eduskeptic

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.

In a previous post, 11.29.08, “Starting with Pre-School”, I wrote about the Rand Corporation study that is widely misused and misquoted to support the idea that universal preschool for all children is the best thing that could happen to education.  The preschool for all group likes to say that the study proves that pre-school keeps children in school, and later, out of jail, with no drug use, and better jobs held by all.  It simply doesn’t say that.  Read the post for more on this issue.  What it does say is that for disadvantaged children, pre-school may do some good.  In the Technology and Learning online magazine, (you may have to peruse the archives, but it was a very recent one), there is an interesting e-book titled “Using Technology to Improve the Graduation Rate.” In the introduction, it states “..students living in low-income families were four times more likely to drop out of high school in any given year­—in this case, between 2005 and 2006—than those living in high-income families.”  It does not define “low-income”, but the Rand report, which preceeds this report by a few years, says the same thing, using “disadvantaged” and “low-income” as elements in future school and life problems.  The statistics quoted in the report are not at all comforting, or supportive, of whatever we have been doing to prevent academic and life problems for the young people of our nation. Here is a complete quote from the Introduction:

“The report’s analysis shows that only about one-half (52 percent) of students in the school systems of the 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma. That rate is well below the national graduation rate of 70 percent, and even falls short of the average for urban districts across the country (60 percent). Only six of these 50 principal districts reach or exceed the national average. In the most extreme cases (Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and Indianapolis), fewer than 35 percent of students graduate with a diploma.”

“Essentially, students in these cities are at risk for failure in school and thus in the job market. At-risk students are those who do not experience success in school and are potential dropouts. They are usually low academic achievers who exhibit low self-esteem, and disproportionate numbers of them are males and minorities. Generally they are from low socioeconomic status families. An array of problems prevents them from participating successfully in school. For example, they have a minimal identification with the school and have disciplinary and truancy problems that lead to credit problems. As they experience failure and fall behind their peers, school becomes a negative environment that reinforces their low self-esteem.”

The idea that we should pour money into preschool education for every child in the United States starts to fall apart when real data emerges.  Once again I must say that preschool is not a bad thing.  It can be quite nice for young children.  As a predictor for future success it just doesn’t work, unless we are speaking of young children who are members of low income or otherwise disadvantaged families.  I don’t necessarily equate low income with disadvantaged though.  My family, many years ago when we were all very much younger and the children were very young, qualified in every way as low income.  We simply didn’t have much, and though I worked all the time, the money wasn’t very good.  We were not “disadvantaged” in the classical sense at all.  We simply made do with not much.  We took very good care of our family.  My wife, myself and our children are all university graduates (California State University Fullerton, California State University Sacramento, University of California Davis, Univeristy of California Berkeley).  My children had very minimal preschool experiences (a day or two a week, for a short period of time), all paid for by us.  Perhaps the definition needs to be refined.  What seems to emerge in the studies that I have read is that a combination of low-income and dysfunction within the family hurts everyone involved.  A child who lives in a nightmare world of (take your pick) drug addition, criminal behaviors, violent behaviors, absent parent(s), gangs, and so on, generally cannot compete very well within the school system.  In a study I read some years back, and I’ll have to see if I can find it, the environment that a child lived in “won” over 90+% of the time.  That is to say that a child who comes into my classroom for 5-6 hours per day, and goes home to complete dysfunctional chaos for the other 18-19 hours, will likely side with the chaos as normal, and my classroom as an aberration.  Whatever behaviors the child experiences in the home are very difficult to overcome.

Instead of attempting to fund preschool for every child, our laws should be writen to mandate the opportunity for preschool for those who are most likely to benefit from the experience: low income, low socioeconomic status, or just plain dysfunctional.  Further, we should be pumping money into those families who are at risk, wherever and whoever they are.  Without an opportunity for families to eat well, work well, function well, our efforts to make things better for the children of those families will most likely be unproductive.  The root of the problem of children growing up into dysfunctional adults is not a lack of preschool.  It lies directly within the family unit and the society that family lives in.

Education is, if one is to believe the rhetoric, a very high priority for this nation.  This message goes out from city, county, state, and national offices.  Admirable.  One must first define “education” though, as education occurs every second of every day.  The education mentioned by the various governments is the institutional variety, that which occurs in public classrooms.  It is said, quite often, that we need to place the highest priority on education.  Not surprisingly, every priority has defenders.  Health, education, welfare are all intertwined, and have all been national priorities at one time or another.  The test of whether education, or anything else, is actually a real priority comes when there isn’t quite enough money or time, or both, to go around.  Now is one of those times.  Part of the federal stimulus package  is for education ($100 billion +).  Arne Duncan, President Obama’s Education Secretary, has a big job on his hands.  He has to see that this money is well spent by the states.  In California, as in other states, the budget is a bit difficult just now.  School districts around the state are in the process of passing out pink slips by the hundreds, which equals thousands when all the districts are counted (according to the California Teachers Association, 25,000).  The districts probably don’t have much choice, as March 15th is the date that they must notify credentialed staff that they may not have a job next for the next school year.  School districts around the state are still in the process of allocating funds, figuring out what to cut.  Mostly, the cuts will be painful.  Some, in this state and in other states, probably should have been made long ago.  What is important is that the cuts be made as far away from the classroom as possible.  What is probably real is that a large number of good, young teachers will lose their jobs, class sizes will go up, and test scores will go down.  A district in the Sacramento area has issued close to 400 pink slips.  This is just one district in one small part of the state.  They went all the way back to 2001 and have notified the teachers hired since then that they may be out of work in June.  By May 15, some of these teachers will still have jobs, and, sadly, some will not, May 15 being the day that the pink slips become real.  This is not putting education in a high priority status.  It is giving lip service to the idea and failing to back it up with actions.  The federal stimulus package has given California money for education.  The state, in turn, is working out the details for how the money will trickle down to the districts.  The districts have a rough idea about how much they are going to receive.  Still, the pink slips go out, the morale tanks, and the newer teachers have now been put in a position of figuring out what they will do for work when June arrives.  They are expected, however, to somehow stay focused on their classrooms.  Quite hard to do I think.  Mortgages, health insurance, car payments, food are now viewed in a different light.  One of the big disconnects in this scenario, and it is a big one, is that the people who are in charge of issuing the pink slips are not in danger of losing anything.  They also don’t teach anyone, and rarely visit a classroom.  Their jobs, perks, and benefits are all secure.  The entire layoff procedure is a piece of business for them.  It’s not that they should be in the classrooms.  Their jobs are, after all, different.  They should, however, be far more connected to the damage done to education when they okay hundreds of pink slips.  Some jobs will be saved by older teachers retiring, others by leaves of absences for various reasons.  The disticts should focus on how they can keep as many teachers as possible, instead of figuring out how many pink slips to issue.  Education needs these good, talented young teachers to lead us forward.  Without them, we stagnate, and that is not a good thing to have happen, now or ever.  Some of these good young teachers will abandon the field for good, feeling, rightfully I think, let down by the the very people who claim that education has just got to be a very high priority for this nation.   It is an easy thing to say, especially by government and administrators who will continue to have jobs when June rolls around.  Education as a priority?  Prove it, Mr. President, Ms. Superintendent.  Talk is, as always, very, very cheap.

This is a quick take, to  be followed up later, on the state of our school budgets in California.  The state has a budget of sorts now.  Around 8 billion dollars has been cut from education throughout the spectrum, from pre-school to grad school.  Districts of all sizes are now able to make a somewhat educated guess about what to do with their budgets.  The most expensive item in any school’s budget, anywhere, is people.  Most districts are now attempting to figure out who stays and who goes and what else is going to be curtailed or eliminate Very large districts are probably able to cut more than very small districts.  The small district I work for functions on about six million dollars a year.  A large district not far from here is looking to cut two million dollars from a nine million dollar transportation encroachment into the general fund.  I have no idea what their total budget is, but I think it is rather large.  Passing out pink slips to the least senior and  telling the people in temporary positions that they won’t be back, and so on, is a difficult process.  Figuring out what the new rules are and what programs to keep is a delicate and difficult process.  It’s not over yet.  If you have any insights into what is likely to happen, by all means leave a message for all of us to read.

As of today, Feb. 16, school districts throughout California still have no idea what their funding picture is.  Our legislators are busy in Sacramento attempting to hone political stonewalling into an even lower rung on the evolutionary ladder.  By March 15, districts must, by law, notify certificated staff (administrators, teachers, librarians who are credentialed) that they could be laid off.  The pink slip time clock is ticking rather loudly.  By May 15, those who receive pink slips will find out if they have jobs for the following school year.  Most likely no one who is as gray as I am will find anything pink in the mail.  The young, energetic, full of enthusiasm future of education in the classroom teachers will receive them.  Most of them went through University when the cry from the education and political establisments was that we have a national and state shortage of teachers.  Get your credential, get a job.  I hope that the legislators, in whatever state they are in, come to their senses and get the budgeting issue solved very soon.  It would be, in my opinion, a disaster for education if we lose young teachers because of the inability of the state government to come to agreement on where the money to run the state actually comes from.  Arranging the deck chairs to facilitate the sinking of the ship is not what we are in need of just now.

California is a large state with a large problem right now.  The state of our economy is just plain weird.  The funding picture for schools isn’t any better than it is for anything else.  We simply don’t know what it’s going to be.  We do have to plan though, and come up with a budget that is supportable for this year and the following two years.  We do the best we can with this scenario.  Keep in mind that we do not generate things that make a profit for us.  We are charged with  spending what is allocated to us in a responsible manner, and at least for this district, I think we do.  In the current financial situation, the Governor has, as part of his overall plan for schools, decided on some options for us.  It is, from the Governor’s side, a completely brilliant plan, and the ultimate in passing the buck.  In a nutshell, here it is: give school districts the ability to choose the programs they are going to fund.  It sounds like a return to local control, and I must say again that I think, from the Governor’s side, it is absolutely stunning.  What it really does is completely shift responsibility for programs from the state to the district.  Great, right?  Maybe.  The Governor and the legislature will be able to stand in front of their various microphones and tell the public, with straight faces, that the loss of any program is the result of the local district choosing to discontinue it.  They are off the hook.  If the state government actually takes the restrictions off all the categorical programs and lets us use that money for things that make sense in our districts, it might turn out all right.  The actual amount of funding that we receive is very, very important though.  One of the things that the CTA is floating an ad on TV about is class size reduction funding.  CTA says it is a target of the Governator.  Naturally, the response from the capital is that it is not.  Remember, one direction of the Gov’s financial thrust is “local control”.  I’ve been in this business a long time, and have become fairly well aquainted with how we are funded.  Here is a general picture of what the public might hear at budget time: we have fully funded the schools according to the Prop. 98 guidelines.  Schools have received a 5.5% COLA (or some other percentage, makes no difference), and that is really good for them.  Sure.  What you don’t hear, unless you work with a schools budget, is that the state has applied a 2% deficit to the 5.5%.  This simply means that instead of a full 5.5% (just for illustration purposes), we receive 3.5%.  It’s the best of smoke and mirrors.  That deficit is simply money we never see.  The bills don’t decrease, and the needs don’t decrease by any percentage.  So, with that kind of bookkeeping in mind, back to class size reduction.  If the state actually fully funds the categoricals (pots of money that may only be spent on certain programs, whether they make sense or not), and gives us control,  we will be faced with what we will fund, and what we won’t.  Maybe, not such a bad deal, as we will be able to fund programs that really do benefit children, and discontinue ones that are clearly marginal.  This will vary from district to district as the needs are different from district to district.  Class size reduction funds are $1,071 per child in each K through 3rd grade level.  I can tell you that working with 20 very young children in my classroom is much better for all concerned than working with 30+.  Yes, I have taught Kindergarten with 32 children in my classroom, no teaching partner, all day.  My small group instruction is better with groups of 6 or 7 instead of 10 or 11.  The same is true for 1st grade, where they are tasked with teaching reading, an art form that is truly amazing.  Now, full funding from the state probably means that we will be able to continue with class size reduction.  If, however, the state government decides to pull the funding, and tell us to use what ever we need to from the newly unleashed categoricals to fund what ever we want, some very difficult choices, class size reduction among the “choices”, will have to be made.  If districts throughout the state eliminate any K though 3 classes from class size reduction, literally thousands of mostly young teachers will be out of jobs in June of this year.  Along with the increasing demands of NCLB, AYP, STAR tests,and state standards, the resulting increase in class sizes, which will undoubtedly float to 30 and beyond in K-3, will have a bit of a harsh effect on meeting any of those goals.  Of course, it will be the districts fault.  The Governator and the so-called legislators will be, with straight faces, off the hook.  Free choice, remember?  I don’t know what the motivation of the Governator is, but, as the title of this blog suggests, I am absolutely skeptical.  Politicians, if nothing else, are self-serving,  That’s probably more to the point than local control.  Keep listening.  Your comments are welcomed.