I have always admired you, Diane, as a scholar and clear-headed thinker, even when I disagreed with you. Now? I am saddened by your Manichean view of the education reform world. You now consistently write and speak as if all would-be reformers have nothing but selfish or devious motives for advocating significant changes in public schooling.
In the opening pages of Reign of Error, for example, you write: “Public education is not broken. It is not failing or declining. Public education is in crisis only so far as society is and only so far as this new narrative of crisis has de-stabilized it.”
Yet, a few pages back you also write:
“I do not contend that the schools are fine just as they are. They are not. American education needs higher standards for those who enter the teaching profession. It needs higher standards for those who become principals and superintendents. It needs stronger and deeper curriculum in every subject…”
I agree. However, the latter angle never appears again in the book.
It’s also noteworthy how you tiptoe here around the elephant in the room in the preceding paragraph: to what extent today’s teachers are doing an adequate job. Indeed, much of your polemic is to criticize those who say that “blame must fall on the shoulders of teachers and principals.” Well, why shouldn’t it? That’s where achievement and change do or do not happen. Instead, you blame the forces of privatization and corporatism and poverty. Indeed, even, in the first paragraph above you lament merely a lack of “standards” and “curriculum” – a de-personalized critique. So, which is it? Are schools doing as well as they can with the teachers they have, or not? Are kids getting the education they deserve or not?
I think there is plenty of evidence about the inadequacies of much current teaching that you and I find to be credible and not insidiously motivated. How else, in fact, would you say that schools aren’t “fine” as they are? Reform is strongly needed in many schools (and not just the dysfunctional urban schools). To say that these problems are somehow not due to teaching and mostly due to forces outside of school walls belies the fact that schools with both non-poor students and adequate resources are also under-performing, and outlier schools serving poor children have had important successes.
Even the 2nd largest teacher union agrees that changes to teaching are needed:
But extensive improvements to America’s education system are essential to help all students acquire the knowledge and skills they need for success in the 21st century. Students must not only attain knowledge, they must be able to apply what they have learned. They must have access to a curriculum that focuses not just on what is to be tested, but on what should be learned to make them well-rounded thinkers and individuals.
Merely undoing harmful privatization is thus nowhere near sufficient to make schools serve our students properly. Schools can and should be a lot better than they are, not just in the cities but in the suburbs; not just in the US, but in all countries.
I always find it odd that defenders of teachers won’t ever criticize teachers and want to highlight forces outside of classrooms and schools because then they are tacitly admitting that teaching doesn’t make much of a difference. Good teachers get good results; weak teachers don’t. Why can’t we say this and thus work on what is in our control – the teaching?
In terms of evidence, let’s start with the remediation rate: Nationwide, as you know, the remediation rate in college is 40%. ACT reports that 30% graduating HS students are not ready for college. This can only happen in a “K-12 system” that is not a system at all. I find it hard to blame poverty and privatization for such an institutional failure to link K-12 to college in assessment and grading locally. And having spent decades in schools, I can tell you why this occurs: teachers are allowed to work in isolation and set grading and testing policies completely on their own.
[Added after the initial posting of the blog entry: from the just-released OECD study on adult skills:
- Larger proportions of adults in the United States than in other countries have poor literacy and numeracy skills, and the proportion of adults with poor skills in problem solving in technology-rich environments is slightly larger than the average, despite the relatively high educational attainment among adults in the United States.
- Socio-economic economic background has a stronger impact on adult literacy skills in the United States than in other countries. Black and Hispanic adults are substantially over-represented in the low-skilled population.]
Let’s look at student engagement: in national studies and in my own surveys of over 8000 students, kids – even in elementary school – consistently report or experience work that is boring and without meaning a great deal of the time. I find that I am bored most of the time when I visit HS classrooms. I see the same disengaging teacher habits that I experienced 50 years ago as a student, despite what we know about best practice. Poverty and privatization have nothing to do with such practices, and no money is needed to fix it – just leadership and commitment to not bore kids.
Let’s look at Hattie’s research: there are over 30 powerful interventions that trump socio-economic status, yet it is extremely rare to find those practices in use in any one school. The pressing question for all teachers and administrators is: why is it so rare, in the face of two decades of research? Poverty, politics, and privatization have nothing to do with teachers using best practices. In medicine it is termed malpractice not to use such practices.
Let’s look at NAEP and more recently PISA: for decades students have shown that they are poor at drawing inferences about such things as main idea or non-routine problems. The gains have come only with low-level skills. Why isn’t that traceable to teachers and principals in the same way that the gains are?
[added: In Reign of Error you correctly note that students have made steady gains overall in NAEP. You brush over a key fact: 17-year-olds have made no gains in the 40 years of study:
Both 9- and 13-year-olds scored higher in reading and mathematics in 2012 than students their age in the early 1970s. Scores were 8 to 25 points higher in 2012 than in the first assessment year. Seventeen-year-olds, however, did not show similar gains. Average reading and mathematics scores in 2012 for 17-year-olds were not significantly different from scores in the first assessment year.
And what a close look at all the results reveals, as I have long written, is that the hard problems show terrible results. Whenever there is a multi-step task or unobvious answer, students not only do poorly, but the results are poor across the board, regardless of ethnicity or urban schools. (I’ll have more to say on this in a future post).]
Let’s look at the research on good teachers: some teachers can add an entire extra year of growth to student achievement and put those students on better footing forever, yet those teachers are a small minority of outliers (despite the fact that we have a body of best practice that provides a solid foundation for teacher improvement). And schools rarely let teachers go: “National estimates from the U.S. Department of Education indicate that, on average, school districts dismiss 1.4 percent of tenured teachers and 0.7 percent of probationary teachers for poor performance each year.” (Chait, 2010).”
Let’s look at weak curriculum, a need you underscore: in 20 years of doing UbD work I still find local curricula and assessment to be woefully inadequate and primitive. Our research shows that over 90% of curricula are still framed by discrete topics instead of complex ideas, challenges, and tasks – a fact that Ralph Tyler bemoaned over 70 years ago. Teachers still march through discrete low-level content because that is how curriculum is written. How is that anything but a local-educator and supervisor problem?
Let’s look at assessment: going back to Bloom’s Taxonomy-related research over decades, local assessment continues to demand only low-level performance – and this has been a constant since well before test prep mania. This quote from a Rand report is chilling: “ We found that 0 percent of students in the U.S. were assessed on deeper learning in mathematics through state tests, 1–6 percent of students were assessed on deeper learning in reading through state tests, and 2–3 percent of students were assessed on deeper learning in writing through state tests.” Now consider that locally assessments are typically less rigorous than state tests, as consistently found over the years using Bloom and our own assessment audit. Who is to blame for poor local assessment if not many of the designers and users of them?
Let’s look at the research on teacher questioning: for decades the research has shown the power of high-level questioning but also the sad fact that most teacher questions are low-level.
Let’s look at structural issues that are also within the control of educators: schooling is still organized based on “seat time” instead of demonstrated mastery. Students are typically grouped by age and follow a curriculum that is jam packed with content to be covered (often driven by rigid pacing guides) despite the obvious fact that people learn at different rates and have varied interests. This issue is as old as Ralph Tyler’s criticisms
What does poverty or privatization have to do with how educators set goals, use time, group students, and develop structures, incentives, and learning opportunities for all learners to achieve goals on a flexible schedule and with some degree of choice?
Let’s look at grading and reporting practices: The assigned report card grades are notoriously inconsistent among teachers within and across schools. Grades are often based on local norms rather than on genuine achievement judged against credible standards. Teachers’ assessments vary so widely that an “A” in one class could be a “C” in another. No wonder there has been such a focus on external, standardized testing, since local grades and transcripts lack validity or helpfulness in providing students with helpful feedback and a fair appraisal of strengths and weaknesses.
Let’s look at student autonomy: I think that it is inarguable that 12th graders in almost every HS in America, public and private, have less intellectual and physical freedom in school than 4-year-old Montessori students. Secondary education in many places is more like a white-collar prison operating on a compliance mentality than a vital learning organization that plays to individual student passions and strengths, and the need to prepare kids for the freedom of college.
The issue: quality assurance in teaching. The bad news? We face a complete lack of quality control in teaching in most schools, in most districts. The good news? Unlike poverty, this is in our control as educators. Quality control is achievable if we would only find the courage, the persistence, and the allies to make it happen as a collective commitment to excellence.
In the absence of true leadership and the right policies for supporting good teaching week in and week out, we get the wide variance we see: side by side in the same schools are wonderful teachers and terrible teachers. I have seen teachers in middle-class schools scream abuse at little kids, right in front of me, for the smallest of infractions or a simple mistake. Similarly, some of the schools in New York City are world-class; some are downright horrendous, as stultifying and ineffective as can be imagined. In one high school I visited, not one student spoke for three straight periods. Our variance most likely explains our international results: performance in Massachusetts is on par with the best countries; performance in Mississippi is horrific, as reflected not only in NAEP results for decades but on the basis of my having worked in the state’s schools for a year. I personally witnessed endless mind-numbing practices, such as students taking turns reading passages out loud for entire periods in 10th grade, teachers lecturing from notes on the board where the students’ sole job was to copy the notes, and where homework was never assigned anymore because “kids won’t do it.”
This complete absence of consistency of quality in schools may also explain why both the ardent detractors and defenders of schools are correct. The critics are correct: our state, national, and international performance is weak, as our President has often noted – and our standing is hurt by the wide variability across teachers and schools that is less common in other countries. And money for poor schools has often not had much effect: look at the Abbott schools in New Jersey where per pupil expenditures have been over 14,000 dollars.
But the defenders are also correct: there are outstanding schools and districts in this country, truly world-class. Take away the seven weakest states, and our international performance improves significantly. Finland and Singapore may look better because of our wide variance rather than any inherent special excellence. But then let’s face facts: such variability within and across our schools and districts can only happen where there is poor management and an inability to leverage better teaching.
A perhaps unseen lesson as to why SES correlates so well with achievement. Diane, these problems are of long standing (and you know this as a historian of education). Indeed, these weaknesses also exist in private and charter schools. Some of the most boring and fear-inducing teaching I have ever seen is in prep schools where only innate ability, student willingness to delay gratification and trust adults keeps it going. So, our problems cannot be caused solely by poverty and nasty manipulators of public schooling for personal gain or politics.
Indeed, in my view the only way to make sense of the long-established connection between student SES and school achievement scores is to conclude that most schools are not very effective. That explains much of the data in education, to my eye.
I love teaching, and I greatly admire teachers. I have spent the last 30+ years with them and in schools. Yet, we must face the truth, the “brutal facts,” as Collins termed it: many teachers are just not currently capable of engaging and deeply educating the kids in front of them, especially in the upper grades. Why can’t we admit this? I can admit it happily, because I think good teachers are tired of being brought down by weak teachers and policies that support them. And I’m in this for the kids, not the adults. Kids simply deserve better and no one lobbies primarily for their interests.
Thus, I strongly encourage you to be more careful in your rhetoric and more precise in describing which reforms are bogus and which are sorely needed. Preaching to the choir and separating people into crude friend or foe categories is not what we need in these challenging times.
PS: For anyone reading this who disagrees with the basic premise here that schools could be much better than they are, please do not write me back until you have shadowed a student for a day in an average school, clocked how many minutes teachers talk and students sit, and collected the assignments and assessments given in that school. I have done this dozens of times and I can assure you it will sober the most rabid defender of “teachers” since the quality of teaching varies so dramatically in a school, and the experience is always pretty boring. By contrast, neither I nor students are typically bored in classes like art, robotics, drama and sports – just as the data from Goodlad’s A Place Called School 30 years ago and our student surveys last year reveal. The bad news? The problems are real. The good news, if we would only see it this way? Many of the key changes are in our control as educators: better teaching, better assessments, better quality control through peer review, shared standards, and policies that promote the interests of learning and learners.
Sincerely,
Grant
86 Responses
Mr. Wiggins,
Do you believe that there are obstacles thrown in the way of the average educator? Perhaps in the form of more paperwork and more assessing? I know a educator who used to have the students dress up for mock Salem Witch Trials in Social Studies class. No more. No time. Not properly aligned with CCLS. Does she want to be observed as students are having fun and engaged?
Before I was removed I had a “talent coach” trek me I have to change the way my praised STEM lab operated, because it wasn’t properly aligned with the standards.
You have a point, but so does Diane.
Francesco Portelos
IS 49 UFT Chapter Leader
Parent
Educator
Educatorfightsback.org
Mrportelos.com
Of course there are obstacles. But they have always been there: read The Cult of Efficiency on the turn of the last century in education. There are always bad teachers, bad admins and bad students. But that doesn’t mean we cannot be a whole lot better. Indeed, the propensity to blame others and forces outside of school only delays the needed internal reforms that would make teaching more of a profession.
As for cool activities not properly aligned to standards? Well, I confess that I have seen many cool activities that are not valid, they are just cool. Check out my previous blog entry on experiential learning. I saw a huge multi-day effort on Victorian culture involving dress up, tea party, Dickens characters, etc. take 2 days and 2000 dollars in a middle school and I thought it was the biggest waste of time I had ever seen. “But the kids love it!” So? It really caused no take-away learning. So until and unless you can show me how the activity meets important goals related to understanding then I am going to remain a tad skeptical. I have been burned way to many times on that.
I dind’t say that Diane doesn’t have a point. I said she has falsely divided the world into lovers and haters of teachers and public education. That is simply not helpful nor intellectually valid.
I’m curious though about this Victorian lesson that did not meet any goals. I’m surprised that this could not be translated to something that did meet goals and it’s a shame that it did not. As an former educator (non-teacher) we were taught to have lesson plans for everything with the goal stated and the activity as a support to the goal. The goal came first. Activities without goals was called stealing from the student. You were simply, then, playing with them like a babysitter would play. Fun, but not your job. Teachers who want to be treated as professionals always keep that in mind. Sometimes the goal is there but then people get carried away. It sounds like that might have been the case here. But, there are so many goals that could be applied to this activity- it’s a shame since the kids were excited and motivated by this that it could not be used as a learning experience. Interesting.
Exactly right – it was babysitting. The new Supt came in, demanding a UbD unit plan for the day, got nothing back, and the fight was on.
You would be surprised how often such activities are not justified by any link back to goals, in a way that is valid and not wishful thinking. Indeed, this is central to the phone calls we get for work – the realization by admins that this happens far too often. Someday I’ll write about the boomerang lesson in history class.
So, here’s something, in my opinion, that should be part of the annual evaluation. Instead of averaging test scores to evaluate a teacher’s skills annually, a principal should have the time to review teacher lesson plans with the teachers for informed and meaningful evaluation. That would be important to me as a parent rather than a “fight” to ensue and then nothing. Teachers who babysit should not be allowed to continue. Certainly, I’m not advocating firing immediately. Due process is important. Efforts to improve teaching skills should be made as well. But this should not continue. I find that way more important that whether the teacher moved this year’s class to a higher test score as compared to a totally different group of students in previous years.
A sensible hiring and firing routine is key to reform. I would encourage public school admins to visit some prep schools. There is a peer to peer support system and peers sit on the review committees. That lends the whole thing gravitas and credibility. Part of the ineffectiveness of public schools lies in how evaluation has grown up as a divisive union issue instead of a partnership to weed out the obviously poor teachers. No true profession wants poor teachers in its guild. Ironically, one of the places we worked – Toledo Oh – used to have such a system, put forth by a very enlightened union head 20 years ago. Now? The worst union – admin relationships I have ever seen. You cannot go unannounced into classes without an invitation, and you cannot write anything down unless it is the formal observation. The union filed a grievance when one of our coaches took notes designed to help the teacher!
Back to the friend or foe dichotomy – I’m not sure that it’s fair to blame Ravitch for that. I think that Rhee and the corporate reformers were the ones who started that, and they started it with intensity. I think Ravitch and others are just taking the logical response to the attack of the reformers. This matters because everything else that corporate reformers do and say indicates that they have little to no interest in fighting the other causes of poverty (Walmart busting unions, Gap Inc. outsourcing production to maquiladoras with concerning labor practices). I don’t think that Ravitch is saying that teachers can’t be better, but is more narrowly arguing with the premise that teachers are the only factor that matters. She could say more, and say it more effectively, but the point remains – she’s fighting a shift in the field of discussion from “there are alot of factors we have to tackle to end poverty” to “replacing bad teachers will solve poverty”. It’s up to the rest of us to consistently remind everyone that yes, teachers can improve dramatically AND we need to do much, much more to support students, families, communities, and even the teachers who need to get better. That’s not something the corporate reformers appear to be interested in and we should be very worried about their long term aims – which seem more driven by economic ideology than a vision of a country without poverty.
Fair enough, the Rhees of the world were pretty slash and burn. (Though, having grown up in DC and gone to school there briefly i can tell you heads needed to roll – very cynical and corrupt system. That doesn’t excuse her tactics). But your account here is more balanced than hers. I think Diane DOES dance around the issue of teachers being better and the inhibiting role of the union in so much of this. (Someday I will write up our year of working in an urban district in the midwest – I have never seen such a dysfunctional system, aided and abetted by a union head who thwarts reform at every turn.)
I also think that even the phrase ‘corporate reformers’ is a tarring with a big brush. I think the Gates Foundation does some great work; same with Pearson. I have worked with both groups and see little that relates to the gross caricature provided by people on the other side. All in all, I think the opining of the air with the kind of rhetoric being used on both sides is unhelpful and reflects the dysfunction in our country. Problems, big problems are ONLY solvable by working together. So, when you caricature your opponents, when you frame things in Manichean terms, we all lose, I believe. And I think history proves me right in both education and politics.
“Why can’t we say this and thus work on what is in our control – the teaching?”
Unless I am misunderstanding who “we” is, more than the teaching is within our control. When I being inundated with research on the subject I remember reading that one of the most cost effective ways to improve educational outcomes in low SES environments is to bring in a dentist and an optometrist. That is something (ameliorating the symptoms of low SES) within the control of “us” without approaching the much bigger issue of dismantling structural poverty outright.
When I was in undergrad, as every teacher candidate (caveat: I responded to my fellow teacher candidates by throwing up my hands in disgust and going to law school) must, a lively debate on whether ending poverty through good education or poor education through ending poverty was the key. And then, lucky me, I had it again in law school. I took the unpopular but obvious position that we do both: as much and as often as we can. I still do.
Moving onto more specific disagreements, I think the entire education reform (or just plain education) community has failed to fully internalize a basic truth: we must build around the median teacher.
We can all talk about great teachers: but great teachers will be great teachers by hook or crook, and a lot of them has to do with the raw stuff they’re made of long before they become teacher candidates. There are something around 49,266,000 grade school students in the United states. Assuming an entirely arbitrary acceptable lead teacher/student ratio of 1:25 we need 1,970,640 teachers. I’m not sure there are just south of two million people in the United States capable of bringing excellence to the classroom, let alone the logistics nightmare of convincing them all to be where we need them to be, and to retire and graduate teacher schools in sync, plus the support staff to make a school work.
Which means, as do governments and business, schools must create education systems where median – even mediocre teachers can improve educational outcomes, or at least do no harm. Which is to say that quality control that consistently produces wonderful teachers is a pipe dream that harms the education causes. Rather, a good system allows median teachers to do good enough work and a superior system allows median teachers to do good enough work and superior teachers to do superior work.
Spinning off of that, I think it is an open question whether “teachers [who] are allowed to work in isolation and set grading and testing policies completely on their own” are the problem. Is the median teacher served well by cramming them into a particular model or are they better served by being encouraged to develop their own abilities and style. How about the superior teacher? How will a change in what they are allowed to impact recruitment and gathering those 2 million teachers we need? One of the best teachers I had in college broke every rule on teaching and public speaking: he read from a book (one he wrote as it happened), wandered while reading, never established eye contact, lead a discussion, or adapted to learning styles or scaffolding the knowledge and it was easily one of the best lessons I have ever witnessed.
I think there are plenty of solutions, but until we wrap our heads around the whole problem: educating 49.2 million students across 3.8 million square miles, 1 Federal jurisdiction, 51 state (or state like) jurisdictions 13.8 thousand school districts, 132.7 thousand K-12 schools, and several hundred teacher education programs, we are going to be chasing red herrings all day.
I am in complete agreement with your last paragraph. We need a summit of smart and open-minded people to establish future directions that have promise in light of the problem statement, that are in our control as educators.
I am not for scripted or standardized teaching; I am for consistency of grading standards – important distinction. Simple analogy: the AP art portfolio. No hindrance to creativity but common rubrics and grading standards.
Find me funding for the summit and I’ll organize it for you.
As to consistent grading standards, I see and acknowledge the distinction you draw but I’m worried. I was taught, either explicitly or implicitly to make a kind of check the box approach when looking at grade standards, which in turn had a lot to do with how to design assessment. I don’t think there is much doubt that if we had much better tests, teaching to the test wouldn’t be so bad – even may be good. Yet that only works because assessment and teaching are linked, standardizing one must at least somewhat standardize the other. Or such is my fear. For the record, I think my wife is on your side of this argument, and she is the assessment nerd.
Grant,
I love how you put it all on the line here. This is exactly the type of discussion needed today. And many of your criticisms of Diane are helpful. Her message is simple and the issue is more complex. True. But, Diane is trying to get a message across to those who need a more simple message- the non-educator who has supported “holding teachers accountable” because it sounds good. It needs to be clear, concise and simple.
Having said that though, I read your letter reflecting from that criticism of Diane. You do the same thing! You do a good job of discussing how complex this issue truly is and then give a simplistic solution- “Many of the key changes are in our control as educators: better teaching, better assessments, better quality control through peer review, shared standards, and policies that promote the interests of learning and learners.”
The devil is in the details. Let’s look at the details here-
1. At Universities and colleges, it is common knowledge that ed degrees are not the most rigorous degrees. Often, students who do not have the desire or ability to do well in another degree program will turn to an education degree. I realize there are many who are very bright who go into ed degrees. And there are exceptions to this- programs that are very good. But overall, this is the view.
2. Teaching pays pretty well starting out. However, there is a very low ceiling for what a teacher can expect to earn over their entire career.
3. We do not provide a level of professional support to teachers in our schools. Thus, the job is challenging just for the physical challenges. For example, most teachers cannot use the bathroom except if they get another teacher to watch their classroom or during their 1 break during the day. Another example is that teachers are given the same 25 minutes for lunch break as their kids. What other job does this?
4. Teachers must deal with many issues outside of their classroom day. They must meet with parents, grade papers, go to meetings at night (open houses for instance), spend time on weekends doing student club activities, making plans for school lessons. The teacher workday is long and early- then it extends into personal time at night and weekends.
5. There is no reward for pursuing further credentials beyond the masters degree. They used to give a bit more for some challenging credentials but stopped that wen we decided to “hold teachers accountable”.
6. Teachers are now evaluated using 50% of the student test scores. This does nothing to work towards the goals you detail. How to evaluate teachers has been a big problem. We ought to evaluate what we want to see teachers doing. I have seen you support a socratic method of teaching. How does evaluating the history teacher based on the school’s average reading score identify a teacher who successfully uses the socratic method to teach? It doesn’t. In fact, since the teacher knows that will not be evaluated, they focus on the things that are evaluated- like reading. So, the history teacher plugs into his/her lessons some activities to prep for the standardized test. And that may be something that a teacher shouldn’t do. However, it’s in their job description now. They are paid to do this. Since they cannot start from scratch, they work on things they can fit into their day.
7. There are no rewards for doing the type of teaching you describe besides the good feeling that comes from doing the right thing. And many teachers were not taught to use those techniques (back to #1).
8. We are allowing people to make decisions about curriculum implementation and assessment who have never taught nor have any clue about education. Education is very political. The teacher union you quote is also political. I’m a union supporter but they make compromises and negotiations (rightfully so) and make statements based on these negotiations. These negotiations are with politicians. Teacher unions are political organizations meant to negotiate the best job quality for the teacher- they are not meant to stand in as education experts. If people want to genuinely put “students first”, they’ll form an education board in each state and federally of individuals with the great education credentials who have no political pressure placed on them. Idealistic, I realize.
The path we are on is not going to lead us to real, lasting improvement. The high stakes testing “reform” is what Diane speaks against. Maybe she isn’t delving as deeply into a very complex issue as you state. However, her overall message is clear- if we continue to hold schools, teachers and students accountable in the way that we are doing, we will not see improvements. In fact, we will see more problems. She is 100% correct with that message.
Well, for sure my comments are brief – it’s a blog. I think my publishing record is clear, though, on what the solutions need to be. I think in Schooling by Design we laid out what the infrastructure and focus of true reform need to be. Your points 3, 4, 6, and 7 are all important and all in our control – so let’s target those. As I have long argued – and Diane acknowledges – the problem of local curriculum is severe; Lord knows I have written enough about how to solve that one.
And I do not disagree with her basic message, as anyone who knows me and reads me knows. I just think that constantly talking as if educators have no control over their own actions and fate is incredibly unhelpful. If it’s all outside of schools, then just go home and turn out the lights. Some guy already tweeted: You don’t even bother to mention the greatest problem – increased wealth inequality. Huh??? How is that kind of talk going to improve schools – even as I totally agree that wealth inequality is a growing menace.
My message is simple but not simplistic: work on what is in your control, period. And don’t paint the world into friend and foe terms because it simply doesn’t help as the Republican crazies in the Congress just found out. There is just way too much preaching to the choir in this Internet world. What we sorely need is people of differing views to sit together and address problems seriously. Part of what discourages me about schools is that school leaders seem so unwilling and unable to look closely at what ails their schools and develop an effective action plan. Put the other way around, every great school I have ever been in has strong leadership and team spirit. Surely THAT is in our control.
I have to say I agree we need to stop the divisive language. Having said that though- there is a lot of pressure from those who want more high stakes testing and minimally trained teachers and schools to substitute for traditional teachers and schools. Ms. Ravitch disagrees with those approaches. No one is inviting her to testify regarding education and giving her a platform as they are with Michelle Rhee and TFA. Getting a voice out there is tough. She’s doing a pretty good job trying to balance her research efforts and reporting with getting press attention to get that message out. She is doing what you suggest- working on what is in her control to try to get her message out.
And I think most teachers are doing that as well. We are taking more and more away from teachers to control. That is the whole point here. High stakes testing and curriculum mandates take some of the things within the teacher’s control out of their control. This creates a classroom that is less flexible and dynamic. It’s difficult to juggle all the balls and is getting more difficult. You advocate that we focus on what we can control- we always have. The powers that be choose to control the classroom via high stakes testing, pacing, curriculum mandates, etc. WHO is in control is the question. I know you have posted on this as well with discussing that students should have more of a stake in their learning. What it comes down to though is that students and teachers have very little control. They are doing the best they can with the little control they have though. And all of this ignores some of the struggles of the low SES student. These are things we can do something about. We choose not to do anything though.
Tell me about getting your voice out there. I have only been asked to testify once in my career, as part of work in Kentucky. Almost all policy people have no teaching experience in schools. That’s why it is imperative that the unions offer counter-proposals that are thorough and credible in the face of others. But so far they are derelict in their duties. Where has there been, from either NEA or AFT, an alternative bill for reform?
So, you want unions to come up with policy for education. They will now be a “think tank” for education. This despite the fact that they are paid by teachers to represent their interests in contract negotiations and labor practice topics. I think we are talking about changing Unions to something that they are not now. Why do we want unions (a political organization to support teachers) to come up with policy? That doesn’t make much sense.
I want teachers to have a voice at the table. I want unions to do their job. I want other entities to lobby for policies. Civics and Law 101. Let it all be thrashed out in public, with input from many parties, as it is in other arenas. Makes more sense to me than the current system where no entity offers a counter-proposal to the current lobbyists.
This is expressed very well! Thank you!
This post was exciting and I do agree as I am in it and see it. I believe part of what I am experience is that we jump from initiative to initiative never giving the teachers the time to integrate it into their practice. I am a true believer in Backwards Design. We talked about it several years ago. Now they don’t even talk about it. We know it makes good sense in improving our instruction and we have let it go. I would love to have a school where we could commit the time to do the things we know work best for students and do them. With the CCSS now in place it is the perfect time to step back and institute what will move us to helping our students be engaged. Please continue with your work as I am fascinated with it! Thanks!
For Our Kids,
Deb
Debra S. Young Administrator WPLC – Webster 585-216-0132 debra_young@websterschools.org
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Grant – I always find your voice bold, focused, even, and in the service of what’s good for students. Profit driven work is going to have huge ripple effects if we’re not careful with it. Poverty is often a spiked hurdle in the way of learning. Teachers and administrators do have a tremendous workload in front of them.
None of the heavy-handed bickering and blaming is going to move us forward. Not everything on education’s table is how I’d have it, but there are still a lot of things that we can each be doing better. It’s a simple thought, but seems to be missing far too often.
I agree with everything you say. And now is the time for reasonable people who care greatly to speak up on behalf of kids. But, again, there is nothing inherently wrong with profit-driven work in the sense that a national set of standards with national vendors supplying needed products and services is a good thing. It will now be possible for very small organizations to provide quality products and services to educators, something not possible if there are 50 different markets. Similarly, some charter schools are excellent – and “Choice” in my youth was a LIBERAL call and cry for civil rights in urban districts. My point is simple: sweeping generalizations – be it about “teachers” or “businesses” – are woefully simplistic and not helpful. Let’s do more of what works and less of what doesn’t, both within and outside of school; and work on what is in our control as educators to improve the education of kids.
There’s no money to be made in non-polemical interventions. Educational consultants, and publishers of new strategies have a hard time selling something new if the old system isn’t broke. Everyone is too lazy to deal with shades of grey and in depth conversations. Your principal cannot afford the time to sit in your class for several days in a row, nor can she talk to you for an hour after each of those school days. We use data as a poor substitute for time, just as parents use grades to see how their kid is doing instead of turning off the TV and computer and spending hours with their kid in THEIR world. And lastly changing how you teach is a grueling task. I’m a pretty outside the box teacher- this year I’m instituting a new process for innovation projects. It’s killing me. I haven’t blogged in a month, I’m behind in grading. I feel terrible. I need more prep time- last year I was lucky enough to have a student teacher for two periods. After getting him settled in the extra two hours a day elevated my teaching.
A great class is like a TV show production. How many TV shows would feel comfortable prepping for one hour a day for two or three different shows? I work hours at home, but it’s distracted time- being a father, coach, husband etc… Football is awesome to watch because a TEAM is working together for five days to put on a three hour show. I simply can’t think of another job where you are asking someone to be amazing everyday on so little prep. And we ARE asking teachers to be amazing because it’s OUR kids one shot at 3rd grade math or HS Chemistry.
Throwing all that aside, the bottom line is that teaching, like all professions has weak, middling, and strong employees. While not every student will get a great teacher, every student deserves a teacher who wants to be great. What are we doing in our elementary schools, high schools, credential schools to help developing minds and souls WANT to be great. How are we making them thirsty for greatness? If you want to be great- you will put in the time, you will demonstrate grit, you will evaluate and modify, you will work with others and you will share your work- and THAT’s what I want from the teaching profession- as a teacher, as a parent, as a learner.
Maybe the problem is the view that the classroom activity is a show put on by the teacher, rather than opportunities for students to learn. When I switched from being a (reportedly amazing) showman in my classroom to being a guide for learners, my students’ understanding increased, while my workload decreased from an unsustainable 90 – 100 hours per week to a much more manageable 50 – 60 hours per week.
If one looks at really good teachers – as I often have the privilege of doing – they are more like movie directors and coaches. More work is done before and after class and less work in class. The other point: you need enough self-sustaining student work (seminar, projects, group work) to free yourself up to coach and give feedback, which in turn yields better results and a more enjoyable day in school. Being constantly on is exhausting and not very effective either, so the change is win-win.
Dear Mr. Wiggins,
I appreciate your recognition that teachers and administrators do have a direct and powerful impact on students under their care. For ten years I have worked at a wonderful school in the northeast that challenges students to think, reason, write, talk, and play with challenging material. Most days if one walks through the classrooms in our school, one will see students in groups reading challenging texts in ELA classes, working out rigourous calculus problems, analyzing and debating over difficult laws cases, and experimenting with issues in chemistry, physics and biology. I agree with you that antiquated curriculum based on what Frere called the “Banking Model” in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, is at the root of many problems in education. Our school services the most depressed section of our city, and regularly our students out perform the district and competes in many areas with students from affluent districts on our state test. 100% of our students graduated and were on schedule to matriculate to a two or four year colleges last year.
With that said, what drives the current vehicle of education in our country is a test. While we use data to help inform our instruction ,our philosophy at our school is to teach the whole child. Part of the issue with the currnet testing craze in our state and in the country is that it is used as a tool, detrimentally, in my opinion, to evaluate educators, because teachers end up teaching to the test, and schools forget about the classes that really make a difference in their lives, like art and theater. At our school, thanks to a creative staff, we avoid the teaching to the test and provide our students with an opportunity to develop and share their voice in, what my mentor called “the conversation of what is true and beautiful.”
Three years ago we began what we call “Passion Thursdays” at our school. At a staff meeting many teachers lamented the fact that-at the time-a currnet senior told them that if he could have experienced slam poetry as a middle schooler it may have inspired him to spill the enthusiam into his need to learn more about the world. As a result of this conversation, teachers chose a skill, or hobby that they are passionate about and stayed after school on Thursdays to teach it. Some of the offerings included, baking, dance, guitar, juggling, and impov comedy and acting. This decision helped us to get closer to our students.
We struggle at our school to learn. It is a good struggle. It would be easier if all of our students had two parents who provided them with all that children deserve. Poverty does matter in the education of a child. While we do well to prepare students for college and career and we believe our biggest strength is creating compassionate thinkers, I often wonder about the students who grow up with no books in their home, or those who do not have an opportunity to visit different parts of the country or different parts of the world, because they simply cannot afford it. You are correct in saying that it is beyond our control, but those who grow up in poverty become more a victiom of this testing craze than there more affluent counterparts in more affluent communities.
Public education is really complicated, messy, not perfect. Some of it needs fixing, The test is not the solution.
I appreciate your thoughful posts.
Best,
Kevin
I agree that test mania is driving a lot of what happens today. However, my longer-term view must be considered: the exact same problems I am decrying existed 30 years ago when i first started in school reform and long before there were standards or tests driving things. As I have said in this blog repeatedly, the problem is not the tests; the problem is the mania surrounding the tests. And the fact that now teachers are subject to the results. Whether we like it or not, the history of this is clear enough: policy makers are trying to hold schools more accountable, for good reasons. If we don’t like the policies, we get out the vote to change them. More importantly, we get our professional associations to offer alternative policies. My greatest gripe in all of the work of the last 15 years as standards and tests got going, with horrible VAM systems on top of them is that NOT ONE of the unions or professional associations offered a credible and thorough alternative. But that’s how American policy works: you lobby for your values and policies. The education community has been either unwilling or unable to come up with its own proposals.
Of course poverty matters in this country. I decry it and I vote for candidates who seek to do something to undo the worsening wealth inequality. But school people cannot get a credible hearing in the wider policy world if they are going to point all their fingers at ‘society’ instead of what they can and must do to improve things.
I disagree. Many proposals have been made for alternative evaluation models and a very good one has been up and running in Montgomery County, MD for a long time now. The problem is that politicians and profiteers oppose anything that does not leads top profits or an easy way to claim success and move on. There is a huge gap between offering a viable alternative and getting it accepted. The side Ravitch represents has little political power and access compared to the corporate reformers as evidenced by the significant inroads they have made, mostly through political savvy and connections. Ravitch’s side also is not favored by the biased media who are in many ways are in the same pockets as the reformers when they don’t have an actual vested interest. Bottom line, it is not a level playing field, and the fact that Ravitch’s position resonates with parents of all persuasions far more than the reformers does is telling. Reformers also have a long history of outright deception and corrupt practices to a degree not seen in education.
Well, there is a funny irony to citing Montgomery County. They sold their system to Pearson. And I think your claim about the biased media is a sweeping generalization and downright wrong – the media coverage of education is now far more varied than it used to be. I don’t think you are correct in citing surveys of parents either. Last one I saw had heavy majority in favor of reform, especially in minority communities.
Grant,
Your analysis is thought-provoking and important. I agree with JupiterMom that Diane’s audience may be different, but this is the nuanced dialogue that teachers need to be having in order to learn how to best serve our students. I especially agree that curriculum is a critical point for us to focus on–to respond to Mr. Portelos, while teaching will always be demanding on the teacher’s time, a district that provides rigorous, well-planned, engaging curricular resources will go a long way toward maximizing the time that teachers can spend planning rich lessons, improving their practice, and truly serving our students who need it the most.
Dylan Kane
A first year teacher
Mr. Wiggins,
I appreciate your comments very much. I especially appreciate when you said that “good teachers get good results; weak teachers don’t.” I think however, in order to see some of Ms. Ravitch’s perspective, that poverty does come into play here. Good teachers in more affluent areas achieve fantastic results. Weak teachers get a pass in more affluent areas because the skills of their students allow those students to deal with the shortcomings of a bad teacher. This is not true for every child growing up in a higher SES, but is true for many. Many times, those students can learn despite the teacher instead of because of the teacher. On the other hand, while great teachers in communities of poverty also do fantastic things with their students, weak teachers in areas of poverty are extremely damaging. They can decimate the past learning of their students in only a few months. It is because of this that I think we cannot ignore poverty and all of the challenges that come along with it.
I do agree however, that many of our schools are plagued with irrelevant, boring, and meaningless lessons. We have to do a better job of training our teachers to break away from the monotonous lecture, guided notes, and lack of any input from students while they are learning. Great teachers rarely do these types of things, and kids in poverty need our best teachers.
Grant,
I’m a big fan of Ravitch and her work. With that being said, you have written a very important piece. I am amazed at the citations for each of your perspectives. I suspect all your work over the years has prepared you for this. I try to keep up with my reading but you always set a new standard. Thanks for your continued efforts! Greg
Can we hold you accountable for the poorly designed curricula that you have helped develop? I have in mind Person’s Interactive Science, an overload of content if there ever was one, with 90% of the material, from the assessments, texts, and student activities, being low level and not related in any meaningful way to big ideas or authentic tasks. It’s frankly the same old crap we’ve always had with American science textbooks (the old “doorstoppers”), just split up into smaller pieces and with some extra crap thrown in.There are only occasionally sensible additions in that curriculum, like a few token (not terribly apparent or consistently applied) pages on “Big Ideas”, authentic situations, etc.
In some ways the Interactive Science curriculum is emblematic of how you’re describing all of American K-12 education- mostly crap with a few diamonds in the rough. If you, the doyen of best practices in educational design (and I mean that sincerely) put your name on a poorly designed curriculum that had all the resources that Pearson can buy go into its creation, how can I, as an early career science teacher in a district whose leadership and financing is in constant tumult and whose accountability structure for high schools relies virtually only on ACT scores, be expected to develop (even with my peers) engaging curricula and assessments that allow for individual student learning pathways, are embedded in authentic context, and organized around big ideas?
Certainly I am working toward better curricula . But to expect these things immediately in this context is too much. What won’t help in our progress towards achieving better curricula and assessments, I’m fairly certain, is making teaching a less viable long term, middle class career, which as far as I can tell is the primary goal of the privatization movement. While I agree that there are some teachers that are counterproductive toward good reform, there are many others, including many teachers who have been in the system for very long, who are genuinely open to putting in the hard work to make meaningful changes. It’s simply not easy, as I think, for example, the Pearson middle school science curriculum demonstrates. And it’s certainly not easy with the type of institutional structures provided by our local and national education administrators.
Not only may you hold me accountable, I hold myself accountable. I complained bitterly to Pearson about the assessments and questions in the first early texts. I let them know that I could not, in the future, just provide ideas but have no ability to sign off on the use of my work. They agreed, and on recent texts the results have been far better.
Nor did I say do this ‘immediately’. I have been working on this for 20 years. But let’s get on it now, and not wait another 20 years.
I find the concept that “we should work on what we can control” very curious. So educators should focus on improving education. Okay, then what should hedge funders and financiers focus on? Why, education, of course. Who then will focus on all the varied injustices caused by these people (as you have given your blessing for them to ignore their sins and obsess over mine). The fattest beneficiaries of the generalized injustice we allow here wag their fingers at the classroom. But when the classroom points back at their misdeeds you rend your garments. You have disqualified the teachers from responding in kind to an unjust society that accuses them, have barred teachers from saying to the richest teacher-pillorying families in America, “Oh yeah, well you’re not doing so right by poor kids yourself.” This post mutes the social justice teachers; it says “Keep quiet about the scourges you see everyday that are outside your control and just teach better.” Dowse your spotlight on injustice, teachers. That isn’t your place.
Apologist you are for a group that certainly does NOT focus on its locus of improvement–our titans of wealth–by shushing the last whisper of compassion and critique merely because it emanates from the classroom. This piece bolsters the comfy fraud that inequity is beyond action and must simply be accepted.
Nonsense. I never said or implied that inequity must be accepted. That’s your one-sided reading. Re-read my piece and read my comments. My entire pitch is about improving learning today, tomorrow, and the next day because all of us in education can do that. The issue is locus of control and non-fatalistic thinking – surely, you can see that5 this was my point?
Ravitch’s point is that society is the problem and the schools mirror society. All of the (McTighe quote fingers) understanding by design or any other ASCD pumped contemporary teaching or learning methods are no solution to the ills of our schools when students are hungry and their schools are closed due to NCLB or a desire to bring in a charter chain. But then again, if society is the problem, then there is less of a chance that anyone will buy the solutions that ASCD offers. There is also less of a chance that the people who come up with these revolutionary ideas will have as many paid speaking and consulting gigs.
I am impressed with the thoughtful, reasoned, supported comments on this blog–and by the fact that you keep writing back. My comment is going to be much simpler.
I am lucky. I am an outstanding teacher (you’ll just have to take my word for it) who has the fortune to help design district curricula, in a strong school with an administration that appreciates and supports me. I work with an outstanding team of teachers. My community likes me.
And even I am tired. I’m tired of all this crap. I’m tired of the increasing levels of paperwork, the decreasing responsibility of children, and the constant barrage of criticism in the media of me and my profession. This affects me, because it influences voters, who elect the school board, who then determine my salary, cut my benefits, and say horrible things about me and my colleagues in local media.
And these state tests. They are crap.
At one point in my life, I chose to work in a profession in which I knew I would make a ridiculously small salary compared to my classmates of equal or lesser ability. I wanted to teach. I wanted to teach (of all people!) thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds.
So this: What are your suggestions for supporting and retaining excellent teachers, when we are as beaten down by “accountability” as our lousy colleagues?
Sigh. I really need to just cut my losses and become a consultant, like so many other bright and talented teachers.
I have long stated that we have to be democratic with kids and meritocratic with teachers. We have to have a less flat system – driven by union politics – and go to a true guild of levels of mastery, as in all true professions. There should thus be titles like Master Coach, Master Designer, Dept. Head, and many ad hoc titles that are supported with release time and/or money. Secondly, every good teacher and group of like-minded talented teachers should earn increasing control over groups of students and the ability to hire team members from the overall staff, as in most team-based organizations. Thirdly, Board-certified teachers should be paid more and have greater influence. Fourthly, good teachers should be freed from lesson planning and other compliance/oversight duties. Fifthly, they should be paid on a 10-month calendar, like many admins, to do precious non-contact-time work on behalf of their school. Finally, evaluation systems should include student and parent survey data as part of a growth model and self-assessment driven system instead of based solely on tests.
I’m focusing on a different part of your writing than other commenters.
“By contrast, neither I nor students are typically bored in classes like art, robotics, drama and sports”
Actually, I’ve seen a lot of kids bored in art, drama, and sports—if they were in those because they were required to be. Indeed, PE classes were often the most hated classes in a school, because they were mind-numbingly boring (or painful, back in the day when “dodge ball” was the go-to choice of sadistic PE teachers). You don’t see bored kids in art, drama, robotics, and sports, not due to any intrinsic property of those fields, but because those are electives at the schools you observed—only the kids who wanted to be there are.
I have seen kids be bored in drama even when it was an elective—because they were forced to choose an elective (art or drama) and the drama seemed liked the lesser of two evils to them. For the kids in the class who were into acting, the bored ones who were only there to avoid the art teacher served as a major drag on the class.
Classes are much, much better when everyone is there because they want to learn the material—ask almost any professor who teaches both a required class and an elective class. Some people are experimenting with ways to construct classes and schools so that everyone is learning what they want, but I’ve yet to see anything that scales up to reasonable sizes.
After trying both public and private schools (2 or 3 of each, depending how you count 1-semester sabbatical breaks in different cities), my son chose to be home schooled for 10th through 12th grades. This has allowed him to spend much more time on subjects he loves (computer science, acting, physics, math) and less on ones he dislikes (English, History, PE), though we’ve been careful to make sure he gets enough of those to get a high school diploma and meet college entrance requirements. The amount he has learned by being able to concentrate on his strengths, rather than doing a lot busywork is astounding. I’m left wondering if we should have given up on the schools a year or two earlier, and switched to
I think that the increase in home schooling over the past decade has been driven by dissatisfaction with the increasing inflexibility of schools in tailoring education to meet the needs of individual children, as well as the greater ease of finding educational resources on-line. As schools get more and more narrowly focused on test scores in a few subjects, parents see their kids getting turned off from learning and start looking for a different way to teach them.
I’ve also noticed that the large local home school community has a much bigger representation of exceptional kids (both gifted kids and learning-disabled kids) than the neighborhood schools. I think that parents with hard-to-teach kids are those least satisfied with the teach-to-the-test approaches, and so are the canaries in the coal mine, being the first to detect dangerous conditions.
Your anecdote is not supported by student data. Middle Schoolers put PE at the top of the list of favorite subjects (as it was in Goodlad’s study). Nothing is perfect, but, say the differernce between PE, Art and Math is striking.
That’s only because math sucks.
HA! You and the kids. I may publish mroe student replies on math since I am always getting resistance from math folks that there is nothing really wrong.
Agreed, I have only anecdotal information, which is almost certainly strongly biased. I can believe that in our sports-obsessed culture, average students in middle school like PE best. Most of the people I talk with are either home schoolers or university students in STEM fields—two groups who are not representative of the average students.
The student data does not say that many students are not bored in the classes mentioned. It says that they put PE at the top of the list. When I was in school, several students (girls) hated middle and high school PE. In my sociology class today, 5 students (out of 23) least favorite class is PE. That it could the favorite class and have “a lot of kids bored in [it]” are not contradictory, but unfortunately in my experience complementary.
The data is clear: some classes are more engaging than others. That’s the only point here. And it relates to time-tested and valid criteria related to choice, movement, challenge.
Regardless of whether or not teaching is the problem, shouldn’t we continue to strive to improve the instruction and assessment practices in our schools?
You make some clear points in this post and many others about practices supported by research that we continue to ignore in our schools. Yes, there are other factors that impact student learning, but is that an excuse to accept even adequate, mediocre teaching? Is good good enough when it could be great? I think not.
It is not teaching OR other factors. It is teaching AND other factors. It has been this way forever. Let’s accept that and stop making excuses.
Teaching is hard. It always was hard, it will always be hard. Let’s embrace that as a profession, be proud of it, and continue improving our craft.
I totally agree! Any true profession is hard. No musician or doctor thinks they have mastered their craft. That’s one reason why I think unions have done a great disservice by making everyone equals – ironically only in education do we do that. In other unions there are levels of expertise, going back to the old guilds and master level.
Even though this blog is addressed to Diane Ravitch. I don’t think you are engaging in a discussion on the same issues she highlights. Much of what you say about teaching and curriculum is true. Teaching can and should be better. Teachers can and should do a better job of engaging students. Curriculum needs to be richer, deeper and more learner friendly. Your leadership in the area of curriculum design has been invaluable, although it has not had as full an impact as you desire. I believe that improvement has been seen over the last thirty years in teaching and curriculum, but we have certainly not done enough. I find more elementary classrooms than not to be engaging places where students are active and learning. Work is still to be done on the high school level.
All that being said, the corporate reform movement will destroy any gains that have been made and stunt any continued growth. The vast majority of charter schools are even less engaging and more draconian in their disciplinary policies than are public schools. The teachers are less well prepared and even more likely to rely on low level instruction. Voucher programs are stealing badly needed funds from the public schools. Money doesn’t always improve learning, but lack of money has a negative impact on learning. There can be no question that the corporate driven test mania will make schooling less engaging and the curriculum narrower if it is allowed to continue.
So, Grant, I would argue that we need to attack teaching and learning on all three fronts. All fronts that we can control if we choose. One front you articulate well here. The two other fronts, ending the corporate usurpation of public education and attacking poverty as a barrier to learning are well articulated by Diane Ravitch.
Russ, I’m very happy to agree with you. My point is smaller: Diane has become a shrill advocate for a simplistic view of what’s wrong. She is alienating may people like me who think it hurts more than it helps. It’s easy to rile up the people who agree with you. She is sorta like the tea party people, conducting a slash and burn campaign that alienates many of the very people that are needed to address all 3 issues.
And where was she 15 years ago when I argued against the policies she was promoting? The history was against her then: Read Ray Callahan’s The cult of Efficiency. I always find these ‘conversions’ a bit odd.
Well Grant there is no greater zealot than the convert. Personally, I am celebrating another educator who has seen the light and who has a powerful voice. Perhaps shrill, but the stakes are very high. Teaching will not get better by tearing down teachers, just as learning does not get better when thoughtless teachers tear down children. The federal government has just approved TFA teachers as “highly qualified.” Soon the profession, even in the flawed way that we know it, will no longer exist. Children will lose.
I’m bored watching whats going on in classrooms today too! All I see is test prep, stressed out teachers and unhappy kids. I’m quite sure the teachers have no control over that. Diane Ravitch is advocating for teachers who feel helpless in this situation that has gotten out of hand. Research studies show that good teaching can make a difference, but little in a classroom that’s crowded with 30 disadvantaged children. It’s really irresponsible to speak of standardizing children, that’s what we’re trying to do when we talk about standardizing education. Or is it standardizing people. Come on people- do we want thoughtless automatons standing in front of the classrooms? What I hope we want are well- trained teachers who are empowered to inspire children and create an atmosphere that fosters learning. Teachers can’t make students learn- and all of these tests we’re spending billions of dollars on are not improving curriculum, teacher effectiveness or outside factors that impact student achievement. Mainly they’re telling us where at risk students are. And we already know that. Also worth mentioning that there are informal measures of assessment that do a better job of telling us student abilities and level and are used by teachers all over the country. They drive instruction. Lets stop fighting about these “broken schools” and start allocating resources to reduce class sizes in disadvantaged areas, train teaches to implement best practices in literacy instruction, incorporate community- wide resources for parents to get disadvantaged children access to books from birth and give teachers the means to carry out the plan rather than continuing to create an atmosphere that would leave few inspired to work in this profession! Just because people have gone to school, it doesn’t make them knowledgeable about how schools work- lets start relying on the wisdom of our experienced educators.
Well you know our story…hold teachers accountable and they get parents to complain that extended learning is too hard, grading to standards is too different, and not averaging is a crime. “Back to basics” “class rank” “worship homework” or “averages.” We are going back to what was in place 30 years ago…memorize, comply, and spit back what you know…most likely to soon be legislated by a board who has a disdain for research. “Reteaching and relearning does not prepare you for college.” The best comment yet, “Remediation is an entitlement program.” This work is hard…for everyone.
I never said or implied it wasn’t hard. It is very hard. All the more reason to support people better, have a better curriculum, have better incentives for successes, and attract better people.
Maybe teachers would get more on board with the sought-after tough love changes to their profession if they saw a simultaneous and equally tenacious effort to attack the social inequities they see keeping them behind the 8 ball.
Of course the skinny kids are going to gripe about their diet when they see the fat kids shoving Twinkies in their mouths sans “reform” or even recriminations.
The perception (or fact) is that middle class “corrective measures” like pension reform and education reform are actually efforts to ameliorate the social devastation wrought largely by the rich without actually putting a crimp in their ravenous ways.
Are the best systems in the world not full of teacher talk?
Are the students in Shanghai mezmerized by the lessons and the awesome assessments?
Do the best systems have the poverty levels of the US and are those levels increasing?
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2013/10/study-almost-half-public-school-students-are-now-low-income/7287/
Your questions don’t make much of an argument. Part of why I was hired in Beijing, and Singaporean ministry people come to our workshops is that they recognize that their system is driven by extrinsic motivation. I said all schools need improving and variability explains our performance in international rankings.
My point is that the best school systems in the world do the same thing as far as teacher talk. True from what I’ve seen. So, although that can be improved: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/opinion/friedman-the-shanghai-secret.html that is not the variable.
Ravitch is also right about raising the bar for entry.
The variability in our system is a function of poverty. If you, for instance, only include 2% of poor students (roughly Finland’s percentage) in our international tests I bet would be very very good. As they are now, the US is #1 at scores for students fo Hispanic, African, and Asian descent and #2 for scores of European closely behind Finland. http://buchanan.org/blog/who-owns-the-future-4587
Yes, let’s just remove all those poor colored kids from our standards results and all will be well.
Huh?
Karim, more like send the poor colored masses to these shores to get the best education in the world.
Guess it depends on your pov. Ours are different.
Karim, to respond more fully I am for eliminating poverty (and fwiw, the largest group of poor people are whites. See Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 for relevant stats (perhaps not argument?)
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Apart-State-America-1960-2010/dp/030745343X.
Here is one step forward imo: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/business/yourtaxes/a-wealth-tax-would-look-beyond-income.html
Daniel Willingham addresses poverty and wealth and student outcomes:
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/spring2012/Willingham.pdf
Unfortunately, poverty as I linked above is getting worse:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/opinion/blow-billionaires-row-and-welfare-lines.html (This is from today.)
Ravitch has a point. Hattie does too. Hattie lists SES as a significant factor.
And I could make economic proposals, lord knows we need them.
Here is one: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/business/yourtaxes/a-wealth-tax-would-look-beyond-income.html
I appreciate your adding nuance to what has become a polemical dialogue. The only other wedge I would add is that teaching is inherently an interactional accomplishment. That makes good teaching something that happens in situations and places and with people. Why make this point? Because we talk about good teaching as if it is bound up in the skin of good teachers. In my years of research, I have had the chance to see outstanding teachers change schools and, in many cases, struggle to re-organize their practice. It’s important because the resources and organization of schools — everything from the obvious things like textbooks and materials to the less obvious things like the protection of teachers’ planning time, support from specialists in special education or English-language learning, and not-interrupting classes with constant PA announcements –– is highly consequential for what teachers can do instructionally. If we only talk about teachers without taking on broader issues of the school as a workplace, we will perpetuate a system that ignores its own existence and only focuses on the quality of the individuals, no matter how dysfunctional the environments become. I would go further and argue that the things on Hattie’s list would work most effectively by teacher teams, who could socialize students into practices like “self-assessment” and “discussion” and create cultures that avoid “labeling students.”
Thanks again for this post.
You are absolutely right. Which is of course why robotics, seminars, and putting on a play are highly regarded. The most poignant thing I ever heard was the 8th grade girl who said in an interview: the more the teacher keeps talking the more alone I feel.
Funny co-incidence. I was at Ursinus College yesterday to talk about goals and their implication for use of class time. In asking people to think about all the design elements in play, one woman said: eliminating distractions; gaining full control over the learning space, whether it be noise, light, messy desks, texting, etc. That’s an exquisite example of the kind of locus of control thinking that I was writing about. The damn PA is a prime offender; so are bells. My first task as a new Principal would be to turn off the PA. These are prison tools, not educational tools. If colleges can abolish both, why can’t public schools?
I agree that much of the reform stuff is not malicious in intent, but enough of it is. Grant Higgin’s argument here is a great example of how the micro view of schools (instruction/classroom centered) facilitates the efforts of those who want to privatize schools and deprofessionalize teaching. He’s all about the performance of individual teachers in delivering instruction and says nothing about the organizational/institutional conditions in which they work. Ravitch takes a macro view of the problem. She understands that individual performance and the quality of instruction depends on organizational/institutional conditions. It makes sense that Higgins doesn’t get it. He’s a great instructional methods guy, and his viewpoint shows that he’s not much more than that. His narrow, one-dimensional focus seems to make him incapable of reading the bigger picture.
It would bolster your case a lot more if you got my name right. And obviously you have not read all of my writings on the macro view – Schooling by Design, for example – or you wouldn’t make such a sweeping incorrect claim.
I agree with what you are saying here. I have been a huge fan of Diane Ravitch for a very long time, but I am saddened to have watched her blog and her speaking erode over the last couple of years. She called attention to some very important points with “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”, but she doesn’t seem to have been getting beyond that.
While I will continue to do what I can to be active in addressing some of the sweeping social injustices that present huge roadblocks to student success, I must recognize that I do so in my private life, as should any concerned citizen. But as a teacher, I have an obligation to go beyond just pointing out what’s wrong outside the classroom, because I work inside the classroom. There are things that I can do to improve my students’ performance and I must discover what they are and do them, even if the resulting improvement turns out to be marginal.
Having said that, I think Diane is not attempting to run a teacher professional development program. She’s made it her mission to preach a particular message that exposes some things that are definitely wrong and has narrowed her focus. Maybe we need someone to do that.
I agree that education does need reform, but I am frustrated by the notion that teachers are to blame for the failure of schools. Who else? Let’s look at the structures that use teachers and their students as pawns for other purposes. Start with the fact that education has always been a tool for advancing the career interests of people who spend no time teaching in classrooms. Previously, it advanced academics and consultants at the university level who often only had a few years of classroom experience themselves, and now it advances non academics at the corporate level. (The difference, of course, is that the corporate agenda includes the dismantling of public education through a buffet of charter options that transfer public tax dollars into private pockets.) But, both previous and current regimes sell their brand new programs with brand new terminology vigorously and regardless of classroom results. The best results continue to be in the career growth and fortunes of their creators and proponents.
Anecodotally, I came into teaching during the hey day of invented spelling and whole language. As a young humanities teacher of 6th and 7th graders in NYC, my students came to me as happily prolific bad writers. Their spelling was unintelligible, their work showed no instruction in the mechanics of writing at all, and many of them couldn’t read. In some classes, I literally had students who could only draw their intentions and, in one case, I was told by my administrator that I was required to give an illiterate student an A for a drawing instead of an essay because social studies was “not literacy instruction”. I tried to get courses in teaching grammar so that I could build better writers, but I was reprimanded and told that I was regressive in my thinking. All grammar instruction should be taught individually, in context of authentic student writing, generated from topics related primarily to their own experiences. I was told that spelling and grammar was a feature of the dominant culture and something students could always get later on in. I should preference their native tongue which was an alternative English not just learned bad grammar. Although I was to teach grammar in context, I should never actually correct their work. Writing would be squelched by correction. I should never use a red pen.
Phonics was not the way to learn to read when I entered the classroom, and, not surprisingly, students often came to me functionally unable to read. Because the reading level of students in one classroom could run from 2nd grade to post high school, I was told that teaching books on a 3rd grade level to a 7th grade class was perfectly fine if the discussion happened at higher levels. Never mind that books on a third grade level never introduced complexity of language. Later, the answer was I should never teach a book in whole class instruction. Children should read exclusively in literature circles where they would have authentic reader experiences. And then there was multiple intelligences. I was told that students could learn to read or write by dancing the words if they were kinetic learners, and that I shouldn’t preference verbal learners in my assessments. Never mind that my task was to teach literacy; an impromptu dance was as good as an essay and would build the self esteem needed for students to take on new tasks. I was given these and many other misguided, poorly implemented and badly researched ideas. And always any questions or concerns I had were squelched with the words, “the research shows” (“what we know now is…”) And, each year since I came into the classroom 22 years ago, has begun with a new idea, or an old idea packaged as a new one, that made careers somewhere else and held my tenure and my reputation with my administration in its teeth.
Of course, with the door closed, I learned to teach, not because of, but in spite of the trends of the time. Please don’t think that this means that my definition of teaching is forcing boring topics down children’s throats and teaching them grammar in front of the classroom with a ruler in my hand. I’m a big believer in doing what works. I try to take from any approach that which will work for me in my classroom. I do a lot of constructivist project based instruction, and I have been pleased to have done much of my teaching in the past through formal debate, production of non fiction feature magazines, studying amendment related court cases, story theater,studying great speeches, wikipedia style research assignments, blogging, book trailers and so forth. I do not consider myself a finished product as an educator, and I expect to be a learner through out my career. I am genuinely excited to find better ways to teach and to be challenged or confirmed in my own thinking. (I have never read Hattie and I look forward to reading him, and I plan to read your books, as well.)
But, there’s a new sheriff in town. There’s Common Core and I must learn to teach it along with grit. This too holds my career in it’s teeth. I must find a way to teach students how to answer interpretive multiple choice questions, how to find the Pearson right answer where more than one answer is reasonably correct, how to parse arcane language that tests whether questions can be understood rather than whether students can answer questions. I must teach 12 year olds how to persevere when the work is inherently demotivating. I can complain about bad questions but only in general terms because I would lose my license if I write or speak about a bad test question. (After all, can’t sell it twice if you’ve published it once, and priority should always be given to profit making.) My students will undergo many days of pretesting and, as of last year, they can look forward to three days of testing in each tested subject so that Pearson can field test during the real test. I will be asked to test drive the EngageNy scripted curriculum, just to be safe. After all, my instruction may not be adequately aligned. And, there are reasons to worry. Although we tested above the national average, only 48% of 7th graders in my school passed last year’s first Common Core exam. My students are being asked to do work that is far beyond what they were asked to do even one year before. There will be no scaffolding of expectations, no development of skills over time, no review of the expectations of Common Core. Why is this? Because selling school failure is the new reform. Is this not crazy making? Is there nothing wrong here that should be attacked vigorously and unrelentingly? Yes, education needs reform, but the problematic paradigm remains. Careers and fortunes to be made outside the classroom drive instruction within it. In that regard, I am just a pawn.
I of course lament the craziness of the last few years, and teaching middle school is a great challenge. But I don’t think you are powerless. Put more accurately, I don’t think you are powerless unless you choose to be an isolated individual. Every great school I have ever been has a strong team ethos and supportive leadership. i think a lot of what teachers decry – rightly – can be tranced to their isolation, the function of archaic structures and a poor work culture. I certainly felt like I was alone with just 1 or 2 friends when I taught. But the path of just going under the radar is fraught with bad consequences.
And I also completely agree with you about literacy development. Which is why HS English teachers need to get with the program of choice.
I appreciate your thoughts regarding taking greater ownership of my profession. I am in complete agreement. Part of the reason that so many careers have been made on our backs is exactly because we have allowed it, or more accurately, not known how to stand against it. I do not think I am powerless even though I am a pawn of larger forces. But, getting a seat at the table is hard work especially when the table is reserved for power politicians and corporate game changers. Who really can compare my access to power as a 7th grade English teacher to the combined power of TFA, Gates, Broad, Pearson, DFER, etc.?
Getting behind choice might help me as an individual and I have thought about it from time to time. However, I do not think that getting behind “choice” will ultimately help my profession. Choice, as it has manifested so far, has had a dampening effect on the professional standing of teachers. Further, the use of charters to cherry pick students most likely to succeed and the impact of that policy on local public schools is something I can’t condone. There’s something wrong with charters as euphemism for segregation by parent support.
I have both worked in Scarsdale and sung their praises for just the reason you suggest: they did what any really good system would do. Stand up for Mission, and support it by policy.
I agree that educators should do what is in their control, and not be victims. But they will never get off the plantation by working harder to please their digital Pearson masters. Movements begin when people refuse to be controlled, refuse to be victims. For example, all writing will be scored by computers for both PAARC and Smarter Balance. Here is a petition to sign to protest this. http://www.humanreader.org
I have longed argued for, and authored proposals that included, teacher scoring of student work on state tests, a la AP and IB. It’s the best PD there is, it would save money, and it would sensitize people to state vs. local standards. I spoke to both the NC and KY state boards on this very issue. Agreed! And it speaks to the previous post by Dan.
What do you think of the Scarsdale School District approach? Instead of empowering teachers through teaching them how to better focus on the AP exams, they decided that the AP watered down their curriculum. Instead, they hired college professors in the fields and working with their teachers, created a superior curriculum that truly prepares kids for inquiry and college level work. Personally, I celebrate their approach. I think letting the test drive the curriculum is a backward methodology and a high stakes test culture devalues intellectual inquiry.
We always say that students deserve a teacher who plays to their ‘passions and strengths’ (as you put it Grant in this blog) or who respects their autonomy as learners. One-size-fits solutions don’t work with students, because students are different and we as a society must respect their differences and do everything we can to help them flourish as critical thinkers. the “Compliance mentality” breeds robotic thinkers who will fail in the working world.
Open question: Why is it that when the conversation turns to teacher improvement, we don’t endorse the same learning values? “Why aren’t teachers HONORED in the same way AS students are?” After all, they are just older versions.
There is a curious irony at work here. More and more, teachers–as STUDENTS themselves– are asked to be compliant; to teach to the test; to develop common assessments, common grading policies, to teach to common standards. The message– no matter how you interpret it– is that it is better to fit a mold rather than to be unique. Passion, creativity, allowance for differentiated skills– those must be set aside to make room for conformity in practice. Teachers are being asked to embrace values of learning that have been discredited when applied to their students. This, I think, is where much of the teacher frustration lies.
I often ask teachers and admins in workshops to apply the general criteria we derive from “What is the best designed learning you have experienced?” to improve local PD. It’s always an eye-opener, and I encourage them to write their PD people, using the answers and arguments they made. The most common answers, by the way, are feedback opportunities, choice, meaningful challenges, sensitivity to individual needs and safe climate for risk-taking.
Those answers certainly don’t surprise me. Most teachers yearn to be better at what they do, yet often people expect them to be sort of “pass-throughs” to the students. Good teachers sense the neglect and resent the hypocrisy. Much of what Diane says about school reform (eradicating poverty for example) are often voiced by teachers to vent their frustrations with the system and the lack of student learning. Yet, I think that this ‘double-standard’ issue of teachers not being treated like their students is at the heart of teachers’ feelings of not being treated as professionals. There are great rewards for administrators who can identify this latent frustration and work to inspire critical thinking and autonomy in teachers– within and environment of common standards/evaluation. The silver bullet hasn’t been found yet.
My principal still talks about when she sat in on a meeting with you and you asked really tough questions which called for critical thinking. YOU do this well but it isn’t the norm.
But if we want students who think critically, their teachers must lead the way and that requires resisting conformity.
As I read this:
“Indeed, in my view the only way to make sense of the long-established connection between student SES and school achievement scores is to conclude that most schools are not very effective. That explains much of the data in education, to my eye.”
I wondered about the ridiculously large number of definitions for terms like “school achievement” and “effective schools” – For a student, achievement may be getting a desired grade or reaching a self-set goal. Parents may define achievement as good grades, behavior, and positive parent-teacher conferences. For a teacher, achievement & effectiveness may mean having students pass standardized tests or teachers receive a high rating on an evaluation from administrators. For building administrators, being an effective school may mean that 90% of students pass a standardized test that has no baring on students’ grades, self-set goals, or personal educational interests. District administrators may see an effective school as one that does not suspend more than .5% of its students and that .5% is parallel to the demographic make-up of the school as a whole.
None of us seem to be working toward a shared vision of “school effectiveness” or “student achievement” – especially for a country that has such vast levels of disparity in SES. Developing a shared vision of achievement, effectiveness, or success with the students and parents of a community, and the teachers, building, and district administrators would be a better use of time than arguing about who is right about the state of education in this country. No one is “right” – no one has a “better way” – each student should have the freedom to chart his/her own course…especially in a time of such environmental and economic uncertainty. Many people and groups make A LOT of money on education through consulting, writing, and recommending ways to “increase achievement” and “create successful school” – the only people not benefitting from ANY educational movement seems to be the students.
I think you are onto something. To me school effectiveness is a mix of student engagement/feeling of belonging; achievement of all sub-groups, and excellent performance on tasks of understanding and transfer. Schools are simply not very effective on these measures
I agree with you on so many levels. Teachers are pulling many students down. However, they have not been shown how to teach differently. Some don’t know that backwards design exists. They don’t know that they should spend less time talking and the kids should spend more time doing. They don’t know that rigor can be built into even free flowing lessons. It is a teacher’s duty as a professional to learn the proven strategies, but many don’t even know where to look. That is the fault of their education and of their leadership. I know a teacher who was doing great innovative lessons with 5th graders and getting results. She was told by her supervisor to stop because she wasn’t “following the curriculum”. This supervisor had an advanced degree from a prestigious university but the siren call of results clouded her judgment so she couldn’t see the curriculum was the problem. Also, to be the great teacher that you want and that students deserve, requires not only deep training, and expertise, but also it involves an inordinate amount of time. Many gladly put in that time, but it is hard to keep the pace that is needed to truly be a great teacher and not get fatigued. Fortune 500 people who are successful have assistants, secretaries, and IT support. Teachers, as you mentioned, are isolated.
So we can blame teachers, and poverty, and lessons, and writers, but what we really need to blame is our societies’ misconception of what good education should look like. Until we convince lay people that a classroom of silent learners does not indicate good teaching, that read and recall is not deep learning, and that the whole system might need to be reconfigured we aren’t going to improve education for all. We need to stop attacking each other and we need to get on talk shows, magazine covers, and on websites showing an alternative that is affordable and attainable. We need to all band together and do this using science and heart. I am at the ready, and I do think we are getting to that point, but not if we can’t all see the same picture. We need stop worrying about ourselves ans starts worrying about the children who need great leaders to be great leaders.
Melissa, I am in total agreement. i could not have a job if it weren’t for the fact that schools and districts have utterly failed in building job-embedded professional development into the life of teachers. And you are so right, a point that I didn’t make in my piece but i feel strongly: by definition, a professional wants to learn and keep up with the work in the field. I am always stunned to see how little people know about best practice and research. The sad fact is, many teachers don’t read much in the field. In my informal polls, using the top 5 magazines, only about 20% of teachers routinely consult the key journals and periodicals.
I agree with you that this is also a failure of leadership. It starts with the expectations of the employer: you will always be learning. Staff meetings will be PD; dept meetings will be to share results of action research; supervisors will routinely share what is working and what is not to the whole staff.
As for support staff: I have been harping on this for years. Leaders, reward your best people by giving them part-time secretaries.
Grant, best overall analysis of K12 issues I’ve seen. I added some Twitter comments on your fine analysis to those of Jennifer Borgioli’s.
I recently celebrated my 53rd year as an educator, and care deeply about more students learning more.
I started up a school back in the 90’s Reform Era, dedicated to trying to find more ways to engage learners in their own learning. We found that giving kids more ownership for their own learning was the key to their commitment to learn. We called it a Personal Learning Plan.
The students in that school, which was called the Saturn School of Tomorrow, made their own short video describing how their school was truly different. You can see it by clicking on the link below.
Though visited by thousands and extolled by then President Bush, the school’s standardized test scores ultimately shut it down, no matter the superb work and achievements by the students.
It is hard enough to change one classroom. It’s foreboding to change an entire school. No one I know of has changed a school district. There are over 16,000 locally controlled school districts.
I applaud Diane’s courage and energy. But I believe much of it is misdirected.
Here’s the link, along with other resources:
http://www.bobpearlman.org/Learning21/saturn.htm
Press on!
Thanks, Tom, I’ll check it out!
Actually, i think some districts have done some good things – Union NJ and Long Beach CA come to mind. But it is indeed hard. That’s what I wish Diane and others spent more time writing about: why internal change is so hard. It’s not primarily because of the bad outsiders and ‘society’. The same inertia afflicts the best private schools and colleges. And always has. Many of my critics seem to overlook this basic fact.
I think the problem may be that the anti-teacher brigade is so caustic, so vitriolic, that any sensible discussion is impossible. The “reformers” are so narrow minded that any discussion of ways to improve what goes on in the classroom will be used by the “reformers” to further attack teachers. My guess is that there are many teachers that may wish to participate in a level headed discussion about this issue but fear to do so lest their points be twisted by the highly politicized “reformers”.
I completely agree. That’s why I felt the need to say this. Until and unless we have a civil debate about these challenging issues – whether it be about education or in Congress – little good will happen.
Well-said, Grant!
You make so many strong points, then undermine them by throwing in unnecessary comments like this: “interventions that trump socio-economic status.” Sorry, but that isn’t true because it can’t be true. Either the research you refer to is flawed, or it is being misinterpreted, or it isn’t applicable to the situation at hand. The impact of SES is too great, at every stage of a child’s life.
For example, you’ve suggested that the reason SES is shown as significant, statistically, is because higher SES students endure and succeed despite inadequate teaching. So how does that theory account for the enduring impact of the differences that result from the birth to K period, before they enter school?
And more importantly – where’s the research to back up your interpretation, and counter the extensive research on, say, early childhood development? Saying “in my view the only way to make sense of the long-established connection between student SES and school achievement ….” suggests a real lack of rigor on your part, and some of the same willingness to insist that the facts fit your view that you decry in the “other side.”
BUT HERE’S THE REAL POINT – it doesn’t matter what you think on this point. Your main themes are still correct and strong. Change is needed, and there is much that can be done – approaches that are realizable and supported by research. You’d do much better in persuading all sides if you stick to your key points, and frankly stick to what you know – based on what good research shows. SES is not your area of expertise, even if you may have relevant experience.
There’s no need to address that point – that interventions “trump” SES (an incredibly poor choice of words) – or suggest that questions around the impact of poverty are or need to be resolved before we get to work on the issues you raise. Let that go, it’s not the point in your work. Raising that just distracts from what you really have to say.
And as mentioned elsewhere, you’d help your own cause if you dial down the tone sometimes.