eduskeptic

While the nation continues to debate the state of education, teachers continue to teach. Some are teaching in absolutely reprehensible conditions while others are in acceptable situations. It’s what we do.

The current budget crisis has shifted the core of the debate from what we can do to make education better to how much of a monetary cut can the schools take. The form of this shift seems to be centered on unions and how reluctant they are to change. The most frequently sited issue that the Eduskeptic has seen is tenure and how to do away with it. It is a useful distraction if one isn’t making much progress on the complexities of educational change.

It is necessary to say that the unions are not the issue, regardless of what a group of pro-business types would like us to believe. As far as the chamber of commerce  and the wealthy owners of large businesses are concerned, any cut in the ability of a union to function is money in their pockets. Meanwhile, across the nation teachers unions and associations have worked with their school boards to make necessary cuts.

What seems to be happening now is that with the very loud and vociferous calls from some state governors and city mayors that unions must be busted, tenure thrown out, pay and benefits cut, a sense of sanity is appearing. The “I will not budge from my position” adopted by Scott Walker is increasingly being seen as a very untenable position.

This is not to say that there isn’t room to make education in this country better. There always is room for that. There are ways to make the tenure laws more understandable to everyone and to effect reasonable change to them. The economic reality of different communities and their schools is a rich ground for understanding and changing how we deliver education to such a very diverse population. The list is long and always will be.

The dose of sanity that is creeping in is a welcome change from the all or nothing rhetoric of some politicians. It seems that the people of this country are far more in tune with reality than the politicians. It’s not really all that surprising. Every action produces a reaction.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

All in good time, everything comes around again. A not so new idea, adding more time to the school year, is part of the current discussion regarding our school systems. The common thread that runs through the writings of those who posit that more school days will be of great benefit to the children in school is that many (12or so, actually) other countries have longer school years, ergo, so should we.

It is not the gross amount of time spent in school that matters. It is how that time is spent. If one takes the easy look at the charts, graphs and stats about how many days children are in school, it is easy to conclude that we are lagging behind and that adding days to our school year would be good.

A little more in depth perusal, however, reveals a different story. The number of hours per day that teachers in the United States spend teaching is greater than most other nations. 2007 is the latest graph that the Eduskeptic could find regarding this, but it has been true for quite a while.

A recent post by Paul Martin on his blog puts forth his reasoning for a longer school year. His first statement is that we have the shortest school year among industrialized nations. The link is to a 1991 graph, which is out of date. Again, however, it is not the gross amount of days in the classroom that count, it is how the days and time are used.

Secondly, he believes that a longer school year will result in more material being covered, resulting in better educated students. While this is certainly possible, the Eduskeptics experience with his 26 years in Kindergarten suggests differently, as does a disastrous schedule that the local high school adopted then quickly abandoned some years back.

Our district decided to move to all day Kindergarten from the traditional half day. The exact same argument was made to support the move (more time to teach), which the Eduskeptic was very much against. During our years of half day K, one group would was the morning class, and a completely different group comprised the afternoon class. Every day, for both classes, there were two credentialed teachers, an aide, and probably a parent helper, in the classroom. If one of the teachers were ill, a substitute would be there. We ran three small groups, per session, per day. Two of the sessions were taught by the credentialed teachers, the third, non-academic station, by the parent or aide. Each teacher was responsible for his or her class of 20 to 27 students. That is to say that each of the partners had an AM or PM class as a primary responsibility for planning, evaluating, report cards, and a secondary responsibility for supporting the other teacher and class.

When full day K was instituted, rather than having more time to teach, we ended up with less. Rather than two stations being taught by credentialed teachers per day, only one, in the morning was. The aide, whose time was cut to hour per day, took another, non-academic station. The third station, for small groups, was independent, which meant that neither the teacher or aide could fully concentrate on their group. Any groups taught after the aide left were larger, always with an independent group that also had to be attended to, concurrent with the teachers group. Yes, it was a longer day. We lost a great deal of teacher time during the longer day, especially as pertains to small group instruction, which is the foundation of skills based elementary K-3 classrooms.

The longer year pre-supposes curriculum and activities that will successfully maintain a meaningful learning environment. Perhaps this is possible. It is very questionable though. More doesn’t always equal better.

Another reason for a longer year, according to the blog post, is that it would provide for shorter breaks, resulting in less time spent reviewing what was taught prior to the longer traditional summer break. Indeed, as far as the Eduskeptic knows, there is no valid study that has ever tracked the veracity of this urban myth. It has long been the position of the Eduskeptic that the time required to get the new school year started has as much to do with teachers getting back into it as with students doing so.

Lastly, Mr. Martin states that this is the position that the Obama administration has taken, in order for our children to be globally competitive in the future. Again, a longer school year does not equal a better school year, or students who are better, or perhaps worse, prepared for something in the future.

Not all teachers or parents are in accord with the notion of a longer school year. There is great value in allowing children to be children, to put into practice the many lessons learned in school, in a practical, no teachers involved, break from school.

While the Eduskeptic takes exception to assuming a longer school year will result in better results, Mr. Martins viewpoints are offered in light of a long career in education, and deserve to be considered just as much as other attempts to make our system better. There is no one in the current administration who has any time as a real teacher in a real K-12 classroom. Mr. Martin has spent a career working as a teacher, and his views come from experience, not theory.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything. Do your own research.

California recently decided to change the entry age for Kindergartners. The current law allows children who are 5 years old by December 2d to enroll in school.

California Senate Bill 1381 changes the entry date to September 1st. The change to September 1st will happen in stages. The date changes to  Nov. 1 in 2012, followed by Oct. 1 in 2013 and Sept. 1 in 2014. For those children whose birthdays are later than the entry dates, a transitional Kindergarten program has been authorized.

Kindergarten teachers, and the Eduskeptic is recently retired after teaching Kindergarten for 26 years, generally think this is a good idea. Children who have birthdays that push very close to the December 2d date start their 13 year journey to high school graduation at a developmental disadvantage. This seems to be especially true for boys.

Boys develop at a different rate than girls. This is not new or startling. It’s just simply the way it is. Kindergarten classrooms in California currently have children who start turning 6 years old not long after school starts in August or September. There are children who turn 5 years old in late November, and in the most extreme cases, on December 1. This difference in ages for very young children is very significant when it comes to school. A child who starts school at 4, whose birthday is December 1, will always be the youngest, and most developmentally immature, child in every class he or she is in.

The ongoing effort that seems to push inappropriate expectations and academic standards onto very young children exacerbates this difference in developmental stages. There is no credible evidence that supports making very young children responsible for developmentally inappropriate academic standards. Indeed, it is more likely to damage the children rather than help them in any way.

Very young children react rather badly to undue stress. The Eduskeptic saw it, every year, in his classes. The younger the child at the beginning of the year, the more likely it was that their attention span would tank earlier in small group with concurrent behavior that interrupted the rest of the children. This was magnified by those children whose birthdays push up against the December 2d enrollment cutoff.

While it is not possible, or even advisable, to load classes with children whose birthdays are all at the beginning of the school year, the spread of up to a year between the youngest and oldest is massive. For adults, that kind of spread doesn’t really matter. After about age 25 or so, boys catch up with girls on the developmental stage, and we all march forward, mostly in sync, from there.

For a 4 year old to compete with a five year old in a classroom is, to put it mildly, absurd. The developmental processes between the two are not something that can be diminished. The body and brain processes of the very young simply do not work that way. Children develop at different rates. Developmental processes simply cannot be overridden, no matter how much an adult may want it to be so.

The shift to an older start is, overall, good. It should level the learning field quite a bit. The danger is that the shift, in California, comes with a state sponsored ‘Transitional Kindergarten”.

Along with a state funded Transitional Kindergarten, sooner or later, will come standards for the Transitional K children. Their day will be regimented, and certainly could be all day rather than half day. California currently issues teaching credentials that cover elementary, self contained classrooms, and secondary subject specific credentials. There is no Transitional K credential.

In the Head Start and State Pre-School area, the requirements are for early childhood ed courses, typically with a two year AA degree. All other teachers in the K-12 arena have a baccalaureate degree and a teaching credential allows them to teach in a self-contained or subject specific setting.

Placing very young children in a setting that is too regimented, too long, with standards that can, by default, not be achieved, with adults who do not have the requisite credentials and training to teach in that setting, cannot lead to anything good.

It is almost impossible for the adults in the California Education Department to not lay “measurable outcomes” on the Transitional K group. It doesn’t have to be that way, but it seems that sooner or later, that’s what happens. State pre-school is a good example.

If children who are eligible for the Transitional K (so far, it’s not mandatory) are protected from unrealistic expectations it’s possible that there will be some benefit from the effort. It is vitally important for very young children to simply be allowed to be children. This means that they get to play, to run, jump, fall, argue, sing, sleep, whine, build, knock down what they built, and learn lessons about sharing things, time, and emotions. It’s what children do.

The Eduskeptic sincerely doubts that the adults in charge of any Transitional K class, in any state, at any time, are capable of simply allowing children to be children.

If I am wrong in this belief, I sincerely hope that a reader will take the time to educate me otherwise.

Recently, on an Oprah show, Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, said that one of the problems with our current educational system is that we “…are still on an agrarian calendar…”. The Eduskeptic has written Mr. Duncan regarding this urban myth. One of the biggest problems we in the educational field are facing seems to be a plethora of urban myths. On top of that, no one in the national leadership positions seems to have a clue about what reforming the educational system actually means.

The largest “reform” effort appears to be an attempt to force standardized tests on everyone. It’s a one size fits all approach that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for underwear, and it doesn’t work for the school systems in the US.

The changes that are needed are not related to any kind of calendar, agrarian or otherwise. The current educational system is directly related to the industrial revolution. In fact, it hasn’t changed that much since masses of farmers moved into the cities in the late 1800’s. What is missing from the national educational reform movement is any actual reform or understanding of the entire system.

Insisting that teachers and tenure are the problem, that the test scores are the problem, that our rank in comparison to other countries is the problem, is simply to ignore a much larger reality.

Teacher tenure isn’t an issue. Tenure merely grants due process rights to teachers, generally after 3 years of at will employment. Those who want tenure thrown out are merely disguising an economic attempt to make it possible to get rid of those who make the most money. Young and energetic doesn’t equal competent, good, or better. It equals cheaper.

Standardized test scores are not an accurate measure of much of anything. In our system, everyone is tested. Learning to fill in the blanks on a multiple choice scan card doesn’t measure learning, except for maybe being a good bubble meister.

Comparing all of our students with only the elite in other countries is like comparing the local football team to the Super Bowl champs. In order for this kind of comparison to be valid, one has to take the time to compare the same kinds of students to one another. That currently isn’t being done. It doesn’t make for good political grist.

None of these things make much difference when the core foundations and frameworks aren’t rattled. All of the speeches, the sound bites, the posturing by various 15 minutes of fame talking heads creates not much more than enough hot air to fill a good sized balloon. Painting an old wagon might make it look better, but it won’t function better. That’s what is going on. Window dressing to satisfy the need to appear to be doing something, anything, that looks like things are being done.

The school day, and to some extent, the school year, are welded to industrial time clocks. The manner in which we educate our children is the same as it was over 100 years ago. Start at around 8am, stop by about 3pm, 5 days a week. We continue to put students of all ages into chairs, and for about 50 non-stop minutes, attempt to get curricula into them. Then, it’s on to the next lesson.  Somewhere around 1130 the lunch break starts. After lunch, it’s back to the desks. This goes on for around 180 days, with several breaks centered around traditional holidays. This is the predominant model that is used in the US.

Absolutely nothing that the Eduskeptic has heard addresses changing the model itself. There may well be a good reason to continue with the system as it now exists. Rapid change in the real educational world rarely happens. We are, after all, working with children. But what is being broadcast by those who seek their version of change is that change must happen, rapidly, and right away.

Changing the actual foundation, the bones of the system, may be the best thing to do. Possibly, it’s the worst. If, however, the system is as broken as it is reported to be, the foundation, the daily routine, must be reinvented. What exactly is the continuing reason to stick to the educational day and week that we now have?

What if the day started later, ended later? What if children were taught according to their ability, not their age? What if we actually paid attention to the developmental processes that all children go through, and taught accordingly. What if we had ungraded classrooms, with a team of teachers in them? What if teachers were paid like doctors and nurses? What if we recognized that education does not take place only in the classroom, during the scripted school day? What if we recognize that the bell curve cannot be defeated? What if we really did extend the day to include child care, health care, with sports and art for all? What if we actually found a way to pay for all that? What if we took 2 years to revamp the entire system, no holds barred?

Take a little extra time and watch the video at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U. Sir Ken Robinson says it much better than I.

If the need is so pervasive for change, let us get to the changing part. The painting of the old wagon won’t do it. Assume nothing, verify everything.

Perhaps politics and reality just don’t go together very well. Again and again political sound bites are launched into the electronic ether and gain a life of their own. One doesn’t actually have to offer credible data or statements, backed up by actual research or time spent investigating an issue. One merely needs to push a load of mush onto the airwaves, and the speed of the Internet takes care of the rest.

When this is done by national figures, or state figures who are currently in the news, it is particularly inexcusable. Simply throwing stink bombs of useless sound bites onto the ever needy network news shows does nothing except get the throwers name into the news.

Perhaps this is the reason for the toss in the first place. Eventually it seems as though the corporate teams hire who ever is in the news on a regular basis. After all, they must know what they are talking about, they are in the news. This leads to a very nice salary with accompanying benefits and perks.

After 36 years in the educational arena, as a teacher, the Eduskeptic has seen plenty of the mildly talented but uber driven launch themselves out of the classroom and into “leadership” positions. Sometimes it’s with a school district, sometimes a district office or county office of education, sometimes it’s with a think tank or non-profit outfit. It’s always for more money and less contact with children.

The amount of positive changes that have been realized from these marginally talented but driven “leaders” is depressingly small. Non-existent may be a better choice of a descriptor. In the Eduskeptics experience the actual leaders are pretty unconcerned about appearing on the local or national news shows. They simply, and steadily, work for change, not recognition and a better paycheck.

When you hear about yet another supposed educational change artist charging toward glory, promising to really shake things up, put your hand on your wallet. Assume nothing, verify everything.

Since the beginning of recorded history educational systems have been scrutinized. Rightly so. It is important to understand that education is a constantly evolving art. It cannot be any other way.

Educators live this reality every day in every classroom on the planet. Nothing is ever good enough, never has been, and never will be. It’s the nature of evolving, and education needs always to evolve.

The current cry du jour for re-inventing education is centered around merit pay, teacher evaluations, and how to remove marginal teachers from classrooms. The current systems for evaluating teachers aren’t much good. As the Eduskeptic has pointed out, they are infrequent, staged, and one dimensional. Something else has to replace what is currently used. There will hopefully be some well thought out and funded ideas that will be evaluated, and possibly be put into use, sooner rather than later.

Some issues have to be addressed. First, there has to be some sort of base line established, for the superintendents, principals, teachers, and students. Progress can be measured relative to the baseline. Currently, there isn’t one.

Here are some issues that should be addressed and included in order to fairly evaluate how a teacher is doing:

How many children are in the classroom? What is the boy/girl split? What is the range of socio-economics of the children’s families? What are the chronological ages of the children? How many children are from intact, functioning families? How many are from split families and bounce between parents on a regular basis? How many are from functioning single parent families? How many children are latch key children? How many spent most of their pre-kindergarten years in day care? What kind of day care? How many children have verified learning disabilities? How many children have a nutritious breakfast prior to school? How many have a nutritious lunch while at school? How many have a home to go to after school? How many have any verified history of abuse? How long have individual children been at the school? On the days of the classroom observations, have these factors been taken into consideration?

The reason for all these questions, and probably more, is that the situation that a child exists in cannot be summarily discounted or dismissed relative to success in school, regardless of what the teacher is, or isn’t, doing. Somewhere around at least 95% of the time, the environment that a child lives in will win. The differences between young boys and girls are real. It isn’t sexist, it’s just reality. The implications of these issues relative to success in the classroom are enormous.

The teacher in the classroom has no control over any of these. Yet none of these is part of any teacher effectiveness evaluation. The best any teacher can do is to make sure that there is positive consistency in the classroom, and make certain that the time the children are in class is safe, supportive, and educational.

There is a great deal of research on social economic status and poverty and their relationships to learning. The research that is available is real. It is longitudinal, replicated, data based research. Anecdotal musings by teachers, principals, and superintendents simply don’t count as research. All one need do is put the terms education, learning, poverty, social economic status, in any combination, into a search bar. It will take some time to go through all the data that springs up.

What is clear in the research is that the circumstances a child lives in, and with, and the community the school is in, do impact how that child learns. Apparently this isn’t a common sense issue, something that should simply be clear and taken into account. Proof of this is that it is ignored in evaluating a teachers effectiveness.

None of this is to say that children from poor families or dysfunctional families cannot learn, that schools in high poverty areas can’t educate the children entrusted to them. What it does say is that children from depressed circumstances have more problems learning than children in more fortunate circumstances.

Reading the statements from politicians, big business types, and very large urban school district superintendents regarding teacher evaluations and merit pay is an interesting experience. Very little of what the Eduskeptic has read or heard from the politicos, business types, and the very large districts acknowledges reality in classrooms. Perhaps behind the scenes someone is putting together an inclusive evaluation system, and a method for rewarding excellence with merit pay. The public side of their pronouncements about education sadly don’t seem to do so.

That the system needs to change is clear. What we currently use for teacher evaluations does nothing more than evaluate a performance on a particular day. There is no relevance to longitudinal excellence or lack of it in the classroom. A comprehensive, ongoing, multifaceted process is desperately needed. The effectiveness of principals and superintendents need to be rigorously evaluated as well.

The really big question is whether we have the political and financial will to make it happen. Of course, we could use the Wall Street Hedge Fund Model: I get paid a lot, no matter what. That doesn’t sound very appealing, unless of course, you’re the one being paid a boatload of money just because you show up.

The process of evaluating teachers varies across the U.S. What the Eduskeptic is familiar with is the process in his district, in California.

California is a very large, very diverse state. Teacher evaluations differ from district to district. There are over 1,000 school districts in the state. Anyone studying for an administrative credential goes through different models of evaluating teachers. They learn how to set up, take notes, offer criticism at the post-observation meeting, and how to officially write it up, using current eduspeak. The document becomes part of the teachers permanent file.

Here is what the Eduskeptic is familiar with, how the observations and evaluations actually took place, over 26 years in an elementary classroom.

At the beginning of each school year all teachers who would be observed for that school year would be notified. There would be 3 observations  during the school year. Evaluations were every other year, and then moved to every third year.

The principal would ask for a list of times that would work for each teacher. He would suggest curricular topics (math, language, science). The aim was to observe an actual lesson.

On the appointed day, the principal would show up. The teacher would have the class greet the principal and then begin the pre-planned, carefully staged lesson.

The teacher would teach, the principal would observe. When the lesson was over, the principal would leave, the teacher would continue with the day.

Within a day or two, the principal and the teacher would get together in the principals office. The principal would go down a check list of what occurred, guess at the main focus of the lesson, detail observed teaching practices, ask the teachers input at each observation point, and the suggest a way, or ask for a way, that it could have been done differently or better.

The teacher could add his or her own agreements or disagreements with whatever the principal said. The principal would add suggestions for continued success and the document would be signed by both parties. The teacher would get an official copy of the document. This would happen 3 times in a school year, and then repeat in 2 or 3 years. Helpful? Not very. Accurate as to the competency of either the teacher or principal? No.

Teachers would plan for the evaluation lesson. Quite often, this snapshot into how the teacher taught had nothing to do with the real, every day lessons. Teachers would put on  dog-and-pony shows that were designed to impress the observer.

The principal, who didn’t enter the classrooms on a consistent, casual basis throughout the year, used these 3 days to evaluate the effectiveness of the teachers.

The Eduskeptic, when it was an evaluation year would simply tell the principal to show up when it was convenient for him, during station time. He was provided with a list of station times throughout the day, and throughout the week. He could observe any station, any time, any day, as often as he wanted to.

I did nothing extra for these visits. No special props, no extra help, no putting all the fast learners in the observed group, no hiding the difficult ones in another station or out on the playground, no special dress up clothes. I simply did what I did each and every day. I taught my Kindergartners as well as I possibly could, each and every day.

Is this a good system? No. It’s what we had and we all did our best to make it work. Other districts have other systems, equally as flawed.

What’s wrong with it? It’s one dimensional, infrequent, and there’s too much of a subjective nature in it.

To be fair, at least in our small school district, there was constant scrutiny by grade level teachers, of curriculum, best practices, problem solving and a very real belief that no matter what, we could do better. There was constant  collaboration between grade levels to make sure that the children were learning what they needed for the next grade level.

When gaps were pointed out, or scores weren’t where they needed to be, there was exhaustive review of teaching practices and curriculum delivery. Nothing was static. Improvement was the goal. As a staff, throughout the year, we were candid, sometimes brutal, in our critiques of what we did. The principal was a definite partner in this, the superintendent nowhere to be seen.

The need for a different system for evaluating teachers, principals, and superintendents, is very real indeed. We all require the same intensity of scrutiny.

It’s not the teachers. It’s the whole team, the whole system. So far, the principals and superintendents (“chancellor” in some areas) have been blissfully left out of the equation.

What we have is not good. It’s just what we have. Something much more robust, much more inclusive is sorely needed. Something that takes in the whole child and the whole system. Anything less will just be more of the same, inadequate dance that we contend with now.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

Tenure is a misunderstood term. The common misconception is that it literally means lifetime employment. It doesn’t.

New teachers are on probation for at least the first two years of their contract. During this time the school district can dismiss them for any reason. After the probationary term is over, tenure is granted.

Tenure simply provides due process rights for the teacher, nothing else. It grants the teacher the same rights as other employees in other companies. The tenured teacher cannot be fired at will. A legal hearing process precedes any disciplinary action. The outcry by the politicians regarding tenure is a false front, and serves no good purpose.

The history of this is simple. Prior to the tenure laws, teachers were at risk for losing their jobs for non-job related causes: politics, religious views or affiliations, not contributing money to a pet cause, sexual issues to name a few. If the superintendent, principal, or their spouses ,didn’t like what the teacher did or didn’t do, the teacher could be let go.

Tenure does not mean lifetime employment and never has. About 1% of probationary teachers are released from their contracts each year in California. The national average is around 0.71%. In California, 2% of teachers who have gained tenure are let go each year, which equals about 2 per hundred. The national average is about 1.4%. The reasons for dismissal vary. Mostly its because of a legal issue, or they just plain can’t teach. It’s not popular for the politicians to go to far into the facts.

California is a large, diverse state, and what happens here is often reflected in other states, on a more compact level. In addition to the 2% who are dismissed, 50% of new teachers leave the profession within their first 5 years of teaching. That is, according to most of us who teach or who have taught, before they even get out of the rookie stage. The reasons are many. The most common one is that the dream of teaching doesn’t square with the reality of teaching.

The national media has a penchant for sound bites from “experts” who decry the due process it takes to get non-performing teachers out of the classroom. These pseudo experts simply do not have any connection with real teachers, good or bad. Too many of the sound bites also ignore due process and the complexity and reality of K-12 teachers and classrooms.

Moving poor teachers out of classrooms is important. It always has been, and will continue to be. The issue that is paramount is the the process whereby teachers are evaluated. So far, no one has come up with a solution that works well. Firing masses of teachers because the superintendent is “ passionate” leads to legal issues that are expensive, and aren’t good for anyone.

All evaluations that the Eduskeptic is aware of are either flawed in their design (value added model comes to mind), are too infrequent, or are performed by administrators who are out of touch with the classroom setting.

Educators and administrators work with what they have. Moving to simply fire large numbers of teachers (a la M. Rhee, Wash. D.C.) and claiming success is dishonest at best. The protection of known incompetent teachers is equally, or more, dishonest.

A comprehensive evaluation system of teachers, administrators, and superintendents that is fair, multifaceted and meets due process requirements is sorely needed. Administrators and superintendents (chancellors in some districts—same thing) must be evaluated as intensely as the teachers. It is an absurd proposition to hold only one part of the system accountable.

What education needs least are kneejerk bulls in the china shop passing political aspirations off as reform.

As always, assume nothing, verify everything.

As established pseudo experts continue to beat the school system and all those in it for failing everything, the schools still turn out educated students at every level. It is hard to find anyone standing up for such a statement these days. It is much more politically expedient to blame educators for all that is wrong.

There is method in this approach. All of the posturing and passionate speeches by the politicians diverts a good amount of attention away from other societal ills. Everyone who has a barb to throw does so without much actual fact behind them. It doesn’t matter. In today’s wildly connected universe, once it’s out there, it stays out there.

Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, doesn’t hold a teaching credential, has never taught a day in his life, and hasn’t any real connection to any real classroom anywhere. His cabinet is sorely lacking in actual teacher expertise. His job isn’t to teach anyone. It’s to run a large governmental bureaucracy. He is responsible for the overall direction of national education policy.

This doesn’t stop him, or any of the rest of them, from expounding on how actual classroom practice could be improved. The Eduskeptic retired at the end of the 2010 school year, with 36 years of teaching behind him. I know about teaching and classrooms. I know about children, teacher unions and associations, school boards, school budgets and how districts run. I don’t know anything about running either a district office or something on the scale that Duncan oversees.

The biggest issue with those who have no practical experience in the classroom attempting to define what constitutes good practice is that they have no actual basis for knowing what the reality in a classroom is. It is entirely possible that someone could come up with a great idea about how things might work better or more efficiently, just as it is possible that the Eduskeptic could come up with something that would make the Department of Education work better. The odds are against it, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen.

Everyday experience over time does matter when it comes to defining good practice. Teaching is a complex endeavor. Sound bites on the news about educators are nothing more than fluff spit out for political purposes. In the teaching profession it is generally agreed that it takes about 5 years to get past rookie status. It is that complex. If a teacher makes it through those first 5 years, they may actually be a teacher, one who has some potential. It is no surprise to those of us who have taught for long periods of time that the dropout rate for new teachers is so high. It is good for the schools, students, and the profession in general, that most of those who can’t cut it, quit.

Rather than spending time bashing educators and education with gross generalities about how to get rid of all the bad teachers, the national agenda might be more productive if there were more time put into the positive building of a better educational system. The one thing that we may all agree on is that education must be an ever evolving task. It would be best to include some of the people who spend their time every day in real classrooms, across the broad spectrum of urban, suburban, and rural schools, in this very important endeavor. To ignore the expertise that is available is to invite division and failure, on a national scale.

The noise surrounding the process of evaluating teachers is varied and loud. It is the same noise that has surrounded this issue since the beginning of teachers. It is a long history.

Most recently, the national Department of Education, under Arne Duncan, has been advocating for a process to grade teachers, leading to merit pay. It is a difficult process, and no matter how it is done it will infuriate some, and make others think we’ve finally reached the land of milk and honey.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, which, all by itself is larger than some cities in the United States, and has more operating expenses as well, released a report grading 6,000 teachers. Of the 6,000 who were graded, or evaluated, 1,000 were deemed to be good. The other 5,000, not so good. The report’s author is Richard Buddin, a Rand Corporation Senior Economist. It is 21 pages long, and can be downloaded as a pdf. The link to the article which has the pdf link is here. The Los Angeles Times did it’s own study of the 6,000 teachers, and released the names of the teachers.

Releasing the names of 6,000 LA Unified teachers has been on the controversial side. Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education, when asked his opinion about releasing the names, stated that he had no issues with doing so. “What do they have to hide?” Arne, who has absolutely no experience in the classroom except as a student, is pushing for merit pay, and national standards for evaluating teachers.

It is difficult to understand how 5,000 teachers out of 6,000, in one district, spread out over the entire spectrum of schools in this very large and complex system, can be in the not so good column. On the face of it, it seems to be questionable, at best. It will take some time to figure out exactly what the criteria were for this outcome. What kinds of students, what ethnic, socio-economic mix, percentage of intact/broken families, special needs, ages, and more, were involved in the evaluations, and over what time period?

Ed in the Apple writes about the methods and has quite a bit to say on the subject. The dialogue about the structure of any kind of study is, and will continue to be, intense. It is very important for any study of this kind to be completely transparent. Who paid for it, who established the criteria, and what and who, exactly, were studied to come up with the data?

Years ago, in a notebook/sketchbook, the Eduskeptic,  while sitting in yet another staff development day at the elementary school where he ended up teaching for 24 years, wrote, “Here we go again, taking officious leaps into the void, led by someone who has not been there, and it’s getting late. Now what?” This was on Aug. 29, 1989. This describes Arne Duncan, and apparently his entire staff of non-teachers, quite well. It’s not that Duncan is not without passion, as he is full of it. He’s just someone who has no idea, at all, what it means to be a teacher in a public school. Duncan would not make it.

The qualities that make a good and effective teacher are, perhaps, not all that quantifiable. The complexities of making judgements about teachers based on how students perform on standardized tests are great indeed. While complex, it is a job that still needs to be done. It will not happen overnight, and no matter how much the politicians want it to happen during their tenure, it won’t. Schools don’t lend themselves to overnight change, at least not very well. Perhaps if the good Secretary would tend to putting together a set of qualified people, teachers and non-teachers alike, to make this happen, it would. It still won’t be on his timetable though, no matter how many sound bites he appears in.