by Maren Johnson

"Ambitious teaching = rigor + equity. What does this mean for the Next Generation Science Standards?" This provocative question, posed at a conference last week by Mark Windschitl of the University of Washington, has been a framework for me for the last few days not just for thinking about science standards, but also for thinking about teaching in general.

First off, I like the term "ambitious teaching." Ambitious teaching sounds accessible, because, well, that means we as teachers can all aspire to high goals--and if we don't succeed, we can always try again! It's kind of like a "growth mindset" for teaching. Ambitious implies continuous growth, as opposed to reaching an endpoint.

Ambitious teaching in the context of the Next Generation Science Standards? That means rigor for both the teachers and the students--the new standards marry science practices, disciplinary ideas, and cross-cutting concepts in a way we haven't seen before. This will challenge our teaching, and it will also challenge our students. How to get the students to achieve this level of rigor? Growth mindset might again be part of the answer: Ann Renker, principal of Neah Bay Middle and High School, serving the Makah Indian reservation, has had remarkable results with growth mindset and incorporating the ideas of “hard work, not natural intelligence” throughout the school.

The Next Generation Science Standards have been designed from the ground up with equity in mind. Previous national science standards were based overtly, explicitly and almost exclusively on European tradition: Science for All Americans, basis of the National Science Education Standards, stated, "The sciences accounted for in this book are largely part of a tradition of thought that happened to develop in Europe during the last 500 years – a tradition to which most people from all cultures contribute today."

 

by Maren Johnson

When the state Supreme Court ruled on the McCleary case, we all cheered. The state has a constitutional duty to fully fund public education--all right! So how is this going actually going to happen?

One budgeting strategy that has been widely floated is to "Fund Education First." That means to actually go ahead and write a separate budget that would fund public education, see how much it costs, and then with whatever is left, fund the rest of the state's needs.

Sounds good, right?

But fund education without simultaneous consideration of the wrap-around social services? It won't work. Here's just one example why not:

I spent a day in Olympia this week with a school bus driver and a few other people, speaking with our legislators. The bus driver has had a long and varied career: special needs transportation, different routes, services all over his school district.

The bus driver told the story of driving homeless students to school through the McKinney–Vento program. The federal McKinney-Vento Act is designed to provide assistance to youth who are homeless or awaiting foster care. One of the provisions of this act is that students who are in a disrupted housing situation because of homelessness must be transported to their original school. Yes, any stability we can provide these students, who are among our most vulnerable, is of course needed, and those involved are glad to be able to provide it. However, when the student is originally from one school district, and then must be transported to another, it makes for some very expensive rides. The bus driver shared some specific numbers, and I was really surprised by the total costs. These costs vary quite a bit from district to district, but even though the extra transportation is mandated, no extra funding is provided. It is a huge unfunded mandate, and the money ends up coming out of classrooms.

Clearly this is a complex funding issue, with both Washington state and federal components. When neither the state nor the feds pick up the bill, local districts are left to make do. So what about the "Fund Education First" idea? Do we fund education but not fund services like those supporting homeless youth? Makes no sense--the two are deeply intertwined. Education is the state's "Paramount Duty," according to our constitution. It must be fully funded. However, education doesn't happen in a vacuum, and putting together a fully funded education budget demands consideration of other factors affecting students' lives.

 

Last year was my first foray into tromping the halls of Olympia as a novice education advocate. I'm still far from an expert--which was one of my reasons for being so reticent to have a political voice.

I think many of us feel that way. The first step, as always, is just to pay attention...read, watch, listen, make up your mind (and remember, it's okay to disagree with your colleagues, your school, and your union, as long as your disagreement is informed).

WEA keeps an active site that is a good place for your radar to first ping: OurVoice. A few bills of note (and I think they're all still live as I type this...but things can change quickly!)

• S5588: Restricts use of half-days for professional development, marketed as "changing the definition of 'school day.'" (WEA's take, here.)
• HB1293: Requires districts to disclose the real costs of testing, which has led parents to ask legislators a question they cannot seem to answer.
• HB1673: Gradually reduces student-to-teacher class size ratios for calculating state allocations, including provisions for even smaller class sizes in high-poverty schools. According to this document, Washington would need to hire over 12,000 teachers to bring our class size to the national average (we're presently the 4th most crowded). 

While there are other bills (and troubling ideas) out there and various stages of their life cycles, ranging from misguided attempts to businessify the teacher evaluation model that hasn't even been given the chance to get off the ground to others that affect collective bargaining, the class size bill, HB1673, is the one I'm thinking about at the moment. 

The McCleary ruling, which established that the Washington legislature was not adequately funding public education, is popping up in the news again. When the ruling was first issued at the Washington State Supreme Court ordered the legislature to remedy the ed funding debacle, I worried that it was just lip service with no teeth. 

Recent news makes me optimistic that people are paying attention, though my worries still persist. The 2018 deadline is now a year closer than it was when first established, and it is hard to really point at "progress." The court has now said that it wants "yearly reports that 'demonstrate steady progress.'" (Sound familiar?) See the latter part of this article for a "clarification" about what this expectation from the courts might mean, and here's the link to the actual Supreme Court Order dated 20 December 2012. I particularly like this paragraph from page three of the court order:

In education, student progress is measured by yearly benchmarks according to essential academic goals and requirements. The State should expect no less of itself than of its students. Requiring the legislature to meet periodic benchmarks does not interfere with its prerogative to enact the reforms it believes best serve Washington's education system. To the contrary, legislative benchmarks help guide judicial review. We cannot wait until "graduation" in 2018 to determine if the State has met minimum constitutional standards. 

I've learned to not read the comments under any online news report about teachers, education or policy--there's no dialogue there, and too often the perpetuation of incorrect information. I used to whack-a-mole the trolls, but it was futile. Perhaps StoriesfromSchool can be a place for reasoned and thoughtful discourse about this issue.

I woke up in the middle of the night, and knew something was wrong. I was cold, hot, shaking, queasy, everything ached. I stumbled into the bathroom to find a thermometer and wait…

wait…

yup. A fever. Now it’s definitive. I’m sick.

Like somehow I didn’t know that until after the little number popped up on the thermometer.

Well, it’s probably just a little virus, or something I ate. Uncomfortable, unpleasant, but not serious I consoled myself as I curled up on the floor by the toilet where I would be spending the next few hours.

A temperature tells us our immune system is working. It’s fighting off the weakness in the body and in a day or two, we will be well again. Most fevers don’t send us running off to the doctor. Unless they persist…

A fever tells us something is wrong. But by itself, it doesn’t tell us what is wrong or how serious it might be. It takes a while to figure out if you need to call in sick, or check into the hospital.  Just get some rest, or run expensive tests using big humming medical equipment. These are the thoughts running through my head at 2am on the floor of the bathroom.

What does any of this have to do with teaching? Well, since I’m home sick today, I’m sitting here looking at my school’s MSP scores from this past year. We, like many schools, seem to have a bit of a fever. Our scores aren’t where we’d like them to be. They certainly aren’t terrible, but they’ve declined two years in a row. I guess you would call that a fever in reverse.  Anyway, it appears that we’re a bit under the weather. However, the numbers that I’m looking at don’t tell the whole story. It’s a small school. A few kids having a bad day are enough to change our scores from one year to the next. Listen to the staff conversations about this, and we all have an idea what caused the trouble. But what we don’t have is expensive medical equipment that can give us a definitive diagnosis. All we have is the number on the thermometer.

Do we need more professional development to help improve our instruction?

Or new curriculum?

Or a new intervention program?

Or new technology?

Or stronger anti-poverty initiatives?

Or maybe a better thermometer?

Maybe the one we have is broken.

After all, in the past few years we’ve changed our test from the WASL to the MSP, and then changed the administration of that test from paper and pencil to computer based. It’s hard to compare year to year using an inconsistent tool. Looking at National Assessment (NAEP) scores from the past ten years, our 4^th grade state scores have remained relatively unchanged.  It doesn’t seem to matter what we do: which curriculum we adopt, which diagnostic test we administer, which RtI model we embrace. The scores have not wavered in the past decade.

According to the Flynn Effect, we are getting more intelligent over time. If that’s true, then seriously, why aren’t our test scores rising?

I’m not saying we can’t or shouldn’t do anything to try and raise student achievement. On the contrary, I think we need to do even more…way more…to figure out how to level the playing field, provide meaningful, appropriate instruction, and assess it in ways that aren’t skewed by politics. If after a decade this fever has persisted, it seems like it’s time to do more than just keep taking our temperature over and over.

By Rob

Struggling students are referred to the Guidance Team.  We identify the most significant barrier to student success.  We develop a plan to address the barrier.  We choose metrics to track the effectiveness of our plan.  We document our interventions and meet regularly to track progress. 

A teacher may bring a student to the team who’s reading below grade level.  We review the student’s reading data.  Perhaps we find evidence they need phonics support.  We align our school’s resources- this student will meet with our reading specialist for an 8 week phonics intervention.  This may lead to improved fluency and the student can then carry the meaning while reading.  As a result, their reading comprehension improves.  I’ve seen this happen.  It demonstrates some of the best work a school can do.

By Travis

I took my sons to school with me on national Take Your Child to Work day. It humanized me. I have a good rapport with students because I care about them as people outside of my subject area. I know for many students the intricacies of Shakespeare’s language in The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is not what is important for their survival that day. I also know that my class may just be a blip on their day of ups and downs. Given this, I work hard to make their time in my class an “up.”

By Mark

Of my seniors, some may graduate, some may become a statistic.

Of the total FTE in my building, some may have jobs next year, some may be RIF'd.

Of the courses on the master schedule, some classes may be scratched, some may be cobbled together.

I may decide to stay in the classroom. So much depends.

All of these this-or-thats will be decided in May. How appropriate.

By Mark

Everyone has probably heard about, or actually read, the New York Times website article that discussed the supposed downward spiral of teacher morale. It highlighted how teachers working in struggling schools had the lowest morale, and the teachers with greater satisfaction tended to have "more opportunities for professional development, more time to prepare their lessons and greater parental involvement in their schools."

Travis recently shared his one cent about how morale can easily crumble in our present atmosphere. Tamara shared some thought provoking questions, too. And Tom found himself indigo and then entered stage five.  

In my meetings and phone calls and emails and faxes (yep, faxes) with legislators the last few weeks, I've found myself repeating the phrase that I feel like I have "a target on my back and the blame for all society's ills on my shoulders." In quiet moments in the car or after my kids are in bed, I too have thought about what other jobs I could apply for.

But the next day, I walk into my classroom, close the door on it all, turn to face them and breathe a sigh of relief.

Spending on education is about 2% of the federal budget.  That sliver of the budgetary pie was $63.8 billion in 2011.  Even in the climate of debt reduction the President’s education budget for fiscal year 2013 is likely to see an increase.  But this budget will need to be approved by congress.  Given congress’ track record of bi-partisanship this debate could get ugly.

By Travis

The school of the future will not be housed on a cloud, or a floating pod. The school of the future will not have whole sides of buildings made out of windows, nor will students sit, discussing great works of literature through their hand-held discussion devices.

No, the school of the future is more real.

It IS attainable.

It IS possible.

The school if the future will have No Tardies, No Failing Students, and No Homework. The school of the future is only a few years away. 

Each spring the uncertainties of student enrollment, teacher transfers or retirement, and funding make budgetary predictions difficult.

To remain financially sound some districts send out pink slips to the newest teachers. In no way is this ideal. These teachers face uncertainty about their employment future. Some of the district’s best teachers, who happen to be new hires, may not have their contracts renewed.

New legislation, yet to be introduced, may change how districts respond to RIFs. Instead of RIFs base on level of experience they may be based on a teacher’s evaluation relative to other teachers.

This bill, I assume, is in response to schools being unable to retain effective teachers when they are forced to lay off staff.

In 2009-2010, 3% of Washington’s teachers were given RIF notices. 87% of those teachers were recalled. Evidence does not suggest that the best and brightest young teachers are losing out to ineffective veterans.

Still, this idea is compelling. Shouldn’t the best teachers be the last ones to be laid off? Yes. If only it were that simple.

Distinguishing between the best and the worst teacher in a school may not be that difficult. But it is much more difficult to distinguish between the second and the third worst (one may keep their job while the other may not).

New evaluation systems are expected to have different criteria for novice and experienced teachers. Is a good novice teacher more effective than an average experienced teacher? Who wins in this RIF race a teacher with five years of solid student growth and one recent year of poor growth or the second year teacher with two years of average growth?

What are the recall rights for a RIFed teacher?

When the art program is cut can somebody determine the relative effectiveness between a high school and elementary art teacher?

The idea, keeping the best, is elegant. Implementing this idea? Not so much. Since relatively few new teachers actually lose positions this law is unlikely to result in an improved teaching force.

I'd like to see lawmakers put their efforts elsewhere. If lawmakers want to address the problems related to RIFs they should fulfill their paramount duty and fully fund education. And they should allow local school districts the time and space to implement the new evaluation criteria. Many stakeholders came together to put this evaluation model in place. Rolling out this system will be challenging. Rolling out this system while simultaneously addressing the complexities of a new model for RIFs seems unwise. But I'm no lawmaker...

By Rob

Tom has written some thoughtful posts (here, here, and here) about charter schools.  When I read about charter schools with a cohesive staff, a common vision, and high standards for all I’m excited about the possibilities for their use in education reform.  I am also a firm believer that the same reforms are possible for public schools. 

If charter schools take hold then resources will shift towards making them viable.  Who provides the transportation?  Who maintains the facilities?  Who provides the special education services in the least restrictive environment?  Who provides the oversight?  Undoubtedly answers to these questions are possible.  But what if the resources used to address these questions were invested in local school improvement?

By Mark

I sat at a table with two other teachers, two building administrators, and the top two admin from the district office. We'd spent the better part of an hour sorting through the assessment rubrics and frameworks associated with the new teacher evaluation system mandated through legislative action in Senate Bill 6696. 

Silence settled on us all at once. The weight of what we were examining suddenly became overwhelming. 

Like so many things in education, the ideas and philosophies behind this new evaluation system (in brief: a shift from the binary satisfactory/unsatisfactory on a menu of teacher behaviors to a four-point continuum of evaluation using as many as sixty individual descriptors of teacher practice) we could all agree were sound, necessary, and powerful both in terms of evaluation and potential professional development.

But as we began to picture how it all could transition from philosophy to action, the beast began to be revealed.

By Mark

For me, mentally, the coming December holiday break marks the "half-way" point in the school year. While this is not necessarily chronologically true, it is certainly emotionally true.

Back when I was a pre-service teacher, I remember seeing a chart like this one that graphs a first-year teacher's motivation and emotion over the calendar year--with November and December being the pit of disillusionment--but don't despair, rejuvenation and hope are just around the corner!

Ten years later, I feel like the chart still applies to me. It is always in November and December that I wander the web to see what other kinds of jobs my credentials and dispositions might match.

By Travis

A few weeks ago, Tom had a post that spoke to me, We Can’t Do This Alone. In this post, he states how parent involvement is key to a student’s success, but somehow it seems that the focus becomes teacher quality. The idea of a shared responsibility for a student’s education, struck me as important since it has come up a few times at Stories for School. It came up again. Last week. During my parent conferences.

Each teacher had a table around the perimeter of the gym with two chairs in front for the parents and student. Parents visited any of the teachers with which they wish to have a conversation.

To my left was a senior math teacher. To my right, a sophomore technology teacher. Me … I am a freshman English teacher. I had a variety of conversations that night with parents about family responsibility. I was getting worn out having the same conversation with parents about what they can do to keep their student on track and I started to listen to the conversations on my left and right, it was clear my conversations were not unique. Many families are not ready for how school is done.

By Mark

NBC News ran a story last night about Siemens and their 3400 un-fillable jobs despite an abundance of job-seekers out there right now. The segment (embedded below) also featured small businesses who also have an abundance of openings--one owner noting something to the effect of "we can buy all the equipment we want, but it's no good if there is no one skilled to use it."

The piece discussed the "skills gap" between what the jobs require and what the prospective employees were trained for or capable of doing... and thankfully stopped just short of blaming American public school teachers for causing this, the failing economy, or current debt crisis in Europe.

The solution to the skills gap, according to the report, was more training (not testing) in math and science. Okay, that's fine. But how about training in skills?

Several of us here at SfS have beaten the drum about the need for more investment in vocational and career and technical education at the high school level. This got me thinking: what if we took every penny currently dedicated to statewide testing and test prep at all levels and instead invested it in vocational and CTE programming starting even well before high school? What about devoting funding toward funneling kids toward voc/tech speciality schools after high school instead of always talking about "college readiness" as if enrollment in a four-year is the only indicator of a school's success?

Alas, in a cursory search, I was unable to find clear numbers about the cost to taxpayers to adminster and assess all the state tests. Certainly, vocational and CTE programs can be quite expensive due to specialized equipment or facilities needs, but still, I feel like when we look at the problems facing the country, we're mismanaging our investment. 

One of the first and most important lessons I learned as a pre-service teacher was to examine the needs of my students and adjust my response, rather than just dish them a canned curriculum regardless of their needs. When I consider what our economy and country apparently need from public schools, it isn't kids who can pass tests. We need kids with skills... and report after report highlights that skills gap. Our schools apparently are not arming the emerging workforce with the tools they need to be successful.

Instead of using tests to punish schools for what we're supposedly not doing, why not fund programming to help schools do what we ought to be doing?

(Sorry about the ads in the video below. I usually open another window and check my email, but you can multitask however you choose.)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

 

 

By Mark

At the end of July, Randy Dorn announced that the state of Washington has adopted and will begin transitioning to application of the Common Core standards for English Language Arts. I head back to my classroom next week to start unpacking and really getting down to work preparing for the school year, but I'm having a problem seeing how this shift in standards should affect my planning and implementation.

And, based on the emails that have filled my spam folder for my school email address, there are an awful lot of businesses looking to cash in on this standards changeover... so many emails in fact, that the persistent cynic in me wonders whether this change to CCSSO Common Core standards isn't more about supporting textbook and software manufacturers than it is about promoting learning. When I see on the changeover explanation that the "system will include...

• optional formative, or benchmark, exams; and
• a variety of tools, processes and practices that teachers may use in planning and implementing informal, ongoing assessment. This will assist teachers in understanding what students are and are not learning on a daily basis so they can adjust instruction accordingly.

...I hear the cha-ching of cash registers and start thinking about all those emails trying to sell me matierals "perfectly aligned with Common Core Standards to guarantee student success on major assessments."

It probably isn't all about lining the pockets of curriculum mills, but when I look at the standards and the timeline that OSPI posted (more on that below), I do wonder really what is going to change... and I don't mean that in a futile, cynical way. I mean it like this: don't these standards just communicate what we should have been doing anyway under the old standards?

 

By Tracey

In continuing with the Save Our Schools March events, since it's still so fresh in my mind, I'm posting the speech Diane Ravitch gave at the rally on July 30.  She's not Matt Damon, so you may have missed her.  (I was deeply touched by the words Matt Damon spoke and am grateful he came.  But, I will assume you won't need me to hear his speech.)  Ravitch also spoke at the two-day conference leading up to the rally.  Her speech at the rally was shortened dramatically, as it should.  What you missed was a historical account of how our education system has been "in crisis" since 1910.  It's apparently what we do; we claim our schools are in crisis, and then make irrational decisions about how to fix them.  Anyone ever read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine?  A hundred years of crises should raise some flags.  But, the greatest offender at this point in time, is pretending that poverty isn't an issue.

InterACT, a group blog by educators in California, recently shared a post by guest-writer Lynne Formigli, an NBCT and active teacher leader. Formigli summarizes the situation which resulted after three billion dollars (over eight years) had to be funneled directly to nearly 500 struggling schools as a result of a lawsuit against then-governor Schwarzenegger. (Read Lynne's post for more articulate and thorough explanation.)

The use of that money (now a few years into the eight year plan), as implied by Formigli, was apparently teacher or at least locally directed, and the results were powerful. These results included evidence to support what teachers often promote: class size matters significantly to the learners who are statistically "left behind."

This information ought to resonate all throughout the country as states face the tough budget decisions about public education. Decision makers need to hear this:

• It isn't just about teacher pay, it is about paying for teachers.
• When there are more teachers, classes are smaller, and that is proven to result in greater student learning.
• When teachers are cut, schools are left with no other choice but to increase class sizes and do the exact opposite of what data proves is best for student learning.
• Sure, everyone has to tighten the belt a little--but few choices will have as long lasting repercussions as choices about a child's education.

I really encourage you to take a look at InterACT and read Lynne's post and other posts by the teacher-leaders there.

By Mark

I came across this Washington Post re-post via A 21st Century Union, a teacher blog rooted in Maryland. The piece in the Post, in a nutshell, illuminates a simple reality about the recent PISA education rankings wherein the US was situated far from the top. The maxim "if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging" forms the root of the argument.

The hole? The fact that the rest of the world is catapulting past American education on international measures.

What has dug this hole? Kevin Welner, author of the post, states it clearly: we are in the position we are in because the current generation of tested students came of age in an education system dominated by NCLB mandates centered on test-mania. We dug our hole with high stakes tests and an obsession with scores and sanctions.

The result of that test-mania is obvious: we have not gained ground in student achievement, we've lost ground. The proof is in the data. Since data analysis is all the rage in education, we should be abandoning what clearly doesn't work, right? Logic says we ought to stop digging.

Here's the link to the post, it is worth a read. I know I'm ready to put down this shovel.

No, I'm not kidding. It isn't real. Those people auditioned, were hired, relocated into that gaudy house, and then filmed. The episodes aren't real, either... No, I'm not kidding. Those episodes are edited together based on a storyline the writers create by putting The Situation and his crew into situations where the writers know how they will react. It isn't "real."

It is amazing how much convincing it has taken to prove to my freshmen that the Jersey Shore is not real. These are the same kids who have no problem suspending disbelief long enough to just accept that Peter Parker can climb walls when he wears the right spandex suit but who cannot just accept that the animals on Animal Farm speak English and build a windmill.

These conversations help to illustrate a critical shift which ought to be happening in literacy instruction in American schools: rather than studying literary works, we need to be studying literary processes.

• We need to study the process by which 360 hours of Jersey Shore footage gets edited down to 44 minutes for a one-hour weekly episode.
• More importantly, we need to understand the process of acculturation and normalization which occurs in a viewer when they watch entertainment labeled as reality.
• We need to study the process by which lighting, angle, score and juxtaposition are used by news organizations to communicate a message beyond the news.
• More importantly, we need to study the subtle and not-so-subtle biases which shape the decision-making about what makes air and what doesn't.
• We need to help young readers learn to discern which sources on the internet are valid and which are not, and even what we mean by "valid."

Are these lessons more or less important than Shakespeare or great novels and poetry?

As with the television news, whose producers must pare hours upon hours of worthy news into 20-22 minutes of air time (including sports and weather), when we must choose what literacy lessons to keep and what to cull for our limited amount of instructional time, on what should we base that decision?

 

By Mark

I am just old enough to remember Paul Harvey, and the "rest of the story."

Eve Rifkin, at our Arizona partner Stories from School has helped flesh out the "rest of the story" on that annual USNews "Top Schools" list, and it is as if she was reading my mind.

Between Waiting for Superman, Oprah, Education Nation, Obama's charge to raise the bar, and the resulting present (and I pessimistically argue ephemeral) empassioned focus on education in this country, it is clear that the whole story has not been told in far too many instances. Here is my take on the untold halves of the many stories told in the last couple of weeks...the rest of the story, if you will:

1. Unions oppose merit pay not to protect lazy teachers but because no one can come up with a fair and reliable way to assess teaching "merit." Issue number one: test scores don't work because not all teachers are in tested disciplines.

2. Those other countries who post great education stats? Their systems are different than ours. Some screen out special education kids. Some have separate vocational tracks which are conveniently not part of their data. Many in those systems lament the fact that the kids they produce are test-takers, not thinkers.

3. Weighing myself will not make me lose weight...I've being weighing in for years and the number is only going the wrong way. Testing kids more will not make them learn. In fact, testing actually takes up instructional time, the loss of which not surprisingly has a negative effect on test performance.

4. American schools held up as models of success always have the following by comparison to the mainstream: extra funding or an enrollment screen or both. These models are neither replicable nor sustainable in other schools unless those schools also get extra funding or an enrollment screen or both. 

5. Every child can learn, but not every child will. To blame that solely on teachers or on students is yet another heinous oversimplification of the complex problems facing education, educators, students, and families today. 

The rest of the story? I'm sure there's even more. I'm tired of hearing half-stories in the sound bytes mainstream America turns to as it's source of facts.

The economy is struggling...all indications suggest that a good job is hard to find.

Certainly the role of the American public school has little influence on the grand scale of mortgage defaults and consumer confidence, right? Sure, maybe requiring 12-grade personal finance might have prevented a few upside-down mortgages and minimized consumer debt, but I think there is a bigger way which policymakers and schools have failed our economy. A recent headline caught my eye: Lack of skilled workers threatens recovery. That tells me maybe a good job isn't what's hard to find, but it's good workers who cannot be found. Simply, there are jobs out there but there are not workers to fill those jobs because they lack the necessary experience and training. I certainly believe it. The article by Nick Zieminski points out:

Since the 1970s, parents have been told that a university degree -- and the entry it affords into the so-called knowledge economy -- was the only track to a financially secure profession. But all of the skilled trades offer a career path with an almost assured income...and make it possible to open one's own business...

 By Mark

So let's face reality. Something's got to give. 'Tis the season of budget cuts.

We can rail all we want against the flawed system of funding for public education--we can complain about cutting this and that and those as well--but there comes a point that tough decisions must be made.

I recall last year Washington Governor Christine Gregoire posted a website with the bold challenge "You Balance the Budget," where she openly shared the state's budget and the state's needs and challenged the taxpayers to find a solution. I don't have that audacious a charge, but I do have a question:

Since we have to cut somewhere, let's be solution-oriented: What can schools afford to cut?

Go ahead and say "nothing," and then rejoin us in the real world. Since sacrifices must be made, let's line up the lambs. What do you suggest should be first to go when it is time for schools to cut spending? How do you suggest that schools prioritize what stays, what goes, what is sustained and what is starved?

 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.

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?

 By Mark

One teacher in Portland, Oregon, is making the news for all the wrong reasons. She recently plead not guilty to possession and delivering of methamphetamine.

While that's been splashed all over the news in the pacific northwest and other parts of the country, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the other news about teachers. You know, the good news. Not the one teacher out of the 6.8 million teachers presently working in the United States (according to the U.S. Census) recently indicted of meth possession. Not the one who did this in Texas or that in Arizona or the ones being threatened with irrational jail time over failing test scores in Detroit, but the other millions upon millions.

I thought, how hard could it be to find stories about all the great and wonderful things that teachers do every day? What a great idea for a post, I thought, find all this news from the last year about teachers doing great things, and post links to the stories on the blog! How hard could that be? 

Pretty dern hard, it turns out. And that is a problem I'd like your help with.

 By Mark

A recent Education Week article suggests that we already know how to fix the public school system in America, but simply aren't doing it. According to his CV, the author, Allan Odden, has been a university professor and policy maker since 1972, after spending five years as a math teacher.

The article kinda frustrated me. More than a little. A lot really. I had to walk away from the computer several times. 

First, the solutions he suggests for struggling schools: new curriculum, stronger professional development, teacher-leadership, extended literacy instruction at the secondary level...none of these are rocket science. 

But Odden's claim is is that we all know how to fix broken schools, we're just choosing not to do it. 

To me, the article illuminates two great problems with the education system:

 By Mark

I'm presently working with my sophomores to examine news and web articles for the rhetorical triangle of ethos, pathos and logos. In doing so, they've become fantastic critical readers by asking these three questions: What is this article assuming about its audience? What questions is this article not answering? and What is being left unsaid?

That latter two questions came to mind when I was emailed a New York Times article detailing the potential closure of four "failing" schools in the NYC school system under Mayor Bloomberg. The gist was this: four schools had failed to meet growth expectations over the last few years, and therefore the future employment of teachers and administrators was in jeopardy and students were likely to soon be relocated.

The question that seemed to be unanswered to me: How exactly will closing schools solve the problem? 

Let's think about the logic of that...

By Mark

I look with envy at my peers in the math department.

Sure, I know they have the same issues I have as an English teacher: kids who don't turn work in; hours of planning, prep, and grading to do; a state standardized test looming over our heads.

But, there's one thing they have that I really want.

You probably won't find many Algebra II students who cannot do basic work with monomials and reverse order of operations. In Geometry, the kids are all likely equally confounded at first by the mysteries of Pythagorus. In Algebra I, more often than not I think the kids at least have basic number sense.

Or, perhaps it is better put this way...

In that Algebra I class, there's probably not a kid sitting there running advanced differential equations through his head while everyone else solves for x. If that kid were spotted, you better believe that his teacher would bump him up to somewhere that he could be both more challenged and better served.

But in an English 9 class, just because their birthdays fell within a given year, a kid who can immediately spot the nuances in Scout's narration in To Kill a Mockingbird and by the end articulate how the novel is a coming-of-age tale about the collapse of childhood illusions is sitting next to a kid who still thinks Scout is a boy and Atticus is African-American.

By Mark

It's a question I and my teammates get often: "Why don't they do this for all freshmen?"

About seven years ago, some administrators with a clear vision saw a need in our building: far too many tenth graders weren't actually tenth graders. By credits, they were still ninth graders.  Far too many kids were not on track for on-time graduation...or even graduation at all. These administrators had an idea of what they thought would help solve this problem. So, they attended conferences and did some initial research.

Then, those administrators with a clear vision did something that I fear is unfortunately rare, but has made all the difference. 

They identified the problem.

And then they trusted teachers to figure out how to best solve it.

By Mark

The press was briefly abuzz recently when President Obama mentioned his ideas for extending the school year. While this seems to be far from a concrete policy decision, it reopens a discussion to which we seem to return every so often. 

Is Obama out of line? Aside from the cute arguments of fifth graders who want their summer break, why do people resist this concept so vehemently? If we can't change this, how can we change anything else about our faltering education system?

I love my "three months paid vacation and a month off at Christmas" (as if), but am for extending the school year. What are your thoughts?

By Mark

We have some new leadership in my building that is making me very optimistic. One of the movements being promoted by our leadership is the concept of PLCs, or Professional Learning Communities. We've had these in our building for a while, but the current push involves analyzing student data to assess past practice and inform future endeavors.  Makes good sense, prompts a good deal of collaboration, and seems to be ready to push teachers toward improving practice. If it sticks, I see good things on the horizon.

Not too long ago I talked to a retired teacher whose building in a different state had attempted PLCs in her last few years of teaching. "We dumped that pretty quick," she explained. When I asked why, she explained that it didn't seem to be doing any good. When I asked her how she knew that, she couldn't really answer the question, but she knew that she and her colleagues didn't really like it. They said their principal called it "reforming" their school culture...they knew it was just another passing education fad.

This small is example is all you need in order to see why major education reform will always fail.

By Mark

Let me be clear from the outset: I'm not here to argue about whether Obama's speech is good, bad, ugly; propaganda, motivation, or mind control. There are too many unproductive shouting matches going on about that elsewhere on the web. Missing from those shouting matches is reasoned discussion of what I think is a more important question with a much larger impact on what I do as a teacher.

The controversy about the broadcast of Obama's "work hard" speech has precipitated some interesting responses from school districts across the country, ranging from the superintendent of schools in Tempe saying all teachers shall show the address and parents are "not allowed" to opt out, to districts like mine who instructed teachers to get parent permission before showing the speech. These policies have an impact on classroom instruction--much more of an impact than the speech itself--because it brings up the question about how schools should handle politically charged and divisive content, and what the school's role is in mediating that content for students.

Many an educator who attempts to make content relevant will want to connect to current events. Whether its genetic engineering, military endeavors, alternative energies or health care, it is easy for a curriculum to turn into a volatile tinderbox, because these topics and others have clear political implications.

How should schools handle hot political topics?

Next year I'm taking on something new and intimidating. I and three other teachers (history, algebra, and study skills) are taking most of the students from our feeder middle schools who failed two or more eighth-grade classes. Most of them will be boys, most minority, most who qualify for free or reduced lunch - although except for the gender, those qualifiers describe the majority of the students at my high school. Since passing ninth grade is one of the strongest correlations for staying in school and graduating, this is an important task.

Mostly, I'm excited even though part of me is sad that I had to give up my honors classes to do this and part of me is terrified that I will not be able to get the kids hooked.

I've been looking for more ways to bring kinesthetic activities into an English classroom where basic skills in reading and writing are a top priority, and believe me, there just aren't that many kinesthetic activities when it comes to the actual tasks of reading and writing. Kinesthetic projects and responses to literature I have aplenty. Actually getting them moving when they're reading and writing is pretty difficult - especially at the high school level.

We've also been exploring alternative assessment and trying to figure out how that will fit in. One of our discussions right now is how we will balance responsibility and mastery. We're playing with the idea that student can pass our final exams with a 75% or better, it won't matter whether they turned in assignments or not, as long as the tests prove mastery in skills and content. But if we do this, are we setting them up to fail when they move on to more conventional teachers?

There are still a lot of discussions to be had and decisions to be made, but I'm working with an outstanding group of teachers who are all strong relationship builders, and to me, that is the most important "skill" we need to make this work.

All in all, we are up for this challenge. It's either going to be the most rewarding, exciting year of my career, or it will be the year from H-E-double-toothpicks. But the glass is always half full to me, so I'm counting on the former.

I have to admit, I have a bias here. I feel comfortable around technology and use it for education and social learning. I teach two online courses and use technology in my classroom for podcasts, vidcasts, and instruction; my students use technology as well for more than word-processing. So when I saw that Michigan was leading the way in online courses, I had to read the article, oh, and by the way, the article is online. 

COME ONE, COME ALL! Share your "you can't teach that" story. Share what caused a curriculum complaint. Perhaps it was a book, a unit, a topic, or a method of teaching.

I do not usually have a newspaper in my house. I usually do not read the newspaper. However, on this cold, wet Sunday, I read the newspaper. You see, it was left there by a guest and I am glad they did. I was able to read about Measure 60 in Oregon. Not our state you say, well, it is only one state away from Washington, and not too many away from the others.

Not everyone should go to school. Not everyone needs school. School is not for everyone. Not every one has the ability to do well in school. In general, schools just are not for everyone!

Last year as I walked through my school’s commons area in the morning, I couldn’t help but notice the students were sitting at tables segregated by race. The same segregation occurred when students were allowed to select their seats for assemblies. My school population has about a 60/40 mix of white and Latino students. As I glanced from table to table in the commons, once in a while I noticed a few mixed tables, but the norm was definitely segregation by color.

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What is wrong with schools today? Nothing that a little play could not solve.
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“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me...”

Emma Lazarus’ famous words are carved at the base of the Statue of Liberty, one of the greatest – if not THE greatest – symbols of American freedom and the American dream. This is the basis of everything we stand for as a nation – that we will take those who have been disadvantaged and give them opportunity equal to that given to the majority of citizens in this country.

Sadly, NCLB works contrary to this ideal when it allows parents to move their students out of “failing” schools – at the expense of the district – to other schools that are making standard.  This might seem like a non sequitor, but it isn't.

What do you do with a struggling school or student? Bring in stronger teachers? NO. Improve the student to teacher ratio? NO. Offer before and after school support classes? NO.

What you do is throw money at the problem, and I do not mean investing the money in ways that will improving the educational system. What some groups are trying to do is throw money at students as a way to get the students to do better on state tests. Some say incentive, others say bribe.

In Travis’ response to the policy meme, one of his top five began like this: “Education is not a business model. This will lead to the downfall of education, being caught up in a maelstrom of bureaucracy. In addition, business is not even an appropriate comparison for education.” What follows is an article on the subject that I first wrote for the TLN column in Teacher Magazine.

Like most households where teachers reside, there are many conversations about education policy talk in our home. My husband and I also discuss the Dilbert-esque policies implemented at the major manufacturing firm where he works. Not surprisingly, it’s fairly easy to find some common threads.

Not long ago we began to flesh out an analogy between public education and lean manufacturing, a concept now being pursued by many industries. In general terms, lean manufacturing concentrates on reducing costs by utilizing standardized processes and consistent raw materials that together minimize wasted resources, including time. Any variation in raw materials or processing requires adjustments in order to have the same output at a consistent cost.

Two years ago, the state agreed to double the  bonus for NBCTs teaching in high risk schools. Is this fair? I must admit, I did a happy dance when I heard the news. I am National Board Certified, and I work in a high-needs high school.

When I started teaching, I worked in a school that had about 35% free and reduced lunch. Over nine years at the same school, I watched that number climb to more than 60%. Ruby Payne’s theories on poverty might be controversial, but I witnessed the change in school climate when we hit the tipping point where the “culture of poverty” became prevalent. Up until that point, middle class values of achievement, regular attendance, and valuing education reigned. There were enough middle-class kids to carry those expectations for the entire school, and the high-risk kids tried to live up to those expectations. As our middle-class population declined, so did achievement, assignment completion, regular attendance, and parental involvement. It became incumbent upon teachers to be the single most important motivating factor in student achievement, which led to another visible impact: an increase in teacher absenteeism and turnover. The extra time and stress of working with high-risk students took physical and emotional tolls on the staff. It is way too easy to get ours hearts broken when the reason we become teachers is to help kids and make it a little bit easier for them to successfully navigate their way through life.

High risk students come to school unready to learn for a variety of reasons. One student, “Jane,” came into my classroom early on the days she made it to school. She would eat a granola bar from my stash and curl up on the sofa in my room to sleep. I would try to coax her to get her make-up work done, but she was too tired. Jane and her mom had been kicked out of their apartment and were living in a car. The time she spent in my room in the mornings was the only safe sleep she got. In a high needs school, this is not an unusual situation. Maybe I was able to make school a slightly better place for her, but I sure wasn’t able to teach her much when she could barely stay awake during class.

Another year, we had a young first-year teacher quit halfway through the year when he found out that one of his 9th-grade students, Yolanda, was prostituting herself to help support her father’s drug habit instead of doing her homework. It was emotionally devastating to him, and he didn’t know how to face Yolanda after he found out.

An economically impoverished majority, including students like Jane and Yolanda, can lead to lower test scores school-wide. With the government so willing to blame low test scores on teachers, another type of pressure is applied in “failing” schools: funding cuts, interference from the state, and the simple disappointment of having to face "failure". Why would an accomplished teacher choose to work in a school where they have to work twice as hard to help students achieve?

In trying to help my students be successful over the years, I have “helped” them pay for school supplies, food, sports fees, yearbooks, textbook fines, clothes, and field trips. I know that I will not be the only teacher whom the additional bonus simply reimburses for money we have already spend at school. My only concern with this bonus is that it doesn’t go to EVERY highly accomplished teacher, National Board Certified or not, who has accepted the avocation of working with underprivileged kids. A mediocre teacher can be successful in a school where the kids come ready to learn (not that there aren’t amazingly competent teachers in those schools and not that we don’t have any students who are ready to learn). It just makes sense as a matter of public policy that students with the greatest needs should have the most accomplished teachers, and National Boards is one way to measure that competency that the state can reward.