Stories from School: Practice meets Policy

Seniority Rules

by Brian 

 

The cherry trees are blooming, so it must be pink slip season.  For many years my district was spared the trauma of using the Reduction in Force (RIF) language in our Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).  But last year's state budget disaster forced us into implementing it, and we gave notices of non-renewal to 16 teachers.  Thankfully they were all eventually hired back, as we weathered the cuts with attrition and federal back-fill dollars.  This year as the budget crisis continues we may not be so lucky.

I teach math, so I like rules that are consistent.  You need rules to make a RIF list.  Almost universally they are based on seniority.  But how do you calculate seniority?

Breakfast Causes Lunch

By Tom

I am a wonderful teacher this year. My students are focused, hard-working and smart. They've produced some excellent test scores and I couldn't be more proud of them. And myself.

It started in the fall at Curriculum Night. My presentation was so convincing that the parents have been carefully checking their children's homework each night, helping them practice their spelling words and drilling them with flash cards. They all showed up for parent conferences and many of them took notes. They've made sure that my students are well-rested, well-fed and well-prepared for school each day.

I think I know another reason for my success. I don't waste a lot of my time with classroom management. I mostly focus on teaching and the kids (most of whom are girls!) listen.

I wasn't always this good. A few years ago, in fact, I stunk. My class was rowdy and unfocused. My Curriculum Night presentation was not compelling; I consistently had kids coming in hungry, sleepy, cranky and unprepared. I had failed to get their parents to support me at home.

Moreover, I was frittering away the day on classroom management activities that did nothing to bring my students closer to the state standards. I had a hard time getting that class (most of whom were boys) to listen.

Oh well; live and learn. When I work hard, my kids learn. When I slough off, they don't. One event causes the other. Just like breakfast causes lunch.

Making Better Teachers - Part I

By Kristin

There is a great piece in the New York Times Magazine titled Building a Better Teacher.  It's a long but good read.

In it, Elizabeth Green highlights Doug Lemov's efforts to identify effective teacher maneuvers.  Lemov discovered that it's important for teachers to have some sort of techniques with which to improve their teaching because many of them graduate from teacher education programs ill-prepared to teach effectively.

I couldn't agree more, and wondered what all of you would like to see change in teacher education programs.

Running Stop!

In an earlier post in response to the meme “Five Things I Would Change about Our School System,” one of the items on my list was the Running Start program. Running Start is an option that students have to take classes at the community college and earn college credits while still in high school. Some students are able to finish high school with both a diploma and an AA degree. Sounds good, right? So what is my problem?
 
While students have to pay for their own books and transportation, the tuition is paid fully by the state. Every dollar is a dollar that doesn’t go to the students’ respective high schools, so it is a financial drain on public education. I can just hear some people say, “If you want to keep those kids in high school, offer the classes and programs that will attract them.”
 
It’s not that simple. At my high school, we have the International Baccalaureate program. These are college level classes that challenge the intellect and offer potential college credit. For many of our Running Start students, IB or AP classes are too difficult. Instead, they take basic reading and writing, or biology, or chemistry, or whatever that is also offered at the high school. They don't leave because our high schools don't offer a good education; they leave for the free college credits.
 
It’s not just the money that runs away to Running Start, it is a core group of mid-to-high-level students who both set behavior and academic standards for the school. When there is an exodus of large numbers of these students, it actually changes the climate of the school. Who are left? The very high IB students in their IB classes. And the lower, more poorly achieving students mixed with a smaller than necessary core of "middle" kids.

I do understand that there are some students who simply need classes that aren’t available through the public school system. However, the number of students whose needs could not be met by an IB or AP program is very small.
 
I don’t take issue with high school students taking classes at the community college; I just have a problem, as a taxpayer, diverting the money from our public schools to pay for it. It is our responsibility as taxpayers to pay for education through high school, but it is NOT our responsibility to pay for college.

 
 

Best School Improvement Plan Ever

By Tom

Just when you think you've seen every School Improvement Plan imaginable, someone comes along and proves you wrong. In a remarkably innovative move, Frances Gallo, the superintendent in charge of Central Falls School District in Rhode Island, fired every single teacher in the district's only high school. She now plans to hire a brand new staff by September in her bold plan to turn around the under-performing school.

Central Falls, a town of 19,000 people, is the state's poorest community. 40% of its children live in poverty. The high school has a graduation rate of only 50%, and a mere 7% of the juniors are proficient in math.

Obviously, it's the teachers' fault, and clearly, something had to be done. Fortunately, Ms. Gallo stepped up to the plate.

Accountability.

 By Mark

What exactly does this word mean?

I read often that the reason schools are failing is that teachers are not being held accountable. Teacher accountability is the solution to all the problems in public education. Tie teacher pay to performance, make them accountable! If students don't perform, shutter the school, fire the teachers, hold them accountable!

I work to make sure that I hold my students accountable. But, that doesn't mean standing at the front of the room and making threats and demands until they perform. If I am going to hold my students accountable, I know that I have a responsibility to them. I must offer them the time, the training, and the support to do the tasks for which I am holding them accountable. I must give them strategies and resources, not just mandate that they do while I watch and wait, leaving them to figure it out and readying to punish them if they don't.

So, I'm a relative young'un...not even a decade in the business.  Can someone please explain to me how "holding teachers accountable" will solve all the problems in education today? Why are we focused on accountability (which to me, for some reason, carries a punitive connotation) rather than preparation and providing adequate resources?

Thousands of Dollars worth of Technology Locked in Teachers' Closets

 By Tracey

Have you seen new technology standards? They're not actually "new".  They've been around since December, 2008; but most teachers I talk to don't know about them.  They're pretty remarkable. They emphasize collaboration, innovation, investigating, problem solving, creativity, and responsible digital citizenship.  The picture you see is a Wordle I made from the standards, which takes all the words and displays them, with their size relative to the frequency they occur in the document.  Digital, learning, and technology certainly do stand out.  But so do the words use and district.  What are your districts doing to encourage the use of technology?  I'm curious because in my district we're lucky in that we have technology, the problem is that we don't use it.  

Sacrifice - During the Good Times and the Bad

 By Tracey

I got another email from my principal.  This time, it said, "FYI" and included a link to Randy Dorn's statement about the senate's budget proposal.  Both the house and senate released their supplemental budget proposals for these hard economic times.  They released them with apologies, recognizing the sacrifice we all must make when faced with deep cuts to social services during a time when cuts have already been made.  

Dorn's statement is sobering.  He lists some startling facts, one of which is that the state would fund $3,815 per student, which is just $108 shy of what we provided our students more than 16 years ago.  $650 million would be cut from K-12 education, bringing class sizes up just a touch below what's legal for K-3 students and at the legal limit for 4th-12th grade.  2,500 teachers would lose their jobs, not to mention the huge loss of para-educators, janitors, and other important people who help make a school run smoothly.  The cuts are severe; and the impact would be huge in classrooms across the state.

When do you throw in the towel?

  
 

by Brian

The state has mandated that all students must now pass Algebra and Geometry to graduate from high school. Therefore, many students and parents have decided to forgo taking a Pre-Algebra class, because it will not count as a math credit towards graduation.  The dogma, the unquestionable belief,  that we teachers are sworn to uphold is that all children can learn. 

Yes, they can.  But they need all the knowledge that will allow the new learning to make sense.   So what do you do when a student comes to you and says: "You're wrong, this is too hard"?  

Rethinking the Diploma

 By Mark

I keep hearing about how education as a system is broken. Everyone has an opinion and a finger to point, and many have "solutions." I spotted an article recently which attracted my attention: a Utah senator is being accused of "dumping the 12th grade." (The article is here.)

I think he's on to something. Part of the criticism lobbed at modern education is that it isn't a modern system at all: it is an antiquated 18th century system. One change which could help us rethink the purpose and structure of schools is to rethink the finish line.

We should abolish the high school diploma as we know it.

Sounding Off on Teacher Evaluation

By Tom

There's a bill moving quickly through the Washington State Senate that could produce some interesting changes in the way teachers are evaluated. As part of a new project called Sounding Board, The Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession, the host of this blog, asked a group of National Board Certified Teachers a series of questions regarding Senate Bill 6696. The results are out and some of them are pretty interesting.

The Bookless Library

By Kristin

I like to poke around on the New York Times website.  Mostly I like to read about food, as in the article I mention in my previous post.  For those of you who also like to read about food - good food, not junk food and obese kids - let me steer you towards this lovely piece on Thomas Keller and the meal he served his father right before his father died.  But my post today is not about barbeque chicken.  It's about books, and how the school libraries of the future may not have as many of them as they do now.

Today as I was poking around during lunch, enjoying the world the internet brings to my face and fingertips, I came across this piece in the New York Times about schools eliminating books in their libraries.  Books are heavy, expensive, and they're quickly outdated when you want them to be meaningful reference materials.  Just because I love books doesn't mean libraries have to be filled with them, right?  Anyway, I get most of my news online.  I'm writing online now.  Online is efficient and free!  Who needs books?

Candy

By Kristin

Two things detoured my walk home when I was in elementary school: the nickel candy bins at the 7-11 and the week's top-forty rack of lyric sheets at the record store.

After school my best friend Diane and I would take the change we'd rounded up from the car floor, dad's dresser and the kitchen junk drawer and hit the 7-11, loading up on candy before heading over to Licorice Pizza to see if Blondie's Rapture had been printed so we could sing along without making stuff up.  These days I can google a song if I want the lyrics and the nickel bins are long gone, but that's not all that's changed.  What I had to sneak off to 7-11 to buy students are now getting at school.  Luckily, the government is getting involved to put an end to it.  We are up against enough trying to help our students reach standard every year without loading their bodies up with sugar at break and lunch.

Great Teachers

by Brian
 

Everyone has their own list of characteristics that great teachers share.  And many subscribe to the opinion of James Starkey, who recently wrote in Education Week that: "As dorky as this sounds, great teaching happens by magic. It isn’t something that can be taught. I’m not even sure that good teaching can be taught."

I guess you'd call that the great teachers are born not made theory.  I do think some people are born to it.  My friend Bonnie started great and has been getting greater for the last 30 years.  But I'm sure she also believes teachers can get better, and maybe good ones can eventually become great.  So who's right?

Paramount Duty

By Tom

By the time my third graders graduate from high school, this state will finally have to pay the full price for their education. 

At least that's one way to look at the recent ruling by King County Judge John Erlick on a landmark lawsuit brought by a consortium of parents, local associations, district superintendents and teachers against the state of Washington to make them fully fund education. Glossary in hand, Judge Erilick looked at what the state is currently doing and reread the State Constitution where it says that "it is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders." He sided with the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit provided the backdrop for legislation passed last year in which lawmakers redefined basic education and pledged to fully fund it by 2018. Erlick recognized this effort, along with the current fiscal crises in which the state finds itself. Nevertheless, he ordered the state to figure out what it costs to educate Washington State's children and then pay it.

But he didn't say when.

So it's unclear what'll happen next.  The state could appeal and hope for a different ruling; one that will get them off the hook. Judge Erlick could acknowledge reality and let the state take its time figuring out how to pay for basic education as it's been redefined. Or he could impose a swifter timeline, ignoring the fact that the state currently can't even pay for basic education under the old definition.

Or somebody really smart could come along, take over Olympia, and figure out how this state should pay for the education it wants with the money it doesn't have.

Call me a cynic, but my money's on 2018. Most of the lawmakers in Olympia today will be long gone by then.

Along with my third graders.

Crime and Punishment

By Kim

One of the key concepts of good parenting is making sure that punishment for an infraction fits the crime and that a lesson is learned. I’m not so sure that the same considerations are made in the school system. This year has been extreme, but I just lost my 8th student on a forty-day suspension for smoking marijuana during the school day. The suspension is convertible to twenty days, if the student agrees to and completes drug counseling.   Now, the truth is, for most of my students, four to eight weeks off of school is more of an enjoyable vacation than it is a punishment, and it obviously hasn’t worked very well as a deterrent for other students, either. Ironically, getting in a fight – assaulting another person – only gets five to ten days.

The fact is, most of the students who get caught smoking weed on campus are not our top students, nor are they highly motivated to succeed. Thus, kicking them out for half a quarter in the best case (and a full quarter in the worst), almost guarantees both failure and loss of credit. This, in turn, greatly ups the chance that this kid will drop out. So what are our options as educators? In-school suspensions have not proven effective at helping kids keep their grades up, either. Partially because it can be so difficult and time consuming for teachers to create alternative assignments to those being missed in the classroom that rotate around lectures, discussions, or group projects. My small learning community is in the process of developing an alternative to out-of-school suspension. Kids will still be allowed to attend classes, but they will lose their passing times and lunches to teacher supervision. Additionally, they will be required to attend a one-hour detention Monday through Friday, which will include two days of study hall and two days of drug counseling. Our hope is that we will take away enough of the fun part of school from the kids that they will want to toe the line, while ensuring that they still have a chance to pass their classes and graduate on time.

What other alternatives are out there for long-term suspensions?

My Worries about Virtual High Schools

 By Mark

I came of age with the internet. I'm fond of telling my students that when I had to do my senior project I had to use these things called a card catalog and the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. I had to actually touch materials to use them in research. I had to learn keyboarding on a manual typewriter with ribbon and correction tape...and I'm only in my early 30s.

But by my first year at university, the internet had exploded. Since then, I have learned that I am what is known as a "digital native," perhaps because my father brought home a PC Jr. when I was about six.

I'm all for utilizing the "Web 2.0" as a resource for education, even though I find the moniker kind of obnoxious. I'm on my computer essentially every minute that I'm not with a student or caring for my family. I know that the wired universe (or better stated, the wireless universe) demands new skills sets of our students and "multiple literacies" unheard of twenty years ago. 

I begin to grow uncomfortable, though, when people start to talk about classrooms which exist wholly on the internet--especially on-line schools for teenagers.

Should Math and Science Teachers Get More Money?

By Tom

Last week the Seattle Times ran an editorial supporting differential pay for math and science teachers. The reasoning goes like this: college graduates who major in math or science can make more money in the private sector than in education. If we offer them a bonus to teach, we'll get more math and science teachers. More math and science teachers will lead to better math and science education.

The editorial went on to chastise WEA President Mary Lindquist for opposing this idea, pointing out that the teachers' union doesn't understand the free market system, and prefers to cling to the ideology "that everyone in the group is paid under the same rules. No favoritism." the private sector apparently embraces the free market system in which hard-to-find human resources command a premium, while dime-a-dozen people command...dimes.

I have three problems with this idea.

What Will Be On The State Assessment? I Don't Know.

      

By Kristin

I spent a lot of time today trying to learn a little more about the High School Proficiency Exam (HSPE), the new state assessment that my students have to pass in order to graduate.  I even called our building's test coordinator, but she hasn't "been trained yet" for the HSPE and knows nothing. 

    My own district and the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Washington have published nothing but the test schedule and the reassurance that "it's a lot like the WASL," our old state assessment.  "Like" is not good enough.  Running the 800m is a lot like the 400m since they both involve running on a track, but I would prepare my athletes differently for each one.  Running may be running and reading may be reading, but how you're going to be asked to demonstrate mastery affects how you approach the assessment.

    For all I know, my milers will be told on the starting line that they're running the 400.  Are their scores going to accurately reflect their skills?

Teach the Curriculum or Teach the Child?

 By Tracey

Do you every get emails like this from your principal?

I would like to find time to visit with you and Mr. P (the other 5th grade teacher) about your desire not to send students to the specialist for math interventions. I would like to understand your rationale and to hear your plans for addressing the needs of your students. It is my expectation that when teachers aren’t happy with how things are going, then a team approach to addressing specific concerns makes more sense, especially when it comes to math. By team, I mean the math specialist, math coach, assistant principal and myself.

I got one of these just last week.  In fact, I got this exact email.  I'll admit I was a bit jittery when it first arrived in my inbox.  As I read it again now, I see the professionalism and concerned tone of my principal. I like my principal, and I think we have good rapport.  But the fear of being called down to the principal's office has never quite gone away.