eduskeptic

The federal stimulus money that is scheduled for schools may not make it to California, where I teach. Seems as though the Feds are requiring a system to track teachers and student progress, and to couple them somehow, for some reason. Currently, we have no such system, although I believe that Jack O’Connell, our state Super of Schools, has said that we will, or maybe we do and the Feds just don’t understand what we have and how it complies with the Fed requirement.

I have written before about accountability. It can be a boost to the system and pretty good, or it can be another political opportunity for complete stupidity amongst the politicians in this state, something that is in abundance right now. Since public schools are funded by public tax money, it is reasonable for the taxpayers of this state, and all other states, to demand some accountability. They, and I am one of the “they”, have a right to expect to know how the money is spent and what the results are.

Accountability for student success in the classroom is a very difficult batch of results to measure. There are quite a few variables that are rarely, if ever, taken into account by those who think the school system is incapable of actually educating students. The hue and cry from this group is often that schools should be run just like big business is run. Here are, again, some of the variables: students come from intact families, divorced families, single parent families, loving families, completely dsyfunctional families, no families at all, violent families, absentee families; students come to school developmentally ready, developmentally out of place, well fed, hungry, clean, dirty, alert, sleep deprived, intoxicated, abused, relaxed, stressed out. This type of list can get to be quite lengthy.

According to NCLB (no child left behind), all of these children are supposed to be at grade level, at the same time, at a precise time in the near future. I am willing to be held accountable for the complete success or failure of the disparate group of Kindergartners in my room if, and only if, we adopt the Wall Street model of compensation and bonuses.

In an article in the Sacramento Bee today, July 31, compiled form the New York Times and the Los AngelesTimes, figures released by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo provide a very interesting look at how Wall Street and the banks compensate their staffs: 4,793 bankers and traders were paid more than $1million in bonuses last year. Keep in mind that profits shrank, and the biggest banks got billions of our dollars to keep them afloat. Citigroup, Bank of America (which now includes Merrill Lynch), Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase are just the tip of the iceberg of names of financial institions that passed out billions, in bonuses, last year. Here is the best part, according to Cuomo’s report: “When the banks did well, their employees were paid well. When the banks did poorly, their employees were paid well. And when the banks did very poorly, they were bailed out by the taxpayers, and their employees were still paid well.”

That’s the business model I want applied to me and my teaching and the success or lack thereof of the students in my classroom. No matter what, I get paid well, with big bonuses. It’s a business model I can finally live with when applied to education.

The Governor of California, as mentioned in an earlier post, thinks that the wave of the future for education is digital textbooks. Maybe, he has a point. Maybe, he hasn’t thought it all the way through yet. I don’t know what the Governors of other states are thinking in regards to this issue, but it is far from simple. I haven’t heard much lately about the issue, as California is on the verge of running out of money to pay its bills and perhaps that is a more pressing issue, although you certainly couldn’t tell by what the legislators in Sacramento are doing. I’m curious as to how the digital textbook thing will work. What will the publishers do? The California Governor actually said “free” in reference to digital textbooks, but somehow I think that word isn’t in the everyday lexicon of the textbook publishing industry. I suspect that whether it’s in print or delivered electronically, they will want to be paid. Now, the printing industry just may take a bit of hit on it though, as it may mean they’re not going to be printing hard copies of the texts, or at least not as many.  I’m also interested in how the educational community, already hanging on by a mere financial thread, will be able to provide this digital experience to all of the students in the system. Marina Leight, at Converge Magazine, has mentioned it as well. It’s a complex issue, as all things governmental and educational tend to be. I’ll be doing some research on the issue for future posts, but in the meantime, if you have any ideas, please do let me know what they are.

Some Facts

Arne Duncan is the Secretary of Education in the Obama administration. The education department has4,200 employees and a $68.6 billion budget. Who is he, and what qualifies him for this position?  From June 2001 through December 2008 Duncan ran the Chicago School District. It is the third largest in the country with over 600 schools, and he was tasked with transforming  its weak schools into strong ones, closing the ones that were not performing, and improving the overall quality of teachers and teaching. His title, which will become pertinent to this post in a paragraph or two, was Chief Executive Officer. Most school district heads are known as Superintendents.  According to his biography, he has done a  quite a few things over the years (Ariel Education Initiative, Inc.), none of which involved or included teaching. He does not hold a teaching credential from anywhere, and he has never taught anywhere. He did, however, play professional basketball in Australia. He holds a degree in sociology from Harvard. Where in all of this does it become apparent that he is qualified to be the Secretary of Education for the United States?

What Does it Take?

In an earlier post on this blog, I pointed out the difference between the jobs of teacher and principal. I made the point that educational leaders are in the classrooms. Good principals make it possible for teachers to teach, and good teachers make it possible for principals to run the school well. The job of principal is wildly different from that of superintendent, and because of sheer scale, superintendent positions are different from chief executive officer positions. Superintendents are responsible to school boards for everything in the district: education, facilities, transportation, legal matters, everything. Principals are responsible to the superintendents for everything at their school. What does a chief executive office of a school district do? About the same thing that a superintendent does, except on a much, much larger scale. Running a district with over 600 schools, k-12, with an overall budget in excess of $500 million, just might be a bit different than running a district with 100 or fewer schools, with a budget in the $100 million range, or a small district with a few schools and a $10 million budget.

Does It Take An Educator?

I don’t think so.  While it is possible that some very large districts have CEO’s or Superintendents who once were teachers, and may have empathy for the every day classroom situation, the necessary skills to be successful as the head of a very large school system are more likely to be business skills, not educational skills. The complicated web of laws that pertain to schools, the mountains of paperwork, the politics and the fiscal complexity of the entire thing need management expertise. The heads of these very large school systems have assistants for just about everything. They rarely see the inside of a classroom, talk to teachers, or union/association people either. They delegate that sort of thing to the assistants, who in turn report back to them. Management meetings rule the day, and probably necessarily so. Arne Duncan is a manager, not an educator, which is what the Secretary of Education needs to be.

Is He The Right Person?

Not everyone in Chicago will think so. Duncan closed some schools, and everyone at those schools had to reapply for their jobs. Not everyone was successful at being re-hired when the schools re-opened. The schools he closed were in dismal shape. Most of those schools are doing better now. Google it and find out for yourself what happened in Chicago. I heard him on NPR the other day, and he sounded every bit like a CEO on a mission. He’d better be. The President is expecting him to accomplish a great deal, and I doubt that it will get accomplished without an enormous personality, energy, and sense of urgency. Not everyone is going to agree with his approach. My personal position is that our educational system isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be, and absolutely needs to be better than it is. Re-inventing how we educate children is not an activity for the faint of heart or risk averse types. I don’t think Arne Duncan fits either of those descriptions. He doesn’t have unlimited time or funds available to him. Judging from what he did in Chicago, he may actually make some headway. I am looking forward to what happens next. Time will tell if he is the right person, at the right time, to foster needed changes. In the meantime, assume nothing, verify everything. Check it out for yourself.

It is a magical time of year for everyone in school. It doesn’t matter where you are in the system: head start, pre-school, all the way up to grad school. It’s magical. All of the work that students have done finally pays off. Another crop of grads is on the way to the next step. For the younger grads, the next step is a nice summer break, followed by the next grade level and the new experiences that go along with it. For the University level grads, the next step is into the unknown. About the only thing known for sure is the amount of debt that they are carrying. Perhaps the biggest question is whether the grads are ready for the profession that they have chosen. The hue and cry from the business world, at least according to the yearly outpouring of words in the national press, is that the grads aren’t ready. Oddly though, business hires new grads all the time. Ready or not. It is difficult in the extreme for any educational enterprise to provide educational experiences that are specific enough for any business block, or public sector group, to use without further work. It is a ridiculous demand to make. There is always further learning and education about the work to be done in any job situation.

The System

The main job of the educational system is to build a solid base of some skills: reading, writing, math, art, science. Depending on the chosen field, one of those five will have greater focus. More importantly, the educational system, at least here in the United States, teaches exploration, critical thought, the importance of continuing to learn, and how to continue to learn. Learning doesn’t stop with the cap and gown experience. Graduation from University, Trade School, or Tech School, is the beginning. Stepping into a new job with the confidence that comes from a solid background is always a plus. It is, still, a beginning. Employers actually expect employees to show up and work and to do what is required. The halcyon days of school, the protected bubble of the campus, are over at this point. If the educational establishment has done its job, over the span of the last18 to 20 years, the transition to the work force, in whatever form it takes, will work well.

Into the Wild

As the graduations continue throughout June, the excitement of grads and parents, and all those connected to the grads, is replayed from town to town, across the nation. It is well earned excitement. Eduskeptic sends out congratulations to all who have persevered and made it to the end. Good for you all. You did it, and should be proud that you did. Take a moment and savor the people who helped you get here, the friends you made along the way, and the brief moment that exists before reality kicks in. Best of luck to all of you!

I had the opportunity to attend the west coast Government Technology Conference in Sacramento, CA, last Wed and Thurs, May 13&14. I have enjoyed this conference over the years for a number of reasons. I get to meet vendors of just about everything that I use or might use, talk to different company reps and specialists about trends, what’s working and what is vapor ware, and what’s toast already, what changes have taken place in the market place since last year, and pick up a pen or two with cool logos on them. I get to experience talking with adults all day too, which is vastly different than my normal day. I also get to sit in on various presentations and discussions that are of interest to me, or that I think will be of interest to my district and our technology needs and dreams. Last year I watched a fantastic presentation on interactive white boards, and a system that basically puts a fully functional computer desktop on the white board at the front of the classroom. For those of you of a certain age, blackboards all but disappeared some years ago, along with chalk. They are now whiteboards, and one uses non-permanent markers on them. I got to see the system in action when I talked with a rep at the Western Blue booth. He was using a system that put the desktop on his rather large screen, about the size of a classroom white board, fully connected to the Internet, fully functional, while he looked up some information on it for me. Very impressive. Expensive, but impressive nonetheless. This was very interesting to me, as the subject of interactive whiteboards has been spoken of, and dreamed about, by some teachers in our district, over the last few years. I was able to bring a great deal of information, and enthusiasm, back to school with me. This year I attended a session on “Demystifying the Stimulus Package”. It was presented by Paul W. Taylor, Phd. of  Converge Magazine, with a number of vendors co-hosting the event. During a rather nice lunch we were able to meet other educators, vendors, and administrators. I sat a table with one of the head IT people at San Francisco State, two reps from Cisco, and two from Elluminate. While the seating was completely at random, I couldn’t have chosen better had I been given a list. First, the Cisco guys are experts at networked systems. Second, the Elluminate reps were experts at putting together distance learning for school districts. The San Francisco State guy uses Elluminate all the time for various projects at SFS. We had a good working lunch. The main topic of the session, the stimulus package and what it means for education, included quite a few participants who spoke of the need, in addition to saving jobs, to begin using the technology tools we have today, in the classroom. It is not a given that school districts are using any of the technology that is available to the private sector. We do have computers, the age of which may be shocking to anyone who hasn’t been in a classroom lately. We do have high speed internet pipelines to our sites. Whether we have a good enough infrastructure to carry the highspeed past the entry point is different from district to district, state to state. We don’t have enough computers for all classrooms to have them. A computer lab may have, and may not have as well, current edition computers, and may or may not have a lab person who actually knows not only the machines, but who is able to work with children as well. Printers, ink, and anything more exotic than that may or may not either exist, work, or be available to all classrooms. What does all of this have to do with demystifying anything? Read on. There was quite a bit of talk about online education, online textbooks, either instead of or in addition to, hard copy texts, distance learning, and a constant ability of any student to connect on line to access school curricula, any time, from anywhere. Exciting stuff, to be sure. I think that having the ability to access curricula, assignments, and assistance, over the internet is one of the parts that will help students succeed. Children come to school, in Kindergarten, with greater technological knowledge and skills, than one can imagine. Their knowledge and use of technology grows from there, and it grows in leaps and bounds. If we aren’t able to keep up with what they have outside the classroom, we may just lose them. The enthusiasm from the private sector, the vendors and company representatives, is truly great, as it should be. They have some really cool things to offer. Maybe the stimulus package for education will help districts participate with some of it. One participant spoke about all students having an iPhone or Blackberry, and how they could then connect anytime, anywhere to the good old World Wide Web to access education. Doesn’t that sound good? After I left the session I headed to the ATT booth on the expo floor. I wanted to know how much it might cost, per person, for a level of connectivity that would allow web access from a hand held of any kind. Rough guess: $60-$70 US per person, per month. That is in addition to the cost of the hand-held device. Do the math for your district. The stimulus package seeks, in one small part of the education section, to erase the digital divide, that is, the discrepancy between those who have and use technology and those who do not. The cost is simply staggering. The digital divide is just as likely to widen as it is to shorten. In a catch-22 twist, the very people who are most likely to help with erasing the technology chasm, the good, enthusiastic, up to their ears in technology since they were born, young teachers, are the very ones who are losing their jobs due to the lack of funds for school districts. While the demystification of the stimulus is somewhat complicated, and the session offered good information about a broad range of monies coming to education, what remains a mystery is how, especially in the economic times we are experiencing now, are we going to pay for what the enthusiastic company reps have available. There is definitely another divide out there. It’s the divide between private business and public schools, how they are funded and run, and how the private sector has no clue about the Alice in Wonderland experience of school finance, which may never be demystified. Maybe next year we can have a session about demystifying school finance.

I have been teaching for over 30 years. In that time I have been through seven superintendents and about ten principals. Six of those principals I worked with in a teacher/principal relationship. The other four, or maybe five, I worked with as head of the Teachers Association. Some of these administrators were wonderful to work with. A few were, and probably still are, just plain rotten. Had I the authority to fire them, I would have. I’m equally sure that some of them would have loved to fire me too. I did carry on a professional relationship with all of them, either as a teacher, or as an association representative. I have been approached more than once over the years to consider becoming an administrator. I have chosen to stay in the classroom, for reasons I will get to in a short bit. In a recent article, Margaret Gaston wrote about the declining numbers of teachers pursing administrative credentials. It is an interesting article. In it, she says that only “… 48 percent of California principals say they plan to stay in their jobs until retirement, compared with 67 percent nationally, and only 22 percent of California’s secondary principals plan to do so.” Briefly, she notes that it is important to strengthen recruitment and retention of the administration portion of the school systems. A study by Ken Futernick of California State University, Sacramento, mentioned in the same article, points out that “…42 percent of teachers who leave the field cite ‘an unsupportive principal’ as a reason for leaving.” He says that 52 percent cite poor administrative support at the district level.

The job of principal, or superintendent, is vastly different from that of a teacher. The job of principal is one of administration, one of managing. In these days, at least in California, that job has gotten to be very complicated. Now, I think that anyone who wants to be a principal should be required to spend a minimum of five years in the classroom, if for no other reason than to get a basic understanding of what it takes to be a teacher, full time, in the classroom. Without that experience, school management shifts into the realm of magical thinking. Past that point, principals don’t teach, nor should they be expected to, any more than I should be expected to perform administrative duties.The principal has quite a full plate without attempting to be the “educational leader” of a school. I’ve not met one yet who is. I’ve met a few who thought they were. They weren’t.  I know teachers who think they know how to run a school. They don’t. Certainly, the principal must be the administrative leader of the school, the person who provides direction, support, guidance, and when necessary, discipline, for staff and students.The principal must keep up with the myriad of laws, deadlines, and edicts that govern a school and a school district, an Alice in Wonderland type of experience. I depend on my principal to keep all of that away from my classroom so that I am able to do my job, which is to teach. The principal at my elementary school somehow manages, in addition to everything else, to visit every classroom several times a year to present science lessons. He becomes the Principal of Science on these forays. It is an amazing effort, and something the children enjoy and learn from. He doesn’t pretend to be the educational leader. He’s a great Principal of Science though. Earlier, I said that I chose to stay in the classroom. The reasons are many. The principal at my school gets there before I do, and leaves after I do. His contracted days are longer than mine. His nights and weekends are full of school things, while mine are not. While I spend my days with the complexity of the behaviors of very young children, and other teachers deal with the craziness of middle school or high school students, the principal spends his days with parents, who are either happy with or disgusted with, something that happened at school/on the bus/at the bus stop/on the internet, legal issues about everything, deadlines for forms, meetings, money, clubs, curricula, student and staff problems, maintenance, and the district office.  If this person, the principal, doesn’t have adequate training for administering this mishmash of issues, he or she will fail. It is important for the principal types to have support and continuous training in not only in the business end of running a school, but in the people end as well. Teachers are not altogether easy to manage, even under the best of circumstances. It’s a difficult mix to master, and when it isn’t, some teachers, especially the young ones, leave the profession as a result. The screening process for gaining an admin credential should be rigorous, just as it should be for teachers. We cannot afford poor quality on either side of the equation. The last thing a teacher needs is a principal who is incapable of being honest, human, supportive, and knowledgeable. Now, on top of all this, the principal simply doesn’t make enough money for me to have jumped into that pool. It is a complex and demanding job, just as mine is. It is not a surprise to me at all that the number of teachers wanting to go into the administrative ranks, or stay there, is less than robust. One thing that I want to point out, which is a different from what Margaret Gaston says in her article: school leadership is not vested in the principal, or any other single source. It is a partnership between teachers and principals. Educational leadership is in the classroom, not the principals office. Administrative leadership is in the principals office, not the classroom. The success of a school results from a working relationship between the two.

In an earlier post on this blog I wrote about the massive pink slip party that school districts engaged in, due to the rotten state of the economy. This overstimulated flurry of pink slips to classroom teachers, in California, went out to 26,000 teachers. I think now, as I thought then, that districts in general overreacted to the funding picture. It isn’t that they didn’t have reason to be very conservative in their outlook. In California, schools are funded by taxpayers, and our general fund fills based on how many children are enrolled, and then filtered by how many show up each day. Proposition 98 established a floor for funding the schools in California. In some circumstances, this floor can be sidestepped. Districts had to assume more than worst case scenarios in looking to the 2009-2010 school year, while hoping that some help would show up from the feds and the state. The President, and our Governor, said that stimulus money would soon reach the states, and the states would then begin spending it. I challenged them to prove their dedication to the schools, and make sure that the money actually reached into the school system to do some good. Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, was also stating that education was a priority, not to worry. So, the question arises, has the money done any good yet? I very much doubt that the President, our Governor, or Arne Duncan read anything on this blog and acted accordingly. However, in a small part of the entire national system. I know that the release of stimulus funds has reached into classrooms. Pink slips have been rescinded, and some teachers know that they will be teaching next year. One district sent out pink slips to about 500 teachers, going back a little over 8 years and laying off everyone back to that time. Last week, that district, due directly to a better financial picture as a result of stimulus funds, notified a good portion of the 500 that their pink slips were rescinded. I am hopeful that this type of action is going on throughout this state, and the rest of the United States. I do believe that it is important for the health of this country to keep our schools staffed with that dedicated group of individuals we call teachers. Overloading classrooms by laying off teachers is quite simply a very bad idea, in the short run and the long run. Thank you Mr. President, and our Governator, for releasing enough money for us to do our jobs in our classrooms. It remains up to us, the teachers, to make sure that this is money well spent.

Just a quick note here: Eduskeptic is now listed on technorati. I hope that this makes it easier for readers to find this blog and respond to it.  We’ll see. More to come later.

I just read a blog post at Converge Magazine online.  In it, the writer complains about “glorified babysitting” and the money she once made babysitting.  She made $5.00 per hour, per child.  She, and apparently some colleagues,  goes on to do some mathematical calculations that use this figure to come up with a theoretical teacher’s salary : 35 students x 5 classes x $5 per hour = $875 per day= $160,562 per year. I left a comment.  The writer, as a teacher, should know what a sentence fragment is, and shouldn’t use them in an academic post of any kind.  She further makes a common mistake that I see more and more of these days.  She refers to people in this manner: “…we are legally responsible for every student that is physically present…”.  People should always be referred to as who, whose, or whom .  It is a sign of either a hurried and unskilled writer, or an uneducated one when “that” is use to describe people.  While I would love to make more money than I do, actually, a lot more, I do not complain about what I am paid.  I made a clear choice many years ago to be a teacher.  If I had wanted to make gobs of money, I would have done something else.  I get very tired of hearing those in my profession complain about babysitting and not enough money.  What I do get is more time off than anyone else I know.   I have a great deal of respect for babysitters and child care providers.  Their jobs are difficult, with long hours and very little time off.  My advice to everyone who is profoundly dissatisfied with the salary for teaching is this: quit.  Go find another job.  You will not be missed.  Someone else, equally qualified, or perhaps even more so, will fill your spot quite nicely.  I do not babysit in my classroom.  I teach.  I simply do not permit anything to get in the way of learning.  I do recognize that this can be a demanding and sometimes very, very, frustrating enterprise, this teaching thing, especially for those who are relatively new to the profession.  The learning curve is steep and difficult.  The very first day in your classroom isn’t very much different from the very last:  at the appointed time, the bell rings, the door shuts, and you are in the classroom, alone, with your students.  The days begin like this, and end like this.  Teachers are mostly on their own from the start, and expected to do very well with whomever the students are.  Training is sparse, if at all.  Support is sporadic.  Expectations are enormous.  Responsibility for the students is absolutely incredible, and can be daunting.  Paperwork seems to eclipse common sense.  One thing is certainly clear here though: those of us who are teachers have chosen to be teachers.  We knew the salary schedule when we signed the contract.  It is completely ridiculous to complain about it.  Either come to terms with it, stop complaining, and certainly work for better conditions,  or quit.

Data drives much of what we do.  Without data, the bits, pieces, and numbers of everyday life, it would be difficult to do much of anything.  Make a cake without the proper data to guide you, and you are more likely to end up with either an explosion or a boat anchor than a cake.  We depend on correct data to make, and alter, plans.  We collect it in many ways and forms, and use it in too many ways to count.  The education establishment needs accurate data for just about every thing that we do.  That data is constantly used to either support the idea that we are doing well, or are sliding quickly into oblivion. Verifiable data should be relatively easy to come by and probably just as easy to manipulate.  If it is verifiable data (numbers, names, places, tests etc.) then it is useful, even if we disagree with how it is used, or have different interpretations of how it should be used.   Considering that schools are, in theory, data driven, one could reasonably expect that our data stream is pretty solid, that we can point to numbers and results that actually mean something.  Maybe, maybe not.  Consider just one thing: the drop out rate at your local school or school district.  It is a number that can have rather large implications for and impacts on, schools and communities.  Finding this number is probably not, or at least shouldn’t be, very difficult.  Perhaps you could just call your local school and get it.  The question has been, and continues to be, is the information accurate?  The simple definition of “drop out” is not simple.  Who constitutes a drop out?  Is it someone who simply doesn’t show up anymore? What if someone moves but doesn’t enroll in a public school?  Dropout?  A student leaves your school for a private home school.  Dropout?  Joins the military.  Dropout?  It isn’t easy to define this one term.  How about the students in your class, or school?  Have they been with you from the start, from Kindergarten?  We are looking at test data for our second through fourth grades.  One question I have is simple enough: how many of the students we have tested have been with us from Kindergarten?  The answer: we have no way to figure that out, even with our rather expensive attendance software.  Would it be helpful to know?  Yes, it would.  For us to figure out who has been with us from the start, it seems,  would require an extensive exercise in physically looking at each child’s record and following it backward to the first date of enrollment in our district. Rather time consuming.  We need that data now, not a few weeks from now.  Perhaps a large district could devote the time to such an endeavor, but I have to guess that most districts that are small to medium in size just don’t have the money to do such a thing. If our small distict doesn’t have the capacity to figure out who has been with us since Kindergarten, how does an entire state, or the nation, figure out what the real drop out rate is? McKinsey & Co. has produced a paper that gives us, it says, “…an ideal vision of what a continuous learning system would look like” .  The State of California wants data that is real, accurate, and transparent, that gives us the ability to track students and educators alike, which they say we now do (students: CalPADs; teachers: CalTIDEs)  McKinsey & Co. proposes a comprehensive system that should lead to this goal.  I want the data too.  I want to be able to ask our attendance clerks which children have been with us from the start, who has actually dropped out, which is to say simply quit going to school in any form, and get information that I can use, instead of a statement that we can’t get that kind of information right now.  I’d like to be able to fine tune our teaching and curricula to benefit our students, and having in-depth, accurate, up-to-date information will make this task much more possible.  I would imagine that teachers, parents, and legislators in other states would like the same capabilities.  I’ll keep you posted.  Let me know what is going on in your state, district, or school.  Let’s compare notes.