TeachMoore

The Debt of Honor We Owe

I think we would all do well on Teacher Appreciation Day, to listen to this amazing talk by distinguished education researcher, Vanessa Siddle-Walker on the little known role of Black teachers across the South in the civil rights movement, specifically how they provided the groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education.[Note: When you click the link, you will have to do a free registration to play the video].

Her documenting of our predecessors' heroic advocacy on behalf of their students is particularly ironic when we learn (as I wrote about in American Public School Teacher), how many of these teachers suffered professional and personal retaliation for that work in the aftermath of the Brown decision.

The lessons from that period are worthy of our attention today, as they are pertinent in the current struggles over education and social reform.

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National Board Moving the Profession Forward

I’ve just returned from a meeting of the Board of Directors of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and I am thrilled about where this important organization is headed.

I also feel the need to set straight some disparaging rumors about NBPTS and encourage people to look more closely at what is an important front in the education reform battle in this country.

First, it is important to note that while the staff of NBPTS has been reduced due to reorganization, that staff now includes a significant number of NBCTs—including the Chief Operating Officer, Andy Coons. Another is the Director of Standards, Kristin Hamilton.

NBPTS has also matured to the point that the majority of the Board of Directors (15/26) are NBCTs including (besides me): Kimberly Oliver-Burnim (former National Teacher of the Year), and Glenda Ritz, newly elected state superintendent of Indiana. The majority of the NBCTs are practicing classroom teachers.

Under the direction of new president, Ron Thorpe, NBPTS has made some important changes and earned some much-deserved respect both nationally and internationally. Responding to the needs of NBCTs and candidates, the Board has recently (some would say, finally) shifted to electronic submission of the portfolios, upgraded its website, and other moves to make it more accessible and user-friendly for NBCTs and potential candidates.

Another exciting development, again thanks to the prodding of NBCTs, has been to make better use of the vast NBPTS database of accomplished teaching resources (videos and teacher reflections). Thus was born ATLAS [Accomplished Teacher Learning and Schools].

The National Board is getting its first look at the use of ATLAS in a three-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Education through its Investing in Innovation (i3) program.  Working closely with Linda Darling-Hammond and the Stanford-based Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium (edTPA), along with AACTE, the two teacher unions, Deborah Ball’s team at Michigan, and evaluator AIR, ATLAS will be introduced into teacher prep and induction programs.

While ATLAS was originally imagined as a support for teacher preparation and early career development, pilot programs in the states of Washington and Maine are now using the resource to train principals to be better observers and evaluators of teachers. National Board has received other inquiries, too, regarding professional development for teachers faced with implementing the new Common Core State Standards and other content areas. Whenever and wherever this resource is used, it extends the teacher voice into the way the profession works. (Building a True Profession, Part III)

One rumor I would like to smack-down is that the NB certification process is being run by Pearson. That is an insult to my fellow NBCTs, Board members, and staff who have fought hard and long to maintain both the independence and the quality of National Board Certification. Currently, Pearson is contracted to handle the logistics of the certification process. However, the development of the standards, as well as how they are assessed, scored, and reviewed is all under the control of NBPTS. The unfortunate glitch in release of candidate scores a couple of years ago, was a problem with Pearson’s logistics, but the scores were never lost (just regretfully delayed). National Board Certification was and remains a process created and run by teachers, for teachers.

Most important, NBPTS stands poised to help bring the teaching profession to one of its most elusive, yet essential goals: The development of a true profession. If we, educators, want to be treated like professionals, we have to be a profession. That means setting and maintaining standards for who enters, stays, and excels in this profession. It means holding ourselves and each other accountable for standards and ethics we have developed. To paraphrase Thorpe:

Governments do not create professions. Neither do businesses nor foundations. By definition, professions are created by those in the profession. If teaching is going to claim its rightful state as a true profession, then teachers and other practitioners must make sure [our]voice guides the work. That voice should exert itself through the standards of accomplished practice and the path that all teachers travel to become accomplished. Both will put teachers in a position to define the key terms of [our]work and will create the habits of mind that need to become the profession’s norm. ]We] teachers must realize, however, that no one will do this for [us]. [We] either do it for [ourselves],or through [our]silence agree to comply with the vision others have for [us].

Accomplished Teaching = Student Learning, Part 1

One of the best kept secrets in education might be the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

(Open Disclosure: I am an NBCT and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Board).

Since 1987, the Board has worked “to advance student learning and achievement by establishing the definitive standards and systems for certifying accomplished educators….”(Mission Statement, NBPTS).

While the rancorous and often misinformed media and political debate over education reform has grabbed most of the air, the National Board has quietly and methodically done what no one else has: Defined what good teaching is and provided a consistent means to identify those who know how to do it.

Most important of all, those Standards have been developed by teachers for teachers.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York funded the establishment of NBPTS following the recommendations of the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy’s Task Force on Teaching as a Profession.

The task force’s final report — A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century — released on May 15, 1986, called for the creation of a board to “define what teachers should know and be able to do” and “support the creation of rigorous, valid assessments to see that certified teachers do meet those standards.” (History)

The National Board now has standards for 25 areas of education from early childhood through high school, in almost every subject area. These standards were developed and validated by committees of master teachers, along with representatives of subject area organizations and other education experts. The standards also go through a regular cycle of reviewing and updating, also led by teachers.

Under pressure to improve the quality of their graduates, many of the nation’s teacher education programs now use National Board standards as part of their curriculum; some of those programs are including NBCTs [a teacher who has earned National Board Certification] as full or part-time instructors.

Similarly, as states and districts scramble to develop new more rigorous teacher evaluation systems, some have turned to National Board standards and teachers for guidance. It is not enough to have a generic checklist or to do a superficial classroom walk through (“Hmm, nice bulletin boards”). Nor does just collecting student achievement data reveal who is or is not a great teacher.

In honor of the National Board’s 25^th anniversary, I’ll be sharing a series on the standards and the teachers who write them. 

Learning Unchained

For too long, learning at school has been tied (figuratively and literally) to the old bell schedule and the Carnegie unit. 50 minutes to one hour per subject per day. Oh, then we got really creative and came up with the block schedule: 90 minutes to 2 hours per subject on alternate days. 

Slowly, we are realizing that learning and time do not have to be conjoined. It is not only possible, but possibly much better for students to learn at varying paces, based on the subject matter, availability of resources, their particular learning strengths, interests, and weaknesses--moving toward common goals, but arriving from different directions. 

If even the folks who gave us the Carnegie unit (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancment of Teaching) are rethinking its value, surely the rest of us can at least discuss the wonderful possibilities. To help move that discussion along, I recommend a recent piece by Shawn Cornally, "Why It's Time to Eliminate Class Schedules." 

His critical thinking about scheduling parallels some questions I've been musing for while about why we cling to dividing students into grade levels. 

Anybody know of U.S. schools that have replaced these models with more fluid ones? If so, what has (or might be) the reponse of parents and students? Do these types of changes make more or less sense in an age where learning is more blended with experiences an on platforms outside the brick-and-mortar school? 

Making Teaching a True Profession

Not only does a true professional certification process for teachers make sense, it is long overdue.

For too long, we have tolerated a hodge-podge of teacher licensing and certification requirements across states and within states. In some places, a potential teacher must have a master’s degree in education before applying for a license. In other places, a person needs only a bachelor’s degree (in any subject) and as little as three weeks of summer boot camp to be placed in full charge of students.

The call by the AFT task force is just the latest in a growing consensus among educators of the need to make teaching a true profession. I have been fortunate to be part of many of these studies and discussions. For example, in November 2010, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) issued the report of a blue-ribbon commission representing teachers, parents, higher education, state and local school administrators, researchers, and policymakers. The Commission called for more rigorous teacher candidate selection and preparation noting, “The nation needs an entire system of excellent programs, not a cottage industry of path-breaking initiatives.”   The 2012 book,  The American Public School Teacher, in which a broad range of education commentators reflect on 50 years of teacher survey data, highlights the growing support among teachers for ideas such as performance pay and peer evaluation.

It is also worth noting that the membership and leadership of the much-maligned teacher unions have been at the forefront of these calls. Earlier this year, NEA released the report of a similar task force (Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching) advocating for “collective accountability and collaborative autonomy.”  Specifically, the 21-teacher Commission argued for the creation of national teacher standards and for “one national umbrella group” that would “lead to preparation, licensure, and certification processes that are consistent, efficient, and cost effective.”  At the other end of the career spectrum, we teachers on that Commission also recognized the need for “an evidence-based, peer review teacher evaluation system.”  Tying teacher evaluation to the Common Core State Standards specifically, may be premature and unwise, given that the CCSS are just the most recent in a series of standards, and these have yet to be implemented and proven in the field.

In our 2011 book, Teaching 2030, members of the Teacher Leader Network predicted many of the conditions and changes now being discussed around the teaching profession. As co-author Cindi Rigsbee correctly noted, "“We must expect the respect for teaching afforded to all other jobs.  That is a goal that can only be reached once the world begins to look at teaching as a different profession that it was when our great-grandmothers taught school.”

The creation of a true teaching profession will require cooperation among the many education stakeholders, but it is clearly possible and necessary for our children’s sake.  Moreover, Americans have shown consistently they are willing to pay for quality education for our children. Raising the overall quality and status of the teaching profession, lays the necessary moral and economic groundwork for more appropriate professional compensation.  

Cross-posted at National Journal.com

Never Forget...

History matters.

Venerable education reporter, John Merrow, has shared information about a very important project here in Mississippi that will not only keep alive an important part of our collective past, but strengthen our future.

Tougaloo College, a historically Black college near the state capitol, is trying to establish an endowed Mississippi Civil Rights Movement Chair. Here's a slice from John's piece at Taking Note:

Tougaloo is a small predominantly black college located at the edge of Jackson, MS. During the civil rights movement, most black colleges took a “hands off” role, especially those under state control but many private schools as well. Not Tougaloo. Even at the risk of its survival, Tougaloo backed its students when they got arrested, provided space for groups to meet, invited speakers whom white Mississippi deemed controversial if not subversive, and retained and promoted faculty members who campaigned for an end to racial segregation. At the time, these were very courageous, dangerous, and radical actions....

Now, some private individuals with the support of the college have undertaken a campaign to endow a “Mississippi Civil Rights Movement Chair” at Tougaloo. In Ladner’s words, “It will be the College’s first endowed chair and the first such chair in Mississippi devoted to the Civil Rights Movement.” She goes on to say, “Tougaloo paid a heavy price for its involvement. It was dubbed “Cancer College” by whites, and the Mississippi State Legislature attempted to revoke its charter.” To this day, Tougaloo is not able to draw on the economic elite of Mississippi for the kind of support that many other colleges get from their areas and states. That’s one reason this campaign is so important.

I hope you take time to read the entire piece, and to help Tougaloo with this worthy project.

 

 

Dream (Still) Deferred

As a companion to the previous post (Unfinished Business), I'm re-posting this piece from April 2008. Think about them together.

The observance of Dr. King's death always brings mixed emotions in our home. We live two hours directly south of Memphis, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta which is where my husband grew up. He was one of the thousands of lesser known civil rights activists who answered Dr. King's call in their local, Southern communities, and at great personal cost. My husband cannot walk through the Lorraine Motel, which is now the National Civil Rights Museum. Our attempt to visit it with our children was the first time they'd ever seen him visibly shake with anger and cry.

It wasn't so much the events of the past that agitated him as it was the disappointments of the present, or as he put it: "I went through all of that for what?"  It is hard not to be cynical. On the one hand, we now have Black people in almost every political position, but too many of them are acting corruptly and irresponsibly. Our voting rights, bought in blood, often seemed to have purchased us dull figurines rather than shining champions. Meanwhile around us, our communities disintegrate, torn apart by drugs, crime, and greed. However, the battles have been too hard fought, the scars too deep, the casualties too dear, and the outcomes too crucial for us who remain to just leave things as they are. 

My husband is particularly distressed by what he sees in our schools. The passionate pursuit of education has been a trademark of the African American community since we were brought here. It is painful today to see so many of our children so disinterested in education, so disrespectful of educators and other elders, and so disconnected from the lessons of Dr. King.

Along with ministering to young people through our church and non-profit organization, my husband has worked with our local school system as a team chaplain, assistant coach, substitute teacher, computer lab facilitator, and de facto counselor for many years. One reason he maintains a presence in the schools is to provide the children with some role model, as in many of our schools today there are few or no black males. A both deliberate and unforeseen consequence of school desegregation across the South was the dismissal of many Black teachers, and particularly Black principals. According to my husband, integration for its own sake was never the goal. The fight was for freedom, access, equality: the right to not have doors slammed in our faces, the right to not have to get up or go around back. Integration was a means to secure opportunities for us, and especially, for our children.

Whatever one may think of Barack Obama as a candidate, it is refreshing to see the hopefulness and energy especially among our young people that his candidacy has spawned. Surely, we can find ways to regenerate among them the passion for education in the service of family and community that fueled a historic movement.

The dream lives.

Orignially Published 04/05/08 at TeachMoore

Unfinished Business: Equal Education

The school district in my town of Cleveland, Mississippi is drawing some unfortunate notoriety. The lead of our local newspaper summed it up: 

On Friday the U.S. Department of Justice filed its response to arguments made by the Cleveland School District in the school desegregation case that has been ongoing for nearly 50 years.

Read more: The Bolivar Commercial - DOJ blasts school district's response 

The back-and-forth battle has dragged on for decades, until a reinvigorated DOJ began to push the case towards resolution. Now the matter will go back to federal court on Dec. 11th.

The legal issue is the integration of the all-black high school and middle school. The district wants to encourage white attendance at the schools by offering some magnet courses or programs. For many years, students have been bussed between the two high schools to attend one or two classes at the other building. While black students do attend both of the predominantly white schools, no white students are enrolled in the black schools. Cleveland is a town that only has two high schools (one with approximately 550 students, the other around 360) and two middle schools (one with about 360 students, the other with fewer than 200)--all of which are within walking distance of one other.  

The moral issue is that there are long-standing disparities in the allocation of resources among the schools.This in a town where the median income is just over $31,000. Many black parents and community leaders have argued for years that the best way to solve the problem would be to simply build one new high school (both buildings are old) and merge the two junior highs. However, that idea has met with heels-dug-in resistance, since it would almost certainly result in the mass exodus of white students from the public system. Cleveland is the only town in the Delta that still has any significant number of white students in its public schools; in other towns, they have long ago moved to the private academies or to homeschooling.

Meanwhile, our Republican controlled state-legislature voted to merge the other five predominantly Black public school districts in the county around us into two, without any input from the citizens or school boards in those towns, and over the objections of their elected representatives. Among the districts being forced to merge is historic Mound Bayou, Mississippi, (I''ve written about this before) a town established by former slaves. The forced mergers, touted as cost-saving measures, are an interesting government usurpation of local school board authority given how much the Republicans usually rail against such intrusions. Yet, when the Federal government presses Cleveland on its equity issue that's criticized as government overreach. 

That not just Mississippi, but schools systems across the U.S. are still wrestling with whether and how to provide quality education to every American child almost a generation after Brown v. Board Education is a sad legacy, but reflective of just how deep and complex these questions really are and how far we still have to go.

 

 

Pedro Noguera on Opportunity to Learn

It's been a long hiatus from my blogging life; however, even though I haven't been writing much, I have been paying attention.

One thing I watched (and you should too if you missed it) was the much needed dialogue between MSNBC host, Melissa Harris-Perry and Pedro Noguera that was part of the Education Nation events, on creating opportunities for all students to learn.

The first segment of the discussion, Noguera talks about how the children of the poor must contend with the accumulating affects of poverty on their family AND of attending deliberately under-resourced schools. 

In the follow-up segment, Noguera and a panel explore the real effects of the current test-based school reforms. Harris-Perry asks the questions that are too often left out of our public conversations about public education. I do wish that she had included more classroom teachers on that particular panel (did have the husband of a teacher), but the information in those segments includes some very inconvenient truths that will not just go away. 

Make Education a Right

This is for all my teacher colleagues who keep wanting to ignore politics and wish that it had nothing to do with education.

The National School Boards Association (NSBA) just reported on the decision of the Rhode Island Supreme Court in a case that challenged inequities in funding a public schools across the tiny state; a common issue in many, if not most states. The Court decided against the plaintiffs, and part of their reasoning was this:

...the court rejected the plaintiffs’ claims that the funding formula violated their substantive due process and equal protection rights under the state constitution because there is no fundamental right to an education. [Emphasis added]

Let that sink in for a minute.  Education is not a fundamental right of every American child?

Well, not in Rhode Island. What about Mississippi? New York? California? Might want to check your state constitutions.

The plaintiffs in this case argued that the state funding formula for schools resulted in many children receiving an inferior education. The Court's interpretation was this:

The court rejected Plaintiffs’ argument that their right to education has been compromised because of their districts’ diminished financial ability. The court stated that “[d]isparities in per student expenditure resulting from the application of the formula, while very unfortunate, are not unconstitutional. It is for the legislature to determine what that minimum constitutionally required education foundation to be.”

The report continues:

...the court stated that the Education Clause [of the state] does not confer a fundamental or constitutional right to education, nor does it guarantee an “equal, adequate, and meaningful education.” Also, the court stated it has consistently held that the education clause “vests in the General Assembly sole responsibility in the field of education,”

I need some legal minds to weigh in on this, and what it means for the larger national discussion of public education, but I find this disturbing. It implies that education is a legislated program that can be operated, maintained, or eliminated at the whim of those legislatures.

Why isn't education a fundamental right under every state constitution and under the U.S. Constitution? That question has some heavy historical and political weight, and the answer says something ugly about us as a nation. So....every American has the right to a weapon, up to and including assault weapons, but not the right to become an educated citizen?