolation of teachers from each other.”  And again, this idea seemed to have real potential, particularly for the most motivated and creative students.

It is interesting to note, however, that students who had already learned to succeed in a more directive environment often became frustrated when teachers no longer told them what to do. The greater flexibility that was a boon for some students was problematic for others.  In the public’s mind, this came to be seen as a ‘lack of discipline’, resulting in a desire to ‘get back to basics’. And so, in the 1970s the pendulum began to swing back again.

So, what can be learned from a century's worth of experiments in progressive, student-centered education?

PSBA conference – The Third Teacher

Since Crabtree, Rohrback and Associates (CRA) is the architectural design firm for our high school building renovation project, it seemed particularly good timing that they had a presentation at the PSBA conference in October. As the basis for much of their thinking, they use The Third Teacher (subtitled, “79 Ways you can use design to Transform Teaching & Learning”) which refers the concept of designing school buildings to be active contributors to the educational environment.

Particularly interesting was their reference to Maslow. Obviously, the first consideration in the design of a school building is in providing shelter and warmth, safety and security - referring to the two bottom layers of the familiar hierarchy. There is a lot of research concerning the impact of insufficient air flow (low oxygen levels), lack of natural lighting, and classrooms that are too hot or cold (we’re familiar with this) on the human capacity for learning.

In a similar vein, they also pay a lot of attention to acoustics: ‘they design for speech and hearing’. Not only is that essential to a modern education, with the increasing emphasis on communications skills, there is a fair amount of research that suggests a significant proportion of special education designations are actually misdiagnosed hearing problems. Mishearing, or having to guess at every third word a teacher says is probably a bigger handicap – and more easily overlooked - than poor vision.

In modern school design, a lot more attention is being paid to uniting the disciplines as opposed to the more traditional departmental (silo) approach, so ‘adjacencies’ within the building are an important consideration.

Another area that is easily overlooked in school design is furniture. I have long maintained that traditional school furniture is a form of torture, but that is changing. Particularly in elementary schools, they suggest that it is time to “make peace with fidgeting.”  It turns out that allowing a certain amount of physical movement is good for the brain, too. 

The book (you are welcome to borrow my copy)  is a fascinating read, with topics ranging from the value of consulting with students on school design, to creating spaces for ‘tinkering’ and the display of student work,  to sustainability, to embracing and engaging the community, with chapters written by Sir Ken Robinson and Howard Gardner, among others.  It is exciting to see this thinking being incorporated into the design of the new State High.  

Their parting quote, courtesy of Albert (Einstein):  “I never teach my students, I only attempt to provide an environment in which they can learn.”

Amanda Ripley at the PSBA conference

Tuesday’s keynote speaker at last month’s PSBA conference was the highly respected education researcher and writer, Amanda Ripley.  She recently spent a year looking at education policy and practice around the world, particularly through the eyes of students. With the large caveat that education policy is extremely complex and difficult to compare across national and cultural boundaries, her research suggests:

• ·        The need for coherent national standards. (See “Common Core”)
• ·        We should wait as long as possible before ‘tracking’ students.
• ·        A need to improve teacher and principal training
• ·        Parental involvement in their child’s education should be primarily in the home.

National standards  It would be deeply unfortunate if the bungled implementation of the Common Core (in particular, the misguided tie to hi-stakes testing) ended up sabotaging the effort to implement something most educators actually agree on.

Tracking  It appears that the strategy of heterogeneous grouping of students, especially in the earlier grades, has benefits for all students.

Teacher and principal training   In Finland, for example, prospective teachers are required to spend a full year in the classroom, under the supervision of an experienced teacher. (A terrific example of which is the Penn State/SCASD Professional Development School.) In my mind there is no question that this should become a standard element of teacher training.

Parental involvement  The practice of “helicopter parents” is a particularly American phenomena, and not especially helpful. Better to create a supportive learning environment at home, encourage reading by opportunity and example, and engage your children in meaningful conversations. (when possible!)

Other observations:

In Finland, there is far less emphasis on standardized testing. They use it primarily as a way to examine school-wide performance (the original premise of NCLB, by the way) for the express purpose of determining which schools need additional resources. I highlight this point, because in the United States, we do exactly the opposite: we use the results of these tests to punish schools, by removing resources! Seems counter-productive, if you ask me. Also: because the goal is to measure school-wide performance, not individual students (there are better ways to do that) they use statistical sampling, because it’s really not necessary to test every student!

Possibly the most important difference between the United States and Finland is the level of respect accorded the teaching profession. It is not easy to get into a teaching school in Finland, and everyone knows it. (Note: this is not strictly about having a high GPA.)  As a result of the higher stature, teachers are better-paid (the community supports it), and they are given greater autonomy. (Unlike in the United States, where teachers, increasingly, have less autonomy.) The combination of better teacher training, higher expectations, and greater autonomy produces a virtuous cycle of teaching capacity.

It’s worth noting that Finland has both coherent national standards and greater teacher autonomy. The two are not mutually exclusive.

One last item: Ms. Ripley also spoke about the unique role of competitive sports in American education.  I think I’ll save that topic for another day.

The Hijacking of the Charter School Movement, revisited

(The responses were very informative.)

As my handful of fans will recall, several months ago I wrote about how the charter school movement – conceived as an opportunity for teacher empowerment and educational innovation – had been “hijacked” by those who recognized in Pennsylvania’s charter school law an opportunity to make money.

I thought it would be enlightening to also examine some of the responses to that article.

Tellingly, there were two very quick responses (here’s one) from outside our local community, from two men who just happen to be employees of the state charter school industry. It is their job, quite literally, to scan newspapers from across the state each morning, to see if anyone has popped their head up to challenge their highly lucrative business model, and then ‘rapidly-respond’ in their version of whack-a-mole. (In this metaphor, I am the mole.)

The great irony is that you, dear taxpayer, are paying their salaries! (Albeit, indirectly)  This happens because Pennsylvania’s charter school industry makes so much money that they can afford to hire lobbyists! To protect their business model!  One almost has to admire the evil beauty of it.

Now, let me ask: how much of what they said did you understand? I would guess not much, because that’s not the point. Their entire goal is to sow enough confusion so that the average reader doesn’t know what to think. (Well, this guy says “A” and these other guys say “not A”. I’m not an expert, so who am I supposed to believe?) And they live to fight another day.

The other point to be made here is this rhetoric is what our legislators hear every day.  Money, mostly in the form of campaign contributions, buys access. So it should be no surprise that they were able to gut the proposed charter school reform legislation in the final days preceding the vote.

I bring up the third letter of interest mostly for comic relief. It came from our local “I’m against everything,” curmudgeon. (Every community has one.) The irony is that for many years this gentlemen has promoted himself as “the friend of the taxpayer”, so I naively anticipated having him weigh in. Ha!  Apparently, “curmudgeon” carries more weight than “friend of taxpayers.”  

Did you understand a word of what he said, either?  I didn’t think so.

The fourth letter was the most disappointing. Written by the leadership of one of our pretty good local charters, their message was essentially “we would never do that!”; which misses the point entirely. As for what’s happening in the rest of the Commonwealth, our heads are firmly buried in the sand.  But as I pointed out to them, the hundreds of millions of dollars that the charter school chains skim from taxpayers aren’t being used to educate anyone’s children – theirs or ours.  We ought to be on the same side, as advocates of good public policy - but then, they’re also afraid of a disruption to the business model. Don’t rock the boat! 

Well, this boat needs rocking.

The Contradiction of the Keystone exams

“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

A column in EdWeekly this summer wisely made this point in regards to the new, incredibly complex, unreliable - yet state-mandated - teacher evaluations, suggesting that we should have first asked the question, “What is it that we're trying to measure?”  Indeed, that question should have been asked before the state Board of Education voted to mandate ‘Keystone exams’ in English literature, Algebra and Biology as high school graduation requirements.

Here’s the essence of the issue, as I see it: the Keystone exams are fundamentally incompatible with the set of knowledge and skills that students need for success in the modern world.  Mandating them as high school graduation requirements only serves to institutionalize a program of education more appropriate for the middle of the last century. It will reduce opportunities for students, who instead of taking electives in their areas of interest, will be required to take remedial courses in order to pass an exam that measures their ability to memorize and regurgitate information they are unlikely to ever need or use.

I often ask, half in jest, how much of high school biology do you remember? Then how important was it?  Do you know the answer to this sample Keystone Biology exam question: which characteristic is common to prokaryotes & eukaryotes?  If not, why do we now require every high school student to know this?

An important insight I gleaned from my time in business school: a business executive doesn’t need to be an expert on anything; rather, he or she needs to know enough about everything to understand what the experts are saying. This strikes me as a pretty good model for education: develop an expertise in one or two areas of passion, but understand the principles of everything else well enough to see the connections.

So, instead of requiring temporary proficiency in the algorithms of algebra, we should make sure that students understand the basic principles - as well as those of statistics, probability, compound interest, and ‘present-value’ - maybe even how calculus ‘works’, even if you don’t know how to find a derivative. (I once asked my sister, who has been a successful civil engineer for over three decades, how often she used calculus at her job. Her answer: once. Once, in over thirty years! – and that was to solve a brain-teaser heard on the office radio.)

In other words, when students graduate high school, they should have a toolbox for solving real-world problems – as well as some actual experience in doing so. That toolbox would include not only knowledge in the core areas mentioned above, but also well-developed communication and research skills, the capacity for critical-thinking and creativity, and the civic skills that come from years of collaborating with others.

Some years ago, when the Partnership for 21st-century skills began asking college presidents and business leaders what their new students and hires were lacking, that was the list they came up with.  Proficiency in Algebra and Biology were not on the list. This is what we should mean when we say “college and career ready”.  It’s what the unfortunately maligned Common Core standards tries to address.  But that’s a column for another day.

Whenever I talk to parents about what they want in their child’s education, they understand this. Why don’t the policy-makers in Harrisburg get it?

The Common Core: good idea, disastrous execution

Most of us in the field of education have come around to the view that it’s no longer appropriate for students to spend the bulk of their time on the memorization of facts and the rote use of math and science algorithms. In  large part, the Common Core standards were an attempt to address this, by refocusing classroom instruction on conceptual understanding and the development of higher-order thinking skills - something the better teachers have always tried to do.

The other rationale for the Common Core is that in a highly mobile society, we should have some measure of consistency from one region of the country to another. The parents of a reasonably successful 5th-grader in Mississippi should not be shocked to discover that their child is reading at only a 3rd-grade level in Pennsylvania. (A recent, true story.) Though far from perfect, and despite the fact that there was almost no input from actual teachers in the development of these standards, the majority of educators are of the opinion that the Common Core reasonably meets these two objectives.

So, what’s the problem?  Well, there are several.

First, the corresponding student assessments are still being developed.  We have no idea how well these assessments will measure what we want them to measure – the tests have yet to be tested!  Plus, how can you assess a student’s  ability to “construct arguments and cite evidence” – key components of the Common Core -  with a standardized,  multiple-choice test? 

Nevertheless, we are already attaching high stakes, such as high school graduation requirements and teacher evaluations, to the results of these untested tests!  In Pennsylvania, the new Keystone exams were developed independently of, and are in many respects, incompatible with, the new “PA Core” standards. Even the Gates Foundation, an early and enthusiastic proponent of the standards, has called for a delay in the implementation of these high-stakes assessments.

In spite of all this, I believe the new standards provide a potentially useful framework for teaching “21st-centrury” skills, and there are good examples of what that might look like: (For an example, see: A Classroom View on Implementing Common-Core Math.)  But they are not a panacea. The key to any new education practice: the teachers. And this is where the implementation fails miserably.

For some teachers, adjusting to the spirit of the new standards will require a significant change in practice. (more ‘coaching’; less ‘sage on the stage’ direct instruction). This is not the sort of thing that can be accomplished in one or two days of ‘drive-by’ professional development. As with any meaningful change, a successful, system-wide implementation will require time and commitment.

Meanwhile, little in the way of resources have been committed at either the national or state level towards helping teachers make this transition. In addition, there are many, many new standards – but no guidance as to which ones should be emphasized. (One consequence of not involving teachers from the beginning.)  Perhaps most astonishingly, many of our teaching colleges have yet to even acknowledge the existence of the Common Core standards.

We’re trying to fly a plane that we haven’t finished building.

Finally, the principals who have the responsibility for administering the new state-required teacher evaluations have not received much more than ‘drive-by’ professional development, themselves. How are teachers supposed to have confidence in this – let alone the other major component of the new evaluations: student test scores, which are a notoriously unreliable way of measuring teacher ‘effectiveness’?  If teachers don’t have confidence in the evaluation model, it’s almost guaranteed to fail.  Ironically, but not surprisingly, PDE’s solution is to have principals use a “check-the-box” approach - which puts us right back where we started, while pretending to have made great progress.

State College is probably ahead of the curve. The District has embraced the Danielson model for effective teaching, and our superintendent has made it clear that our teachers will not be held accountable for things over which they have no control. Even so, this is going to be a challenge.

If we want our students to benefit from the Common Core standards,  we have to disconnect them from the current high-stakes assessments; involve the teachers(!), and take the time to do it right.

The hijacking of the charter school movement

(or, Why School Board Members Roll their Eyes when the Subject is Brought Up)

The concept of the charter school was first articulated back in the 1980s by Albert Shanker, the head of the New York City teachers’ union. Charter schools were conceived as an extension of the public school system – “incubators of experimentation” – to be run by public school teachers, but having the flexibility to try out new ideas, which, if successful, could be templates for school improvement. In State College, our alternative school, the Delta Program, is the closest to matching Shanker’s original vision.

But  there are some other pretty good local examples. One of our charter schools was built on the small learning community model; another emphasizes project-based learning; yet another, instruction in multiple languages. These models have value to students and their parents, and they could provide us with useful insight. But any value we receive from these ‘experiments’ comes in spite of state policy, not because of it.

First, Pennsylvania law allows for little meaningful oversight of charter schools, and there’s no mechanism for closing an ineffective one. There is neither accountability nor transparency; it is next to impossible to find out how charter schools spend their money. And while the local school district technically has the authority to deny a charter school application, the PA Dept. of Education has made it quite clear that it is willing to overrule local decisions.

Second, nearly all charter school funding comes from the pocket of the ‘hosting’ school district. This wasn’t always the case. The district’s ‘average per pupil expenditure’ is the amount that charter schools receive for each student they enroll. But recognizing that school districts have certain ‘fixed’ costs (construction debt, for example) that don’t disappear when students transfer to a charter school, the Commonwealth initially promised to pick up 30% of the tab - a promise that was never kept.  In recent years, state reimbursement has dropped to zero. Guess who picks up the tab now?  (In State College, that amounts to about $5 million/year.)

But it’s worse than that. Here are two examples that taxpayers should find outrageous.

On average, the cost for educating a special education student is about double that of a regular student, and charter schools receive that higher amount for each special education student they enroll. The actual cost of educating these students, however, varies considerably. So, some charter schools have learned to ‘cherry pick’ the less expensive students, and pocket the difference. Alternatively, many students have magically received a special ed designation only upon enrolling in a charter school.  

As a result, last year $350 million dollars flowed from public schools (and their taxpayers) into charter schools for special education purposes. But charter schools spent only $150 million. That’s a $200 million dollar profit, at taxpayer expense.

Then there’s the pension ‘double-dip’. School districts are required to contribute a percentage of teacher salaries into the state pension fund, and that amount is part of the calculation of per pupil expenses that charter schools receive. But the state reimburses charter schools for that very expense so, in effect, they receive the money twice.  The cost to taxpayers: close to $1 billion dollars over the next six years!

Addressing these two issues alone would have gone a long way towards plugging the hole in the current state budget.

One might assume that these are simple oversights, relatively easy to fix legislatively. In fact, “charter school reform” legislation was recently introduced that would have addressed these issues. You might ask, who would oppose it?  Well, the for-profit charter schools, of course! - who just happen to be major campaign contributors to many of our legislators in Harrisburg. (In fact, as a result of intense charter school lobbying, said provisions were removed from the aforementioned legislation.)

The others who opposed it see charter schools as a way to slowly erode support for the entire public school system. But years of research have demonstrated that charter schools, on average, perform no better than ‘regular’ public schools - and because there’s so little oversight, sometimes quite worse. More disturbing: Pennsylvania ranks third from the bottom nationally in charter school performance. Is the current system a defensible use of taxpayer money? The answer seems obvious.

Public needs clarity on Common Core Standards; Brooks isn’t helping

David Brooks’ main premise - that the public’s understanding  of  the merits of the new Common Core standards is becoming yet another victim of the current political environment – is one I agree with.  Unfortunately, by failing to accurately articulate the objections of the “left” from his pulpit at the Times, Brooks is only adding to the public’s confusion.  

As Brooks himself points out, over 75% of teachers are generally in favor of the new standards (in spite of the fact that teachers were minimally consulted in their creation, but that’s an argument for another day.)  So what’s the issue? Teachers’ unions in New York, for example, are objecting to the fact that teachers haven't received adequate time, proper training, financial resources, curricula, and the other support that will be needed in order to successfully bring the standards into their classrooms.

Most teachers have yet to receive training on what, for many, would be a significant shift in their practice.  Further, we have no baseline of evidence on how well the new ‘Common-Core-aligned’ tests will actually do in terms of assessing the new standards -  the tests are still being written, for God’s sake!  (In fact, I would argue that with its greater emphasis on critical-thinking, and the ability to articulate that thinking, the Common Core may not be compatible with high-stakes, standardized testing.)  And yet, in many states,  how well students perform on these untested tests is going to impact performance reviews, pay and even careers, starting as early as the next school year. Elsewhere, states are implementing the new standards – but measuring it with the old non-aligned tests!  Are you kidding me??

For anyone who actually cares about education, these would be very reasonable and important concerns. Using the new state tests (based, theoretically, on the standards) to evaluate educators and schools may well destroy the benefits the standards might have provided before we even get off the ground. The fact that these concerns are essentially being brushed off as ‘whining’ is what leads one to question motives.

Some of this I attribute to the arrogance of policy-makers who fail to understand that  large-scale change cannot come all at once, nor solely from the top down. (See my reference above to the lack of teacher input.)  And some of this, frankly, is opportunism on the part of those who really do want to undermine the basic principle of public education. (“Just because you’re paranoid…”)

But let’s be optimistic! I’ve been making the case for some time that the standards, by and large, are pretty good, and that the implementation, by and large, has been pretty awful. Let’s keep the former and fix the latter. And take time to do it right.

Preparing our Students for the Future – Intentionally

There’s a danger when a phrase becomes so common that it begins to lose its meaning. With that risk in mind, this post will be about “21^st-century skills”, the educational framework that includes critical-thinking, collaboration, creativity, communication (beyond reading and writing), and to which I’ve added a 5^th ‘C’: ‘citizenship’

There’s an increasing recognition that the skills today’s students will need to live successful lives are not entirely the same as they were thirty or forty years ago. Information that once would have required a trip to the library and hours of research can now be obtained in a matter of minutes, or even seconds. It is now no harder to communicate with someone on the other side of the world as it is with your next-door neighbor. There are far fewer jobs that require only an ability to read and follow instructions. Just doing what we did in education forty years ago, only harder and faster (more ‘rigorously!’) is not going to get us where we need to go.

And yes, the so-called 21^st-century skills have always been a part of a good education; (typically in the better schools, taught by the better teachers). If that was your experience you should feel privileged, because equipping every student with higher-order thinking skills has never been an intentional goal of our education system. Which perhaps was ok when a relatively small percentage of the population went on to college and/or professional jobs (and you could make a decent living even if you didn’t). 

Which brings me to the  Eighth Grade Academic Literacy Course Proposal which our Board approved last week. Here are some of the highlights of the proposal, with some paraphrasing on my part, (and my comments). Boldface is mine.

What is the Rationale for this Course?

Academic Literacy 8 will offer inquiry-based learning through extensive reading, thinking, collaboration, and communication in an effort to prepare students for success in high school and beyond… <recognizing that>  teaching and learning in the 21st century requires a blending of specific skills, content knowledge, expertise and digital literacy. (I think it’s a big deal that this is an intentional goal.)

We believe this course will assist our students in meeting the following benchmarks and expectations:

• All students demonstrate acquisition of 21st Century Skills (including creativity & innovation; critical thinking & problem solving; communication & collaboration; and information, media and technology skills) via authentic learning experiences; (We’ll have to develop ways to measure this; standardized tests probably won’t do it.)

• All graduates are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and understanding to participate as active citizens in a global society. (I see citizenship as an essential 21^st-century skill. This has been a district goal for a long time – we just haven’t been very intentional about it.)

As Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening are an integrated part of every content area, teachers will support each student’s development with the following learning experiences: (Especially in terms of what is tested, ‘speaking and listening’ are essential, but almost completely overlooked. The recognition of the importance of these skills in every subject area – not just ‘English’ - is another big deal.)

• Read and comprehend complex literary and informational text independently and proficiently;

• Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation; (“Demonstration of understanding”, not regurgitation of facts, should be the preferred means of assessing our students’ learning.)

Effective reading has become a cognitive science that requires students to interact with texts in an effort to construct meaning. Throughout this course, students will be explicitly taught to:

• Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source, and integrate information while avoiding plagiarism. (That’s not something we paid a lot of attention to forty years ago; the encyclopedia was pretty much authoritative.)

• Draw evidence from literary and informational text to support analysis, reflection, and research. (Reflection is an essential, often overlooked, component of learning.)

• Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express information and enhance understanding of presentations. (I am particularly excited by this last item because it recognizes that having good communication skills goes beyond the ability to write a 5-paragraph essay, and that the arts are a key component of communication literacy.)

Some examples of content related activities may include:  

• English: research, non-fiction text, literary works, writing;

• Social Studies: research, non-fiction text, investigation of historic documents and cultural awareness; (You cannot communicate effectively in a global society if you do not understand culture.)

• Mathematics: Critical thinking and real world application of research and statistics; (Everyone has the capacity to become mathematically ‘literate’; this is how you do it. An understanding of statistics is essential in the modern world – and an important component of citizenship.)

• Science and Technology: Inquiry-based learning through thinking, writing and communication. (It’s no longer “just the facts, ma’am”; even scientists must be able to communicate effectively. Also important: self-directed inquiry.)

As part of the district’s literacy initiative, teachers and administrators will continue to be provided with professional development in the area of academic literacy. (This might seem obvious, but as we speak, the Common Core is being implemented in 46 states, asking teachers to make significant changes in their practice, yet with minimal professional development. This is a recipe for disaster.)

Having the opportunity for teachers to plan collaboratively within the school day will provide students with more frequent integrated learning experiences. (If there was one thing we could learn from Finland, it would be the value of giving teachers time to collaborate. If teachers don’t collaborate, how can we expect students to?)

Now, all of this sounds great in theory, but the most exciting part of this proposal is that we have already seen the 7^th-grade Academic Literacy course in action – and the demonstration of higher-order thinking skills by these students, and their enthusiasm, is just astonishing.

Finally, if high school is going to evolve into a highly individualized experience, as it should, than middle school is precisely the time and place to do this.

School Climate, locally owned and operated

Is it possible to teach and learn in a dysfunctional school environment? Certainly, anything is possible – but it’s like swimming against the current. It’s just common sense that, long-term, teachers are more effective if they’re in a school in which they feel respected and supported, where collaboration and innovation are encouraged, and where teachers are not held accountable for things beyond their control. In a time when resources are at such a premium, one would think that we would jump at an opportunity to make our educational system more effective - yet many ‘reformers’ have been pushing us in exactly the opposite direction.  

How did this happen?  It’s a vicious cycle that began with policies (i.e., NCLB)  that relied on the threat of sanctions to make them ‘work’ (although they didn’t work), and that have continued (well-intentioned or not) with Race to the Top. So we have the DoE twisting the arms of state education departments, who threaten school administrators, who intimidate principals, who then – whether consciously or unconsciously - bully their teachers into ‘doing what they’re told’. And what the teachers experience inevitably affects the students. (It takes a lot of courage to break the chain. See: Are You Stuck With Their Mindset?)   

Here’s one example: we’re beginning to see some pushback from parents and educators against the misuse of standardized tests; tests that consume significant resources in time and money with little value in return.  But testing abuse is only a symptom of the larger problem: education policies that have tried to ‘reform’ the system through coercion. This runs counter to everything we know about human nature.

It is true that ‘fear’ can be an effective motivator – in the short term, maybe. But you can’t live that way. Education is a marathon, not a sprint - living in an atmosphere of high tension will quickly exhaust everyone. 

This is the great overlooked issue of ‘low-performing’ schools. Leadership turns over constantly, so there’s no continuity of expectation. Instead of a culture of collaboration and innovation, teachers bunker down and try to stay out of sight. (As Debra Meier recently noted: “teachers are treated differently in low-income schools.") Just being in a school that is ‘low-performing’ places everyone under greater scrutiny and stress. Why would anyone want to work there?

Unsurprisingly, this results in high turnover, which means you don’t have the luxury of filling open positions with the ‘best’ candidates; instead, you get a lot of kids just out of college, who typically have no idea how to survive, let alone thrive, in such an environment. 

Yet, we continue to believe in the fictional “To Sir, with Love”: the superstar teacher. (Key word: fictional.) But how many superstar teachers did you encounter in school?  Is this really a viable model?  Besides, in today’s environment, Poitier’s character would burn out in three years (or be fired for insufficient test scores) and wouldn’t be given enough autonomy to make much difference, anyway. The reality is that teachers want an opportunity “to serve with kindred spirits” – a key ingredient to ‘retaining teachers in high-need schools’  - where they can collectively make a difference. 

So the only viable alternative is to build a ‘virtuous’ cycle. This takes time and cannot be done from a thousand miles away in Washington. (That’s not to say Washington shouldn’t have a role in providing resources, training, best practices, etc.)  It begins with school leaders who consider the long-term impact of their decisions. They see the annual budget as a tool for getting where they want to be ten years from now. They measure student success not by a one-time test score, but by the quality of life their students have twenty years from now. 

They expect competence, professionalism and improvement - but they know that mistakes are inevitable, and view them as opportunities to learn. And so, people do. Over time, teachers and staff of similar disposition are hired, until a ‘culture’ develops – one in which quality teachers want to stay and build careers, turnover is low, experience is valued – and there is a healthy competition for the relatively few positions that become available each year. Only then is it possible to create an environment that is  emotionally and intellectually safe for students, where everyone feels they are part of something important.

Ultimately, this is the choice: education policies that are based primarily in fear, or those based primarily in, well, love. One works, the other doesn’t.