eduskeptic

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 The link is to a 1991 graph, which is out of date.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.

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.

School districts across the United States are struggling to keep up with the budgetary realities of the day.  It is difficult to maintain a level of educational excellence in the face of a budget that forces more children into each classroom, and cuts more programs that have been good for children, K-12. In California, and across the nation, the task is disheartening in many ways. Laying off over 20,000 teachers in California is not an easy thing to do, nor is it likely to be ignored by anyone with an agenda regarding unions, seniority, and the educational establishment in general.

In an article in the Sacramento, California, Bee newspaper, July 6, co-written by Diana Lambert and Phillip Reese, it is pointed out that, in general,  schools with the most troubles, economically, behaviorally, academically, have suffered the most from teacher layoffs. The reason is relatively simple: the staff at these schools tend to be younger, less experienced teachers. The general rule is last hired is first fired. This may or may not be true in all districts across the United States.

The article points out that a newer teacher, with a PhD in education (doesn’t say from where the PhD is from), who has written about education, and was teacher of the year for his district, was given a pink slip, which has since been rescinded. His take on the layoff business is that it should be based on performance. Perhaps it was, and that is why he still has a job. To assume that it wasn’t is simply naive.

School districts, at least in California, are paid based on the actual attendance of the students enrolled in the district. Absences equal a loss of money to the district. There are no excused absences anymore. If a child is absent, it costs the district. Every district has to make a guess about how many children will be attending school the next school year, and about what the attendance percentage will be, in order to figure out a budget.  March 15, in California, is a day when districts have to notify teachers of potential layoffs. Chief financial officers generally give the superintendents a conservative number regarding the number of potential students for the next year. The incoming Kindergarten class, subtracted from the outgoing 8th grade class, or 12th grade class in a unified district, equals the number of students lost, or, perhaps gained. Based on this number and the number of children each class will carry, teachers will be laid off, or more will be hired. It’s pretty simple. The Phd teacher of the year might want to look into this prior to making assumptions about the process.

The younger, less experience teachers are the ones who take the biggest hit in this scenario, no matter where in the district they are teaching. Teachers with tenure, those who have made it through 3 probationary years, are less like to actually lose their jobs. They do get pink slips. Teachers who have been teaching for 8 or more years have been getting pink slips. Most have been rescinded, but for a large number of teachers, the pink slips have turned out to be real. Tenure is not, as is commonly misquoted and believed, equal to lifetime employment. It means that a teacher cannot be fired, or laid off, without due cause. The reason for this is pretty straightforward.

This writer has written about this, in this blog, before. Prior to the tenure laws, teachers were fired at will for any number of reasons: having different political views from someone on the board, not financially supporting a pet project of a principal or board member, not working for free, having the termidity to argue with a principal, the principals wife, or board member, getting married or pregnant if a woman, not buying the correct clothing at the correct store, being old, not putting up with sexual harassment or assault, even thinking about joining a union, being of a different nationality, color, and the list just keeps going on and on. Tenure laws exist to protect the civil rights of teachers. It is not, and never has been, a ticket to lifetime employment.

The newspaper article, and others like it, point out that a disproportionate number of teachers at difficult schools in difficult areas are laid off at a higher rate than teachers at better schools, because the teachers in these schools tend to be the newest, least senior. Nowhere in the articles that this teacher has read has anyone taken the time to figure out that the older teachers in the districts paid their dues a long time ago. They have already been at the difficult schools with the difficult students in the difficult areas of town. They have been through the grinder and have transferred to less stressful situations. There are not many teachers who can sustain the daily assault on civility, the lack of community support, the mind numbing stress of teaching in such situations, over the long haul. Some can, and do. After a few years though, most teachers in these positions, when offered the opportunity to go to a different location, and preserve what is left of their sanity and health, do so. Not very surprising, really.

The newer teachers are also the ones who are most likely to teach anywhere they are sent, without question, who are most likely to do the involuntary “volunteer” work that principals and other administrators come up with, who won’t speak up too freely about conditions, or 3 hour staff meetings, simply because they fear for their jobs. A colleague of this writer gave up a Saturday to “volunteer” at school for what was called an ADA make-up day. The reasoning? Fear of being laid off.

Nowhere in the press, with all of the focus on the under performing schools having such high numbers of layoffs has anyone pointed out that other teachers filled those slots. The districts put more children in the classrooms, and transferred other teachers into those low performing schools to teach. These transferred teachers are the more experienced teachers. The articles and opinions on the op-ed pages would have the general public believe that the children in these difficult schools are just cast afloat, which is a patently ridiculous position.

The teachers, young and old, are not to blame for the financial mess that the schools and states find themselves in. There is no rejoicing in the teacher ranks when the young and talented are told their services are not needed for the next school year. The more experienced teachers know full well that there is a great need for young, enthusiastic, and energetic teachers to enter into, and stay in, the teaching ranks, and it is they who most profoundly feel the loss of these good young teachers. A good mix of the experienced with the inexperienced in the teaching ranks is what is needed.

No crisis will ever be left untouched for political gain by politicians. What seems to have floated to the top of the pool in this mess is a thinly veiled assault on unions, mounted by politicians who think now is the time to point to the teachers and their civil rights as a cause for the layoffs of good, young teachers. Instead of figuring out how to get the schools back on a stable financial footing, they begin to blame the unions, and all senior teachers. It is, of course, much easier to do this than to actually fix anything. It also does nothing to help children and schools do anything at all.

In the last post from Eduskeptic, the establishment of national standards for schools across the nation were discussed. In general, it may be a good idea, on several different levels. When the states apply for educational funding from the Federal government, it would be nice to know that the scores were based on the same criteria, that the criteria were assessed in the same manner, and the scoring itself was an equal opportunity proposition. As of now, that premise is doubtful at best.

While a case can be made for national educational standards across the K-12 spectrum, the rule of unintended consequences will undoubtedly apply, no matter what. It always does. The other side of national testing, the tricky part, needs close scrutiny, at least as close as the standards themselves. If teacher pay and retention is to be tied to the students success with the standards, someone has to pay attention to the process that takes place.

Teaching to the test is not new. It is what educators have done since the beginning of the educational business. How can it be otherwise? A teacher has a text, or expectations, that drive the teaching of the curriculum on a daily basis. If the expectation is that the students will understand the sound of the letter L, it makes perfectly good sense to focus on the letter L and the sound that it makes. After sufficient time dwelling upon this sound, the test is simple: what sound does the letter L make? Follow up is likewise pretty straight forward: in several different words, which ones start with the sound of the letter L? It would be completely counterintuitive to spend a week with the letter Q, then test for the letter L. Not too difficult to understand. There are some things that lend themselves rather well to this model. It is teaching to the test in a pretty pure form.

Once the varied sets of sounds, math formulas, and steps to get the right measurements and quantities is mastered, things do become more difficult. In any part of the curriculum, at least from about 4th grade on up (4th grade is the first year of mostly pure content teaching. Skills based curricula is a K through 3rd grade experience), content  becomes the focus. Students should already know the alphabet, how to read, and a  bucketful of math facts. Content is a different world altogether, but it is dependent upon the successful acquisition of the necessary skills. Content lends itself to interpretation.

Written papers begin to appear in earnest in 4th grade, and then blossom into a full bore flood after that, all the way to the end of the University years. Papers are written for every subject within the curricula strata. Some of the information that is taught isn’t open to very much, if at all, interpretation. Some historical dates are relatively cast in stone, as are some things that have happened in the various disciplines. It is not quite as easy to adequately grade the way things are written about. Teachers all hope for competent usage of the written language. After that, it gets dicey, which is to say, subjective. The various bits of scientific discoveries are not at all always consistent with what the text book may say. While Marie Curie was busy discovering radioactivity, she was in the process of killing herself with her experiments. Text books used to focus on the wonders of radiation, not so much on what happened to Marie. Perhaps they still do.

In a paper about Marie Curie, what is to be showcased? How does a teacher go about grading two equally good compositions about her, written from two perspectives that are completely at odds with each other? Does the science teacher grade differently from the history teacher, who has a different outlook than the English teacher, regarding the assignment?  History is largely, in this writers opinion, distorted very badly in the K-12 curricula. Who’s version are we writing about? Is one version more wrong than another? In the realm of English, is Shakespeare really that good?  Are “be” verbs all that insidious? Is there really only one way to solve a problem in the world of math? Is science a closed loop, with only one answer per question?

In a standardized testing situation, with standardized scoring, there is only one answer per question. This would indicate that the students have to be asked to memorize pre-sorted facts, which can then be sorted out on a bubbleized scantron card. Fill in the correct bubble, and move on. At the end of the test, the card goes into the scantron reader, and a numerical score is produced. What this measures, and all that it measures, is the ability to memorize the material that is pertinent to the test, and which can be scored with fill in bubbles. Math may be different, as a student may actually have to solve a problem to get to the right bubble on the card. Of course, since there are only 4 or 5 answers to choose from, getting close may be all that is needed.

If the nations teachers are going to be held accountable for great scantron scores in order to stay employed, or to move up, or down, on the salary scale, it becomes important to focus on the presumed correct answers. In fact, there have already been instances where teachers have been accused of cheating on this type of scoring, in order to reach the correct numerical strata in order to be judged a “good” teacher. Herein lies the problem, and this may be the dark side of national standards and testing. If the teaching day focuses on only the correct set of, or acceptable set of, answers to a nationally standardized test, it is more about the teacher than the student and what and how the student learns. The restrictions are enormous in this scenario.

The actual art of teaching takes a clear back seat to the mechanical recitation of someones version of facts. This, in and of itself, in this teachers view, is not good. The wide based critical thinking skills that are a hallmark of teaching in the United States, and which have proved to be pretty important, won’t survive in this type of atmosphere. Rote recitation is not education, it is not learning.

Somewhere there is an answer to this conundrum. Somewhere, either at the national level, in Arne Duncan’s group in the Department of Education, or in the staff room of the local elementary school, there is someone who should be able to figure out how to mesh actual learning with a set of national standards and standardized testing that will be acceptable across the educational spectrum. This will only happen if Duncan et al reach out to the educational professionals who actually spend time in classrooms. The theoreticians are useful as well, as are the sociologists, as this is not just a question that centers only in the classroom. It will take the involvement of more than just teachers to make all of this work. After 36 years of teaching, I have to hope that it does work.

Recently, the move to a national set of curriculum standards took on new life.  For quite some time there has been concern that the standards based lessons being taught around the country were anything but equal. The laws that, for better or worse, came into national prominence with the No Child Left Behind legislation, were meant to establish a basis for measuring success in the  classroom. So far, that’s not what we have.

Some states have moved to rectify the mishmosh of expectations. The intent is to make sure that when the educational, and the anti-educational, establishments are touting their success or lack of it  on the standards platform, that everyone is standing on the same platform. Initially, all of the states were given leeway to establish what the standards in their state would be. The fox was about to have lunch, and dinner, in the hen house. That is changing.

The  National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) released a set of state-led education standards, the Common Core State Standards. These standards are meant to be rigorous, consistent, and understandable, from state to state, across the nation. In light of the push by the Department of Education for better compliance with the NCLB laws, and the changes in this law, this should be a good thing.

A teacher in California, Iowa, and Maine, should be able to teach a set of recognized and accepted curricula that would enable a family moving from one state to another to be assured that their children will be able to apply what they have learned in a fair and equitable manner. Students should be able to seamlessly blend into a classroom anywhere in the nation and understand what is being taught. States should be able to absolutely rely on a level competition for whatever federal education dollars that are available.

That has, up till now, not been the case. Several states established norms that were, when examined closely, at best, laughable. Texas has long claimed great educational gains using various programs. Held up to national review, the claims haven’t always held up. Mississippi and Louisiana established themselves at the bottom of the credibility ladder. What is clear is that everyone should be seeking the top of the same ladder. Educators, at least the ones this writer has worked with over the last 36 years, would appreciate this.

Because the stakes, which have become more monetized than ever, have gotten more critical, it is likewise more critical for everyone in the education arena to know what is at stake. If we are to improve the perceived quality of education on a national basis, it is important that the states sign on to an agreed K through 12 set of standards, and then to adhere to them. Inherent in the standards agreement is the component that assess how the standards are being met. The fox has to leave the hen house.

It is not just the national standards that are coming down the road. Subsequent to the standards, or, lurking in the background, depending on your point of view, are some other items. If the standards become nationalized, the business of education at the university level leading to a teaching credential may need to be standardized, to the highest state standard that exists. A teacher in one state, moving to another state, would have a portable credential. That does not currently exist. Holding teachers accountable for meeting the national standards would similarly need to be a consistent from state to state. That would seem to indicate that acceptable classroom behaviors would also need to be as standardized as possible. What to do with disruptive students, and how to measure their effect on a classroom would need to be consistent. There would need to be an acceptable alternative placement for the disruptive, or a method of applying a discount to the classroom performance, consistent from state to state. If we are to truly measure each student, teacher, state, against a set of reasonable and rigorous standards, the environment from which the children come to school will absolutely need to be part of the formula.

The list of the possible ramifications, modifications, and permutations of national standards is likely to be quite long. The law of unintended consequences will apply as well. This is not to say that the status quo is acceptable. It isn’t. We have to start somewhere, and the first step does seem to be nationally accepted standards. Education is not a static phenomenon. It is always changing, and over time, the good changes outnumber the bad ones. Anything that stays static for too long will deteriorate. We never have been able to afford that in education. We certainly cannot afford to have that happen now.