Best of Times, Worst of Times, and so on...

I get a real kick out the best-of  lists that pop up at the end of the year. This year, of course there's an extra bit of puffery: the First Decade of the New Millennium has passed into ignominy, so what is the great cosmic takeaway for educators?

Really? While there are transformative events and legislation, most real change in education feels sluggish, rather random and exceedingly difficult to analyze. Education policy thinkers tend to be Covey-esque in the upbeat, step-wise way they approach change: anticipate, arrange, administer and assess. That's the way we got No Child Left Behind, which was supposed to be the Grand Plan to identify inequities, raise and equalize standards (a word meaning different things to different stakeholders), harass teachers into somehow teaching better, and then test diligently to ensure accountability.

But-- no plan on such a scale succeeds unquestionably. NCLB may have changed the tenor of the conversation, but the Decade of No Child has now ended and--aside from Margaret Spellings--who wants to keep arguing about whether the results are marginally data-positive or proof that you can spend billions and not improve the worst troubles in any meaningful way?

I have been a teacher in four distinct decades, each with its own  policy slogans, public perceptions and real problems. We've been "at a turning point" more times than I can count. We have surfed the rising tide of mediocrity and been embarrassed by the soft bigotry of our low expectations.  But what has really changed in classrooms? What's the net impact on actual practice?

My--admittedly ultra-personal and non-scientific--impressions of Four Decades of American Education:

The Seventies: Got my first full-time, regular-paycheck teaching job in 1975--something of a miracle, as there was a teacher glut in Michigan. Was hired because the principal needed someone right away and we were on the same humor wavelength in the interview. Soon learned that there was no district curriculum for music or any other subjects. Chose my own teaching materials from catalogs--wasn't that a curriculum? Taught whatever and however I wanted--no content or instructional oversight and nothing resembling "professional development."

Heard "don't smile until Christmas" about 50 times from other teachers, sum total of any "mentoring" I got.  Saw teachers smack kids (still permitted by law)--and heard lots of lounge talk about chaos that would happen if the right to paddle was taken away. Was pink-slipped in Years Two, Three, Four and Six, and always called back--once because of a lawsuit, after registering for unemployment--all tied to precarious, locally voted school funding.

Gave statewide tests--the MEAPs, then a basic-skills check--but nobody considered them a big deal. Was happy that Jimmy Carter instituted a cabinet position for education--about time! Had a few friends who taught in Detroit--envied their superior facilities, resources and paychecks. Teaching seemed like a fulfilling, creative, autonomous profession. Most days, it was lots of fun.

The Eighties:  Economic downturn in the early 80s meant further pink-slipping and annual changes of building/teaching assignment necessitated by constant personnel shifts. Had daily loads of up to 400 students in two buildings and--since any certified MI teacher could teach any subject in grades 7 and 8-- a year of teaching math. All of this change was oddly invigorating, if exhausting. 

Finished a masters degree--in Gifted Education, one of a couple dozen au courant cafeteria-style ed specialties (Career Ed, Distance Learning, Women's Issues). Got serious about teaching. Read many books, took fake sick days to observe admired teachers. Sought leadership roles in Music Ed organizations. Downright hungry for professional conversations. None of this was required, encouraged or even noticed by the district, which did write its own curriculum benchmarks in the 80s; teachers called these "the black notebooks." Problem: not enough staff or resources to teach all the good things in the curriculum.

Reagan's release of "A Nation at Risk" interpreted by colleagues as rhetorical excess and unionized-teacher bashing, an imperialistic extension of right-wing momentum gained in the air traffic controllers' strike. Hoped it would blow over, but having to listen to Bill Bennett's nostalgic morality lessons most discouraging. Still giving the MEAPs, which got harder in the 80s. Took leadership roles in the union--since they were the only teacher leadership roles available.

The Nineties: Decade opens with some optimism. Goals 2000 goals are kind of inane--first in the world in math and science?--but there's the sense that policymakers are paying attention, and belief things can and should improve. Visit Detroit, shocked to see decayed and racially polarized schools--what happened in the last 15 years? Outstate Michigan residents--tired of seeing wealthy suburban schools funded at four times the rate of rural and urban-rust schools--pass a funding bill to get rid of property taxes as source, using sales tax instead. Outstate schools ecstatic as times are flush--auto industry will last forever! Got into an argument in the staff lunchroom defending teacher proficiency tests in Arkansas.

Real and substantive school improvement begins to impact daily practice. Standards everywhere. Benchmarks--and teacher committees to update, align, discuss. Required mentoring for new colleagues. Performance assessments, and portfolios of student work. Required professional learning (not blow-off in-service days). Further upgrades in the MEAPs, including hands-on tasks for kids, new constructivist tests for science, social studies and writing. Better assessments begin to drive instruction. New teacher hiring done by colleagues. Plus--fab new instructional toy arrives in classrooms: the computer, full of infinite possibilities for teaching and learning. Some teachers begin experimenting immediately; others are intimidated. 

Best Secretary of Education ever--Dick Riley--provides eight years of continuity of purpose and coherent policy. Education is still a local-control thing; Feds just there to ensure equity, promote innovation. National certification identifying accomplished teaching becomes reality. Next stop: real leadership roles for exemplary teachers, whose expertise will help policymakers solve problems. Nagging worry: all of this still takes money--and a growing number of poor kids are still completely underserved.

The Naughts: A slow U-turn in policy and conventional wisdom. We're not gradually improving, after all--in fact, we're an international educational joke--and all public schools (not just poor/urban schools) are bad. Decidedly awful--and the people who work and believe in them are intellectual dimbulbs who care only about their inflated salaries. How would they handle this in Singapore? China? India? We must compete!

Buzzword of the decade: data. Every person with a computer sees data analysis as the solution. In the lunchroom, colleagues express skepticism about the Texas Miracle even before it's exposed as just another Data Hustle. Some of the best teachers in the building discover they are not Highly Qualified. Meanwhile, the worst teachers in the building--genuine stinkers--look good under NCLB regs. We begin administering tests to third graders--and relinquish development of performance assessments that tell us real things about kids' writing, number sense, comprehension, familiarity with the scientific method. No time for that now--the data-driven race to the top has begun even before it's formally named.

Saw well-regarded suburban districts become defensive. Urban and rural districts, shamed. Teacher preparation institutions--even the good ones-- scorned. Paradox of the decade: We must have the smartest teachers! But should they bother studying the science of teaching? Or stay in the classroom for more than a couple of years? No. With data, we can replace teachers as often and as efficiently as we replace technologies.

Lately, it occurs to me: what a long strange trip it's been.

Happy New Year, teacher readers. Look for  the Teacher in a Strange Land to be truckin', come 2010.

Image: Hagerstern@Flickr Creative Commons

Comments

[john]

I heard Dan Pink on NPR today explaining why the Naughts were such an underacheiving decade in business as well as education.

I also remember reports in the 1990s that were so enthusiastic about computers being better than doctors in diagnosis, and how data had killed the business cycle. And remember all those centralized health systems implemented in hospitals in the 90s and then dismatled when they learning that health and healing is much too complicated for those simplistic systems?

Gosh, when you consider the digital miracles and the unprecendented funding of this last decade, shouldn't we be in a golden age of learning? Given America's desire for purpose after 9/11, should we have seen a take-off in education? With Obama in the White House, shouldn't it be so much easier to inspire students?

[Nancy Flanagan]

Hey, John.

Your ideas make a lot of sense-- why wouldn't any civilized, resource-rich society expect a continuous improvement in education outcomes? After all, we expect ongoing upgrades in technology, new product development, entertainment, health and longevity and so on.

If I had to make a guess, it might have something to do with unbalanced opportunity--the gap between advantaged and poor, which is unprecedented in America and grew most rapidly in the last decade. The gap pits resource-starved, poor-outcome segments of society against the growth in all the other populations and industries. No matter how great our technological development is, the negative, ignored sector drags down overall satisfaction and progress.

Think of all the resources now going to "turn around" schools that never should have gotten so abysmally bad --and all the resources spent on testing to determine with scientific precision what we already know: poor kids do much worse on all indicators.

As for Obama serving as inspiration-- that may yet happen. I haven't seen the new administration change much of anything in education. And... just as "The Sixties" really meant the last half of the sixties, plus a couple of years following--there's always a lag in assessing the impact of a decade's worth of trends.

[Claus]

Is it me, or has the "faster, stronger, better" language intensified in the past decade?

The good news, it seems to me, was that more people, including CEO's, see a broad education as valuable, because mere basic skills or narrow vocationalism will get you nowhere, or nowhere good. This rhetoric did not, unfortunately, translate into better policy, but I could at least sense much less scorn for English majors among the business elite. In the 80's, I was much more likely to hear "what are you going to do with that, teach?"

But the "better-faster-stronger" rhetoric was the more troubling flip side of that same trend. The argument goes like this: Everyone needs a broad base of knowledge and skills, because the world is changing. (I believe that to be true.) No one can enjoy professional or economic stability anymore, so we all have to be creative. The Chinese and Indians will take away jobs that were reasonably stable, so we have to get even more creative. We'll lose our jobs--nay, our careers--every five years or so, so we had better learn how to keep learning. In the "ownership society," only the brilliant or independently wealthy will succeed. so you had better become brilliant.

In an odd way, education seems to have escaped the back-to-basics mentality (again, in all but policy) that seemed to dominate decades ago. A good thing, no? But the alternative sometimes seems to me like an exhausting education treadmill. Learn, learn, learn, because your life depends on it. And even that's no guarantee.

A truly mixed blessing, don't you think?

[john]

Cluas,

The "better-faster-stronger mentality is doubly destructive and not just because its faster in getting us out of balance. Its helping to undercut the concept of the autonomy of teachers, and the accelerating the drive towards emphasizing extrinstic, not intrinsic, motivation in students. Education, like government, and like the rest of human life, needs checks and balances.

[Nancy Flanagan]

Claus and John-- interesting discussion! Thanks. Nobody was more surprised than I when ed policy in the 21st century went in what seemed to be an inexplicable direction. In the 90s, we were looking toward an unpredictable future by strengthening everything-- standards, curriculum, instruction, teacher prep, research. Claus calls it correctly, I believe: the world had caught up to us, so our creativity, collaboration and innovation had to be continuously stimulated. There was also a Deming-like attitude: flatten the hierarchy, drive out fear, build human capacity.

All of that went away in the last decade, supplanted by "data" and efficiency. Economists began driving the ed policy conversations. They didn't care about research on instruction or curriculum, looking for root causes or building communities. They cared about doing it better-faster-stronger-- but also (and this is key) cheaper. We could build a better teacher and better outcomes through standardization (not standards). There was also a lot more blaming of schools (a recurring American habit, since they're publicly funded) for crumbling, unsustainable social structures: rust-belt industrialization, expensive social-support programs, breakdown of traditional families.

Most education policy made in the last decade had little to do with actual education and lot to do with economic stressors.

[john]

For what its worth, following up the Ripley article in the Atlantic, I reread a 2003 article by Matt Miller. He then proposed a grand bargain that sounds like The Grand Bargain of today: dramatically raise salaries, use VAMs for evaluation in the hands of peer review committees of teachers and administrators.

Would Miller and friends at the CAP still accept that, or in the last decade have their eyes become bigger than their stomachs?

[Nancy Flanagan]

Good question, John. The dramatically raised salary as bait for outcomes determined outside the classroom has been dangled repeatedly. To me--this is proof that nobody thinks that such a model could be sustained wide-scale, only in small, boutique situations where teachers could be culled from the rabble and rigorously trained to standards of reliability. A tough job, when you're working with human children--but it could be done. And--as charter aficionados are fond of pointing out-- if someone can do it, why can't everyone do it? But scaling up ain't easy, especially when what you're enlarging may not be good policy to begin with.

The problem with teacher salaries is that there are millions of teachers and they're on the public dole, subject to economic and political vagaries. While I'm in full agreement that the way we're paying teachers incents the wrong things, we're not going to see 6-figure salaries for teachers in my lifetime, just because the scope of the issue is too large.