Are We Reforming for the Right Reasons?

The latest trend in urban reform seems to be a push towards school choice. There are a great number of charter schools, transformation schools, and other schools that are being formed as an alternative to the traditional public school system. Even Alonso's new plan for Baltimore includes closing certain schools so that alternative schools may expand or so that new ones can be created. Is this expansion into the private sector research driven or is it being promoted by a select few? I have seen the results of the students in these alternative schools and they look great (even though they are not required to report anything so they are only putting out the data that people want to see). I have heard the teachers from these schools talk about how wonderful they are. What I have not seen is a study done on the performance of the schools that have students who were refused entry into one of these alternative schools, the ED students or students with extensive IEPs. How do the public schools look when all of these alternative schools take the best and brightest teachers and students? Maybe it is too early to tell since this is a recent movement or maybe this data has been looked over in favor of how well the few students in these schools are performing compared to the much larger number still in public schools. I have also seen parent and public comments on this recent trend. One parent responded to an article in the Baltimore Sun about Obama’s education plan claiming that his plan “…should involve improving the school curricula by including courses that help students meet the worldly demands of our highly technological society.” instead of “…giving parents who don’t know what they are doing a choice of schools.” A board member of the American Civil Liberties Union responded to an editorial supporting the BOAST bill by saying that, “[Private schools] are not obligated to educate low-income children, special-education children, children with disabilities or children presenting any educational challenges.” She also states that, “Vouchers for private and religious schools are part of a political and ideological crusade, not a plan for education reform.” This last statement made me wonder about the path we are taking towards reform. Is this trend of reform through vouchers, charters, or other forms of choice what is best for all students, as should be the overarching goal, or is it for the select few?

Perception Versus Reality

As teachers in Baltimore City, we constantly hear about the ever-present violence that occurs in our schools and the communities around us. Whether as a blurb in the newspaper or a clip on the evening news, we unfortunately hear about fights, riots, stabbings, and shootings. The reports always highlight what went wrong, but never what possibly went right.

Last Friday, at Northwestern High School, an unfortunate series of events took place during the first lunch period. A community conflict that had erupted earlier in the week boiled over and was finished in the cafeteria. This fight was quickly contained and the instructional day continued with only minimal interruption. If you had been watching the news or reading the paper over the next few days, none of the positive actions by the staff were reported. The caption from WJZ news that evening said “Police Swarm School After Dozens of Girls Brawl.” If you knew nothing about Northwestern High School, but you saw that caption, you might think that these events were commonplace with an ineffective staff.

Left out of the story, was the swift reaction of staff and administrators to contain the fight. Left out was the fantastic performance of other students who did not allow the fight to destroy the rest of the school day. Left out were all the gains that have been made in the atmosphere of the school. While I am not an apologist or attempting to cover-up what took place, I would ask that a fair picture of the progress made in our school be presented. As a teacher at Northwestern, I can say that had this happened last year, the day would have been a waste.

Though one would have assumed that I would have been saddened by the events last Friday, I actually left the school that day extremely proud of my students. With a room full of upperclassmen, my students stayed on task, finished their work, and maintained a lightheartedness that made the extra hour in our room seem like no time at all. My students went to lunch during the second period, and as I walked them down to the cafeteria, I was amazed that it looked as if nothing had happened. Students maintained their composure and went about eating their lunches.

I use the events at Northwestern to comment on how we view violence throughout our school system. Unfortunately, for many of the communities surrounding our schools, violence and gangs are commonplace. As teachers and school staff, we are extremely limited to what we can control outside of school. Additionally an unenforceable cell phone ban and weak discipline code, leave administrators at a disadvantage. We know that strong consequences are not going to eliminate school violence; there must be a systemic change of culture. In most cases, a change in school culture can take approximately four to five years to take full effect. If we know that systemic cultural change takes so long, can we really blame faculty and administrators for setbacks along the way? More resources must be placed in schools for anger management, counseling, and conflict resolution. While our ultimate goal as educators is to make events like last Friday a thing of the past, we must acknowledge the reality that they may happen no matter what. Rather than unfairly place blame, we should celebrate swift action and competent management in the face of crisis.

The False Specter of Teacher Quality

School reformers have been banging the “teacher quality” drum for a number of years. Their endless wailing over the topic will fail to bring the change they are hoping for. Teacher quality is widely held to be one of the largest determinants of student success. However, the term is hopeless confused. A teacher’s quality of instruction results from a complex interplay of factors internal and external to the teacher including talent, skills, school climate, resource availability, class size, and most significantly, leadership.

The school reformers ignore the external determinants of teacher quality and purport that a teacher’s quality is largely within their own control. While the days of a one-room schoolhouse with the teacher acting as the principal, secretary, and social worker are gone, reformers trumpeting “teacher quality” conceptualize the teacher’s classroom as an island, disconnected from the complex organization characteristic of modern schools.

A quick search in Education Week confirms the focus on teacher quality over principal quality. The phrase “teacher quality” appears over seven times as often as “principal quality (216 articles vs 14). Many influential leaders in education, including Michelle Rhee, the Superintendent of DC Public Schools embrace this narrow, inaccurate perspective on teacher quality. She has pledged to “purge incompetent teachers by any means necessary” (Ripley, 2008). Perhaps what’s most misguided about Rhee’s approach is her behaviorism-like understanding of teacher competence. Oddly, by her own admission, she started off teaching doing a very poor job. She became competent. A teacher’s abilities in the classroom are not fixed.

Teachers can also appear more competent when they’re external environment is conducive to success. In a school beset by behavioral problems, poor organization, abysmal communication, and a dearth of an instructional vision, how can a teacher’s competence be evaluated? There are too many negative, external factors affecting that teacher’s success to blame students’ low achievement on the teacher alone.

A far more important contributing factor to student achievement is strong school based leadership. Reformers need to begin campaigning for better leadership within schools. Good leaders recruit good teachers, improve mediocre teachers, and work to fire the hopelessly underperforming teachers. They also tend to the external factors that contribute to teacher success. By directing their efforts towards school based leadership, reformers would be helping to increase student achievement.

What is the point?

In today's Baltimore Sun is it reported that there is an estimated 8% of Maryland high school seniors at risk for not graduating. 4,660 students out of 53,500 (with 1063 of those students coming from our very own Baltimore City) are in the process of struggling through Bridge Projects in order to graduate on time. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-hsa-resultsbyschool-table0325,0,6258495.htmlstory When I say "struggling," I mean the teachers and Department Heads are the ones struggling.

During one of our Professional Development days, the math teachers were all sent to be trained on how Bridge Projects work. In my school, only the Department Head and one other teacher deals with advising the projects, so until this PD I was unaware of what this process included. To my surprise, the PD was not filled with useful tips on how to get the students motivated to do the projects, but rather was a session on how teachers can give students the answers to the "project" (really it's just an extended work packet) without legally giving them the answers. We were told that as an adviser, we should be giving students the exact questions with different numbers, work the problems out, as well as write out any explanations needed. This can be used as a "reference" for the student as s/he completes the project.

Frankly, I don't see the point of this project. The student's are still not mastering the skills they clearly need. They are merely being taught how to copy off another page properly. I understand the concept of modeling for a student, but how does this assess whether or not the student understands the concept being tested? Students taking the real HSAs do not get problems worked out for them. I feel as though the state is trying to find a loophole from failing the 8% of students. If you are going to have a standard such as HSAs, do so. Stick by it. Fail 8% because they are not ready to leave high school, because they have not accomplished the skills the state has deemed necessary for graduating. Do not just let them pass by completing some make-up work packet the students copy off of their teacher. What is the point of that? What is stopping them from removing the middle man and have the teacher just write it out themselves while signing the students name? The responses on these projects aren't the words or thoughts of the student, but rather the teacher. There is no actual understanding being demonstrated.

So someone please tell me, what is the point of these Bridge Projects? Help students understand material? Or a way for the state to avoid failing mass numbers of students and looking like an educational failure?

The teacher-in-chief speaks - The Economist 14-03-09

In the March 14, 2009 edition of The Economist I read an article entitled “The teacher-in-chief speaks” that can be viewed at www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13279059 . This article was about Obama’s speech and all of the issues we have discussed so far in class from rigors of standardized testing, merit pay, teacher quality, charter schools, and vouchers.

I think this all are serious issues that apply to the Baltimore City Public School system and cannot be ignored. I know that my school receives Title I money from the government, but how that money is used is not often in the students best interests. Baltimore City Schools have a large amount of Federal money thrown at them, but miss manage it and use it for things that ultimately do not promote closing the achievement gap.

I think that in order for the BCPSS system to change, the reforms at the Federal level must be stronger and have a longer lasting influence than those of the past administrations. There is momentum being built to close the discrepancies between state standards as well as getting bad teachers out of the classroom. Baltimore City needs supports in place to keep the good teachers who demonstrate student achievement in the classroom while working to eliminate the teachers that do not perform to expectations.

The Missing Piece

When thinking about changes that need to be made in order for our students in Baltimore City to success I can’t get past the family and community involvement piece. This is my second year teaching and I feel much more equipped to initiate parent communication to get parents to volunteer, come in for a conference, or discuss good and bad behavior. From the beginning of my teaching career in Baltimore City I have been pleasantly surprised with my interactions with parents and family.

Recently though, I find myself frustrated with unanswered efforts to communicate with parents and families. I am a tutor with an after school program run at my school and several of my students are in the tutoring program. I have a student who displays negative behavior daily and she is in the afterschool program. She and I have a special relationship and she was showing improvements from spending extra time with me not only for academics but behavior. I offered to drive her home after the program so she could stay and I had been doing this for a few weeks. Her sister and mom came up today and ever so kindly told me they didn’t want me driving her home anymore. It really hurt my feelings. It hurt me even more to see my girl walking out the door with her mom almost in tears because I couldn’t drive her home. I felt all my efforts to help this student went down the drain with this small act.

I don’t ever want a parent to feel that I am overstepping my boundaries on their parenting skills. It is obvious that this child needs a lot of extra attention and help. I just wish that this specific parent and others like her would more readily realize the good intention of teachers in the city. In a perfect world teachers and parents would work together without any feelings of animosity. For now, I’ll make do with what I’ve got.

What about the administrators?

A good friend of mine works in a public charter school in urban Connecticut.  While the name of the school escapes me, what does stick are the stories.  Test scores are low, violence and crime within the school building is up and students and some staff are apathetic, to say the very least.  Thought to be a highly progressive charter, the high hopes for success in this school are not coming to fruition.  Progress is not being made, and teachers and students are growing increasingly dissatisfied.  Most interesting, though, is that the school does not have a single administrator.  In fact, the school was established in a feeble attempt to prove that administrators are an unnecessary toxin.  The theory, however, has failed.

From Barack Obama to Andres Alonso, all we're hearing about is reform, reform, reform.  If the teacher is bad, find him or her a new profession.  If the students are not meeting standards, point to the person standing at the head of the classroom.  As a disclaimer, let me say that I am a firm believer in the theory that teacher actions are the number one influencer of student actions, and that, yes, if the test scores are low, then it is very likely the fault of the teacher leading, or for that matter not leading, the classroom.  However, so to play the role of the devil's advocate and spice up the conversation, I ask: what about the administrators? 

Of a group of teachers surveyed in one of my classes at Hopkins, an overwhelming, borderline alarming, number of "good teachers" departing the Baltimore City school system at the end of this school year are crediting a lack of administrative support for their reason for departure.  Where is the discussion about administrative reform?  If a classroom is successful because a teacher is a good leader of that classroom, wouldn't/shouldn't a school be equally successful under equally strong leadership?

Allow me to provide an example: I am a teacher in the Baltimore school system, and am in my, approximately, seventeenth month of teaching. Allow me to be the first to say that I still have a LOT to learn.  I welcome observations, and have, on multiple occasions invited any one of the four vice principals, the resident principal and principal, into my classroom to both see the great things happening, but also offer constructive feedback so to improve my performance.  Never has an invitation been answered, which I have simply assumed is because their schedules are too busy to accommodate a pop in, and that is fine.  But, for my formal observation this spring - one of two scheduled opportunities to rate and officially document my performance - according to district expectations, I am to have a pre-observation meeting, an observation of my teaching and a post-observation debrief and strategizing session.  Last week, as assistant principal walked into my room at 2:55 pm, minutes before the final bell was to ring and in the middle of the closing of my lesson, to tell me that she "knows what you're capable of based on what I've seen you do in the classroom before, so you don't have to worry about any of that pre or post observation stuff. I'll just drop in for a few minutes for the actual observation."

She's never seen me teach before. Ever.... ev-ver. But, she's charged with the responsibility of providing me a comprehensive and accurate rating of my teaching performance?  I would think that me, a teacher of less than two years, would be prioritized and taken through this observation cycle to provide me with the feedback necessary to develop me into one of these "good enough" teachers we hear so frequently are needed in our failing schools. Quite honestly, I could be a miserable teacher who puts on a good show for observation day and has students who like me enough to not say anything about it.  I bet that, based on this skimpy (dare I call it..) "formal observation", I would be rehired to teach next year - my third year - therefore guaranteeing me tenure and virtually never fire-able. Isn't that exactly the problem?  Bring on the firing squad - MAKE me prove that I'm good enough.

In an OpEd posted on the New York Times site, Nicholas Kristof calls Michelle Rhee's takeover of the DC school system "education's ground zero".  He cautiously praises her for her firm stance on the educational platforms on which she stands on difficult issues, like incentive pay for teacher.  But, in the discussion about incentive pay, Kristof writes, "But teachers worry, not unreasonably, that their performance is difficult to measure, that they will be judged by incompetent principals."  I ask, then, where is the discussion about reforming school leadership? Isn't it time that weak leaders be made aware that their performance is under the public microscope, too?

Another Look at Obama's Speech on Education

As a teacher in Baltimore that tries very hard to pay close attention to educational policy and its likely influence on my classroom, I can’t shake Obama’s recent speech on education out of my head. He offered lots of action, but in the end, very little positive substance – or perhaps the bad has drowned out the good. So first, the aspects that appear to be on the right side of what Baltimore schools, and schools in general need: support of early childhood, support and funding for National Board Certification, and a substantial increase in funding IDEA Part B (in the stimulus). Obama also vaguely acknowledged the need for better assessments, though his Education Secretary praises the basic model of testing that currently prevails.

The bad: much of his speech reinforced the high stakes, low quality assessments that have become ubiquitous in public education. They provide incomplete and inaccurate information which is used to make important decisions. Everyday I witness the harms of high stakes testing on the children who need our most support. The MSA and other tests like it reduce the educational experiences of children and turn schools into test-prep factories.

Parts of Obama’s speech were factually inaccurate. He stated that the United States had “fallen to 9th” in the world, whereas in reality the U.S. had to make substantial gains to rise to 9th. On the same test in 1995 the United States was ranked 23rd out of 41 countries. Maybe international comparisons are significant benchmarks by which to gauge our success. But this misuse of data rings of the Bush era when misleading scare tactics became common-place in order to promote the administration’s agenda.

Obama also spoke of the merit pay meme, which will likely come to Baltimore in some form sometime soon. People can have reasonable disagreements and ardent debates about merit pay. But one thing is clear, in survey after survey fully certified teachers that leave the profession state that the primary forces driving them out of education were infringements on their creativity and autonomy within the classroom, not low pay. This is not to say that teachers should not be paid more, but rather that merit pay is simply not successful at what it purports to do. Here are the educational historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban: “The history of performance-based salary plans has been a merry-go-round. In the main, districts that initially embraced merit pay dropped it after a brief trial.” More on why merit pay has not historically worked is available here. In short, merit pay would exacerbate the problems that manifest with high stakes testing, leading to an even less-rich educational experience.

Many in education circles that I am a part of poorly formulate the measure by which we should judge Obama’s policies. We need to go beyond just asking ourselves, “Is he better than Bush?” Yet, even by the Bush measure, we have cause to worry.

There's much more to be said about Obama's educational policy initiatives, but this is already too lengthy. Before these policies become reality in Baltimore, we need to take a hard look and go beyond talking about rigor in the classroom. We also need to be rigorous in the evaluation of proposed initiatives. Too much has been discussed and promoted without careful examination. Simply being pro-reform, regardless of the particular reform, will not serve the children of Baltimore.

I will end with quoting one educational pundit Gerald Bracey talking about another: “Diane Ravitch, never once called a bleeding-hear liberal and assistant secretary of education for George H. W. Bush, recently said that, from what she's seen, Obama is a third term for George W. Bush and Arne Duncan is Margaret Spellings in drag. She was not doling out compliments to either man.”

HB 630: The Key to Restoring Respect in Schools?

A Price George’s County Democrat, Delegate Gerron S. Levi, introduced four bills, which she hopes will help restore respect at school. One of which caught my eye, was HB 630, which would mandate that parents and guardians whose children have been repeatedly suspended or chronically absent would lose access to some state tax benefits if they do not attend school/teacher conferences. I am intrigued to think of the ramifications this bill could have on Baltimore City Schools. Lately, I have done a lot of reflecting on my students’ progress in my classroom. While they are being challenged to work hard and achieve at high levels, I often question if I have had a real influence in developing them to be highly capable outside of my classroom. In a school environment where chronic absenteeism is the norm and where students lack appropriate social cues, I wonder if my students could make it in an environment which required them to be punctual, respectful, and hard-working at all times.

One student who I had not seen since the beginning of first semester reappeared in class last week. Although his family had been notified of his absenteeism and he had been on at least two short-term suspensions during the first semester, my principle is bending over backwards to develop a plan for him to graduate, complete three bridge projects in three days (just in time for tomorrow’s submission deadline), take three classes on Novell this semester, and get mandatory make-up work packets so that his first semester grades can be changed. Honestly, this has me heated! When are we going to stop giving chance after chance? We are demonstrating to our students that it is ok to be late, to come to school once in a while, do little to no work, and to be flagrantly disrespectful, because in the end, there is no accountability.

Perhaps HB 630 will restore some of the accountability that has been lacking on the parent/guardian side. As for our schools, it is high time we stop pretending the majority of our students are prepared and ready to go to college or go into the workforce. We need to show our students we care by holding high expectations. All of these chances only illustrate that we are pushovers (many times forced to act this way because of an unsupportive administration). The respect that is lacking can only be restored when we actually demand it and lead by example.

http://www.gazette.net/stories/02262009/lanhnew172109_32481.shtml