By Tom

Imagine living exactly next door and directly downwind from a combination slaughterhouse and rendering plant. Your days and nights are plagued by the haunting cries of doomed cattle and the fetid stench of rotting roadkill.

And then one day you come home from work to find that the owner and his wife have put the place up for sale and moved to a condo on Lake Chelan.

The air clears. You can have friends over.  But you’re unsettled, wondering what will move in next door. 

A year passes. Then you see the real estate lady, whom you’ve gotten to know fairly well, stapling up a “Sold!” sign. You ask her who bought the place. She smiles and asks what you’re hoping for. You describe a funky, independent bookstore with a wonderful coffee shop that also sells pizza and chicken teriyaki in the evenings. And they have live jazz on the weekends.

She laughs and tells you that your new neighbors include a dry cleaner, a nail salon and a doughnut shop. Although you’re disappointed, you realize it could be, and in fact was, much worse.

This is the best way I can describe how I feel about the pending debate over the reauthorization of ESEA legislation. Now that the health care bill has been passed (or “crammed down your throat,” if that works for you) our country’s domestic agenda will likely focus on education and the president’s Blueprint for Reform.

I know that the banner across the top of our blog reads teacher leaders tell stories about how policy decisions impact learning and teaching in their classrooms. I freely admit that this post strays from our purpose more than a little and I hope my fellow bloggers will get us back on track with their next posts. So I digress:

My second year teaching, I somehow earned the reputation that I could handle the "tougher" kids. Perhaps I was (still am) naive to interpret this as a compliment of my classroom management, strategies, and dedication to respecting every student--nonetheless, I've had a number of my most favorite students enter my classroom "on conditions." Sometimes they've bounced through other teachers with whom they butted heads, sometimes they've failed other classes and it was time to try my teaching style on for fit.

By no means do I claim to work magic--but sometimes things just work well. This was the case with the young man who I am thinking about tonight. His freshman year, he was placed in my class part way through the school year, because the counselors had a feeling that we might get along. And he is one of those kids who I knew, from the time I met him, that I'd always remember.

First of all, the kid never stopped smiling. He'd spot me through the crowded halls or locker bays and wave up high, shouting hello with his huge smile, bright enough to outshine everything else. And you only needed to be around him a minute or two to know how passionate he was about riding dirtbikes. 

By Tracey 

I’ve always been taught that a healthy dose of competition is a good thing.  It can motivate you and help you to set and reach goals for yourself.  We value it in the marketplace as it can encourage innovation and lead to better products and services.  But does it have a role in education?

 

By Kristin

You know the saying "If these walls could talk"?  Well, they do.  Our faces talk too, and our bodies, and sometimes our voices say something other than our words.  As Mark has pointed out on other posts, how we treat students matters to them.

This sign was on the door of a good teacher during one of our building's big tardy sweeps where kids have to check in with the office if they're late.  This sign is a good example of how we disrespect kids without knowing it.  For many students, being disrespected by a teacher is reason enough to quit.

 By Mark

It is a rare day when watching FoxNews inspires me to be a better teacher.

Obama's recent tete-a-tete with Bret Baier on FoxNews certainly wasn't the first nor will it be the last evidence that our country has lost its capacity for reasoned discourse, whether the home court is labeled conservative or liberal. Neither side is free of culpability. Why is it that we cannot speak to one another, civilly disagree, offer substantive evidence to support our own positions--rather than treat a conversation as a battle to be waged, where ad hominem attacks or unsubstantiated accusations rule the rhetoric? It is great for when I teach rhetorical fallacies, but as a citizen I'm sick of it.

So FoxNews has helped me revise instructional goals from here forward: in every unit I plan to include opportunities to teach students how to disagree with civility and reason. Whether it's a discussion about a bona fide controversial topic like healthcare or the Iraq War or stem cell research, which all come up during our unit on research and persuasion...or whether we think Romeo or Juliet was more to blame for their mutual tragedy... I pledge to encourage dissent amongst my ranks; I pledge to challenge every student to defend their position with rational grace (regardless of my personal convictions on the issue); and in the process TEACH my students that it is okay to disagree but for crying out loud it isn't okay to interrupt.

Sheesh. How many of our problems would be solved if we would just listen to each other and use our silence to consider other perspectives rather than to ready our next offense.

By Tom

I read the whole thing. All forty-one pages. Twice. And frankly, I kinda like Obama's "A Blueprint for Reform." It's not as cool as "A Blueprint for the Batmobile" (pictured to the left) but it's a heck of a lot cooler than the mess the last president left in his wake.

Let's take a closer look at some of the highlights:

In the (autographed!) introduction, Obama states "My Administration’s blueprint for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is not only a plan to renovate a flawed law, but also an outline for a re-envisioned federal role in education."And he's not just saying that. This is by far the boldest move since 1965, when the federal government first stepped into the education arena. Obama knows that that he can't directly affect schools, but what he can do is use money, lots of it, as leverage to get school systems to do what he wants.

by Brian

 

Our students just finished taking the renamed high stakes state tests.  The High School Proficiency Exam (HSPE) has replaced the WASL.  Not quite what the kids were hoping when Randy Dorn said he was getting rid of the WASL.  This week it was Reading and Writing; next month will be Math and Science.  It looks increasingly likely that the scores our students achieve on these tests will be used in our yearly evaluation.  In Florida it's possible that teachers' salaries will also be tied to test results.  Half of their salaries may be tied to their state comprehensive and end-of-course exams.  Which sounds not so much like merit pay, but de-merit pay.  Instead of paying good teachers more, they'll pay teachers whose students underachieve less.  And the drum beat to fire bad teachers goes on.  (See Tom's post.)The cover of the March 15 Newsweek is a blackboard covered with the sentence: We must fire bad teachers.

So I was reading an article by George Packer on President Obama's first year in office in the March 15 edition of The New Yorker and I came upon an amazing anecdote.  Packer was writing about Obama's frustration at being unable to hold the banks fully to account for the financial collapse.  Apparently Obama would have been happy if Timothy Geithner, his Treasury Secretary, had recommended the top bank officials be held accountable by forcing entire management teams out of their jobs.  Packer writes: Geithner felt that firing the leadership of the bailed-out banks would ultimately cost taxpayers money, owing to the loss of expertise, and would inevitably punish executives who were not to blame.  The President reluctantly agreed.  "You always admire someone willing to do the responsible thing, even when it is terrible politics," Sperling (a counsellor to Geithner) said.  "But you could see how frustrated he was."

Too bad Arne Duncan and Geithner can't trade jobs.  Duncan likes firing people, and he doesn't mind losing expertise or punishing teachers who are not to blame.

It's starting to get to me.  Fire the teachers, but give the bankers another bonus.

By Kristin

Well, as we might have guessed, things have started to fall apart at Central Falls High School.  

While I'm not one to shy away from taking a side, today I'm not going to write about whether the teachers should be fired or not.  Instead, I'm going to write about the fact that when Superintendent Frances Gallo searched Central Falls High School one night in response to a rumor that there was an effigy of Obama hanging somewhere, she found it, hanging upside down on a white board and holding a sign that read, "Fire Central Falls Teachers."

It made me think of how we sometimes overstep that line between protecting our students and trying to rally them.  The students sitting in our rooms are not our colleagues or friends.  They are not our troops.  There's a line that teachers shouldn't cross, even though it can be tempting.

  By Kristin

Taking a bold stance in favor of equality, The Texas Board of Education has voted to include different cultures and political viewpoints in their history textbooks.  Just kidding!  Actually, they voted to revise the texts in order to erase the separation between church and state, emphasize the Christian origins of the United States, and put the "free enterprise system" in a more positive light.  A final vote will happen in May, and then textbook companies will work furiously to fulfill the revised-history textbook orders of this important customer.

In a strongly worded condemnation of this moment in Texas history, the editors of The New York Times point out that curriculum should be "chosen for its educational value, not politics or ideology."  But who can trust The New York Times?

By Tom

Let's take another look at Race to the Top, (RT3) but this time from a student's perspective.

RT3, the centerpiece of the Obama administration's educational policy, is a federal initiative in which states compete for grant money by showing that they have put into place certain school reform measures that the administration values. Among these measures are liberal provisions for charter schools, merit pay for teachers based in part on student test scores and state-level authority to take over so-called "failing schools."

For the sake of argument, let's pretend that these provisions actually add value to a state's school system. And for the sake of comparison, let's consider two different states, who've taken two different approaches to the administration's challenge: Illinois and Washington. 

By Kristin

The Obama Administration has revised NCLB.  To be honest, though I try to make sense of the changes they've made, I tend to get caught up in opinions like those of Susan Traiman.  According to the article in the New York Times, Susan is "...a director at the Business Roundtable, a group that represents corporate executives"  She "called the proposals a 'really positive step forward.'"

Forgive me for thinking that perhaps the Times should have quoted a teacher's opinion on the changes. Forgive me for thinking that if corporate executives are the population whose views on schools matter, then maybe I should see a corporate executive spend seven hours in a room with 35 15-year olds.  Even once.  Ms. Traiman and her corporate cronies approve of the changes to NCLB because of its big push toward "college and career readiness" instead of testing a child's ability to meet standards.  I don't think that college readiness is the same thing as career readiness, and I wonder where we're being told to steer our students.

By Mark

My goal is neither to roast this teacher nor defend his practice. The video above clearly doesn't give the whole story. However, it raises an question with which I myself have battled: when a teacher disagrees with a colleague's classroom practice, how should this be handled?

We've all been there. A kid comes in and complains about another teacher. We take the high road, try to give the kid strategies for conflict resolution, and hopefully, we don't take sides. If you're like me,  you occasionally hear about a colleague's questionable discipline or off-target comments--we must of course take what students say with a grain of salt. But what if a kid hands you a paper from another class with feedback like what was given above? And worse, what if it isn't an isolated event, but something you've seen as a pattern in this teacher's behavior? Can, or should, a teacher try to influence the questionable classroom practices of a colleague?

What would you do? What should the administration do?

 By Mark

The last few weeks I've been really busting my tail. A month or so ago, I noticed some major problems in my 10th graders' analytical writing. They were writing often, but only maybe once a week could I find time to give much feedback--and too often by the time I'd get the feedback returned to them, it would be just enough a delay as to be irrelevant to them. Even in the span of one week, some kids had forgotten they'd even done that writing I was handing back to them. I saw almost no skill growth from my feedback in their next writing sample. It's the same struggle I have every year and the same issue most teachers of writing encounter. Despite my feedback, the students would persist with the same errors in conventions, arrangement, and idea development. 

However, these like so many problems I see in my learners' abilities to learn, are all problems I know how to fix. 

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?

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.

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.

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.

 
 

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.

 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?