Making change

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/how-to-improve-teacher-education-now-and-why-teach-for-america-isnt-the-answer/2011/08/02/gIQANclsqI_blog.html

This piece by Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and former president of Teachers College, argues that alternative certification programs like Teach for America serve to undermine true reform efforts in teacher quality. These programs, he says, siphon off resources that could go towards truly reforming teacher education programs. Instead of shutting down or revamping poorly performing schools, we simply create another source of teachers. Meanwhile, poor schools continue producing lackluster results.

This sounds a lot like the opposition I’ve heard to the charter movement. Much like Levine’s frustration with alternative certification, critics see them as band-aids for more systemic issues in education.

But if there is demand for these schools – and for these teachers – programs like charters and alternative certification can offer an important service.

Both charter schools and programs like Teach for America act in many ways as laboratories for innovation. Teach for America doesn’t simply provide certified teachers to classrooms. As an organization, it has contributed to a body of knowledge, offering valuable insight into what creates results in low performing schools. Though not everything a charter school or TFA tries is successful, these movements accelerate innovation.

A Warning for Charters?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/15/nyregion/tom-vander-arks-new-york-area-charter-schools-falter.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

When first reading about Tom Vander Ark’s history as former director of education for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and his ambitious plan to create a network of his own charter schools, I thought he and his schools were sure to be another charter success story. However, his efforts to open charters in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and Newark can be described as nothing less than an epic fail.

After spending more than $1.5 million of investors’ money, Mr. Vander Ark has walked away from the project, and the schools will not open as planned this fall, leaving others involved “stunned and frustrated”.

One consultant puts into words the thoughts of many charter school critics that seemed to come alive in this particular case, “…it signals what’s wrong with the so-called charter school community. Somebody who doesn’t deserve a charter gets a charter. Somebody who doesn’t deserve a building gets a building. And then somebody who doesn’t care about the communities can turn their head and walk away.”

Obviously what happened in the case of Mr. Vander Ark is not exemplary of every charter school, and many find much more success than their traditional counterparts. However, I think it does provide a warning for anyone hoping to open a charter in the future as well as a possible deterrent to school districts’ desires to expand their charter numbers.

Leave the kids behind. They just aren't curious.

A New York Times article published yesterday listed scores and results in the national geographic survey, administered to 4th, 8th and 12th graders across the United States. The article started out with promise, saying, “The good news is that students did not do all that poorly.”

That was the only good news and I wasn’t impressed.

Only one in four fourth graders could identify all seven continents. (Did anyone else fight this battle in his/her classroom this year? It drove me crazy.) No higher than 27 percent of any of the grades tested were rated proficient. If that’s not “all that poorly” then I don’t know what is. The article was written in a Q&A style and I found some of the comments made by David P. Driscoll, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board quite interesting. He put the blame on today’s children lacking curiousity for knowledge. He said they could memorize song lyrics, but couldn’t name the vice president and that was the fault of not working hard enough.

He sounds like a real winner.

I agree that students need to take responsibility in part, but they need to be provided with quality instruction in a quality environment in order to succeed. They also need to have sturctured home life that encourages that curiousity. They need to have books in the house. Maybe this Driscoll wasn’t all bad, but he certainly rubbed me the wrong way.

Equally concerning was that results had not shown significant improvement since the test was last administered in 2001. I thought no children were being left behind during this time period…

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/us/01questions.html?ref=education

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them stop cheating.

Congratulations to my home state of Pennsylvania for adding itself to the growing list of states filed under educational cheaters. The New York Times reported today that 89 schools in Pennsylvania (28 from Philly) have thrown up red flags for “questionable gains” and questionable numbers of erasure marks.
The information that led to this discovery was collecting e-dust for more than a year before a reporter from a Philadelphia outlet called The Notebook had time to dig deeper. The state put out a study of red flagged schools and then did nothing with the information – nothing that is until The Notebook ran an article with the information from that study.
It’s frustrating that a state study went widely unnoticed for so long. It’s even more frustrating that I doubt much more will be done with the information. The article paralleled the Atlanta cheating scandal, where 10 months of investigations led to the identification of 44 shady schools. Those schools account for half of Atlanta’s district. In Pennsylvania, there are 3,300 schools to sift through.
So far, no teachers or administrators have gone on record about cheating at their schools. Additionally, there are political ties that will further complicate an investigation. One of the schools that had the most flagrant violations reported is run by the biggest donor to Governor Tom Corbitt’s last campaign.
It always comes back to leadership, doesn’t it? Crooked politicians. Crooked Administrators. Maybe that is the key. We need more Geoffrey Canada’s out there. How do we change the whole system? How do we create an educational climate where schools don’t resort to cheating?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/education/01winerip.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=education

Raising the stakes

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2011/07/duncan_teacher_salaries_should.html

On Friday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan called for higher pay for teachers, more accountability, and higher entrance criteria at education schools. And in order to make this happen, he stressed, the nation is going to have to think critically about our current hiring practices, job security, and benefits in the field.

In other words, we need to raise the stakes for public school teachers.

About a month ago, I would have seen this news, reported in Education Week, as purely positive. But the class on school reform I am currently taking makes this news more nuanced for me. It’s not that I do not want stronger teachers or incentives for hard work. I truly believe that these measures will do good things for our nation’s students. Still, I think we need to consider carefully how we evaluate our teachers and structure compensation modules.

When we place a disproportionate focus on test scores in a school environment – and then award money accordingly – we can create a climate that does not focus on complex and meaningful learning. As Alfie Kohn argues in a recent opinion piece featured online in the Washington Post, some teachers in struggling schools that aggressively and sometimes obsessively pursue gains on standardized tests reduce their classrooms to relentless test-taking drills. There is little room for a constructive approach to education in these settings.

It’s just something to think about.