Dear Ms. Tisch

Posted on May 9, 2012 by admin

Today, I was able to sit with my colleagues at the Meryl Tisch Forum held by Crain NY in NY City.  Ms. Tisch was there to speak on the issue of various initiatives that are being implemented in our state.  We weren’t able to ask her questions, but we hoped that our No Pineapple tee shirts sent the message we wanted her to here.  Still, I would have liked the opportunity to talk to her and share with her a teacher’s perspective on the state of education in NY in 2012.

Dear Ms. Tisch,

In a very short period of time: we’ve changed testing companies, shifted from 2 to 3 days of testing in both English and math, allowed field testing that includes questions that are not even on our curriculum.  We’re implementing the Common Core this September, and at the same time, we will have a new teacher evaluation system, tying accountability to test scores that are suspect, and implementing SLOs which have yet to be figured out for every other educator in the system… all at one time.

And we hear there’s more to come.  We understand that the Board of Regents is recommending narrowing and removing art and social studies from the curriculum and lumping it with English to create social studies/art flavored English.. as if addressing the Common Core isn’t enough for the English Language Arts curriculum..  And, as if history and art are no longer important to the education of children in public schools.  We’ve been given to understand that in 2014, all state testing is supposedly going to goonline. I don’t know how anyone expects that to happen.  And just recently we’ve heard that our Governor has tasked a blue ribbon commission with creating an action plan for 2013 that may impact every aspect of school life and structure.  And there’s not one working teacher on that commission.

We hear excuses from reformers up and down the line about how change is messy. transformation can be hard… Lots of talk about relentlessness and urgency… and in some circles… disruptive innovation.  It’s disruptive, but not in a good way.  What we’re seeing is a lot of initiatives thrown at public schools in a short span of time…. and words like urgency to disguise the fact that it’s really just a pile of unvetted initiatives that impact instruction and the well being of all the stakeholders in the system (including children, the communities they live in,  the teachers and administrators that serve them and eventually the politicians and policy makers that ride in on them) It’s more than messy. It’s a mess. We’re concerned that we’re being set up for failure so as to justify turning over the entire public system to private enterprise. And that this shift from public responsibility to private is an attack on all schools including those that are well run or that were well run before outside interests began tinkering with them. We would like to know why the state is agreeing to roll out so many new untried initiatives all at one time?

We think it can only be because education reform is being spearheaded by people who have little or no classroom and school-wide experience, and we feel that they should not be the only voices heard in educational reform in this state or in this country. We think that NY State should stand with John Kuhn in Texas and with Diane Ravitch and others in demanding more involvement in our own profession. We reject the notion that expertise is irrelevant, as well as it’s corollary that teachers with experience have no expertise.  We question how teachers can be told that they are expected to singlehandedly erase the impact of poverty upon performance but be too unimportant to be invited to the table where decisions are made on matters so crucial to all of us. We would like to know why the expertise of long time educators with extensive experience in school settings is not part of decision making… why instead we see one new initiative after another rolled out  seemingly without any forethought…

Sincerely,

a hard working public servant

Posted in Common Core, Educational Reform Movement, High Stakes Tests, public policy | Leave a comment

Test This

Posted on April 3, 2012 by admin

Dear Student: You seem to be making fun of our test, and we don’t appreciate it. We do not need your implications. We’re looking for that sweet spot between illiteracy and insight…. the text based detail. This is not it. As for any inferences that you might wish to make in the future…. those will be part of a series of wholly interpretative multiple choice questions you’ll get later. Your teacher fails.

Sincerely,
Test Company

ps. You look like money to me.

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Self Interest as a Social Good: The TFA Model

Posted on March 18, 2012 by admin

How can TFA be so successful and yet such a failure of good intentions? Perhaps because it was co-opted by another agenda. Wendy Knopp says test scores shouldn’t be published. I appreciate that sentiment in much the same way that I appreciate Obama saying that teachers shouldn’t teach to a test that they are rated by. Thanks for the postscript to your bad policy.

In a very real way, TFA is complicit in the attacks on teachers… as it benefits directly from the idea that good teaching is rare in America… as it builds on a false notion that self interest when paired with good works necessarily make the world a better place. But, the truth is a little less elegant. When self interest and the social good collide, self interest wins out. Almost every time. Witness how good teachers are removed in schools around the country and replaced by cheaper, more temporary TFA grads (a short term experience that they will capitalize on for years to come). But that small evil helps bring TFA to scale and brings ” the best and the brightest” into the classroom and quickly into policy making positions. Isn’t it an acceptable loss, in the long run, if removing a few good teachers helps to bring the best people into positions of influence? And there we have it. Self interest and self regard rationalized as synonymous with the social good.

TFA is a franchise with a singular goal of power, influence and cache through its members. In this sense, TFA is not unlike any number of theories of education to come out of schools of education (perhaps a bigger source of systemic educational malpractice than even the due process demands of those poor benighted teachers laboring in obscurity) Like whole language and invented spelling, TFA persists… even when ineffective or where disreputable and despite research critical of its claims. It grows up and and lives on… to feed the careers that rode in on it.

Posted in Educational Reform Movement, Teach For America | 1 Comment

Voter Dilemma

Posted on February 27, 2012 by admin

Voting for the man who facilitated an attack on public education that is unparalleled in our history…that’s the choice. The general public doesn’t understand that RTTT ties funding to a false measure and that it is not hanging tough on accountability. Or that that the charter school concept is just a way to privatize public dollars and covertly filter out undesirable children.

But it will be understood eventually, and it will mark his administration with a strong brush, like McCarthyism or an unpopular war. Obama will not go down in history for health care. He will go down in history for undermining the fundamental social good of publicly supported education. Whether his intentions were good won’t matter; that he makes little, late in the day public statements for the record won’t matter; the part he played will be what is remembered about him. If he’s a good man, that’s a tragedy. But, he will still deserve it because he chose not to include anyone with expertise in the field in the formulation of his policy.

Friday, NYC teachers had their scores published…that is, all EXCEPT for teachers who teach in charter schools because profit won’t be risked. Today, it’s NYC English and Math. Soon every teacher in NY State, teaching every subject in every grade, from k to 12 will be measured by a test of their subject matter that will be published in papers. It’s not just teachers who will be harmed by scores that do not really measure their worth, it’s the focus of education that will change. Children who are already spending large amounts of time prepping for tests will spend their entire school careers moving from one test to another. And that will be the end of social mobility. How can a child who has spent their entire education parsing multiple choice questions in every subject area compete with a child who has actually had an enriched exploratory education? Educators are fighting it in our schools right now, but until the public understands the unintended toxic consequences of the Obama policy, it’s a losing battle. Meanwhile, it’s true; we don’t want one of those crazy republicans in office. After all, they could really go to town now that Obama has prepared the way.

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The Class Ceiling

Posted on August 24, 2011 by admin

If we make it possible for children to run the same race and the kid doesn’t run hard enough.. okay. Fine. But, we don’t make it possible. You think you can just tell a 13 year old with a mom who smokes a crack pipe to buck up? Really? Why should a child who grows up on hard ground with no real shot at your life, who grows up to be the guy cleaning your office stay loyal to such a system? Because this is the land of opportunity? Ha. You are fooling yourself. This is not the land of opportunity. This is the land of class ceilings.

We admire our dead heroes… especially Navy Seals right now. Did anyone listen to that one mom whose son died? She said, “If he knew he would die when he did would he have chosen this life anyway? .. better to die young then live to 104 working at McDonalds.” (or some paraphrase) No one seemed to catch that..we don’t mind sending our poor off to fight and die in our wars and we just love to idolize their dead bodies when they return, we don’t mind being against abortion because it’s “murder”.. but once they’re here… they’re on their own. We didn’t even pay for armored HumVees in Iraq…It’s only “a shame” that we sent them over without proper protection and want to cut their health benefits when they return without their legs. Bad things happen. But this is the land of the free to just take care of me. So… thanks for the limb.

Is it fair that one child comes back in a body bag or without a body part, while someone like Bush is able to be president? It’s unAmerican to provide for poor children in our system.. because they’ll become loser freeloaders? And unAmerican to provide a decent, free education for anyone who can get the grades. And unAmerican to provide for the elderly after taking their vitality. But if you’re rich… you can be as much of a loser as you want. You can avoided the draft, never serve your time in the National guard, tank your company, be a C student. Bush’s thesis professor said that his final thesis was an embarassment. Did Bush care? No. Because he didn’t have to care. Only middle class strivers have to care about grades. Could your child become president after getting Cs in school… avoiding the draft, avoiding his service commitment, destroying his own company, being arrested for drunk driving? I’m sorry.. but if anyone needs less coddling it’s the sons of rich men like him.

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On Being the Change You Want to See

Posted on August 5, 2011 by admin

What follows is an open letter to a young teacher Marilyn Rhames who wrote for Ed Week on conclusions she came to from an experience of a hostile school environment. Her article can be found here: A Course of My Own. I hope that you will also click on the image below to see a video depiction of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as visualized by Seth Brau and another one that depicts a great short history of Human Rights.  Both are worth seeing and are excellent resources for the classroom, as well.

Dear Ms. Rhames,

It’s a terrible thing to listen to an abusive principal tell elementary school students that aren’t good at basketball that they shouldn’t bother to try out for the team because they can’t help the team win . Being told by that same principal that she likes money and that teachers might, at any time, be fired is equally distressing.  I can imagine why you told all these stories in the faculty room when you were in a better school.  They are cautionary tales and shocking, from one point of view. And, I appreciate your caring for the children who had to learn under this principal’s leadership, but I must disagree with you and with the social studies teacher who piously told you that this all just happened to the children.  It didn’t only “happen to them.”  It also happened to YOU.

It did happen to the children.  For the most part, they probably won’t cry about it in years to come; many of them will probably not even remember it.  But, her actions and her words may directly influence some of those children’s willingness (as children and as adults) to try things or persevere when faced with difficult tasks. That’s a terrible message to give to anyone.

But, you were also given a terrible message.  You were told that you were a disposable tool of your industry, that you should fear for your livelihood  every day that you work.   You were presented with the message that working people in many industries are hearing currently; that is, no matter how hard you work, your ability to feed yourself and your family, to offer a future to your children or to feel secure in the knowledge that good work  will be valued is at risk.  You were told that you may be replaced at any time for any reason.  You got the message that your survival depends on the sacrifice of anything and everything that may be asked of you.  You were told to live and work in fear.

You may say, well the issue of teaching is bigger than us.  It’s bigger than a mortgage or a family or ability to retire one day.  I would disagree.  I think that the underlying message is that work is bigger than anything or anyone, and that message is related directly to all of us, young and old.

You suggest that “[e]ducators and policymakers must boil the chatter down to two essential questions: to what degree will this policy enhance student learning and how will we know?” I  suggest that if you don’t boil the chatter down a little further than that, you’ll be enhancing student learning for a life destroying purpose.  In accepting terms that define you as expendable, in choosing to manage the anxiety of knowing that that no matter what you do, you have reason to be insecure of your livelihood and your ability to feed and provide for your family, you accept a life diminishing notion of every person’s relationship to their work.  You tacitly agree to work with no regard to its impact on your family, yourself or your children.   You agree in quite blatant terms to have no value.  This may be something that sounds like noble sacrifice to you.  But, you might like to consider what you’re selling as well as what you’re teaching.

Of course, it’s important to work hard for children, to do good work with integrity.  It’s important to understand what children are learning.  But,  it is also important to consider what your learning is preparing them for.  Are you readying them for a life of opportunity or for a life of insecurity and fear, of work without end, of a constant and pernicious anxiety about their survival in an inhumane marketplace? Are you readying them to embrace life or to negate themselves and their families in their turn?  What your employer told you was acceptable for you is what you accept for them, and if you accept that this act is somehow too small a concern in a world that needs change, you’re not just agreeing to your own erasure, you’re agreeing to theirs.

Maybe it’s not such a noble act to manage undeserved fear of reprisal or to stuff anxiety over the consequences of  limited ability to negate the impact of poverty on opportunity.  At least, not when you consider it in light of the fact that in accepting those conditions, you prepare children for your own fate.   Perhaps considering the welfare of children as separate from the family or the welfare of families as separate from the people who work to maintain them is a false dichotomy.  Maybe… maybe… when you fight for a living wage, for decent working conditions, for the professional status of your career, for dignity in the performance of your work, you fight for the children you teach, as well.

 

 

Posted in Educational Reform Movement, philosophy | 9 Comments

Son of the One Right Answer

Posted on July 20, 2011 by admin

The primary focus of the New York State English test  is  weighted toward multiple choice answers which require one right answer.  I wouldn’t argue that there are no critical thinking skills involved in multiple choice tests, because there surely are, especially since multiple choice tests are designed by the evil test makers to include distractors that there to trick students into picking partially correct or not quite as right answers instead of the correct ones.  A deep reading of the text is often necessary to tease out which response is really the right one.  So, yes.. as heretical as that may be to some, there are things to teach and to learn about multiple choice tests.  However, it grates against another kind of teaching I find important and that is the notion that there is more than one right answer.  Language, connotation, persuasion, slant, intepretation are not venues for a single response.

In fact, I find that students who focus on a single answer are usually my most literal students, often because they equate intransigent grade grubbing with success and  inevitably they stop their thinking process where they think the grade may be.  My challenge is to integrate test taking and the fact of the one right answer into a curriculum that preferences growth and assertion and support as the more important skills.  Here’s what I tell my incoming 7th graders currently:

First Principle: There is often more than one right answer and more than one way to get to a right answer. Depending on the kind of answers we’re looking for, your answer can be right even when it is different from mine. This means: go out and find your answer… but don’t forget to use the second principle

Second Principle: Your answers are as right as your ability to back them up. If you can back your assertions up with compelling and persuasive evidence, you usually can use them. That means: do your research, find your evidence, make your argument, let the chips fall where they may.

Third Principle: Real thinkers think. Grade grubbers grub. The grade you get is the grade you earn.  It is assessing what you’ve learned.  It is not a prize or a cookie, it is information.  Use the grade you get to inform your actions for the next go round. That being said, if you think I assessed you incorrectly, make your case (refer back to the second principle)

Fourth Principle: Even in circumstances where there is one right answer, the process by which you get to your answer (right or not) is often more useful than the answer itself. Yes, I mean this. (except on the State Test)

Yes, But.. Aren’t Right Answers Important?

Of course, they’re important. It’s not very useful to NASA if they don’t get the right answer on the cold weather capabilities of their ORings but the process of getting to the right answer does include failure (hopefully, not as spectacularly disasterous as the Challenger’s).  Actually, failure is essential.  Sometimes failing is the  means to a better success.

As a former art teacher of mine put it, “You have to be willing to do bad work if you ever want to do good work.”  This is a good lesson for students.  The dilemma of the artist (or writer or scientist or hockey player) is that as they develop, their standard of excellence moves in front of their ability. They develop an educated eye long before they develop the ability to master their art.  Once students realize this simple reality of learning, they can allow themselves to accept their best bad work and do it faithfully every day in their inevitable approach of the standard they hope to achieve.

Randy Pausch also put it very well.  We learn most of what we learn indirectly or by what he called a “head fake.” He said, ”… we send out kids out to learn football or soccer or swimming or whatever it is… we actually don’t want our kids to learn football… we send our kids out to learn more important things… teamwork,sportsmanship, perseverence… and you should keep your eye out for [these lessons], because they’re everywhere.”

Teaching to the test teaches  students that getting the right answer is the only measure of success, and that anything but the “right answer” is failure.  It also teaches them that failure is unacceptable.   Once the right answer becomes coded as the single measure of their personal value, they find it hard to learn the other more subtle lessons that are embodied in a more nuanced and laboratory approach. They’re too focused on superficial learning and measurement… they, along with everyone else, become victims of the all important God of Data.

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Don’t Collaborate through Sabotage

Posted on July 18, 2011 by admin

I just finished reading Timothy Slekar’s post It’s Not Cheating It’s Sabotage in the Huff.  And I must disagree with the notion that we can acceptably change answers in a random way to discredit the test.  Such an action only discredits ourselves.  Below is my response on facebook:

Dear Tim,

I love you for [fighting against the forces attempting to dismantle or co-opt funds for public education], but I have to disagree with the call to sabotage the test. Such an action inevitably feeds into the hands of the dismantlers by calling into question whether we belong where we are. I think that can only backfire and show us in a bad light to our communities.

My principal who just retired said what I think is a true thing to us. “Do good work like you always have and let your work speak for itself.” I call that a guiding principal :D That is what we must do. We must not allow the forces attempting to destroy public education to undermine what makes a public education vital and important. That is, we must not play into their hands by disrupting rich curriculum or resigning ourselves to becoming test prep factories.

Instead, we need to keep it rich. Let the test be one measure of excellence, but not the most important measure. Instead, shore up relationships within the community, communicate with them and establish strong links to parents and the board, keep a good working relationship between administration, faculty and staff (or build one), emphasize support and collaboration among teachers, share materials and good work. Refuse to collaborate with our own destruction. We can’t turn our backs on the test or on the hate pouring in upon us through such propaganda tools as Waiting for Superman (sounds like a Leni Riefenstahl film title, doesn’t it?). But, if we become (or remain) a solidly connected community, then we will win one community at a time. The forces of disruption come through chinks in our armour, through flaws they can exploit. Give them less to exploit.

My district has made it clear that we don’t want that kind of war coming to us. I hope we stay the course because we have a good district. We serve a diverse student body and we give our all. We will not let them take us down. We will do the good work we’ve always done. That and get into the street at the SOS March.

Posted in Educational Reform Movement, High Stakes Tests | 2 Comments

The One Right Answer

Posted on July 12, 2011 by admin

Every summer, I revamp my curriculum.   It’s not that I don’t already have a curriculum that works, but every year I can think of things I’d like to do differently or did something differently the past year that I’d like to do again.    This summer, my general goal is to continue to improve the continuity and flow from one unit to the next.  I don’t know that it’s strictly necessary, but in my vision for it, if I can better establish my root ideas and build on them all year through multiple project based opportunities, my students will see connections that they can take with them to any classroom (more on that later).  I also want to build smoother integration of testing techniques into the structure of each unit so that while my students are getting a good education, they will be also be preparing for the high stakes test that they take in May.  This may be a bit more problematic.

On principle I am opposed to teaching to the test.  But, who in public school (correction: in English or Math) can afford to ignore high stakes testing?  To start with, high stakes is an understatement.  Our tests are more of an all in, everything on red to win gamble that what benefits McGraw Hill will also benefit our students.  But that’s another story.

What makes it high stakes for communities is that student performance on a single test in Math and English doesn’t just evaluate their understanding; it determines the reputation of their community, decides the value of their parents’ property, and impacts the job security of their teachers and principals.  It increases the amount of time spent teaching to tests and limits access to an enriched, inquiry based curriculum in schools with a substantial high needs population.  So, the kids who have the greatest reason to opt out of school have the least access to the kinds of curriculum that might build a future or spark  lifetime interests.   It also intensifies class based conflicts within systems.  Affluent parents have less reason to live in communities with a high needs population if having higher need neighbors increases emphasize on the test and decreases access to a more enriched, nuanced curriculum.  High stakes?  It’s Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery comes to life.  Each year, the State gathers around armed with stones masquerading as tests while we sacrifice the accomplishments, love of learning, inquiry, and creativity of our children and risk the  lives and properity of everyone we know on the altar of data.  It’s insanity masking as a standard.

I should be focusing on what I plan to do next year… there was this other thing (curriculum) I had in mind…. but the test seems to have the upper hand.   I’m sure that from an outsider point of view there is nothing so terrible about insuring that students are ready for a test.  Isn’t it all just about literacy?  If we were all good teachers, wouldn’t they do well on the tests?  One would think so, but there’s a lot of ground to cover between idea and implementation (something that the high influence low expertise crowd doesn’t realize each time they fail to take their simple, elegant, wrong ideas to fruition).

For one thing, the bull’s eye is constantly moving… whether it’s change in format, content, time allotted, how it’s reported, where the cut scores are, how it’s administered, or when we give it… something is always changing.   This year heralds a new secrecy.  We were told that we’re not to speak about the contents of the test, even to each other in private.  Does this mean that we can no longer analyze the test as a department or use it to inform our instruction?  Are we just not to talk about specific questions on the test or are we constrained against talking generally about types of information that might be on a subsequent test?   And, what about field tests?  Are we allowed to talk about those?   What if, for instance, a field test for future 7th graders had 8th grade material on it,  would we be allowed to say so among colleagues so they could prepare students or would that be inside information?  In previous years, we could build test prep material and create formative assessments from past tests.  No longer.  Is this someone’s idea about how to keep the tests secure?  Is that because they plan to use the test over again?  Do they want us to rely on McGraw Hill for all our test prep needs?  And speaking about conflicts of interest…. are the tests are high stake enough that politicians or hedge fund investors might have a vested interest in performance… in which direction?  One wonders with all the power players vying for control of the vast public education purse strings:  who benefits and how?

I don’t know.  I’m only preparing my classroom for the coming year.  My job is to consider how to best prepare my students for a high stakes test.  There’s going to have to be a bit Stanley Kaplan, but if it gets the results…  Of course, I won’t only teach to the test, but I can’t ignore that the data feeds my family and keeps the wolves away.

 

Posted in Curriculum, Educational Reform Movement, High Stakes Tests | Comments Off

TFA redux

Posted on July 12, 2011 by admin

TFA started with laudable goals, but it was developed on the principle that when self interest and civic virtue are linked together, we can achieve both ends at the same time.    The most obvious problem with this model is that where civic virtue conflicts with self interest,  self interest is likely to win.  As an example, imagine that it becomes clear that TFA is contributing to the systematic erosion of the professional standing of educators or r that TFA is being invited to appropriate the jobs of more experienced teachers who would make a lifetime contribution to teaching in favor of recent grads whose temporary commitment ends after two years.   Is it likely that the young recent grad will refuse that guaranteed two year salary and the valuable connections and opportunities that come with it?  Not very.  More probably that they will convince themselves that their participation is necessary, that the teachers that they replace in school systems around the country need replacement, that the  negative by-products of their actions will be outweighed by the good that they can bring to the country through their commitment to policymaking or whatever excellent future they have identified for themselves.    Self interest conflates educational reform with personal survival and status in the marketplace.  Power and influence becomes the mission.

Evidence that contradicts the perceived value of the TFA model over other models is ignored, dismissed or reframed.  Michelle Rhee, the most well known of TFA poster children, is a perfect example of how flaws in self reporting make TFA claims suspect.   Rhee’s lackluster performance in the classroom is ignored,  data goes missing, leadership failures are glossed over.   Yet, nothing she has or hasn’t done seems to stem the flood of unwarranted influence that she continues to have in policymaking circles.

This isn’t anything new.  It is perhaps axiomatic at this point that merit only wins where mediocrity has no better connections.  In this sense, TFA isn’t different from other back door ways up the influence ladder.  But, it bears noting that the reform movement can’t choose expertise over connections; there’d be fewer opportunities for  entrepreneurs with little or no background or young graduates with goals beyond their expertise.

In some regards, I think we can look at the entire Reform Movement as individual cells of disruption within a larger framework and it would be foolish to focus attention strictly on this organization which is by no means the only source of attack on public education.  However,  their recent contributions to that movement should shock.  We should be appalled to know thatTFA collaborated in the removal of teachers in the Kansas City, Missouri school district.  Or that TFA is untouched in a recent teacher lay off.    The wholesale removal of educators and replacement of staff by an organization with an opaque training system and an agenda to be in the forefront of policymaking could easily be turned to any purpose.  At the very least, it is the systematic undermining of professional status for teachers.  Certainly nothing less.

Posted in Educational Reform Movement, Teach For America | Comments Off