It is essential to have time to collaborate.

In light of the news of how Michelle Rhee’s much touted success in Washington was at least partially due to cheating,1) and the catastrophic disclosures about the Atlanta school’s scandals, educators are back to the drawing board in the debate as to how to evaluate teachers and improve schools.

High stakes tests as teacher evaluations don’t work 2) and yet those who are charged with overseeing education insist on using them. As a result we are seeing schools closed because of failing scores, principals who have devoted their professional careers are having to deal with non-renewal notices because of someone’s artificial measure of success. Public education has been built upon a litany that educators know only too well: “Keep doing what you have always done and do this too. We wish we could provide the materials you need, or support for your struggling students but money is so tight.” Teachers who have labored for years while watching their classrooms increase in numbers and their paychecks shrink with each fall’s arrival are now looking at the want-ads to search for their new career.

It’s not any easier for the students.

Children are spending their precious time learning how to take tests and what to look for on the test and they are deprived of time to think, reason and develop as they should. Art, science, music and social studies are sacrificed to the altar of the all-mighty standardized test with no more thought than we used in choosing our cell phone provider — that of money: which one is cheapest, high stakes tests or real education?

But teachers must be accountable; no longer is it enough that they are willing to do the job few others want to do. Now we must validate their competence through a fabricated measure, some kind of assessment. Unfortunately no one agrees as to what that measure should be.

I think I have a simple solution.

When asked about schools and public education in general, parents often respond that schools need to be improved. But when asked about their schools, the one their children attend, they usually respond that their school is fine, they are happy with their school. 3)

Have parents evaluate their child’s teacher.

Now wait, don’t sign my commitment papers yet. Follow my reasoning on this.

One thing we know is that children need to be educated, we can’t just let them wallow in ignorance hoping they’ll get lucky and fall into some lifelong career like being elected to our legislature. If we are going to educate them we may as well do a good job of it; I think most people would agree to that premise.

But there is no panacea.

Writing in the New York Times, Jal Mehta offers one of the most damning and yet cogent arguments for what is wrong with education at this time. 4) He argues that our model is basically unchanged from the original formulated in response to the needs of the Industrial Revolution and yet our world is greatly altered. The warnings have been around for a long time:

In April 1983, a federal commission warned in a famous report, “A Nation at Risk,” that American education was a “rising tide of mediocrity.” 

Mehta continues by offering a solid solution and it is what so many of us have been advocating for years:

Teaching requires a professional model, like we have in medicine, law, engineering, accounting, architecture and many other fields. In these professions, consistency of quality is created less by holding individual practitioners accountable and more by building a body of knowledge, carefully training people in that knowledge, requiring them to show expertise before they become licensed, and then using their professions’ standards to guide their work.

Some might respond, “Don’t we already do that?” No we don’t, our system does not prepare teachers for what they actually find when they get to school each day. It prepares them for what we think they should find but reality intercedes.

We need more time spent in real teaching, more research into what works, and support, support, support. This issue is simply too important to skimp on it.

We point to Finland and cite the effectiveness of their education systems but they have already adopted this model. Their teachers actually teach fewer hours, have better training and are appropriately compensated for their efforts.We do not necessarily want to be Finland or even Japan but we do want an effective educational system that prepares students to participate in the world not to shun it. When our goal is truly to provide the best educational experience possible; administrators, parents and yes, possibly even legislators will clearly see the results and enacting the evaluation model will be easy.

I see teachers every day. I see how hard they work and what conditions they work in. And I see students struggling to focus on learning.

It is not simply a case of good schools and bad schools. Writing in the Arizona Star, Richard Gilman aptly points this out using Paradise Valley School District in Arizona as an example. 5)  He states: Some of the state’s “best” schools, judged just by test scores, are part of the same school district as some of the “worst.” That means it is not simply a matter of good teachers and bad teachers, good schools and bad schools; it comes down to support. Gilman reports:

(Paradise Valley) pulled in 14 of the 15 A’s given and 12 of the 16 B’s. . . . worse-off schools get . . . the black marks (and) Paradise Valley received seven of the district’s 10 C’s and both of the D’s. Any suggestion that the disparity is the fault of the schools is vigorously disputed by Paradise Valley Superintendent James P. Lee. He declares, “Some of our best teachers are in our ‘D’ schools. They’re laying it on the line for these kids.”

To educate a child is a worthy goal. But we can’t ask children to learn if they are hungry or sick. We can’t ask parents to help with homework if they are working three jobs only to still be living in poverty or they have to use the hospital emergency room as their family’s primary medical provider. We can’t ask teachers to make children successful if they do not have the necessary tools, support or training and we can’t expect anyone to commit to being an educator if that profession is reviled or dismissed outright.

The answers are not simple and they are not likely to be cheap but then they say you get what you pay for.

If we don’t offer what students need to learn they will still find some way to survive, though not necessarily as contributing members of a growing healthy society. If we do not provide avenues for parents to achieve a reasonable wage in a profession they value without working 60 hours a week they will give up or become a drain on our economy instead of an advantage as a contributor to that society. If we do not provide our best teachers the support they need to be effective they will leave and seek professional gratification elsewhere. And if we do not invest in our education system and those who commit their professional careers to mastering it there is no hope for our continued position as a leader in the world.

But if we do decide to turn this around, in an appropriate fashion, by committing to the whole child, and their families, I think the teacher evaluation issue will be solved.

1) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/13/michelle-rhee-cheating-investigation_n_3072568.html

2) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/leading-mathematician-debunks-value-added/2011/05/08/AFb999UG_blog.html

3) http://www.dc.gov/DCPS/Files/downloads/

4) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/opinion/teachers-will-we-ever-learn.html

5. http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/guest-column-state-leaders-turn-blind-eye-to-socio-economic/article_41a9f9d9-17e1-5cf6-9812-0844a09bd7a0.html

I don’t trust this guy. He looks like he means to make mischief of one kind or another. Photo by M. Severson

Any good parent will tell you they can’t make their children behave, but what they can do is make them want to behave. They can make them imagine the consequences of not behaving in a certain way and choose to do what is safest for their continued happiness.

Teachers will tell you teaching is not like that.

This is where teaching and parenting part ways. Teachers can develop dire outcomes to aberrant behaviors in many faceted forms and children will still choose the wrong path, no matter our resistance.

So that’s it, fine, we have no recourse, if children don’t want to learn, we can’t make them. It’s over, give up.

No, that’s why we have teachers.

What teachers can do, if fact what many teachers are really good at, is they can make children ready to learn. This is the penultimate divergence between parenting and teaching. Teachers check to see what skills children have before they try to teach them something. They evaluate student learning styles to see how the child processes new concepts and how best they internalize new ideas and teachers strive to make the learning of the material understandable and interesting so that the child is intrigued by the thought of pursuing it further.

Teachers spend most of their time preparing children so they are ready to learn, it is what they do.

Ready to learn. What an epiphany!

Our focus in education over the last few years has been directed at setting the curriculum (read test) and forcing the child to learn it or else. “Learn this or fail!” has been a hollow mantra that has resulted in increased frustration and growing despair among students and teachers alike.

Imagine if our cynosure was the child, themselves. What if we chose instead to ensure that the child had all they needed to be ready to learn before we demanded that they do it?

If you are working on your car would you get up in the morning and throw up the hood without first gathering tools, identifying the problem, making sure you had parts and perhaps even fixing yourself a cup of coffee to help ameliorate your mood at being forced to pursue the activity in the first place? No, you want to be prepared.

We owe our children at least this courtesy. Make sure they are ready to learn before we ask them to learn. Provide the stability and security of the freedom from hunger, disease, poverty or fear and then offer the enrichment of exposure to all the developmental prerequisites necessary to make the child feel confident they are prepared and yes, even eager to learn.

We need to unlock the gates of teaching as much as we need to unlock the gates of learning. No one wants to work in a field where they feel devalued or dismissed as ineffective, no matter their efforts. Photo by M. Severson

We hear all the time about companies making record profits, financial institutions handing out millions in bonuses to CEOs, even when their business loses money. As an educator I look upon such news and wish a fraction of that money could be allotted to education.

Instead we are bracing ourselves for even more cuts. And then, here comes the sequester.

Writing in her blog Alyson Klein argues that Arne Duncan’s claim that teachers are already being fired due to the sequester is an incorrect assertion (“Arne Duncan’s Education ‘Sequester’ Claims Questioned” 1). I do not claim to be in her league as a blogger but I have to disagree and raise my hand in support of the implied tenor if not the concrete adherence to Mr. Duncan’s statement.

In the school where I work we already know that next year we will have one less classroom teacher, no part-time counselor and our half-time librarian will become a half-time library assistant. These people know that they will be looking elsewhere for work, and I wish them luck. Our district is bracing for the closure of 11 schools. A memo from our superintendent outlines numerous position cuts. These jobs are already gone and the additional loss of funds from sequestration makes our choices become either bad or worse.

When did we decide as a country that short-changing the most vulnerable members of our society is acceptable?

Ms. Klein states:
” . . . districts have known the cuts were a possibility for a long time, more than a year. Many districts—including most that receive federal impact aid, which supports schools that have a lot of kids from a nearby military base or Native American reservation—have already planned for a possible reduction in federal funding.” 1)

Ms. Klein is correct when she states that most districts are already prepared for more cuts to their budgets but she is wrong in saying that doesn’t mean that people aren’t already planning to look for work because their job ends in May. Many teachers know that the sequester will simply make the likelihood of find a job that much harder and is tantamount to a pink slip. With their own families to support they must try to be proactive. The negative impact of continued cuts to education continues to be felt. Unfortunately in the education field we have been getting used to working with less each year for some time now. It doesn’t make teachers more effective, it makes them more dis-spirited and desperate.

And these continuing cuts have an even greater adverse impact. Many young teachers are seriously reconsidering their career choices. I speak to them every day; bright new-to-the field minds who have their efforts devalued or even denied. Seeing a pattern of less and less support for education and no opportunity to move into a financially secure position in their chosen occupation, many are seeking employment elsewhere. Anthony Cody writing in EdWeek says:

“The pressures we are subjecting teachers to are taking a toll. When our leaders hold schools responsible for overcoming poverty, teachers sometimes feel as if their work is never enough. And in addition to meeting all the needs of their students, teachers are also expected to constantly monitor data, communicate with parents, and even act as security guards when violence invades the school. Many teachers have families of their own, and find themselves in a losing race to meet the competing demands for their time and energy.”2)

Even those teachers who manage to hang on in the face of these pressures also have to face the very real possibility that their place in their chosen career will be sacrificed to the looming monetary crisis. The tragic part is that this current crisis is all created by our own government’s ineffectiveness. Dedicated professionals will lose their jobs, families will be denied important services, children will be placed in over-crowded classrooms and schools are deprived of needed personnel and materials simply because political posturing takes precedence over the needs of our citizens.

Yes, Ms. Klein we can prepare for still more bad news while at the same time we wonder, yet again, why it is happening?

1) http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2013/02/arne_duncans_education_sequest.html

2) http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2013/02/how_can_teachers_overcome_depr.html

One morning I was watching MSNBC, (Yes, I know, but baseball season is over for Cubs fans and the Bears play only once a week.) and I heard Joy Reid, one of the panelists on “NOW” with Alex Wagner, voice very succinctly the core issues currently impacting public education. To paraphrase, Ms Reid said that there were two key problems that our legislators are struggling with. First, they have realized that they don’t have to provide public funds for education. Instead of that they can privatize it through the use of vouchers and charter schools. Second, some people want to have the freedom to teach to their agenda; instruct only what they see as the appropriate subjects and curriculum to be delivered to our students in schools.

Bravo Joy, that sums it up in a very neat little nutshell.

Now that we have identified the problems, the question is what should we do about them?

Let me take a stab at it.

The initial problem I see as symptomatic of our current fascination with our economic downturn. With unusual magnanimity, I am willing to give our lawmakers a pass on this, and not indict them as being enemies of education as a whole but simply misdirected in that they see an opportunity to save critical state funds. Unfortunately they have no sense of historical precedent or long view to the fate of our potential future. The reason education is public is so that everyone gets the same opportunity. It is supposed to be an equity issue. That of course never happens, but imagine how wide the disparity will be if providing education becomes a matter of profit line.

To privatize education is to widen the gap between the haves and have-nots and further erode our already rapidly diminishing middle class. Opportunities for children of various socio-economic classes will become even less available and we will lose the key element that we have always touted as the hallmark of the United States — that anyone can grow up to be anything they want; a Governor or even President.

It also represents a dangerous precedent for other social services, some of which are already crumbling. Just think of a world where all medical services are for profit, law enforcement for profit, fire safety for profit, highway construction and maintenance for profit.The list of services goes on and on. Making any of these available on a solely for-profit status is counter intuitive in concept and would be wildly irresponsible in actual practice.

There are places we can cut costs. Some I would look at are: subsidies for oil companies, farm subsidies for people not to grow crops, tax breaks for companies that are not located in the United States, higher taxes for conglomerates — companies that swallow up smaller competitors simply to corner their market share, that is an idea that may have reached its majority.

But cutting basic services for all would make government complicit in the crimes that brought us to our present financial crisis and it is not a solution.

Then there is the second issue raised by Ms. Reid — what I like to call interest-based curriculum. In my career as an educator I have worked closely with several religion based charter schools. One of them even offered me a full-time job which I politely declined. I was there as a coach for their chess teams. And I have to say the best bunch of young chess prodigies I ever coached was at one of these schools. Being there once a week for an hour or two gave me the opportunity to observe the schools closely and I saw that each appeared to be an excellent blend of secular and faith-based instruction.

Still I wouldn’t send my children there, no matter how good they were. I am of the belief that secular education and religious instruction should be kept totally separate. I made it a point to strenuously avoid this controversy in my classroom by always referring my students to their parents in any question that even remotely alluded to religious beliefs. While it wasn’t always easy  I felt it was an important distinction to maintain.

So how do we solve the problem of faith-based curriculum? That one is simple: We don’t.

This perceived problem, like voter fraud, is entirely a construct of those with political agendas. There has never been a time in the United States when a church based school could not exist. Most educational professionals have no problem with them existing. Nor do they take issue with academy style schools that seek to focus on achievement and specific foci such as math or science. The problem lies in the support they receive and the proliferation of less carefully wrought iterations of private schools that are masquerading as public school under the aegis provided by a legislature eager to get out of the business of educating the public.

Currently in Arizona a charter school need only have one certified teacher overseeing curriculum and does not have to follow the federal guidelines laid down by NCLB and ESEA. What’s more they are funded at a different rate with fewer restrictions as to how that money is used. 1) The use of the term, “charter school” in Arizona is so meaningless as to almost be humorous. The construct would be laughable were it not charged with such a critical issue as the education of our children.

Charter schools as supported by Arne Duncan, are schools first and businesses second, but that is not how they are manifesting themselves here in Arizona. As a point of fact in Chicago where Duncan hails from, all charter schools are part of the public school districts and subject to the same restrictions and guidelines. Were this situation true of Arizona I would immediately will withdraw any objections.

With the recent loss of revenue from the defeat of Proposition 204 finances will be further crippled in our state’s public schools and we can only hope that legislature of Arizona will recognize their inherent fiscal short-sightedness and restore funding for education before the effects become irreversible.

1) http://www.arizonaeducationnetwork.com/2011/06/az-achievement-profiles-show-top-schools-suffering-from-budget-cuts/

“Vulture capitalists?”

“The private equity guys and the hedge fund guys are circling public education.” Diane Ravitch 1).

I am not by nature, an alarmist. One reason I lasted so long as an educator is that I rarely react precipitously. I can, but I tend to wait, see what happens and reflect on what must be done before doing it. Usually I would offer my kudos to any other individual acting similarly. But in this instance the individuals I am looking at somewhat askance at are newly identified as such: corporations as people.

Private industry is watching public education right now, to see if there is an opportunity materializing right in front of their eyes. Stephanie Simon writing for Reuters and published in The Huffington Post discusses the reaction of many US companies to what they see as a financial frontier, freely open for further exploration and exploitation.

“Privatizing Public Schools: Big Firms Eyeing Profits From U.S. K-12 Market” 2) is a discussion of a potential burgeoning industry that could result in another source of record profits for someone. Simon points out correctly this is not a new phenomenon, the growth of for profit companies involved in public education has been steady over the last decade or more.

Simon states: “Big publishers such as Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have made hundreds of millions of dollars selling public school districts textbooks and standardized tests.” 2)

Those of us involved in the field can attest to the increasing number of offers for teachers to buy supplemental materials designed to improve instruction. Having reviewed many of the new and improved educational materials in my career I am of the opinion that most are representative of rediscovering the wheel, that is to say, they represent old techniques, repackaged and with a fresh coat of glossy paint.

By this I do not mean to imply they are of no worth, rather from what I can see they represent tried and true learning vehicles, useful but not unknown to the experienced educator. The problems arise as the expenses involved in order to purchase something that may already be available, or that can be replicated rather simply.

Conversely, I feel that much of the appropriate focus of education has been lost by looking in the wrong direction. We should not be examining the materials to see if they support our instruction until we know what skills we have to teach; we should focus on the student to understand what it is they need to learn. You don’t buy children clothes and shoes that are “one size fits all”.

The longer I taught the more I looked to old adoptions, materials that had been used and discarded, to find the tools that I needed to reach some of my students. My aim was not to fit the child to the curriculum but make the curriculum fit the child. We have lost the sense of this through our dependence upon time-lines and benchmarks. A benchmark is a goal, not a deadline. By focusing our efforts solely on product and ignoring process we lose the art and humanity of education.

And it is in this milieu my fears become emboldened and stalk boldly into the light to challenge me.

A tenant of the new Charter school movement is that teaching is facile and available to nearly everyone. Certified teachers are not necessary in this new profession because anyone can deliver the curriculum with a modicum of training and effort. This, as any good teacher knows is fallacious and dangerous on many levels but two of them intrude upon my professional sense of inner well-being most forcibly.

First, teaching is facile, and available to almost anyone but good teaching is not. A good teacher is an artist working in a human medium. It is not just hubris that empowers me to say this but rather observation and self awareness. It is because I see my own failings as a educator that I can recognize the concomitant instructional strengths of others. Are all teachers effective with all children? Of course not and that engenders my proposed corollary: our children as students have become more diverse in the skills and experiential characteristics over the last generation, just as our knowledge and technologies have broadened and deepened in their complexity.

The second fallacious and possibly injurious belief that arises out of the growth of Charter schools and their reliance on less well-trained professionals is that of a monetary focus. Many decry the supposed avarice of teachers, jealously guarding their tenured positions and generous salaries. Yet another danger implied in Simon’s article is clear. If teachers need not be trained, they do not need to be compensated for having acquired that training, therefore increased profits incurred by private schools serving as public education facilities will become available. Who will earn that wealth? Will it be passed on to schools as lowered costs for materials? I am not a “trickle down” proponent — to me that trickle has always appeared more as a wet spot on the ceiling indicating that the roof needs fixing. And believe me when I tell you I know how much a new roof will cost.

The pursuit of ‘for profit education’ is analogous to other formerly exclusively public service industries i.e. cable television, special deliveries, and the rapid growth of private prison facilities. Has the service improved? Expanded yes, but not necessarily improved, not unless you have the funding to afford those improvements. Follow the money, it still comes back to cost and profit.

Perhaps most insidious in my eyes is the lusting after the Special Education field:

SPECIAL ED AS A GROWTH MARKET
Another niche spotlighted at the private equity conference: special education. Mark Claypool, president of Educational Services of America, told the crowd his company has enjoyed three straight years of 15 percent to 20 percent growth as more and more school districts have hired him to run their special-needs programs. Autism in particular, he said, is a growth market, with school districts seeking better, cheaper ways to serve the growing number of students struggling with that disorder. 2)

Is this what our country has come to in its children’s education? Chortling over the wealth to be realized through the misfortune of others? Public education was established as a non-profit service industry for a reason. It needs to be one of the few sources of equitable treatment for all Americans and a consistent opportunity offered regardless of race, creed, culture or mental or physical limitations. Oh, and yes, regardless of wealth.

1) http://schoolingintheownershipsociety.blogspot.com/2012/08/hedg-fund-vultures-circling-public-ed.html

2) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/private-firms-eyeing-prof_n_1732856.html

“Sum-mer-ti-ime and the living is . . . ”

Hard for non-educators to imagine and even harder for professionals to explain. Let me try anyway.

I sat in my last classroom the other day. My indefatigable aide, Donna, had finished a marathon cleaning and clearing out while I had alternated between puttering around, sorting papers and reminiscing while watching her in mute amazement. I had given her virtual carte blanc, that is, I had told her to use the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule: if she was unsure about whether to save something, don’t ask me because I will vacillate and perseverate over the decision and therefore don’t tell me when she had gotten rid of something, because likely as not I’ve forgotten I even had it and definitely no longer need it. As a result of this dictum there was almost nothing that distinguished my former classroom from any other big empty classroom in the school.

Sitting there facilitated my reflections. It made me think of what Catherine Gerwertz writes about as one serious worry that is looming before many teachers who are supposedly relaxing and recovering from another school year: The Common Core. 1) The Common Core is like a big empty classroom. Gerwertz says:

Now, the (Common Core) standards face what experts say is their biggest challenge yet: faithful translation from expectations on paper to instruction in classrooms.

The problem is concisely restated in the article by Professor William Schmidt:

Most current teachers have read the standards for their grade level, think highly of them, and are willing to teach them, but few understand the profound changes in teaching that they will require . . . .

And my followup statement to Gerwertz and Schmidt, not uttered in the article but never forgotten by any professionals, is that teachers need to be ready to implement these changes by day one of the upcoming year. For many teachers this is a summer of transition. Some have established their teaching rituals over many years of practice and reflection. Now they are wondering if those practiced daily schedules and progressions are viable any more.

They also have clean, unwritten plan books that are like my big empty classroom. What will they write? How are teachers going to fill their days? Will they furnish their plans with exciting activities that integrate lessons into the curriculum using the Common Core as a guide or will their days be predicated upon lessons that focus on teaching to the objectives for the purpose of passing tests?

Are the profound changes mentioned by Dr. Schmidt a series of directives that will narrow the curriculum or are those changes a form of educational liberation that energizes America’s public education again and encourages our students to want to learn. It’s scary, entering the unknown territory that the Common Core represents. Teachers like to know what they are doing before they begin to do it. Believe me when I say the youngest child can sense when as the teacher, you are making it up as you go along and they will respond accordingly. It’s not pretty.

My big empty room is unidentified; without personality, like the school year to come. The upcoming year is going to be an exciting one for many teachers. Whether that excitement will be caused by positive energy, persistent confusion or abject terror remains to be seen.

1) http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/04/25/29cs-overview.h31.html