Teacher in a Strange Land

Contented Cows

My favorite professor at Michigan State (known locally as "Moo U") was fond of telling his grad students that researchers should just explain what they found in their studies, and resist the urge to add specific policy implications. Good research should stand on its own, he said--and determining What It All Means was the reader's job. 

Cynic that I am, I would add that readers should draw their own conclusions without input from research funders, as well--whose strategic fingerprints often turn up in the policy implications section of glossy, graphics-laden reports.

Public Agenda's fascinating new report, Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today, divides teachers into three loose groups--the disheartened (40%), the contented (37%) and the idealists (23%). Discussing the report with a group of teachers in New York this week, one teacher noted that she is frequently idealistic, disheartened and contented in the space of a single day--but we generally agreed that the data and characterizations squared with our prima facie impressions about our teacher colleagues. Some are passionate believers in using education to change the world, some have settled into situations where they have support and resources, and feel confident that they're efficacious. And some, unfortunately, see little to be optimistic about--poor working conditions, poor leadership, and poor results.

What struck me in the Education Week article about Teaching for a Living was the summary of policy implications:

Are the Idealists the best prospects for high-needs schools and for reinvigorating the profession, and what do school leaders need to do to retain them in the field? Given the Idealists’ passion for improving their students’ lives, how can administrators ensure that they have the skills and support to fulfill that goal? More than a third of Idealists voiced a desire to move eventually into other jobs in education. How does the field respond to those aspirations? The Disheartened pose a different challenge. Some may be ill-fitted to the job and ready to move on, but how should the field encourage and support their transition? Others may be good teachers trapped in dysfunctional schools and, in the right environment, might change their views and become Idealists.

Which group is missing in this analysis?

Why would we want to convert disheartened teachers into firebrands, especially since idealistic teachers in the survey were overwhelmingly young and frequently admitted that they weren't interested in teaching as a long-term career? The thing about idealists is that they burn out--or they become pragmatic, understanding that changing the world happens slowly, but is worth the effort.

Maybe giving the satisfied and confident teachers a bovine label--contented--was intentional. 

Public Agenda has a reputation for solid, non-ideological research and thoughtful analysis. Here's the teaser for the report, on their own web page:

Two out of five of America’s 4 million K-12 teachers appear disheartened and disappointed about their jobs, while others express a variety of reasons for contentment with teaching and their current school environments, new research by Public Agenda and Learning Point Associates shows.

Compare that to Education Week's opener for a similar report published in February--the "MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Past, Present and Future:"

Teachers’ views on their profession have become markedly more positive over the past quarter century, at least partially validating the widespread school-improvement efforts of the period, concludes a retrospective survey report released this week by MetLife Inc.

Sixty-two percent of American teachers said they were "very satisfied" with their job in the MetLife survey, taken in 2008. When you add up Public Agenda's idealistic teachers and contented teachers, you come up with 60%--about the same number, actually. The difference? Policy suggestions for what to do about teachers who are dissatisfied. Maybe we should be providing them with the resources and support that they say they need, turning their discouragement into realism.

Contented cows give better milk, after all.

Image: dali, Flickr Creative Commons

And the Livin' is Easy...

It's time for the annual round of teachers-in-summer blogs. These come in several flavors: Ambitious (with a side helping of enrichment). Justification (a.k.a. "I work harder than you know"). The traditional, obligatory Reading List for Teachers. (This one blew me away--three books involving Nazis, Charles Murray of Bell Curve fame, and...Daniel Pink? ) A Snarky Saga of the Last Days of '08-'09 (where someone almost gets punched out, speaking of tense and irritable...). Plus two new cable TV shows for your summer viewing pleasure, featuring garden-variety, nice-guy teachers. One manufactures and sells high-test meth to build a nest egg for his family (since he's dying of cancer), and the other sells his own substantially endowed body since he doesn't make enough money teaching to keep his children happy and a roof over his head.

Moral of all the stories: Teaching is an undesirable low-prestige, low-salary, high-stress job--and teachers can no longer publicly say the three best things about teaching are June, July and August.

The answer to all these trials seems clear to me. The traditional school calendar is way past its expiration date, and should be abandoned. Its flaws are well-known:  too much time off in the summer, too much review needed in the fall--not enough well-used time, crammed into too few days. The agrarian calendar represents a wildly inefficient use of resources, and the folks who support it do so for reasons that have nothing to do with education. All of the barriers to changing the calendar--busing, sports, vacations, staffing, summer camps, cheap labor for summer businesses-- can be effectively addressed. 

My personal preference would be a modular calendar, with four- to six-week curricular units, offered flexibly, year-round--through both in-building residencies and on-line. Students would be required to be "in school" a minimal number of days (say, 180) but could select additional modules to attend school 200 or 220 days a year. Short vacations would be scheduled between modules. Students could enter the system at multiple points in the year (September, January, June) and finish when all the modules were successfully completed. Nobody would "fail a grade," because a module could be re-taken if material wasn't mastered. There are dozens of ways to improve the school calendar.

I find it amazing--and get huffy and defensive--when I am reminded that a significant chunk of the general public still thinks that teachers are working only when there are students in front of them. The first step in changing that perception is not going to be strongly worded blogs, however. It will be banishing the lazy, crazy 10-week summer vacation.

A few years ago, a local reporter interviewed me for a story on what teachers do in summer. I ran through the usual agenda: planning, reading, looking at new music, cleaning the percussion cabinet, taking a class, directing the community band. They sent out a photographer for a photo. We had coffee on my deck--and he persuaded me to stretch out in our backyard hammock with my own summer professional reading. The photo (below) made the front page of the paper. 

And---I got a call from a School Board member, that evening. He was dismayed that I would agree to a photo suggesting that I was "laying around" [sic] all summer, doing nothing. The Board wished another shot had been chosen. Perhaps a glamorous pose of me cleaning out the spit-valves on the school-owned euphoniums?  I declined to give him the brief lecture on Urgent vs. Important that came to mind. But we have a long way to go before teaching is a real profession in the public's mind.

Images: Livingston County Press-Argus; k.l.macke

Merit Badge

 

Happy Fourth.

What truths seem self-evident to educators in the year 2009?  Are all teachers created equal?  Which of their rights are still unalienable? Life, certainly--but who gets to pursue happiness or feel liberated, these days? It's hard to follow your bliss when unemployed, and studying the indicators that currently constitute effective teaching is the antithesis of liberty.

There were fireworks over Jonathon Alter's June 15 Newsweek column in which he declares that the key to fixing education is figuring out who can teach and who can't (and asserts that teachers are born, not made). This good teacher/bad teacher schism should be glaringly obvious and embedded in policy creation, he says, but is currently obscured by educrats who "remain fiercely committed to the status quo."

OK. Raise your hand if you know anyone, anywhere in the land of free, who's fiercely committed to bad public schools. Right. There are educators fiercely committed to improving dreadful schools, of course. Some parents are appropriately loyal to the public schools where their children thrive--and some are determined to preserve a status quo that lets them send their children to exclusive schools with individual attention and rich curriculum, while other people's children get 5 hours of reading and math, plus test prep. I don't think that's the status quo Jonathon Alter is referring to, however.

There will never be equality in outcomes, but we can pursue--relentlessly--equity of opportunity for all American students. Part of that pursuit will be a continuous improvement strategy for the coalition of willing, effective teachers (who are made, and refined in experience, not born).

I'm not writing to shake another finger at Alter, however. I'm here to praise an earlier column, on a "misplaced faith in the meritocracy"--an interesting (and kind of schizophrenic) contrast to his natural-teacher argument. In the June 1 Newsweek, Alter writes warmly of his father, a member of the Greatest Generation--the men and women whose social, economic and workplace values were also refined in experience, often during wartime and while they were very young. He contrasts these solid citizens with the whiz kids who represent the meritocracy in the 21st century, who are:

...shaped not by war, but by college. To win the battle for admissions, fellowships and the other totems of success, they needed not bravery or proven leadership, but test-taking skills and a specific kind of cunning that's come to be confused with "merit." Obamaworld is loaded with these exact types...policy wonks who have experienced little in life but sound unfailingly articulate and confident about their elegant economic models. 

Obama's faith in data and in his ability to reach the "right" policy answer will not be enough for success. That's because every expert opinion is the product of the biases and backgrounds of the experts. He needs some people around him who, in LBJ's words, have "run for sheriff."

Absolutely. Perhaps someone who's been successful on genuine battlefields in education ought to step in, and point out that a true meritocracy in teaching is earned in trial by fire in real schools. And that putting whiz kids, armed with test-taking skills and academic cunning, into classrooms, assuming that their high SAT scores and elegant policy solutions will save the day, is not a viable long-term strategy for cutting out the rotten spots in the status quo. Perhaps we should be pairing whiz-kids newbie teachers with the teacher equivalent of the local sheriff. Maybe we should pair them with educators whose biases and backgrounds resemble the those of the students in non-meritorious communities.

Malcolm Gladwell, who seems to be developing a new peripheral career as an education spokesperson, in his keynote to the National Educational Computing Conference, reiterated his "effort trumps talent"  idea. Ten thousand of hours of practice makes perfect. You can't short-cut the development of a teaching career. Made, not born.

Image: Drexer Shift-Drifter, Flickr Creative Commons

Remembering: A Seniority Moment

It's natural for me to think of my dad on Memorial Day. He was a proud veteran of World War II, a tail gunner in the Army Air Corps, serving in the Pacific theatre for the duration of the war.  He enlisted early in 1942, at age 20, inspiring his younger brother, my Uncle Don, to lie about his age so he could get into combat, too. My dad made it home but Don did not--he was killed in action, in the first Marine landing on Iwo Jima, February 1945. He was nineteen years old.

I don't think my dad ever got over the terrible loss of his brother; the war was a powerful influence on his character and thinking. Most of the life lessons I learned from my dad sprang from perceptions born of his wartime experience: Have confidence--you're as good as anyone else. We live in the best country in the world. Tattoos are OK only if they're memorial crosses. Freedom is worth any cost. Buy American. And--the Palmer House (where he and his unit did their radio training) is the best hotel in Chicago.

When my dad came home, in 1945, he was diagnosed with "battle fatigue."  The discharging physician recommended a job that involved physical labor, independent work without constant supervision, and friendly colleagues. My dad got a job delivering bread. He became a Teamster, and was a loyal union member until he died, in 1980, of brain cancer. Another lesson from my father:  The union keeps us strong, and watches out for the little guy. When I joined the teachers' union, in 1975, nobody was more pleased than my dad.

According to my father, there are people with money and control, and there are people whose assets are loyalty and community. He did not go into battle, or survive having his plane shot down, for the benefit of the rich and powerful. He fought for the rights of ordinary Joes to make a good living for their families, to live in a country where their contributions were honored. The union was there to protect justice for the working man.

I thought about my dad when I read "Is Seniority Best Practice?" in the Stories from School blog. The blogger, Kim, shares her dismay over losing so many fine new teachers with budget cuts in WA, and asks "...with all of the pressure being put on teachers to meet professional standards through reflection and best practices, shouldn’t the teachers who are doing that have some advantage?"

I know what my dad would have said:  Seniority protects loyal workers, when their bosses can replace them with someone cheaper. And in a brutal economy, it's often difficult to determine whether employers are valuing quality practice or merely seeking the lowest price.

Still--in a profession critical to building human capacity, shouldn't exemplary practice be rewarded above all else? In teaching, there must be a balance between excellence and mere longevity. We owe that to our children, as much as we owe fair employment practices to workers.

John Adams  said: I was a warrior so my son could be a farmer--so his son could be a poet.  I would hate to think that my dad got up every morning at 4:00 a.m., lugging heavy bread racks when he was 58 years old, so that I could turn my back on fairness. But don't the blessings of liberty include the right to an affordable, high-quality education for everyone--the 21st century ticket to opportunity? Isn't that also a right worthy of sacrifice?

My father was also right about the Palmer House: it's magnificent.

Arne Duncan and Social Justice

So, I put the phrase "social justice" in the title of this blog for all the prickly folks who have their Google alerts set to snag any blogger with the temerity to write about equity and fairness in American education. I could come up with a dozen more interesting titles for this dispatch from D.C.--but the money quote in this blog is about social justice, a once-righteous phrase that has lately taken a licking and, one hopes, will come out ticking.

I have been in the capitol this week to attend the National Teacher of the Year gala and give the fabulous 2009 State Teachers of the Year a hand in developing their own virtual think tank (a project led by the Center for Teaching Quality, as a part of the Teacher Leaders Network). The 2009 TOYs were on a major high, having been recognized in the White House Rose Garden, and feted by various and sundry Big Names, including the President. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was the kickoff speaker at their (very classy) recognition dinner. And he said some wonderful--perhaps surprising, and even reassuring--things.

The conventional wisdom on the Secretary has been that he's not moving a bold or innovative ed reform agenda so far. Or that he is, in Diane Ravitch's words, Margaret Spellings in drag--a man whose default strategy has been to keep from rocking the accountability boat. Depending in which "reform" crusade you march, you can see Duncan's first hundred days as annoyingly static or encouragingly stable. His big policy pronouncements--i.e., some kids need more time to raise achievement data--have been humdrum or recycled.  There doesn't seem to be a clear or stirring vision of what American schools could look like, or aspire to--only sporadic opinions on charters, the miraculous power of data, and irritating goal-post metaphors.

Probably because he was speaking to a crowd of education insiders and funders, plus fifty-odd extraordinary teachers from across the country, the Secretary's remarks were centered on good teaching as the solution to any number of problems. We've heard that before--in fact, it's become the centerpiece of education policy in both progressive and conservative camps. We all want good teachers--the political conflict begins when we try to define and measure effective teaching, describe the right candidates for the job, and figure out how to maintain consistency, excellence, and enthusiasm while paying them peanuts.

Duncan's remarks at the Teacher of the Year gathering began with some boilerplate along the lines of "I'm in a room full of amazing teachers"--then shifted to our most intractable problem, the ugly gap between our high-achieving children of advantage and those who drop out after facing daily failure. He said "this is the civil rights issue of our age" and "money does matter in education."  He spoke about our "window of opportunity" to turn this terrible situation around. I started to feel flickers of something I haven't felt in several months: hope.

Duncan went on to say that we needed a full-out campaign in teaching to "attract the best and brightest--and to retain the best and brightest for the next twenty-five years." It was the second half of the sentence that floored me. We haven't heard that lately--a recognition that keeping great talent in K-12 schools, long-term, is a worthy goal. In fact, Duncan used the words "retain" and "retention" six times in his speech. "We want to transform the teaching profession," the man said--and it was clear that he didn't mean a revolving door of de-skilled teachers or suggesting that experience is a drawback, rather than an asset.

"We have not served all communities equally," said the Secretary. "This is nothing less than a fight for social justice."

Well, I loved hearing that. The idea of democratic equality--liberty and justice for all-- once a cornerstone of our national commitment to a free public education, has been bruised and bloodied. The last time I put "social justice" in a blog title, I was visited by an enraged crank who posted threatening racist comments. I had to snip them because they were disgusting. The rising tide that lifts all boats, the inherent beauty of pluralistic community?--not so much, these days. We are trying so hard to be "efficient" that we've bypassed "all men are created equal" and have moved on to segregating our students for motivational test-prep assemblies. These assemblies may or may not raise test scores, but they are certainly a sign that our democratic values are royally screwed up.

To hear Arne Duncan call the quest for better public schools a fight for social justice was refreshing. Just a few lines, in a speech that exemplified preaching to the choir--but enough to re-generate a touch of optimism. Thanks, Secretary Duncan.

A Dozen Ways to Save Dough

Times are tough. Schools are slashing budgets. But are they collecting advice and suggestions from their teachers and other staff, or just handing out the pink slips? The twelve suggestions below are not wholly original, but they honor the concept that loyal and committed employees would rather contribute  more--and more effectively--than go down with the financial tsunami, clinging to outmoded habits or contract language. Here's what I'd try, if I were in charge, ideas both simple and complex:

#1) Plant an idea box in every school office to collect suggestions for small-scale scrimps--from students, parents, teachers and especially custodians who are by far the best source of information on waste in school buildings.  New habits, like recycling paper printed on one side only, or collecting half-used spiral notebooks from the trash on locker cleanout day, can save modest amounts. They also serve as a constant reminder to conserve and recycle. Ideas should be shared school-wide.

#2) Use donations and volunteers more effectively. Instead of recruiting volunteer classroom "helpers" (then boring them to distraction at the Xerox machine), or preparing a "wish list" of things the PTO should raise money to purchase, why not ask parents, local businesses and community members what services, skills or goods they'd be interested in sharing, to enrich kids' learning?  I once had a retired piano teacher, newly moved into town to be near her grandchildren, call and ask if she could donate her piano-playing. She accompanied my students at solo and ensemble contest for years, gratis.

#3) Start buying supplies and teaching materials from discount commercial outlets. School supply companies add huge markups for materials, especially pre-packaged (and often junky) instructional "kits." Schools pay for the convenience of working with a catalog dealer willing to take school purchase orders, and accept payment in 90 days. Someone might have to actually go shopping, of course--but virtually everything is cheaper if you're canny and look for sales.

#4) Let experienced, capable teachers accept larger class loads for additional pay. When contract language on class size specifies no class larger than 28, and there are 90 kids enrolled in the 4th grade, with three teachers, you have two choices. You can either hire a new 4th grade teacher, and put 22 or 23 kids in a class, or you can put 28 kids in two classes and pay the third teacher more to deal with 34 kids. Something like this actually happens, fairly often, on a secondary schedule, when a teacher takes an extra section, forgoing their prep period, for an extra 15% or 20% of their salary. In fact, the opportunity to teach an overload is often offered as a perk for teachers with seniority (weakening the student load/class size impact-on-teaching argument). Why not offer overloads based on perceived excellence instead--giving exemplary teachers the chance to work with more students? Remember: every additional teacher also needs a space to teach. Much cheaper to provide extra desks and materials than a new classroom.

#5) Stop buying textbooks on a schedule. In fact, stop buying textbooks, period--or purchase limited classroom sets for selected materials teachers think they can't live without. Start by cutting the district's annual textbook budget in half, then challenging expert teachers to create syllabi full of free-access or low-cost/consumable materials and digital tools, to meet curricular benchmarks--and offer bonuses for teachers who share self-created materials that all teachers in the grade/department agree to use. Begin building resource libraries of common on-line content links, assessments, classroom sets of trade books, video clips and licensed web resources. And never buy another media security system, spending tens of thousands of dollars to "catch" someone stealing a $5 magazine.

#6) Stop centralized ordering in large districts.  Once, while doing a presentation at a school in a nearby urban district, I needed an LCD projector. When the custodian opened the equipment storage room, there were unopened boxes stacked against all four walls--laser disc players, turntables and cassette players, slide projectors, VCRs,  giant video cameras and tripods, 16-mm film projectors, and DuKane machines (filmstrip projectors with sound, highly desirable, c. 1978). Plus unopened boxes of computer monitors and CPUs. The custodian shrugged when I glanced around the room. Each building gets the same stuff, each year, whether they want it or not, he said--keeps them all equal, you know. 

While we're at it, let's stop allowing districts so large that they have to have a warehouse for toilet paper, a centralized sub-hiring system (rather than calling someone who's a known quantity in a building), or more than a single layer between superintendent and teachers. Note to would-be consolidators: Big is nearly always less efficient.

#7) Immediately offer job sharing and flex hours to both elementary and secondary teachers.  Give every teacher who'd be willing to work part-time a shot at proposing a position that fits district needs, goals and budget. Don't put too many pre-conditions on the arrangements--someone might like to teach M/T, sharing with a W/TH/F partner. Someone might like to stay home in the mornings with their toddler, or take a semester-long unpaid sabbatical. One-year agreements only. Sweeten the deal by offering them a full year of seniority for half-time work, or (even better) permission to skip staff meetings.  If a small percentage of a staff was willing to work half-time, it would free up slots for new personnel and save small programs during cutbacks.

#8) Open up school building budgets to the teachers and other building staff. Instead of dividing available monies between grade levels or departments based on "equality" or some archaic needs formula (read: the principal was once fond of this program), then urging complete disposal of the allotted amount, as "proof" that all the money was essential, adopt full transparency. Provide every teacher with on-line access to the building's materials budget, and dispersal patterns over previous years. Every teacher who wants to make a purchase over a certain modest amount would have to defend the expenditure to a committee, and every person in the building would have access to the records. Might foment lots of arguing about what's worthwhile--but those arguments could lead to some productive program weeding  or even consensus about priorities in student learning, rather than protecting legacy budgets or programs.

#9) Hire new staff year-round, including promising interns and subs. Give them a month-to-month subbing contract with an option offer of the first available position, then watch them work, up close, with students and staff. Renegotiate contracts to push hiring windows into the school year, so prospective candidates' interviews can include actual teaching. How does this save money? Turnover in school personnel is enormously costly--hiring procedures, records and reference checks, induction, benefits startups and mentoring costs, plus loss of investment in professional development and training when teachers leave.  Hiring the right teachers to begin with saves money--and it boosts achievement and collegiality.

#10) Think about investing in programs that save money over the long run, like high-quality early-intervention support for individual students (rather than an untrained aide to help with management), site-based family assistance, dropout prevention models or intensive literacy programs. Every child who remains in school, healthy and out of a special education placement represents recaptured funding. This is not a knock on special education programs--there are kids who truly need the services of educators specially trained to deal with specific learning disabilities. But there are also special education referrals related to dysfunctional family structures or inability to read--and students who drop out for the same reasons. It costs two to three times as much to provide special education, and dropouts are expensive not only for schools but also communities.

#11) Pay teachers to do needs assessments with colleagues, look at research and develop their own professional learning experiences, where appropriate, instead of assuming that expensive curriculum experts or inspirational speakers change practice.  Put in-house teachers in charge of interpreting test data, or conducting lesson studies. Build structures into school schedules (rotating lunch discussion groups? early morning coffees? data retreats? intensive summer workshops?) where genuine learning communities can form around emerging issues and interests, rather than mandating PLC formation and membership. Putting teachers in charge of their own learning will also lead to some consistency over time. In professional development, you don't always get what you pay for, or what is promised.  So grow your own.

#12) Re-conceptualize the idea of "full-time teacher." Break role-based work (instructional coaching, student programs and events, discipline, building maintenance, personnel issues, curriculum development, guidance) into chunks and create hybrid leadership roles for professional staff, which include a mix of job responsibilities, always including a connection to the classroom. Stop paying people for collecting graduate credits and remaining in the same job--and start looking for new ways to use the diverse skills and talents of teachers, reducing all-supervisory job classifications and plugging those functions into mixed-role positions, based on aptitude and skills. It's a business model--flattening the hierarchy. But it also provides a progression of work responsibilities and challenges for the world's flattest career: teaching.

Quality Time

 At the moment, I am sitting in a room with 50-some Teachers of the Year, the 2009 state, territorial and Department of Defense winners. There are also a half-dozen National Teachers of the Year, lending some brilliance and gravitas to the group.  If one was conducting a thought experiment—what would the  extreme dream team of teaching look like?—you really couldn’t do better than the people gathered here. There are amazing personal stories of courage and innovation, but also something that doesn’t get much credence in the education press these days: longevity. Last night, the eight folks in my dinner group had, collectively, over two centuries of classroom experience.

So I’m privileged to be hanging with the crème de la crème. A hotel meeting room brimming with teacher quality. They’re being briefed on critical issues and ideas in education. 

Yesterday, the National Council on Teacher Quality released its State Teacher Policy Yearbook, an “in-depth analysis of a critical piece of the teacher quality puzzle: the retention of effective new teachers.” The preface includes this observation:

The state controls virtually every aspect of the teaching profession. The Yearbook analyzes what each state is doing to identify teacher effectiveness, support the retention of valuable, early career teachers, and dismiss those found to be ineffective.

The report then proceeds to grade each state, giving no state an A, one B-, and assigning two-thirds of the states Ds and Fs. Evidently, the NCTQ is not grading on a curve.

Teachers in the room have been e-forwarded local press pieces on the NCTQ report from folks back home, and there have been side conversations about what it means to live in a state where headlines are proclaiming that teacher quality is D-minus or F. To be completely accurate and fair—the NCTQ report merely compares and evaluates states’ policies, based on their perceptions of which policies are (here’s that word again) effective in improving teaching.  Effectiveness, it seems, is something that can be measured. Quality, on the other hand, is nice idea, but harder to define.

This shift to “effective” as the preferred descriptor for good teaching firmly establishes the idea of quantitative measurement as the benchmark for credible identification of skilled practice. And it suggests that policies drive practice—that the unit of analysis ought to be the state, and the leverage point for positive change is in policymaking.

The teachers in this room, at this moment, are talking about their personal passions. They are sharing stories from their classrooms—students who were transformed, curriculum reshaped to meet real kids’ needs, colleagues who need support, good vs. useless professional development. To them, the unit of analysis is “my classroom”—or my school or my district. And the leverage point for change is a teacher and his students, a principal and her school.

The NCTQ report asks: How do we support and retain promising novice teachers? If you asked the Teachers of the Year, the answer would not reflect NCTQ's #1 indicator: investing in expensive statewide data systems, the better to track individual student test data--and the corresponding capacity to attach student numbers to the folks who taught them. Nor would it be in tweaking tenure laws or getting better systems in place to exit (NCTQ’s word) ineffective teachers.

It’s not that the teachers in this room are opposed to accountability—in fact, they speak with passion about reaching out to every single child. Susan Waggener, the Arkansas Teacher of the Year, mentors HS students in danger of dropping out and told me a heart-tearing story about a young man who would not have graduated had he not had lunch with Susan, every day for three years. He had decided not to walk in the graduation ceremonies, because there was no family to attend—or, as Susan says, “hoot and holler for him.” Guess who persuaded him to make that final step and was in the front row, hollerin’? That’s accountability, too, on a human scale.

When it comes to “exiting” ineffective teachers, the excellent teachers here are painfully aware of teachers in their schools and districts who are not doing the job. In the past two days, I have heard their thinking about what to do: reach out, don’t turn a blind eye, share and model—or counsel that person to find another job. Fast. We can hope that states will develop stronger regulations on getting ineffective teachers out of classrooms. But think of the power of being mentored and coached by demonstrated experts—given the best possible chance for success or, if that’s not the reality, some well-timed advice on choosing another line of work. From the people who care most about those students and their learning.

It’s a mark of professionalism to fiercely guard the level of practice—read: effectiveness—in your own bailiwick and care deeply about results. If the goal is lasting improvement—better teaching and learning—state policy mandates and data management systems will go only so far in building a better teaching force. What we need is a new focus on what is useful, creative and effective in our classrooms, including the person in front of the room.

Image: Cindi, Tony, Susan/Rigsbee

Teacher Quality: Highly? Hardly? Who knows?

I am still wiping my eyes after the Inaugural speech, and really need to get my act together for the Virtual Inaugural Ball edition of the Carnival of Education which will be held here, in a Strange Land--tomorrow! I should be virtually vacuuming or something. But first, I need to sing a quick chorus of:

Grazing in the stats is a gas
Baby--can you dig it?

My favorite annual statistical round-up, Education Week's Quality Counts 2009, showed up in my mailbox last week, with six beautiful faces on the cover. I haven't had much time to sit down and--well, graze in the stats, which this year are centered on teaching kids whose native language is not English. But last Thursday, January 15, the two largest dailies in Michigan published pieces with the following headlines:

Michigan Students' Core Classes are Taught by Best (Detroit Free Press, Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki)

and

Schools, Teachers Must Produce Better Results  (Detroit News Editorial page)

The Free Press article noted that Michigan has the second highest percentage of "highly qualified teachers" under No Child Left Behind--99.6%, not too shabby--of 41 states surveyed by Gannett. Only North Dakota, where every teacher is highly qualified, ranked higher. The gap in qualifications between teachers who teach our poorest students and those who teach our most advantaged is less than 1%.

In contrast, the Detroit News editorial says that the Quality Counts data gives Teacher Quality in Michigan a grade of D. We also got a D on K-12 Achievement. The News then goes on to assert that teacher quality is the #1 predictor of student success (which kind of makes the lousy teacher-lousy achievement grades seem like a twinset). This issue is so important, says the News, that even Bill Gates has become interested in teacher quality (now that he's fixed Vista, presumably). And one last thing:

For years in Michigan, political leaders and policymakers in Michigan have avoided even a discussion of teacher quality because of the powerful political influence of the Michigan Education Association and its allies.

Well. I taught in Michigan for 31 years, and remember plenty of statewide policy discussions about teacher quality. And I'm wondering which of the teacher unions' "allies" the News is referring to--MASA, the superintendents' association? MASB, the school board folks? The principals' groups? Indicators of teacher quality have been on the table for decades, and rightfully so.

So--which is it? Are Michigan teachers among the most highly qualified in America? Or are we barely passing? Are we a national leader in getting good teachers into the toughest schools? Or are our weak teachers producing substandard results? Or does it merely depend on which newspaper you read, truth being in the journalistic eye of the beholder?

Yes--I see your hand waving, informed one. I do know how to interpret the statistical claims made in the two pieces. My point is that most people who read the News or the Free Press will not, and will instead base their beliefs about Michigan teachers on what they read in the papers. Do we get a 99.6%, or a D?

It's true that Michigan has a very high rate of certified teachers, teaching in their area of content expertise. It's also true that Michigan is a teacher-exporting state--it's extremely hard for new graduates with a teaching license to find a job here. Michigan schools can be picky, most often, and hire people who have the right stuff, at least on paper. It's also true that Michigan has teacher-friendly HOUSSE (High, objective, uniform state standard of evaluation) regulations--created largely to keep effective teachers (as determined by the people who've seen their work--principals and so forth) in their classrooms when the regulatory deal changed under NCLB.

As for the News' claim that Michigan gets Ds in teacher quality and student achievement--well, they're using year-old, 2008 data (although they neglect to mention that). The 2009 data measures different things. In the 2009 data, Michigan gets a C+ on the "Chance for Success" index. We come in 30th, of the 50 states. We are, in fact, slightly above the national norm for 4th grade reading, and a little below for 8th grade math. We're above the national mean in percentage of young adults enrolled in college or with a completed degree. Guess what drags us down most in this index? Our unemployment rate--a condition that is obvious to absolutely everyone in this economically depressed state.

In terms of standards and accountability, Michigan comes in 8th of 50 states. We're leading the pack in early childhood standards, college readiness, a strong, comprehensive required high school curriculum, and work readiness. We look pretty good in school finance, too--15th--although economic conditions make continuing financial stability doubtful.

Do I think that Michigan can and should improve the quality of its teachers? Absolutely. One thing I'd like to see is an emphasis on performance assessments for teachers--perhaps beginning with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards' Take One model. I want Michigan kids to have teachers with strong content knowledge, and I want student progress measured often, in ways that are meaningful and useful to the people who teach them.

In the meantime, I'll be grazing in the stats, looking for a little reality.

Teach for America vs. National Board Certification

If pressed to name my ultimate professional passion and goal—the thing I was put on earth to do—it might be something like “elevate the ideas and voices of excellent teachers.” Like many people in America, I think we can do a vastly better job of educating all our kids, across the socio-economic spectrum. We’re not going to get far with that goal until we upgrade our teaching force, however—skilled and dedicated boots on the ground.

Last week, I wrote about the experience of snooping through some internal TFA listserv messages about Linda Darling-Hammond and her prospective role in the Obama administration. That conversation was far more intelligent and even-handed than most education writers’ recent TFA-Defense pieces, like this little beauty, wherein Richard Whitmire claims that TFA corps members single-handedly thwarted the Darling-Hammond Secretarial bid, from their current "high-powered" positions.

It is possible to respect and admire both the Teach for America premise and TFA teachers and alums, without believing that TFA teachers somehow have special, magical insights into how to “fix” American schools, whatever that means. Whitmire asserts that there are now 14,400 TFA alums out there making a difference, changing the world, wielding the power and so on—all on the basis of their brief, but well-documented sojourns as barely trained educational missionaries in their own land.

Here’s another way to consider this. There are currently about 74,000 National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in the United States. Their practice has been rigorously and scientifically vetted, with most of them having to go through two or more annual rounds of submitting valid evidence of standards-based teaching and high-level student learning. They have at least four years of experience by the time they’re selected—but most of them have a great deal more. NBCTs voluntarily spend 200-400 hours meticulously developing a portfolio of their work over time, to be adjudicated by assessors who don’t know them, and to whom they cannot make excuses. And then they sit for six on-demand content exams. They work in all kinds of schools, in every state in the union, facing a broad range of circumstances, problems and student needs.

National Board Certification may not be perfect, but it’s as good and reliable a benchmark as exists, right now, for identifying strong and efficacious teaching. Whether they certify or not, National Board candidates overwhelmingly say the process reveals new insights into effective practice. And—this is the foundation for my argument—nobody would pursue National Board Certification unless they were absolutely committed to a long-term career in teaching and education reform.

So—why aren’t we asking National Board Certified Teachers what they think about key policy issues, or who should be Secretary of Education? Shouldn’t we be asking for input from a pool of solid practitioners, who have demonstrated a personal willingness to be publicly accountable? What kind of pundit honors the views of two-year field medics over those of veteran physicians with long records of success and innovative practice? It’s a good question.

It might have something to do with the fact that teaching is a huge occupational cluster that has not developed a compelling national vision of its own professionalism. This is in distinct contrast to teachers’ professional behaviors and responsibilities in other, high-achieving nations. The National Board standards were supposed to help with that, but the general public—and a fair number of high-profile researchers, in fact—don’t understand the conceptual framework, intellectual tools or process of national certification for teachers.

Full disclosure: I worked with nine other NBCTs in developing a comprehensive policy brief analyzing current research on National Board Certification—and we were dismayed by the lack of impact NBCTs have had on policy creation, and how quick analysts were to attach national teacher certification to teacher union issues, once again lumping all three million teachers into the category of skilled technical workers rather than creative professionals. Whitmire positions TFA teachers as “not beholden to the system”—as if all other teachers were, in fact, part of an amorphous, not-well-hidden agreement to accept the status quo.

Then there is the unattractive fact that, according to Dan Lortie in the new edition of his classic Schoolteacher,

 "Teaching has attracted many persons who have undergone the uncertainties and deprivations of lower- and working-class life. It has provided a significant step up the social class ladder for many Americans."

It would be unbecoming for academics, policy-creators and opinion leaders to say, hey—why would we listen to low-rent scholars who went to fourth-tier state universities and don’t aspire to anything more prestigious than teaching? So they don’t. Instead, they suggest that it makes sense to endorse the winners of a best-and-brightest competition to obtain a two-year starter job in education. Many TFA recruits become competent, even highly capable, teachers. I want to hear what they have to say about educational change. But theirs is a limited perspective.

Listening to long-term exemplary teachers would represent a fundamental shift in the way we think about transforming American schools. Power to the teachers, right on.

And—Happy New Year.

Fred Strine, Part Deux

So—a couple of days ago, I tossed off some sharp critiques of one Fred Strine and a guest blog—1984 Now—he wrote for the Core Knowledge Blog. I was pretty hard on Fred, whose thoughts struck me as rhetorical hand grenades lobbed willy-nilly at all educational change. I posted the blog at night, then went to bed, satisfied.  When I checked my e-mail in the morning, I discovered that Fred had found me on Facebook, and was ready to step out into the hall and chat virtually. You can write, but you can’t hide, it seems.

I can now say with some certainty that Fred is a gentleman with a good sense of humor. We’ve had several exchanges, and have called a truce on blog-related sniping. We also have a number of things in common. If I’m doing the math correctly, we’re close to the same age, and have done similar long stretches of hard time in the classroom. We’ve seen lots of pendulum swings—from the Open Classroom to Outcomes-based Education—and have both experienced Trial by Administrator. We’re veteran teachers, at different points in the philosophical spectrum, but colleagues nonetheless. I was most impressed with the evidence that his students saw him as an intellectual and a demanding teacher.

Unlike Fred, I have faith in many progressive (for lack of a more specific word) ideas and techniques about teaching, but only because I have incorporated them into my own practice, with demonstrable success. Still, I am convinced that the best and most effective instruction happens when the teacher is in his/her comfort zone. It’s far better to teach to your strengths—in both content expertise and pedagogical repertoire—than to be required to follow someone else’s conception of what good teaching “should” look like. On that point, Fred and I heartily agree.

Plus—Fred got off a few good maize-and-blue jokes (he’s a Buckeye) and you have to respect that, too.  Thanks for being a good sport, Fred (raising virtual glass). We’ll meet again.