The runaway train of educational policy...

This opinion piece in the NYTimes made me think. It's about the economy, but I see parallels to what's happening in education lately too.

Brooks argues:
"The economic approach embraced by the most prominent liberals over the past few years is mostly mechanical. The economy is treated like a big machine; the people in it like rational, utility maximizing cogs. The performance of the economic machine can be predicted with quantitative macroeconomic models. [...] Everything is rigorous. Everything is science."

When I saw Ravitch speak about her latest book recently, she wondered how a liberal President could have embraced ideas about education (measure and punish, teacher accountability, wide sweeping top-down measures to control what happens in classrooms, etc.) that were not in essence liberal. I wonder if there's some connection here to what Brooks is saying about the dominate liberal thinking toward fixing our economy, an approach that for the most part excludes "psychology, emotion, and morality"--concepts that he says he would expect in liberal thinking on the economy.

Maybe. All I know is that education thinking at the policy level is heading in the wrong direction. My state is proposing an "assessment system" that will mandate not just a state-developed summative assessment at the end of the school year, but quarterly interim assessments (that's now FIVE state tests each year) and formative assessments that are ongoing. If these are delivered to the schools from the state, by the way, they are actually no longer formative assessments which work (the research tells us) because they are contextual, immediate, and respond to factors that emerge in the daily life of a classroom. And this interim assessment thing--there's no body of research (yet) to show that they work in the ways that proponents claim they do. I just can't imagine that five state tests in a year are going to improve things in my classroom and make my students more successful, even if it does bring up their test scores.

It's like no one at the policy level is actually thinking about this stuff. There's no thought in the realm of "psychology, emotion, or morality"--how might all this testing affect teachers and students psychologically, emotionally, or morally? Who can actually teach and learn when they are being forced to do so? Where's the love of learning?

Without that (a love of learning), there is no learning actually.

Anybody know how to stop this runaway train?

You should read the rest of Brooks' argument and see what parallels you're seeing to educational policy right now. And let me know what you think.

M. Shelley

Race to the top?

I got in an argument today with my dad. He's becoming more and more of a curmudgeon these days (can't blame the guy, though).

The subject of our argument had to do with the conversation on Meet the Press this morning between Arne Duncan, Rev. Al Sharpton, and Newt Gingrich, a trio that has been touring the country to look at schools and talk about what direction education policy needs to take in the years ahead.

I just happened to catch this 20 minute conversation while I was walking on a treadmill in a hotel fitness center this morning. I don't have TV at home, so had it not been for the particular circumstances of this morning, I would never have seen this.

The first thing my dad said to me when I entered his living room later in the day was something that asked me to agree with him that the conversation on Meet the Press this morning was thoughtful, balanced, and thought-provoking.

Well, I had already discussed with my husband this morning over breakfast that this was not exactly my assessment of the Duncan/Gingrich/Sharpton Meet the Press dialogue. To me it was one more example of educational discourse that looks at our public schools only in terms of the extremes (it opened with stats about the public schools in Washington DC--while the stats are true and horribly sad, they contextualized the conversation within a view that public schooling in America is failing all of our kids dismally). There was a good amount of conversation that demonized teachers (without considering the horrible, impossible conditions that some teachers are asked to teach within--a massive failure of our system as a whole). There was anti-teacher union sentiment. There was a promise from Duncan that none of the Race to the Top money would be doled out to any state/district that didn't tie their reform plans to test scores.

In short, it was a group of politicians (with NO actual educators) sitting around discussing the needs of educational policy in our country.

My dad is proud of Obama for challenging the teachers' unions. Now, I'm not exactly the most fervent fan of teachers' unions, but they are there for a reason. Teachers have a history of being treated very badly by their school districts. My dad said to me, "you're a good teacher and everybody knows it--you don't need the protection of the teachers' union." Well, until I feel valued for my experience and expertise by my district administration because I see them placing a priority in all of their decision making on valuing teachers, I will still see a need for a teachers' union in my district. My dad made a sweeping statement writing off teachers' unions for protecting bad teachers. Sure, that happens, and I don't like it--but teachers' unions also protect the rest of us who work unbelievably hard.

I told my dad that so far Obama's educational direction is not really a dramatic change of course from the No Child Left Behind bus driven by W. What we certainly don't need is more mandated testing and holding teachers accountable to test scores. The tests are flawed for a whole range of reasons (see the link below for someone else's take on some of those reasons). I do not oppose higher standards or meaningful, rigorous assessment in public schools. I do not oppose requiring districts to examine their test score data by the sub groups of student population within their school and to use that test score data to identify the groups of students who are struggling the most and find ways to close those achievement gaps. In a nutshell, those are the requirements of NCLB, the most recent revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that has been around since 1965 and responsible for scores of significant and important educational reforms in this country. What I have a problem with is the mandated high-stakes testing--meaning real world consequences for schools that don't make the grade on test scores.

If the tests were meaningful and rigorous with a minimum of fill-in-the-bubble multiple choice test questions, I might be able to get behind it. But they're not. We do not have a testing industry that can support meaningful tests at the scale that federal law requires. So we're left with the tests that are able to be scored efficiently.

But there is nothing efficient about measuring what students truly know and are able to do. It's a messy, complex, nuanced process. And that--as I tried to make the point to my dad today --is why I had a problem with Meet the Press this morning. There are probably scores of Americans who now think they are more educated in this issue after watching that program this morning. But they have no idea how nuanced and complex public education in America is. There is NO simple fix for reform. Each school and district is its own universe with its own unique community context that spills into the school in myriad ways to affect what happens in classrooms. I happen to work in a district situated in a research university town--you bet that spills into our classrooms. The community expectations are high enough that on the whole we believe our students can achieve. And most of them do. You might not believe what we are able to accomplish here at the high school level with many of our students. F. Scott often says that essentially our students are getting a private prep-school caliber education for free. And he's right.

But that doesn't mean that we can't still do better. And we want to. And pressure to tie all of our reform ideas to scores on our state test is not what will make for meaningful reform. Actually--we'll enact meaningful reform, unique to the needs of our students in our community, simply by working together to work on the problems particular to our school context (an achievement gap for our second-language learners, students in the non-IB/non-AP courses who are generally disengaged from school, an impending doom that threatens to bring budget cuts of 6 to 9 percent next year when we are already trying to manage huge class sizes...).

This was going to be just a short piece to direct your attention to the Open Letter to our President that I came across today in the Edurati Review because I believe it gets into some of the nuance that I thought was lacking from Meet the Press this morning. But apparently I had a lot to say (either that or I'm just avoiding the stack of grading and other things I have sitting here staring at me...).

By the way, speaking of the stack of stuff staring at me--in a few weeks, F. Scott and I have agreed to capture here (as well as we can) a typical week in each of our teaching worlds--all in the spirit of helping others to understand what it looks like to do the work that we do.

Signing off,
M. Shelley

Why federal "RTT" reforms won't work...

This is maybe the best articulation ever of why current reform efforts underway in our nation's capital will not work. Funny- it took someone who actually knows education to point it out.

Marion Brady on The One Reason Duncan's Race to the Top Will Fail at Valerie Strauss' Blog at The Washington Post.

Brady says (succinctly) all the things I have wanted to say for years. I think she has it nailed.

Thanks to Schools Matter for passing this along.

F. Scott

Real change?

I'm supposed to be writing a paper (the same paper I've assigned to my students to show up in rough draft form tomorrow). Procrastination sets in so I'm writing, but here instead.

In conversations with colleagues over the last few days, I've gotten to a place where I feel somewhat stuck. Or maybe overwhelmed.

It's one of those times where I feel like I just want to shut my classroom door and do my own thing despite what the rest of the school is doing.

But unless there's some way to enact real change in the rest of the school, I will not be able to realize the hopes and visions I have for my students.

See, I really truly want to figure out what it means to teach language arts to high school students in ways that will meaningfully prepare them for success in our ever-changing, complexifying world. The jargon for this is 21st century skills. What does it mean to create a 21st century high school?

I am willing to chase this question, even if it means I have to throw out everything I've done before and remake my classroom and my teaching.

But I'm not sure my colleagues are equally willing.

When I get little glimpses of what is possible--of cool ways to integrate technology to get students more engaged, of interesting potential for doing cross-disciplinary work, of the options that begin to surface when we consider putting aside the daily/weekly schedule that currently rules our lives in the traditional American high school--I get excited.

But these are changes on the level of paradigm shifting.

Paradigm shifting is really, really difficult.

For now, I feel somewhat stuck within the boundaries created by the ways the community where I teach defines the purposes and practices of school. There are definitions about these things--about what students do, about what teachers do, about what is supposed to be happening in classrooms, about what a day at school is supposed to look like--that we all share and buy into, that we live and exist within, that are as invisible (yet omnipresent) to us as the air we breathe. So within that context, it's really hard for me to make the real change that I would like to move toward.

So there is where I feel stuck. It's such a daunting prospect (paradigm shifting--questioning the air we breathe) that I don't even know where to start.

Signing off (to write that paper I need to write)--
M. Shelley

Close to Home

Sarah Fine's eloquent essay in the Washington Post struck awfully close to home. You can read it in its entirety at the link above, and you should. She is leaving teaching after four short years, and while so much of my professional life is quite different from her's, so much is also the same.

I most definitely do not teach in an inner-city charter school. Many of the challenges she faced are at the least lessened, if not absent, in the school M. Shelly and I teach in. We are not a charter. For better or worse, we enjoy the protection of our union. Most of our students come to school ready, if not willing, to learn. A large portion of our students are even eager for education. My administration is generally supportive of me, and I have a high degree of autonomy in teaching. I work with wonderful, talented colleagues.

So why did Fine's essay resonate so strongly for me? I too am thinking about leaving the classroom. The continual expansion of the work load (especially by things that seem to have no benefit to my students), the relentless focus on high-stakes testing (even in a very 'good' school) mandated by NCLB, and the endless flow of barriers to actually connecting with students in meaningful ways are a constant drain. It is often a life of death by a thousand cuts. No one thing puts us over the top, but the accumulation buries us.

Most importantly though, Fine hit on one of the toughest parts of teaching for me.

Teaching is a grueling job, and without the kind of social recognition that accompanies professions such as medicine and law, it is even harder for ambitious young people like me to stick with it.

While every one of my parents and community members is appreciative to my face, the continual drumbeat of anti-teacher rhetoric at every level of this society is truly draining. The same parents who thank me write letters to the editor complaining about teachers demanding higher pay (not, for the record, anything that would constitute 'high' pay- our main, and apparently unreasonable, hope, is that our salary schedule could at least keep pace with inflation, which it has never done). Our district administration continually makes decisions and discusses teachers publicly in ways that devalue or show outright contempt for both teachers and the work they do. And the rhetoric and legislation of both the state and nation reflect a lack of interest and awareness of actual teaching that is frankly painful to me.

And, Like Fine, I am ambitious. Like her friend, I want to "do big things and be recognized for them." I'd like to do them working with kids, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of room for that in our society.

So, I am giving thought to doing some other things. Unlike Fine, I came into teaching in my thirties, with other professional experiences behind me. It has been invaluable to have that depth and grounding of experience as a teacher, but it also continually reminds me that I have other skills. I have a choice. I'm not sure yet what exactly the next thing in my life might be professionally, and I have a family to consider in these decisions.

I will be starting my eighth year in the classroom in the next few weeks, and while I look forward to, and am sustained by, my relationships with students and colleagues, I am also wondering if that is enough. It makes me very sad, and sometimes angry. I could spend a lot of time wishing for a different world, and sometimes I do (one has to be pretty idealistic to be a teacher at all). I just wish I felt like there was something more I could do with that idealism, something that meant staying in the classroom.

F. Scott