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Emerging Trend: Superman Snubs the Justice League, Lex Laughs to the Bank

September 18th, 2010

NBC’s Education Nation confirmed their list of panelists for the upcoming education summit – none of whom are teachers and all of whom seem to take snaps from the same ed reform playbook. All except for the lone Randi Weingarten. She will play the role of Dissenting Voice in an ed reform narrative that is being ballyhooed across the nation. (Except where it’s not.)

It was important for event organizers to give Randi a place on the panel. The basic ed reform thesis, chronicled in the upcoming “Waiting for Superman,” begins with the idea that the school system & schools are broken, and that unionized teachers are where the faulty rubber meets the road. The trouble is, if the powers-that-be were to directly cast teachers as Lex Luthor their plan might backfire.

Who’s willing to place the failure of the American Education System on little old Mrs. Newton, teaching 2nd grade to generations of tots that loved her? That won’t sell well or bring in votes.

Enter unions stage left. Randi, as president of the American Federation of Teachers, has been a vocal critic of NCLB, RTTT, & the Fire-(Teachers)-At-Will squad of trigger happy reformers. As a teacher representative, she’s become the de facto Lightning Rod in the plot line that pits unions (as antagonists) against the great teachers the ed reformers (as protagonists) would deliver if only meddling teacher advocates would step aside.

For the NBC organizers, she needs to be a panelist in order to give the Gates’ League the whipping boy (girl) it requires.

The story goes like this: the unions enable the hordes of bad teachers who are responsible for keeping students from achieving. All the while the benevolent market forces of goodness & quality do their darnedest to right this wrong through superhero feats of privatizing, hiring & firing, and incentivizing teaching to the tests.

We are asked to buy into this plot-line and then jump to reformers’ same conclusions. Effectively, we are asked to leap these tall buildings, each in a single bound of reasoning:

  1. If we weigh the cattle more often, they’ll get fatter.
  2. Non-union teachers teach better.
  3. Charter schools = silver bullet against poverty & lack of parent involvement.
  4. Merit pay will be enough improve teacher “performance”. (A recent Vanderbilt study concludes otherwise.)

These unproven assumptions need more than super breath to blow me over. I’m just not convinced that these measures will lead to more professional educators & greater access to quality learning environments for all students.

The Bottom Line Variable

But what if they are wrong?

What if the fear mongering and hyperbolized “broken” metaphors that the media outlets have bought-into & hyped are the machinations of private stakes and bottom lines, rather than deep insights into poverty, parenting & learning? (That’s not to say there are not deeply rooted problems that need transforming. But “broken”?! That seems a slap in the face to the thousands who work in our nation’s schools.)

On his site, How the University Works, Marc Bousquet brings this point to light:

I’d like to see a few more of us start to question the objectivity of The New York Times and Washington Post, both corporations with increasingly large hopes that profits from their education ventures will prop up sagging journalism revenues. The Post, which owns Kaplan and shocked readers by blatantly pushing Kaplan’s legislative agenda in print and in person is already an education corporation that owns a newspaper as a sideline.

What is curious is that even Fox & Friends has discovered what the Chamber of Commerce and the Washington Post knew a long time ago: The Obama/Duncan algorithm for improving our nations’ schools has a hidden variable — profitability.

Non-union teachers + prepackaged curricula + (test x test x test) = Corporate Bling Package

Standardizing content across the country simplifies what all teachers teach, making it easier to . . .

Increase class size and save moola on teachers (especially the union-free teachers in charter schools who get paid less & have fewer benefits), which frees up money for . . .

Buying curricula in bulk from major textbook companies (which are more profitable to produce in larger numbers) which will necessitate. . .

Buying tests designed specifically for those prepackaged curricula, which will be justified because it will help  prepare students for . . .

Super-sized multiple-choice assessments to determine if teachers are teaching, which will . . .

Earn testing companies stacks of benjamins for administrating & scoring those tests, and has the added benefit of . . .

Determining which teachers should be fired, so newer, cheaper teachers can be hired, and more curricula can be bought to raise scores.

The private sector’s opportunity to profit handsomely from this brand of standardization has stockholders salivating & lobbyists scheming. The Chamber of Commerce, at the behest of former FL governor Jeb Bush (whose younger brother, Neil, profits from NCLB & RTTT), has become a testifying standard anywhere education reform is on the legislative docket.

It all makes me wonder if ed reform is being driven by Superman, or Lex Luthor.

What if we are asking the wrong questions?

What if the propagandized central conflict, Unions vs. Good Teaching, isn’t the central conflict after all? What if it is just a sub-plot? What if the problem is much more complex than that?

What if the central argument, “Pay great teachers for student achievement and great teachers will flock to the classroom” doesn’t hold water? What if the actual teachers we want teaching and shaping our youth are not the ones attracted by promises of pay for performance?

What if wooing and keeping great teachers requires a different sort of honey altogether?

Unfortunately, no-one is asking what it takes to attract (and retain) the truly innovative educators who can provide the transformative learning experiences that transcend race, gender, and socio-economic status. It seems assumed that bonuses, based on centralized high-stakes tests, will be enough.

In a tweet-versation with RiShawn Biddle (@DropoutNation), an education journalist and ed reform advocate, I asked if the current slate of reforms was likely to narrow the curriculum and decrease educator autonomy. He replied that it would, that it was necessary.  This made me wonder what it would take to attract and keep the best and the brightest (the most ambitious and well educated among us) to the field of teaching. So I asked him.

His response?

They need more than a paycheck. They need an environment which allows them to utilize their skills in new and creative ways. In essence, they need autonomy and the flexibility to work in a professional atmosphere where they have latitude.

And therein lies our paradox. We want/need the best and the brightest to embrace teaching as a profession, but our brand of ed reform vinegar (high stakes testing, value added firing, & standardized everything) is a hook without a worm. It doesn’t attract and/or keep the very candidates we need flocking to our schools.

Superman & the Justice League

We seem to hope that by testing the kryptonite out of students Superman will arrive. However, him being faster than a speeding bullet doesn’t make him a silver bullet. We’ll need more than Superman if we aim to make meaningful, relevant, and lasting changes to our national school system.

We’ll need the entire Justice League in order to effectively address the central conundrums of transforming our schools into learning environments of equality where students are engaged, enabled, and empowered.

Our villains are many:

  • Poverty
  • Lack of parent involvement
  • Untenable dropout rates
  • Too few high achievers in the field of teaching
  • Overly specific centralized learning goals
  • Undervalued teaching profession
  • Inaccurate measures of teacher effectiveness
  • Overuse of high stakes assessments as a cure all
  • Elitism

To tackle these villains, we must recruit & engage every one of the Justice League heroes, many of whom are dedicated teachers who’ve been asked to stay quiet and do as they’re told for far too long.

The Justice League is supposed to be a collection of people banded together in mutual cooperation.

Too bad they’ve been left off of Superman’s panel.

Thanks a lot, Man of Steel. You could’ve gotten a teacher on the panel if you wanted. After all, with that cool x-ray vision thing you got going, you should be able to see through their shenanigans.

This post was originally published on Ecology of Education.

Justice League Image: OSU Department of Statistics
Lex Luthor Image: Prodigeek

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Posted in Accountability, Arne Duncan, Big Idea, Collaboration, Duncan, Edreform, Education, Education Reform, educational reform, Jason Flom, Merit pay, Michelle Rhee, NCLB, Schools, Teacher Evaluation, Teacher Pay, Teacher's Unions, Testing

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Emerging Trend: Teachers as Advocates

June 15th, 2010

(This piece was originally published at Cooperative Catalyst.)

I keep waiting on the invitation:

Who: Teachers

What: Education Reform Policy Party

Where: Wonk Circles All Over

When: NOW!

Why: We want YOU to help envision & shape the next generation of schools.

The paradox, of course, is that as the reformation of education garners greater and greater media attention, teachers — the unrecognized professionals — continue to find ourselves left out despite the fact we have one of the largest stakes in the debate.

While it would be fun to point fingers at others, the truth is that we have a long history of grudgingly accepting whatever comes down the pipe at us, so it may well be of our own doing. Fortunately, that is changing, and none too soon.

However, thanks to the Race to the Top and the unprecedented funding by the federal government, the reform effort has amassed a following of armchair experts who all seem to sing from the same hymnal:

  • Market driven solutions will work.
  • Increasing competition among teachers will improve their “performance”.
  • Firing teachers must be a first priority.
  • Threats achieve results, especially if the threats involve closing a school.
  • Standardized tests are effective measures of success.
  • More standards = more learning.

Yet the most egregious (albeit tacit) tenet of the movement seems to be that reform should happen to teachers rather than with teachers.

While nearly everyone intimately involved in the reform effort would publicly deny this, the fact is that teachers remain the underutilized voice on how to improve our schools.  The most recent example of this was in the New York Times Sunday Magazine’s May 23rd piece, “The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand“.

The over 8,000 word education reform article did not quote one teacher.  Not one!

It’s outrageous! When an editor from one of the world’s most powerful newspapers does not insist that a teacher’s voice be included in such a premiere education piece we learn a lot about the esteem teachers are held in. It’s the The-emperor-has-no-clothes moment of truth. Finally, we see and we should be livid! After all, we have the most profound of roles in our schools — we teach the children.

Imagine for a second a comparable examination of banking reform that does not quote from at least a single banker. It would never happen.

Fortunately, the letters in response to the article raised this concern, perhaps most poignantly by 2nd grade teacher, Emily Miller.

There are many things in Steven Brill’s article that trouble me, but my greatest concern about the education-reform debate is the absence of teachers’ voices. When the country was debating the economic-stimulus plan, policy makers asked economists for advice, and the press frequently provided a forum for them to express their opinions. Yet when discussing education, the experts — those who work with children every day in classrooms — are rarely consulted. Many of those who were interviewed for Brill’s article said that they want what is best for children. It seems to me that if this is a genuine concern, those who best understand the challenges and problems in our schools, namely teachers, should be asked what they think.

The fact is, teachers have little history making or getting our voice heard. We are the unrealized professionals.

Thankfully, change is in the air.  Through social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, & ASCD Edge educators are building networks that turn up the volume on their ideas, concerns, and potential power of their numbers.  This ability to make our voice heard is an important first step toward being substantively included at the table.

It is a start, but we still need to do more. But how?

As with most grassroots efforts, it begins at home: Think Globally, Elect Locally.

Our local officials and state representatives need to know our names, not just the names of the union reps.  During the summer, we can make calls to our elected policy makers, write letters to the editor calling out publications for misrepresenting us, and learn how to advocate. We can interact with politicians running for office and insist they answer questions about education.  And if their answers seem copy-pasted from the Reform Hymnal, we help educate them, or deny them our vote.

Perhaps Jessica Luallen Horten said it best in her piece, “Calling Teachers to Action Beyond SB 6“:

I implore you to think about your beliefs about how children learn, what have you discovered in your years of experience? Write it down, share it, speak it and continue to examine it every day. If you truly want to advocate for children, you will become active in the process that will shape their tomorrow.

We have an opportunity to capitalize on the press and the widespread focus on education, even if we never get an invitation to the party. It’s time to bust down the doors and demand to be heard. As the experts in the field, we have a civic responsibility to speak truth to power and to armchair experts everywhere.

Change will happen.  However, the onus is on us to either be recipients of it or agents in it.

How else can teachers get involved? What other ways can we help shape the debate?

Image: alli coate

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Posted in Collaboration, disruption, Edreform, Education Reform, Jason Flom, Professional Development, Race to the Top

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Teacher Uprising 2010: It’s About Collaboration, Not Merit Pay!

April 21st, 2010

Critics of Gov. Charlie Crist’s veto of Sentate Bill 6 sensationalize it as “a real setback”, “putting the brakes on progress” & squandering of “an opportunity to improve teacher effectiveness.”

Across the nation editorial boards have sounded in on the debate raging down here in Florida, including the Chicago Tribune, which headlined their ed as, “Status Quo 1, Kids 0″.

To this I say, “I don’t think so.” (My Letter to Ed response here.)

More like — Representative Government: 1, Status Quo: 0

The Real Status Quo

For far too long the status quo has been to enact reform upon teachers, rather than alongside them.

The prevailing wisdom has been, legislators and bureaucrats alone know what is best for our schools, not the teachers with years of experience serving in the classrooms. As a result we have been summarily left out of many conversations, SB6 included.

If we were as well heeled as other professionals — doctors, lawyers, bankers — we might swell the pockets of lobbyists and gain access to the closed doors behind which such legislation is cooked up. But we aren’t well to do. We are paid a pittance and expected to accept whatever comes down the pipes at us.

(One might say that SB 6 would pay us more, but look at the reasoning from this group of Republican FL legislators, who opposed the bill, and you’ll see that it is just not possible without raising taxes or class sizes or cutting programs and/or teachers. The district funding doesn’t grow. There is no more money. Plus, additional funds will be funneled away from districts to the testing industry. What fuzzy math — and/or gall — leads policymakers to conclude there will be more money for teachers?)

The one group lobbying on teachers’ behalf, unions, are villainized as impediments to growth, barriers to progress, and reviled for their opposition to legislation such as SB6.

However, while unions played a role, Crist’s veto of SB6 is not of their doing. This is a victory of the people who spoke up for themselves, as is their democratic responsibility. This “victory” is a testament to the power of voice in our representative democracy.

Crist’s veto, even if politically motivated, demonstrated that if enough of us shout loud enough, someone’s gonna hear us.

The Teacher Uprising of 2010

The Teacher Uprising of 2010 was organized by we, the people: teachers, parents, and other concerned citizens, some union members, some not. (For the record, I am not in a union, but am a proud member of the teaching profession.) We organized through Facebook, Twitter, and cell phones to pushback against SB6.

The volume and clarity of we, the people, showed that the sort of business as usual that crafts and railroads such legislation is no longer an option.

We will not be left out of the education reform process any longer.

That’s the status quo that must be changed first, before there can be any meaningful reform to our schools! Once we are brought to the table, then lasting & effective reform can be envisioned and implemented.

A New World Order

If our leadership wishes to capitalize on the Teacher Uprising of 2010 for increasing teacher effectiveness, it needs to begin by talking and listening to the best teachers. (And despite assumptions otherwise, these teachers are not hard to identify. They are the ones with National Board Certification, who daily engage their students in complex lessons and offer substantive ideas in teacher meetings. They are the ones our kids talk about at home around the dinner table.)

Education policymakers need to ask such teachers some of the following questions:

  1. What is your blue sky for schools?
  2. What would increase your job satisfaction?
  3. What gets you inspired? What limits your inspiration?
  4. What would attract more teachers of your caliber to the classroom?
  5. How can we scaffold the profession to ensure there are new levels for the eager and innovative to aspire toward?
  6. How can we increase the success rate of new teachers?
  7. What would it take for you to teach in the schools most in need of your passion, expertise, and energy?
  8. What are the most significant limitations you face while teaching in public schools?
  9. What would a fair and equitable teacher accountability system consist of?
  10. What is the most important thing you do to set your students up for success?

If they ask, listen, and collaborate with us, I have no doubt we can move our schools toward the 21st century and not only increase teacher effectiveness, but cultivate life long learners in the process. It’s a win-win-win.

Image: Empowering Lives Tour

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Teachers’ Voices Fall on Deaf Ears

April 6th, 2010


Last night (April 5th) I attended the 8 hour Florida House Education Council Committee meeting on House Bill 7189 (HB7189), which is the companion to Senate Bill 6 (SB 6). While I never had a chance to testify, I left feeling both more inflamed by this legislation and more proud to be a member of this profession that I’ve been in a long time.

Over 120 people came to speak out against this bill (which passed the committee and goes to the House floor this week). Most were teachers, but there were also parents, principals, superintendents, and representatives from PTA, School Board Association, and Civic Concern in attendance. There was bipartisan opposition with only partisan support among representatives.

Hour after hour I listened to teachers speak truth to power about schools, learning, and the reality of teaching in Florida. Teachers who have been teaching for 20, 30, and nearly 40 years offered their thoughts and insights, all of them speaking eloquently and passionately. They truly represented the best of our profession.

Common theme in many of their testimonies: Education in Florida is over-mandated and underfunded.

The question every representative supporting this draconian bill should have been asking them was this: How do we get more teachers like you in our state’s classrooms, and then what’s it going to take to get them to stay?

The main proponents speaking on behalf of the bill: Chamber of Commerce representatives, a spokesperson from Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Florida’s Future, and Florida’s Secretary of Education, Eric J. Smith.

I wondered why the Chamber of Commerce was so dedicated to this bill.

If they were in this for the best interest of students and the work force they would be citing the latest brain research, talking about creating innovative and engaging learning environments, and encouraging legislators to enact policies that provide students with meaningful learning experiences in which students apply skills in relevant contexts.

Their mantras would be:

  1. Let’s focus on job ready skills for helping Florida compete in a globalized world.
  2. Lets give these kids skills that can’t be shipped overseas.

Then, I found this clue in the evaluation of Florida’s Race to the Top application that shed light on the Chamber of Commerce’s intense interest:

A substantial amount of the resources requested are target(ed) to external vendors and contracted services as opposed to a systemic integration of the work into key functional units of the state department of education as well as other state agencies.

So . . . money will be pilfered from our schools and go to corporations . . .

How much money?

Well, turns out, while this bill does not begin the testing portion until the 2013-2014 school year. However, during the next three years districts are required to allocate 5% of their budgets for development of the measures used to assess teachers in order to reward them.

Code: Development of standardized tests.

This 5% amounts to $900 million dollars per year siphoned from our already cash strapped districts and funneled to private companies. Over the 3 year development period, that amounts to 2.7 billion dollars!

Let me repeat that: $2.7 billion from our schools — our classrooms — handed to the testing industry.

At a time when districts are forced to eliminate programs and services due to budget cuts, teachers are paying for supplies out of pocket, and students are forced to share textbooks because there are not enough for everyone, the legislature is mining schools to help companies profit.

There is a gross warping of education policy going on in Florida.

The Hillsborough Example

One irony in this dark comedy is that we have in our state an example of unions and policy makers working together to create a merit/performance pay plan that everyone can agree on.

Hillsborough County applied (and won) a $100 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create and implement a collaborative plan for differentiating teacher pay and measuring student growth.

In order to not negate the grant, legislators amended SB6 so that Hillsborough county would be exempt during the period of their grant.

Even so, numerous teachers from Hillsborough testified against HB7189 offering their district as an example of what can be accomplished when lawmakers and teachers work together. As a principal remarked to the committee, “Rather than exempting them, we ought to be following their leadership.”

Teachers are not against using standardized testing to measure growth. They aren’t against merit/performance pay.

What they are against:

  1. Being left out of major reform that does not include their input.
  2. State mandates that pillage from local districts’s limited funds to pay private companies.
  3. Reforms that do not promote meaningful learning.
  4. Deaf legislators.

It is time for Florida leadership to see the writing on the wall. This railroading of the bill disrespects the professionalism of educators. And when teachers and districts do not support or stand behind these reform measures recruitment efforts to attract and keep the best and the brightest to our classrooms will be severely undermined.

Image: Bluejayway67

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Shift Happens. Even in Schools.

October 30th, 2009

On a recent field trip, neither my students nor I was at threat of being eaten alive by a t-rex.

Why, despite ruling Earth for nearly 80 million years (even longer than Wall Street barons), are Cretaceous period animals not regularly chowing on our gizzards? Things change.

Scientists have suspected this for some time. In fact, a growing body of geologic evidence seems to support the theory that things today are not the same as they were 200 million years ago. (Many even suspect tomorrow will be different than today.)

Surprisingly, this idea of “change as constant” is not yet an accepted norm. (Though it comes as no surprise to anyone who has visited any number of schools in the past few years.)

In a recent post, titled “Constant Transformation is the New Norm”, on his “Innovation Insights” page on Harvard Business Publishing, Scott Anthony writes:

There are still some executives who are waiting for things to return to “normal.” It’s not going to happen. Constant change is the new normal.

Um. . .correct me if I’m wrong, but hasn’t “constant change” been the norm for quite some time? Sure, there were (and will be) periods of relative stability, but these are often preceded and followed by periods of growth and transformation. Nothing stays the same forever. This hold true in both geologic and bi-pedal time.

So, why is this news? How can such a scientifically accepted norm make it onto a Harvard blog geared toward innovation? Why is this an emerging trend worth writing about by someone with such an impressive resume in innovation? Surely business executives were aware that things change. What’s so different now?

Pace.

Despite vain attempts by the learned and powerful to keep things as they were, the digital domain is disrupting the old standard, rapidly. Such meteoric growth is transforming how businesses do business, and should affect how schools administer schooling.

While the key to success is to adapt to the new landscape, the strategies for doing so are not so clear cut.

Toward this end, Mr. Anthony offers 3 points of advice:

1. True transformation starts with a deep understanding of the severity of the problem.
2. Transformation requires being outside-in, not inside-out.
3. Space is the only way to avoid the “sucking sound of the core.”

While specifically geared toward businesses, reform minded education trailblazers would do well to take notes on these points, because they offer insights for being on the leading edge of transformative change in our nations schools.

  1. True transformation starts with a deep understanding of the severity of the problem. In education’s case, it must include a deep understanding of the severity and variety of the problems. Too often measures are put in place based on a single problem, as in addressing an important issue, such as the achievement gap, while neglecting or exacerbating others. Leaders would do well to think system-wide before instituting scaled-up standards that solve one problem at the cost of creating others.
  2. Transformation requires being outside-in, not inside-out. Innovation is born out of a novel combination of knowns. Facilitating the innovation process necessitates drawing in elements/people/knowledge from outside the organization. Education’s deeply rutted top down hierarchy maintains the inside-out approach by limiting inputs. As a result, much of the “reform” appears much the same as before, just more of it. More standards, more tests, and more hoops to jump through. Yet, beyond the school walls there is a shift in how people are interacting with knowledge and each other, and an even larger shift in the behavior of the global economy. Looking for meaningful and lasting transformation requires that education leaders broaden their inputs from outside the economic interests of the lobby-sphere to include ideas and influences that develop life long learners.
  3. Space is the only way to avoid the “sucking sound of the core.” In an interview with Blogging Innovation, Mr. Anthony describes the “sucking sound” this way:

Most companies excel at managing innovations that extend their core business. They struggle with innovations that run counter to their existing way of operating. Then, the greatest enemy lies within. We call it “the sucking sound of the core.” A company’s core systems and structures “want” an innovation to conform to what a company has done before, not what is necessary for success. The sucking sound makes innovation slow and complicated. To break the sucking sound of the core, companies need to make sure they have a “safe space” for innovation, and that senior leaders actively step in to break standard operating procedures when required.

In many ways, charter schools represent the laboratory of the education institution, the Skunk Works of sorts. However, as testing and accountability systems become increasingly standardized, the sucking sound at the core threatens to pull any innovation in the public school system toward the previous norm. Continuing to develop and support the relative autonomy of charter schools will help to ensure that our education system has room to explore new and compelling ideas.

Change is not the new norm, but we would do well to act as if it is.

It is the one thing we can count on. In fact, it is the only thing we are sure our students will face as adults. Preparing them for adapting to change must be our top priority. If we are truly bent on normalizing our nation’s schools, we must find a way to standardize diversification and differentiation.

Image: National Geographic

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Posted in change, Charter Schools, Harvard, Innovation, Jason Flom, Scott Anthony, transformation

Curiosity: The Curricular Cinderella

October 22nd, 2009

Curiously, curiosity is no-where to be found in reform measures being debated today. Rather, curiosity is left to scrub the proverbial floors of our education institutions. It’s the forgotten and malnourished stepdaughter of NCLB and mistreated stepsister of Race to the Top. Click on some of the speeches by President Obama and Secretary Duncan and and then search for “curiosity”. You won’t find it, anywhere.

Yet, in order to promote lifelong learning, it is a, if not THE, necessary ingredient. It is the high octane fuel of learning. It is a glass slipper.

In her report, It Only Killed One Cat: The Role of Curiosity in the Classroom, Betsey Appleton provides a nice overview of literature on the topic. Despite research supporting it’s effect on learning, curiosity has seen its ups and downs in our popular culture mindset.

  • Greeks gave curiosity a bad rap via Pandora’s legendary earthen jar. (Full disclosure: my daughter’s name is Pandora and we do encourage curiosity and think its quite fun to label things, “Pandora’s ______”.)
  • Proverbially speaking, curiosity brought death to the feline, insinuating, it is best to be ponder-free.
  • George W. Bush’s reputation for having none hinted it may be worthwhile to possess some.
  • Obama highlights it as a necessary component of progress.

I can’t help but think: show me a curious kid and I’ll show you a learner.

So, what’s the goal of education? To become learned or to become a learner?

If “life long learning” is “happily ever after”, we’re only in the part of the story when the reigning maidens of the household, Standardization and Testing, are still corroborating against our fair heroine, Wonderella. Unfortunately, our sterling prince of reform seems to be more smitten by the stepsisters. No doubt we want them as part of the family, but I’m not convinced they’re the ones we want sitting on the throne wearing crowns. Or making the final decisions about what to do with teaching and learning.

The curious piece for me is that students arrive at school immensely curious — inquisitive, motivated, and prone to exploration. Anyone who’s been responsible for a preschooler for any length of time knows that they are hardwired with a singular directive: find the novel and test if its dangerous. This should work to our immense advantage when it comes to constructing learning environments. If we can put someone on the moon, surely we can find a way to capitalize on student innate curiosity. But, as Mark Twain quipped, ” One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity nothing beats teamwork.” Getting to this point in the story has been a group effort. Getting out will be one too.

This, of course, is where it gets messy, the moment in the plot when we look at our poor soot-covered Wonderella and think, how? How can we get this poor, abused, natural beauty coiffed, to the ball and in the arms of the prince? It will take nothing less than the Fairy Godmother of Reframed Debates.

  • What if we were to begin with the assumption that kids want to learn, that they are in fact predisposed to doing so?
  • What if we constructed learning environments and curricula in order to cultivate and refine the innate curiosity of kids?
  • What if we learned the art of inquiry in teaching?
  • What if our goal was to cultivate life long learning?

There are no clear and simple answers to these questions. Our push for standards, accountability, and graphs denoting progress have forced us to produce sterile and scripted classrooms that dwell in the known. I suspect we want students to stick their oars into the unknown, to wrestle with ideas and concepts that pique their interests, and roam the wilds of their creative imaginations.

(Just to be sure, I’m in no way advocating for lack a academic challenge or rigor or for limiting student exposure to content. I am arguing in favor of opportunities for students to apply what they’ve learned to novel situations that are interesting and compelling to them. I am arguing for giving kids a bit more free range, to encourage question asking, and to make learning more robustly real, practical, and personal.)

At the heart of innovation is imagination, and imagination is born of curiosity. That simple question, “Hmmm, I wonder. . . ?”

I wonder if Wonderella were to become a member of the educational royal family, might she change the world for the better?

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Dualities, Schmualities

September 14th, 2009


By Jason Flom, Ecology of Education

Our public forums teem with dueling dualities:

  • Luke vs. Vader
  • Booker vs. du Bois
  • Optimus vs. Megatron
  • Homework vs. None
  • Fraiser vs. Ali
  • Whole language vs. Phonics
  • Nixon vs. Truth
  • Skills vs. Content
  • Cylons vs. Humans

However, the latest iteration hits a bit too close to home to be anything besides unnerving for educators:

Judging teachers using only students’ scores on high stakes test vs. Not

While I’m not a huge fan of standardized tests as primary markers for achievement, I understand (and even appreciate) their utility and functionality. For assessing benchmarks and basic skills, they serve a purpose. However, we must temper our enthusiasm for relying on basic skills attainment as the sole measure for determining if teachers are teaching.

If this dichotomy is really the best we can do, then we really do need to retool our education system. Badly. Quickly. Immediately.

Clearly the basic skills approach isn’t leading to critical thinking in basic deliberation/mitigation/compromise skills. Additionally, such “dualities only” debates illuminate a graphic lack of creativity, imagination, and, ultimately, innovation.

Basic civics lessons teach us that “either/or” ultimatums often lead to “neither/none” outcomes.

Aren’t there other options?!

Of course there are. But they cost money and take time. Two things of critical shortage in our school system. And are more difficult to standardize and analyze than, well, standardized scores.

The problem with a sole reliance on standardized test is well stated in Campbell’s Law:

The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.

David T. Campbell, in 1976, goes on to write:

Achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways. (Similar biases of course surround the use of objective tests in courses or as entrance examinations.)

Perhaps it is time for us to take a page out of Carol Ann Tomlinson’s differentiation schtick. Perhaps it is time for us to begin with the idea that all students and teachers are different — and therefore perform differently in different situations, and have different needs in terms of growth and development.

I am personally a big fan of working on a local level to improve the quality of life and quality of instruction provided in our institutions. I also believe that once a year evaluations by principals are too few and too thin to provide any sort of reliable and effective professional development for teachers. Additionally, in terms of cultivating a professional atmosphere for teachers and principals necessitates that both take a larger role in steering areas of growth.

Enter rubrics. Kid tested, teacher approved.

I am a big fan of the teacher and principal rubrics developed by Kim Marshall:

Moving beyond this or that, one or the other, mine or yours, them or us, and with us or against us mentality should be a chief objective for cultivating civil school systems. To that end, lets empower districts and principals to weigh in on who deserves pay incentive. A new teacher working hard to improve in identified areas of needed growth should be rewarded for doing so, even if it can’t be measured on a multiple choice test.

In this way, we may just find teachers more willing to look their shortcomings in the eye and work to overcome them.

As the old adage goes, if all you have is a hammer, all your problems look like nails. Let’s fill the assessment tool box, or at least put another option in it.

Image: How Stuff Works, but obviously a Lucas Films Image

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Posted in Accountability, Basic Skills, Campbell's Law, Carol Ann Tomlinson, Darth Vader, High Stakes Assessments, Jason Flom, Kim Marshall, Principal Evaluation, Teacher Accountability, Teacher Evaluation

Avoiding the Dickensian Curriculum

August 27th, 2009

Monotonous tedium and homogeneous uniformity — the great plagues of education. With rampant disregard for age, class, or ability, a curriculum lacking topography flatlines interest, dulls creativity, and limits potential. Yet, we find ourselves haphazardly careening toward fact based national standards, accountability systems, and teacher pay incentives that further cement our commitment to high stakes assessments. Such batteries that, by proxy, entrench pedagogical practices in the mires of conformity.
What we need now is a hyperbolized metaphor to cast the right light on the situation. Enter 19th century Dickens.
I’m reminded of the orphan scene from Oliver Twist, in which sallow eyed kids lament full bellies while heavy handed lords offer meager sustenance, the lowest common denominator for survival. “Please, sir, can I have some more?” “MORE?!”
Fast forward to the 21st century, the faces of students drawn down by boredom, teachers droning on and dolling out dittos of “test prep” materials. One curriculum looks the same community to community, offering little variety (or interest) for the educators or the learners. Students under such Dickensian conditions soon associate learning and schooling with drudgery, toil, and starved minds.
The rare lesson that engages students to dig deep into an idea or concept, to explore new avenues, and to get a bit messy with creativity awakens and feeds an enthusiasm long suppressed by the sameness of repetition. Students for whom such learning has been absent, or withheld, find their palates whet with the sweet taste of authenticity and relevance. “Please, marm, can I have some more?” “MORE?!”
A bit much you say? Too overstated? How could I possibly compare NCLB to the New Poor Law of 1834?
You’re right to question, to stand up for an education system that endeavors to educate all students, and to advocate on behalf of the millions of educators working to cultivate the minds of our young.
However, the fact remains that while the world around us has changed, much of the education system remains firmly rooted in an industrial society that no longer exists. It is less important now that students can repeat the same task over and over. The standard of yesterday’s literacy, “Can the worker read the signs in the factory to ensure the safety of himself and his colleagues?” no longer applies to the degree it once did.
We enjoy a world with abundant and assorted information, replete with mutliple access points for ideas, concepts, and knowledge. Students of diverse backgrounds (and of both genders) can reasonably vie for myriad careers and a range of higher level learning opportunities, if so interested. Given this, it is of absolute necessity that we seek to add topography to our educational landscape. Homogeneity must give way to heterogeneity if we aim to give all students connecting points.
How do we do that?
Teachers need the demonstrated ability and supported autonomy to effectively tailor curriculum for the unique culture, skills, needs, and interests of each class. Beginning with a framework of basic skills, concepts, and themes, the teacher must seek two main pillars to effectively differentiate for the individuals within an individual class.
What does that mean?
Connections and Contrasts
Constructing knowledge begins with connections. If students are to make any sense of material, they must first find a connection with it. If we are to believe Jay McTighe’s quip that, “Facts don’t transfer, big ideas do,” then it is imperative that we elicit student involvement in order to link the big ideas to their interests and backgrounds.
Teachers have known this for ages. The KWL chart (Know, Want to know, Learned) is a well known acronym in teacher-ese. Beginning with the connection, teachers then need to provide enough contrast so as to stimulate the brain and effectively engage the student. Building (or at least maintaining) nueral pathways requires broad exposure that keep the nueral connections alive, functioning, and well traveled.
Unfortunately, legislation has come to think of that as simply exposure to copious facts we want the students to know. What we’ve ended up with are standards that are a mile wide and an inch deep. What the brain thrives on is consistent contrast.
Students need newness, contrast in experiences, and depth of study. This is the great beauty of the differentiated instruction movement — it seeks to provide big ideas that span the curriculum and add multiple connection points for students. Combined with the Understanding by Design efforts, in which teachers create new experiences that offer a contrast to the experiences of the past, we have the potential for a rich depth of learning that students find relevant, meaningful, and ultimately, useful.
The challenge then becomes, if we aim to leave no child behind and recognize that each student is different, how do we standardize teaching and learning without monotonizing teaching and learning?
Image: BBC One

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Posted in Dickens, Differentiated Instruction, Education Reform, Jason Flom, Jay McTighe, learning, NCLB, Oliver Twist, teaching, Understanding By Design

Backward, Ironically, is Pretty Forward

August 7th, 2009
Jason Flom, Ecology of Education

Moving toward a goal seems quite intuitive. Toddlers demonstrate profound awareness of this concept daily.

“I want to pet (i.e. manhandle) that cat up there. With a chair, a box, and a bit of climbing, I can. Go-go Gadget Toddler-Ingenuity.”

Ideally, we move beyond this form of immediate gratification to a more complex, intentional set of actions. But, as I usually demonstrate whenever I go to the grocery store hungry, thinking strategically is not a skill we stumble upon. It takes effort.

Applying strategic thinking to individual actions can be challenging (and humbling) to say the least. Applying it to an organization requires leadership, vision, thick skin, and a willingness to let go of power a bit. (Applying it to schools also requires a bit of verve, because aligning and organizing teachers can sometimes be akin to corralling squirrels.)

Enter Jay McTighe, stage right. He and his colleague, Grant Wiggins, have grown beyond their initial publication, Understanding by Design, to expand their reach. Schooling by Design, aims to apply basic strategic thinking to cultivating a collaborative culture with a clear mission, sound learning principles, and effective instructional programs.

Like many of today’s educational leaders, he advocates for building the curriculum around big ideas with the mantra, “Facts don’t transfer, big ideas do.” He suggests using questions to offer a doorway into those big concepts. Big ideas act as “cognitive velcro,” and help students “connect the dots”. Because individual lessons and units collectively add up to the culture and curriculum of the school, we should map out our curriculum around concepts and big ideas for long term effect.

One hour only provided a sampler platter of the foundation and framework of his program, but it was enough to know that schools can grow forward by looking ahead in order to look back.

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Posted in Jason Flom

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