Search results matching tags 'teachers', 'education reform', and 'merit pay'

Diane Ravitch at NCSS 2011

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 23:18:00 GMT

“If enough people care, the public may learn the course is not wise, not reform and backed by no evidence. Public Education is a precious resource that must be preserved and improved for future generations.”

-Diane Ravitch, NCSS 2011

Diane Ravitch is a voice of reason and sanity in the politically charged and reckless world of education policy and so-called reform. The Teaching Underground had the privilege of hearing a lecture from Dr. Ravitch at the NCSS national convention this weekend in Washington, D.C.

Conventional wisdom might brand her “anti-reform,” but in reality the term educational reform has been high-jacked and turned into “testing, accountability, and choice” at the exclusion of meaningful reform seeking appropriate ways to “develop qualities of heart and mind and character to sustain our democracy for future generations.” The Teaching Underground is ready to steal the term back and label Diane Ravitch as the voice of true reform in American education.

After hearing Ravitch’s talk we jokingly said to each other, “she stole all of her material from the Underground.” Since our arrival in the blogging world in October 2010, we’ve learned that every challenge we’ve faced at the local level is rooted in the national education landscape. Like Ravitch, our primary hope is that people would care, and by caring, the public will learn that our present course of educational policy in the United States often guised as reform is really no reform at all.

Ravitch’s lecture at the NCSS Convention centered around a dozen or so questions. (I was typing fast, if you were there and see that we missed a question let us know.) Below are the questions Ravitch addressed. We've included a few links to related posts on the Teaching Underground. Feel free to offer your reactions to the questions, and if you were at the talk, let us know what you thought. We'll post about some of these topics in the months to come.

Are we in crisis?
-one of the very first posts on TU: Are We Failing?

Should public schools be turned over to private management?

Why not have a free market of choices for parents and students?
-these two questions were addressed in our post Breaking the Public Schools

Should public funded schools be allowed to make a profit?
-in April we discussed The Education Marketplace

Should teachers get a bonus for higher test scores?

Will test scores go up if teacher evaluations are tied to them?

Should student test scores ever be a part of teacher evaluation?
-each of these three questions remind me of the post Why You Should Care

Should NCLB be reauthorized?
-among other posts addressing NCLB, here is 2012 or 2014

Will Race to the Top transform?
-it will certainly transform something, here's a post on NCLB Waivers and Race to the Top

Should teachers and principals have professional training?

Will competition improve schools?

How to Make Us All Great

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:20:00 GMT

Greatness is a relative term and there is a growing effort focused on making the teachers we have across this country better. But there's a simple solution. Hire more crappy teachers and voila. That will effectively increase the relative quality of those currently employed. Obviously that was a joke but so are some of the suggestions currently gaining favor.

Here's a serious one, actually pay educators for what they do. One way to do that would be to pay higher ups less. Keep the money in the schools with the people who work with kids in them, nowhere else. Don't allow yourself to be naive to the degree that you fail to recognize how influential companies are slowly leeching money away from actual instruction in schools and into management and testing. Let's use that money to do what was suggested in a bad 2008 Time Article reward teachers so that "the most competent, caring and compelling—remain in a profession known for low pay, low status and soul-crushing bureaucracy". If you use student scores and similar measures to rank us some of us are going to be bad. If you must tie this information in use it appropriately and rate, do not rank. Similarly be very careful about how you choose to reward educators. It is pretty important. Why not increase teacher pay across the board?

Great teachers know their subject, they communicate well, they inspire and connect with young people, they motivate, they understand kids and their emotional needs, they have the intangibles, they are creative, dependable, organized, work hard, are patient and resilient(My English teacher would run out of red ink on that sentence). Good luck getting all that from everyone. As some yolk the momentum for change in campaign season the finger can get pointed at teacher preparation. In other professions it seems what you did in college matters, but it seems OK to have graduated and underperformed before you got a job. Each year you work what you did and learned before you were hired matters less. Not so in education. Truth is the best preparation for teaching is actually teaching, the other stuff helps but learning about teaching and actually teaching are very different. Why does this even get pointed out as a big reason our students under-perform? Many kids I know only excel when their performance affects others, when it really maters. Teachers can be much the same. Imagine 25 faces staring back at you wondering what is about to happen when you don't know either. That would suck huh? Thus it'd be great to stop implying what you learned in college makes you a great teacher.

My favorite analogy came from Katy Farber who wrote Why Great Teachers Quit: And How We Might Stop the Exodus . She said that teaching is like treading water and then being handed more and more bricks. I feel that way almost daily. The more bricks we are handed, the less great we are. To offset the increasing demands some propose raising pay but that won't make the day any longer.

Many efforts to increase pay require that increase be tied to student performance on standardized tests(see previous post). Some are calling for experience to play a reduced role compensation or even be removed all together. Would that approach make sense for doctors, pilots, police officers, or any other job? News flash: EXPERIENCE MATTERS IN TEACHING. Tenure allows teachers to take risks and improve. To have piece of mind that they will have a job and focus on developing their craft free of the burdens of probationary supervision. Opponents of tenure argue it serves to keep bad teachers around but there are far more pros to cons.

Other ways to make us all great are to allow and protect the time teachers need for effective and meaningful collaboration. Squeezing it in the schedule here and there with a shoehorn doesn't cut it. That will allow for relevant sharing of resources and ideas along with professional development among peers so they can actually support each other. This enables them to successfully navigate the maelstrom of public education. Collaboration instead of competition.

Force everyone who wants input on educational decisions to sub in schools so they'll gain understanding on how tough this job can be when working with unmotivated or disrespectful kids.

Actually go back to where the kid was the one being held accountable. The are you working to engage johnny and what have you done to reach this kid stuff goes away when a kid acts like an idiot.

Respect the profession of teaching. Foster more autonomy and individual control, allow for advancement and leadership without leaving teaching. Excellence suffers when pressures from efficiency and output are applied to the classroom.

Simplify things. Teachers need time built into the day to settle the chaos. That would allow them to model a much calmer nature and be more understanding. Schedules need to be constructed in a way to allow this. Having full time subs would be a classic example of ways to help teachers be great with simplicity.

Recognize the limitations on digital and online learning, use it to supplement instruction, not just replace it. It has a growing and important role but has limits. Just as virtual human exchanges are useful but fall short of sitting down face to face. One of the lessons of John Henry is that technology is not always better. So much of what teachers do are those more subtle things or actions that have a formative impact of kids. Online classes should maintain similar student teacher ratios to brick and mortar learning. Kids can learn content from a book or a computer but the dynamic between a teacher and student can never be replicated virtually, period.

Keep teaching authentic not out of the box top down. Let teachers use their passion to instruct and do not extinguish that trait with minutia of pupil management.

Understand that teaching is a struggle. Every day is different and presents its own unique challenges. Support teachers accordingly.

Alleviate the student load to a level that allows more one on one attention and focus. This goes for all educators, teachers, counselors on down the list.

Just do what Jeb suggests...I mean he is obviously an education expert.
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110401/EDIT05/304019996/1021/EDIT No don't...the seismic shift referenced on that link will be good teachers leaving the job.

Try building teachers up instead of tearing the profession down. It is a human endeavor and the human spirit can accomplish some pretty amazing things when it is cut loose and kept healthy. Ask what they need and work to get it to them. Don't give them stuff then convince them to use it.

Whatever paths chosen locally, statewide and federally to encourage greatness among teachers they should be carefully chosen and well thought out to help us be great, or at least allow us to show that we are when allowed to be.
Just don't hand me more bricks.

Taking a Stand in Virginia and Texas

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:25:00 GMT

In the previous post on the Underground, my colleague referred to Superintendent John Kuhn of Texas testifying before the Texas legislature regarding teacher evaluation and "value-added" systems of measuring teacher effectiveness. Across the nation, we are moving toward systems that measure the effectiveness of students, teachers, schools, and entire districts on the basis of standardized testing. The push toward common core standards will only lead to more. (See here for a interesting post discussing merit pay and common core standards)

I am convinced that the American public agrees. I am also convinced that our politicians, educational leaders and all of the media-endorsed experts agree that excessive standardized testing degrades our educational system. I don't think these same leaders and "experts" understand just how much their ideas and policies that sound great in theory can do so much damage when put into practice. Let me concede a few things:

1) The idea that every family in America can expect a consistent and quality curriculum for their students is a good idea.

2) The idea that a teacher should be evaluated based on how well they are able to move their student from one level to the next is a good idea.

3) The idea that teachers and schools should be held accountable for what and how they teach is a good idea.

Maybe that is a little common ground that we can all agree on that might help us move toward reducing our differences. The differences arise in the methods proposed to make these ideas reality. Organic systems work when they are sensitive to their environment and respond properly. In the human body, this means the brain receives information from the body and responds accordingly. Executive functions in a healthy system arise from quality feedback. For whatever reason, the executive functioning of education policy acts independent of quality feedback. Perhaps the teachers and students who raise their voices in opposition to the onslaught of standardized testing are seen as too self-serving. But the survival and maturation of our system requires that decision-makers understand the impact of their decision.

That is why Superintendent Kuhn should be applauded. Openly testifying to the Legislature that he has considered opting his child out of the testing process and publicly naming a company like Pearson, asserting that we have placed more trust in them than in our local teachers, is not the smartest political move. Standing out against the grain of public education policy may cost him any hopes he may have had of holding higher position at state or national levels. Calling out a player in the "industrial-educational" machine may limit his post-education employment options. But, perhaps for these reasons he will also be taken seriously.

Virginia now stands on the verge of facing an increasing growth in the importance of standardized testing and the resources it will require of schools for administration and reporting. It is not a secret that the state is on the "value-added" teacher evaluation bandwagon. The secretary of Education, Gerard Robinson, belongs to the "Chiefs for Change" coalition supported and promoted by former Florida governor Jeb Bush. The group focuses on issues such as creating "value-added" evaluations for teachers and principals, stronger standards and testing, and expanded school choice.

Allowing for the "common sense" thinking that "value-added" is a reasonable method of teacher evaluation, we should consider the serious misgivings of the approach. Just a few criticisms of the approach can be found on the blog of Harvard Education Publishing, at the National Academy of Sciences, and the Economic Policy Institute. Full texts of the reports and studies can be found at the links above.

Further bringing Virginia into the realm of "value-added," Governor Bob McDonnell has implemented a pilot merit pay program in the state. Closer examination of this program reveals that teachers working in "struggling schools" who succeed in raising achievement will be eligible for up to $5000 in additional pay. The identification of deserving schools in this case does not seem clear to all, but even more problematic is the sublime move toward a value-added model on which to base this reward. At least 40 percent of a teacher's performance evaluation must be tied to student academic performance. This includes improvements in standardized test scores. As a "pilot" program, this appears innocuous enough, and framing the terms (a la Race to the Top) in such a carrot and stick fashion might cause districts to run for the money.

Educators have two choices in situations like this. 1) Take the money and run, don't rock the boat, and accept this as the future and get on board early. 2) Take a stand, speak up for what's good for education, and refuse to play a role in implementation of bad policy.

I am encouraged to hear the news that district leaders in Fairfax and Loudon County are not likely to apply for this program. I hope they follow through. I also hope that the school board and administrators in my own county of Albemarle will not accept the advent of value-added as inevitable and take the opportunity to stand against it by refusing to apply for the funding. To the public, refusal of this funding may appear confusing at first, but it provides an excellent opportunity for school leaders to communicate what responsible reform should look like. Change is needed in American education, but reform such as this is no reform at all, it is more of the same "carrot and stick" motivation driven by standardization.

We would love to hear other opinions regarding the movement toward "value-added", merit pay, and especially this new Virginia policy even if you disagree. Click the comment link below to add your thoughts.