The Tempered Radical

How Testing Will Change What I Teach Next Year

Regular Radical Readers know that high stakes testing is in the forefront of my mind right now.  I guess that's just what happens when you live and work in a nation hellbent on tying teacher evaluation to the scores that students produce on multiple choice exams.

The testing pressure is worse than usual for me this year simply because in response to President Obama's Race to the Top initiative, North Carolina has introduced new "Measures of Student Learning" exams for science. 

That means a "value-added" score based on nothing other than results my students generate on a late-May exam will be tied directly to my evaluation -- and, if our Republican-led legislature has its way, will eventually be the SOLE factor in determining whether or not I'm placed on a terminating contract.

Outside of design flaws that will make this "measure of student learning" nearly impossible for the 12-year olds that I teach to actually pass -- it is primarily composed of 35 isolated knowledge-driven questions that cover topics from a 23-page curriculum guide that we started learning in July -- I'm worried for one main reason:

I don't think I'll get through our entire curriculum before the test.

Part of the blame for failing to get through the curriculum before the test rests with the curriculum designers, who really did jam the proverbial kitchen sink into the sixth grade pacing guide. 

Need proof?  Then check out this PARTIAL list of "essential" vocabulary words and tell me whether or not you think it's possible for teachers to engage sixth graders in a meaningful exploration of this content in one year:

Conduction, Convection, Radiation, Heat Transfer, Mediums, Frequency, Amplitude, Pitch, Wavelength, Longitudinal Waves, Transverse Waves, Trough, Crest, Rarefaction, Compression, Electromagnetic Energy, Disturbances.

Melting Point, Boiling Point, Solubility, Solute, Solvent, Saturation, Phase Changes.

Density, Igneous, Sedimentary, Metamorphic, Oceanic Crust, Continental Crust, Plate Tectonics, Alfred Wegener, Convergent Boundaries, Divergent Boundaries, Transform Boundaries, Primary Waves, Secondary Waves, Surface Waves, Parent Rock, Contour Plowing.

Eclipses, Phases of the Moon, Tidal Patterns, Hubble Telescope, International Space Station, Fermi-Gamma-Ray Telescope, Chandra X-Ray Observatory, Gravitational Force.

And part of the blame for failing to get through the curriculum before the test rests with the calendar writers, who have my students taking our end of grade exam almost THREE FULL WEEKS before our school year actually ends. 

If I had another three weeks to work with my students, I'd get through the curriculum without any trouble.

But most of the blame for failing to get through the entire curriculum before the test rests with me.  After all, I spent a TON of class periods covering things that AREN'T going to be tested.

Here's what we were "wasting our time" on:

Sustained Silent Reading:  My interdisciplinary team made the decision long ago to do silent reading once a week in every classroom.  Our thinking was that students need daily time to read silently AND need to see EVERY teacher as a reader.

We're PRETTY sure that this time is well spent. Our team is full of passionate readers this year who love talking about books with us. 

A colleague stopped by the library the other day while we were reading and asked how we got our kids to be so quiet during SSR time.  My answer: Give kids chances to read every single day.

Time "Wasted":  30 minutes per week, or two class periods per month.  16 total class periods.

#measureTHATlearning

Teaching the Nonfiction Reading Skills in the Common Core Curriculum:  Science teachers in North Carolina have been buried in training around the literacy standards for social studies, science and the technical subjects in the Common Core curriculum this year. 

In fact, it was the PRIMARY professional development that I received -- and the expectation was that science teachers would integrate nonfiction reading lessons into their curriculum.

Convinced that teaching students the skills necessary for being literate consumers of scientific text and literate participants in scientific conversations, my learning team jumped into that instruction with two feet.  Check out the lessons that we developed. 

Not bad, huh?

Here's the problem:  NONE of those skills will be tested on the fact-driven "measures of student learning" exams that my kids have to take.  Of course, the language arts teacher on our team is probably jazzed that I spent so much time teaching nonfiction  skills like identifying bias and evaluating evidence, but it ain't going to help me.

Time "Wasted":  4 two-day lessons.  A total of 8 class periods.

#measureTHATlearning

Introducing Information Technology Standards:  Here in North Carolina, there is a required Information Technology curriculum that has to be delivered by core area teachers. 

That curriculum is actually pretty solid -- it addresses essential themes like teaching students to manage and evaluate information in online spaces and encouraging kids to use digital tools to publish for wider audiences.

On my interdisciplinary team, most of those lessons happen in my classroom simply because I'm comfortable with introducing students to digital tools and spaces.  Wrote a book about it, even.

To address those standards, I had my students work in groups to use Diigo to create a shared collection of resources connected to the New York City Soda Ban -- a high-interest topic that played a role in our nonfiction reading work.  Check out the lesson here.

We also talked about the characteristics of collaborative dialogue -- and then practiced those skills by engaging in a VoiceThread conversation about the New York City Soda Ban.  You can see the conversation here and explore the lessons here.

Again -- not bad stuff, huh? 

But nothing in these lessons is going to be tested either -- even though it IS a part of the required curriculum that students are supposed to be introduced to.

Time "Wasted":  8 class periods.

#measureTHATlearning

Spending Two-Weeks Introducing the Scientific Method with an Actual Lab: Probably the worst decision that I made this year was deciding to start the year by introducing the scientific method with a lab activity. 

We spent the first few weeks using different liquids and materials to explore density -- the ONE theme that appears again and again in the content of our curriculum.

It was a pretty awesome experience for the  kids.

They know little about density when they come to sixth grade, so watching liquids separate out even after they are mixed and shaken vigorously raises a TON of wonder questions in their minds -- and because density appears so frequently in our curriculum, I've been able to use that experience as a starting point for a thousand conversations in our study of the required curriculum.

What I loved the most, though, was watching groups ask their own density-related extension questions -- and then try to figure out how they could (1). develop a lab to test their hypothesis and (2). communicate their findings with others.  Those are fundamental scientific behaviors, right?

Unfortunately, they're not TESTED scientific behaviors.

Time "Wasted":  8 class periods.

#measureTHATlearning

Allowing Students to Ask and Answer their Own Wonder Questions:  One of my favorite goals in the Common Core writing standards for science and social studies argues that students should be able to "conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration."

That's AWESOME, isn't it? 

We are LITERALLY saying that students should be spending regular time in schools asking and then researching answers for their OWN questions.

To tackle this goal, I started the year by having my kids spend 5-10 minutes at the end of each class period recording interesting questions connected to the content that we were studying. 

Then, at the end of the quarter, students had an entire class period to study one of the questions that they had generated during the quarter.

That practice, sadly, was pushed aside at the beginning of the second semester when I realized that we were going to run out of time before testing season started. 

To ensure that my kids were prepared to ANSWER questions, I stopped having them ASK questions -- but not before we'd "wasted" another chunk of valuable instructional minutes.

Time "Wasted":  5-10 minutes per day, or two class periods per month for one semester.  8 total class periods.

#measureTHATlearning

If my math is right, that means I spent 48 class periods on things that AREN'T going to be tested.  That WAS a foolish decision, right?

I should have known better than to spend so much time encouraging reading, introducing the skills necessary to tackle nonfiction text, teaching about the role that technology can play in making learning easier, developing the core behaviors of scientists, and allowing my kids to ask and answer their own questions.

#measureTHATlearning

Never mind the fact that EVERY one of those skills is a part of one of the three different required curricula that I'm supposed to teach or that EVERY one of those skills are skills that sophisticated, responsible learners must master in order to be "college and career ready."

The only thing that matters right now is that NONE of those skills will show up on our "measures of student learning" exam, so spending time on them was a decision that I'll pay for when my students struggle to answer questions about Contour Plowing, Pangaea, Geotropism,  the Chandra X-Ray Observatory or the Fermi-Gamma Ray Telescope in a few weeks.

Unless I get lucky and the 35 multiple choice questions chosen by test writers all cover the content that I DID get through, the results could be disastrous:  My "value-added score" will be low, "needs-improvement" will be slapped next to my name, and I'll be placed on a terminating contract all in the name of "holding teachers accountable."

I won't make the same mistake twice, y'all.  

Science is going to look a lot different in my room next year.  Whether I like it or not, the content that is tested will get WAY more attention than the content that isn't -- and I'm pretty sure that's NOT a good thing.

#sheesh

_______________________________

Related Radical Reads:

 The Monster You've Created

Stuffing Kids with Content

What DO We Want Kids to Know and Be Able to Do

 

What Do You Want From Me?

Blogger's Note: I read a John T. Spencer bit a few weeks back that touched a bunch of emotions.  That's led to a bit of unvarnished truth that I wanted to process here in a post that is decidedly light on the smiles and candycorn.  Hope that doesn't shake you. 

___________________________

One of the most painful moments in my teaching career happened several years back when I was working in a language arts classroom.

The results of our state's standardized tests had just come back and I was called into my assistant principal's office to review my scores.  "What are we going to do about this, Bill?" he said, passing a paper covered with red ink across the desk.  "You've got the lowest scores on the hallway again."

I wasn't mad at the principal.  In fact, I considered him a friend and he was only doing his job.  But in that moment, I was definitely defeated by a system that defined the value that I add in such a narrow way.

I lost it.  Literally started to cry in front of him.  I was embarrassed and brokenhearted all at the same time.  I felt like a failure and a fool all wrapped into one.

I was ashamed -- both of my results and my emotions:

Download: Slide_TheProblemwithShame

 

In that moment, I couldn't think rationally.  I couldn't remind myself that the end of grade exams given in our state only measured 2 out of 6 objectives in the curriculum.  I couldn't remind myself that my students excelled at untestable skills like engaging in collaborative dialogue or building new knowledge together.

I wasn't thinking about the kids who left my room inspired each year -- motivated to study new topics or to tackle new tasks or to try new things that they'd never considered trying before.  The power of those connections were forgotten; blurred by the stream of red ink that my state's legislators intended to use as an indicator of the sum total of the contributions that I make in the lives of my kids and my community.

I stormed out of the principal's office, grabbed my things and headed home.

On the way out the door, a parent chased me down in the parking lot.  "Mr. Ferriter.  MR. FERRITER.  Can I talk to you for a minute?" she said.

"I just wanted you to know how thankful I am for you.  My son loves you.  He comes home every day so excited about school -- and your lessons about life are sinking in.  He's proud of himself and he's determined and he told me that you talk about those things in class all the time.

"He means everything to me -- and sending him away for 8 hours a day is hard.  But knowing he's with you makes it easier.  I just thought you needed to know how grateful I am for you."

Her words mattered.  They were a reminder that I wasn't completely useless -- that some people really DO care about something other than end of grade test scores.

The entire experience has left me bitter and angry, though. I haven't let it go -- and I definitely haven't recovered.  Years later, I catch myself thinking back on that day.  

Most of the time, I wonder just what people want from me.  Am I supposed to inspire and encourage -- or am I supposed to grind a collection of random facts into twelve-year old minds in a march to the end of grade test?

Am I accomplished when my kids can spit back facts on low level multiple choice exams, or am I accomplished when my kids care about themselves and each other and their communities?  Can I make a difference even if I have the lowest test scores on the hallway?

And to be honest, my bitterness and anger only grows stronger in a Race to the Top world where even progressive politicians seem determined to use test scores to reward and punish teachers while simultaneously stripping away our resources and publicly celebrating their quest to destroy our profession.

Some days, fighting such a dysfunctional, confused system seems incredibly pointless, y'all.  Things aren't getting better.  They're far worse than they've ever been -- and I don't see any light at the end of the professional tunnel.

#whybother

_____________________

Related Radical Reads:

The Monster You've Created

My Work Has Been Gutted

Breaking Public Education to Pieces

Value-Added Teacher Evaluation Models Fail Kids and Communities

Anyone that has spent any length of time following the Radical knows that the test-happy culture that we're swimming in rubs me the wrong way.  It's simultaneously stripping the joy out of learning and driving good teachers out of the classroom all in a thinly-veiled attempt to declare war on teachers.

What frustrates me the most about today's accountability culture has always been the suggestion that measuring student performance on content-driven multiple choice tests given once per year is the best way to measure the "value that teachers add" to their kids, their schools and their communities. 

That's ALWAYS sat wrong with me -- and it should sit wrong with YOU too.  

Teachers do SO much more for our kids than deliver content. We coach and we encourage and we inspire.  We are cheerleaders.  Kids take risks while they are in our classes that they may never have even considered had it not been for the fact that they knew we cared.

But in a world where tests are created with the sole intention of ranking and sorting our teachers, those intangibles -- those small acts of kindness and care that are often the things that keep kids moving forward -- are dismissed, pushed aside by politicians who argue that the only value that matters rests in the results that we can measure with multiple choice exams.

My rants against testing have always felt half-baked to me, though, because I could never back up my assertions with a healthy dose of research -- the Turkish Delight of the #edpolicy kingdom.

Until now, that is. 

You see, a new study from Kirabo Jackson of Northwestern University FINALLY supports my hunch that our single-minded determination to assess and evaluate the cognitive impacts that teachers have on students is flawed policy at best -- and failing our children at worst. 

What Jackson -- who was interested in determining the impact that cognitive and non-cognitive behaviors have on the future success of students -- discovered should force every parent, politician and policymaker who cares about schools to rethink the role that testing plays in our buildings. 

First, he discovered that non-cognitive skills and abilities like motivation, determination, and self-restraint are a better predictor of future success -- particularly for struggling students -- than the cognitive skills measured by standardized tests.

Perhaps more importantly, he discovered that SOME teachers are good at increasing the cognitive skills of their students and OTHER teachers are good at increasing the non-cognitive skills of their students, but MOST teachers AREN'T good at increasing BOTH cognitive and non-cognitive skills.

This has HUGE implications, doesn't it? 

If Jackson's research and methodology is sound, current educational policies -- which prioritize test scores when measuring a teacher's value -- are incentivizing the WRONG behaviors. 

Our students are the ultimate losers in environments that encourage teachers to push non-cognitive skills and abilities -- skills and abilities that Jackson argues are actually BETTER indicators of future success -- to the sidelines in response to the cognitive-first realities they are working in.

What politicians who are pushing the testing culture in our schools should REALLY worry about, though, is that educational policies designed to reward teachers for producing results on standardized tests are actually wasting taxpayer cash. 

As Jackson explains:

"Teacher effects on test scores and teacher effects on non-cognitive ability are weakly correlated such that many teachers in the top of test score value-added distribution will also be among the bottom of teachers at improving non-cognitive skills.

This means that a large share of teachers thought to be highly effective based on test score performance will be no better than the average teacher at improving college-going or wages."

And:

"Because variability in outcomes associated with individual teachers that is unexplained by test scores is not just noise, but is systematically associated with their ability to improve typically unmeasured non-cognitive skills, classifying teachers based on their test score value added will likely lead to large shares of excellent teachers being deemed poor and vice versa."

Just stew in that for a minute, will you?

We are literally spending MILLIONS of dollars  -- not to mention MILLIONS of instructional hours -- every year measuring the wrong skills and rewarding the wrong teachers!  Sure, mastering the content covered in the K12 curricula matters, but according to Jackson, mastering non-cognitive skills -- skills that we currently do nothing to assess -- matters more.

No joke, y'all:  It's time that you start asking your policymakers some difficult questions about their positions on value-added measures of teacher performance.

If Jackson is right, those policies -- which have rapidly become the norm instead of the exception in most states in America -- are wasting our time AND our money.

____________________________

Related Radical Reads:

Nate Silver on Using Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers

Three Things Parents and Policymakers Need to Know about Merit Pay in Education

What Economists Don't Understand about Educators

 

Sheriff Joe and His Segal-Posses

I've intentionally refrained from writing about the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary here on the Radical. Stories about teachers sharing their final moments cradling dying children are just too heartbreaking to really wrap my head around. 

But as the "arm-'em-all" attitudes continue to break loose in legislatures around the country, I'm finding it harder and harder to stay silent. 

And like so many other moments in the past two decades, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona -- the same guy that dressed convicts in pink underpants, forced them to live in tent cities in the middle of the desert and bragged about feeding them green bologna -- has elevated the lunacy to new levels.

You see, good ol' Joe is using Steven Segal -- yes THAT Steven Segal --  to train "armed posses" to protect Phoenix area schools:

"The self-proclaimed "America's Toughest Sheriff" joined forces this weekend with action movie star Steven Seagal to train volunteer armed posse members to defend Phoenix-area schools against gunmen.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced the controversial plan in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting that left 27 people dead, including the gunman and 20 first-graders.

The exercise took place Saturday at a closed school site in suburban Fountain Hills, outside Phoenix, where sheriff's SWAT members acted as shooters and teenagers played the part of students during mock scenarios involving up to three gunmen.

Makes you feel safer already, doesn't it? 

After all, what could POSSIBLY go wrong with a bunch of armed volunteers who trained with a washed-up movie star hanging around our buildings?

I think what bugs me the most about the trend in legislatures to find enough money to arm everyone even remotely connected to schools is that we've simultaneously spent the past two decades stripping our buildings of nurses, couselors, psychologists and social workers.

As Regan Mensch Brown explains in a recent letter to our local newspaper:

A nurse and counselor could have a far greater and more positive impact on children’s lives, identifying physical, mental and emotional problems that, if dealt with early in childhood, could change the future for the better of so many children.

These healthier children would become more successful adults, with less chance of mental and emotional illness – the real root of our mass shooting.

Regan is right, y'all: The simple truth is that we've GOT to protect our students -- but "protecting students" is going to depend on more than just our willingness to flood schools with pistol-toting practitioners or police officers. 

"Protecting students" means making just as many concerted efforts to address the social, mental and emotional health of both the kids in our classrooms and the people living in our communities.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/08/2664812/regan-mensch-brown-nurses-not.html#storylink=cp

Nate Silver on Using Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers [SLIDE]

One of the hottest statistical minds in the world right now is Nate Silver, the mind behind the FiveThirtyEight blog which is dedicated to helping readers to "cut through the clutter of this data-rich world." 

Silver rose to prominence initially by using algorithms to correctly predict the winner of 49 out of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election.  He's gone on to become one of the most respected voices on the use of data to drive decisions.

Yesterday, Silver participated in an online IAmA Blogger Q+A session over at Reddit -- and the first question that he was asked was whether or not he believed that using standardized test scores to determine a teacher's value was a responsible decision.

Silver's response was worth sharing with every parent and educational policymaker you know:

 

Download Slide_SilveronTesting

 

Now to be fair, Silver DOES say that he'd need to give the topic a much longer look before he'd be able to make any real decisions on using test scores to evaluate teachers. 

But his initial hunch that using test scores as the most important measure of a teacher's effectiveness is an example of using data badly aligns nicely with the thinking of other really bright minds working BEYOND education -- including Bill Gates (see here and here), Dan Pink (see here) and Chip and Dan Heath (see here).

And as Liz Dwyer points out on the Good Education blog, Silver's hunch on testing as a tool for holding teachers accountable also aligns nicely with REAMS of studies already completed by everyone from The National Research Council and the president of Math for America to respected senior scholars like Richard Rothstein.

Finally, Silver's initial hunch ALSO aligns nicely with the opinions of the very companies that make the standardized tests that are strangling education in our country, who have noted time-and-again that their products were never designed to be used to draw conclusions about individual teachers. 

So if there is a broad consensus starting to form that using test scores to evaluate teachers is a bad idea, then why do policymakers -- including President Obama and his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan -- keep pushing for these failed policies?

That's a question that every person you vote for should be forced to answer.

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Original Image Credit: American statistician Nate Silver at SXSW in Austin, Texas USA on March 15, 2009 by Randy Stewart -- Licensed Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike on January 10, 2012

Quote from: Data King Nate Silver Isn't Sold on Evaluating Teachers With Test Scores

 

 

 

Constantly Fighting the Good Idea Fairy [SLIDE]

One of the books I just finished working my way through was No Easy Day, the firsthand account of the killing of Osama Bin Laden written by Navy Seal Matt Bissonnette under the pseudonym Mark Owen.  

As a bit of a military buff, my main goal for reading No Easy Day was just to learn a bit more about the work that Seals do to defend our nation.  Their service goes largely unrecognized simply because of the secretive nature of their missions.   

While reading, however, I learned that Seals and full-time classroom teachers actually have something in common.

We both spend half our professional lives pushing back against Good Idea Fairies, who Bissonnette decribes as well-intentioned people working in the "head shed" beyond the mission who dream up ridiculous solutions to nonexistent concerns and slow teams down (Kindle Location 665).

(click to enlarge)

 

Download Slide_GoodIdeaFairy

In the case of the raid on Bin Laden's compound, the Good Idea Fairies -- in an an attempt to convince Osama's Pakistani neighbors that the middle-of-the-night attack was nothing more than a local police action -- decided that a group of Seals would be tasked with attaching a police light to the roof of one of Osama's Land Rovers in the early moments of the attack.  

Then, the same group of Seals would work together to push the car -- complete with flashing police light -- into the street in front of Bin Laden's house before returning to the battle.

Stew in THAT for a minute, would you?

Why would a group of Seals on a covert mission inside the borders of a country that didn't know we were coming ever WILLINGLY draw extra attention to themselves by firing up a flashing blue light that they just happened to carry along?

And are we REALLY convinced that neighbors woken in the middle of the night by the sounds of war -- helicopters, machine guns, explosions -- next door would believe that a local police action was taking place simply because ONE car with a flashing blue light happened to be blocking the street? 

But most importantly, do we REALLY want soldiers who are finally in position to capture and/or kill one of the world's most notorious and elusive terrorists afer YEARS of searching -- and who are literally risking their lives on our behalf-- to spend ANY time pushing a car out into the street? 

Ridiculous, right?

And discarded immediately by the guys who knew better because they'd been carrying out raids in Iraq and Afghanistan -- rather than calling the shots from Washington DC -- for the better part of the last decade.

The leadership lessons learned from Bissonnette's police light experience is a simple one: 

Sometimes the best laid plans -- especially in complex, constantly shifting, unpredictable situations -- are simple and flexible. 

And sometimes the best choice that leaders can make in complex, constantly shifting, unpredictable situations is to trust their talent to execute under fire.

Heavily scripting the shots does nothing but pigeonhole your team into an overly-complicated plan based on nothing more than your predictions about what MIGHT happen.

So what's the #flashinglight in YOUR school and/or district? 

What crazy plan dreamed up by a Good Idea Fairy is distracting you from work that REALLY matters? 

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Original Image Credit: If You Believe in Fairies by JD Hancock

Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on December 4, 2012

Are Current #edpolicies Turning Schools into "Brainpower Wastelands"?

Quick question:  How many times have you heard a politician claim that "schools just need to learn to do more with less" in the past few years?

Bajillions, right? 

The simple truth is that most communities are flat broke, and EVERYONE -- including people working in private sector -- are being asked to do more with less.  Productivity just plain matters in an era when nobody has two nickels to rub together.

And while it might surprise you, I don't have ANY trouble with the suggestion that schools find ways to get more out of the resources that they currently have.

I'm just as likely to think conservatively as the next guy, and the way I see it, if I have to find ways to stick to a budget and to stretch a buck, governments should do the exact same thing.

More importantly, I'm CONVINCED that ANY organization -- particularly those that rely on human capacity to drive growth -- CAN get more out of the resources that they currently have at their disposal as long as they take the right steps.

Need proof? 

Then pick up Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown.

After spending years studying leadership in some of the world's most profitable companies, Wiseman and McKeown come to a startling conclusion:  Multipliers -- the term that Wiseman and McKeown give to successful leaders -- can get TWICE as much out of their employees as their peers.

Think about the implications of that fact, y'all.  Imagine being able to DOUBLE the productivity of schools without adding ANY resources at all. 

#winning

Simple Truth: Collective Strength Matters MORE than Individual Talent [SLIDE]

Oneof the guys that changes my thinking more than most is Paul Cancellieri -- seventh grade science teacher and the mind behind Scripted Spontaneity. 

Paul and I have talked a TON over the years about the mistaken belief that we can improve schools by doing nothing more than filling every classroom with a talented individual.  While talent certainly matters, it's just not enough to drive change in complex human organizations like schools.

Instead, driving change in complex human organizations like schools depends on building high-functioning teams that can support one another -- bringing complementary skills to bear against shared challenges:

(click to enlarge)

Download PPT Version

 

So the question -- whether you are a principal, practitioner, parent or policymaker -- is simple: 

What are YOU doing to ensure that the teachers who serve the students that you care about are working on teams that are collectively strong?

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Related Radical Reads:

Three Things Every Parent and Politician Needs to Know about Merit Pay

These are OUR Kids [SLIDE]

What Can Educational Policymakers Learn from Amazonian Explorers?

Are YOUR Learning Teams Playing Together?

 

 

Original Image Credit: Band of Brothers by The US Army

Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on October 21, 2012

Three Things Every Parent and Politician Needs to Know about Merit Pay in Education

On the drive home today, I tuned in to the local talk radio station because the host was interviewing a TON of local and state political candidates and I wanted to learn more about their individual positions. 

The interviews were incredibly interesting --- especially when they turned to education simply because the host seemed to ask every candidate how they felt about merit pay for teachers. 

Considering how important the issue has become in conversations about the future of education, I decided to whip up a list of three things that I wish every parent and politician knew about merit pay.

Here they are:

Experts in fields BEYOND education are convinced that merit pay plans WON'T improve schools.

The simple truth about merit-based compensation plans is that they are ONLY effective in fields that require "rudimentary cognitive skills." 

In fact, research has shown that compensation plans that tie pay to performance may actually have a NEGATIVE impact in knowledge-driven fields like education.

Need proof? 

Then check out this RSA Animate video sharing the ideas of Daniel Pink -- a one-time supporter of merit pay plans in education whose personal opinion changed after studying nearly every independent research report on the impact of incentives on human motivation. 

Or this bit detailing the thinking of Chip and Dan Heath, who argue that our constant attempts to design a better carrot result in a tendency to focus on ONE variable -- which might successfully drive change in simple fields, but are destined to fail in work that is complex and dependent on multiple variables.

 

Most merit pay plans are generally built around high-stakes standardized tests that almost NEVER actually measure anything we REALLY want our students to know and be able to do.

In almost every conversation that I have with stakeholders about the skills that students need in order to succeed in tomorrow's workplace, people -- including employers in almost every field -- argue that kids need to be able to communicate, to collaborate, and to solve problems creatively. 

Sounds about right, doesn't it? 

If YOUR child left school having mastered those three skills, you'd be happy and they'd be successful no matter what profession -- or personal passion -- they decided to pursue.

Here's the thing:  Today's high stakes standardized end-of-grade exams -- which are almost ALWAYS used as the basis for deciding which teachers deserve merit pay bonuses -- don't measure ANY of those skills.  Instead, they measure nothing more than a student's ability to remember and regurgitate facts.

Which means that the merit pay plans that wonks like to tout as silver bullets for motivating lazy teachers end up simultaneously stripping classrooms of the kinds of higher-order skills that we claim to care about. 

Need proof?  Then look at what years of teaching in a tested classroom did to my instruction.

 

If you want to incentivize something, incentivize collaboration.

Something incredibly powerful is happening in my professional life this year:  I'm working on a learning team with two young teachers who are literally changing the way that I teach.  Both are skilled at developing hands-on, inquiry-based science experiences for kids.

That's an area of REAL weakness for me even if I AM certified to teach middle school science!

What's cool, though, is I'm having JUST as a significant impact on my colleagues. 

I bring a bunch of nonfiction reading experience to our collective planning table -- I have spent the better part of my career in language arts classrooms, after all -- and that's helping my peers, who AREN'T trained reading teachers.

That means collaboration is paying off for ALL of the kids on our hallway. 

My students are benefiting from the inquiry-based strengths of my peers and their students are benefiting from my experience as a reading teacher. 

That's beautiful, right?

But here's the thing:  That collaboration will DIE in a merit-based workplace.

Think about it:  Would YOU share your best practices with struggling colleagues if you knew that there was a limited pot of money that was going to be given to a small handful of teachers that produced the best scores? 

HECK NO.  You'd let THEM -- and more importantly, the KIDS in their classrooms -- fail miserably because it would give YOU a better chance of cashing in.

Which is why the report on redesigning professional compensation for educators that I wrote with 18 accomplished teachers a few years ago recommends incentivizing collaboration INSTEAD of individual performance.

If we believe that SOME teachers have discovered the best strategies for teaching essential knowledge and skills to our kids, why wouldn't we design incentive systems that encourage SHARING rather than COMPETITION between peers?

 

I get it, y'all.  There ARE real problems in our educational system that need to be addressed.  Change IS necessary. The uncomfortable truth that we've been all-too-willing to overlook is that our current approach to schooling just ain't working for a TON of our students.

But as a teacher AND a taxpayer, I cringe whenever I hear someone argue on behalf of merit pay programs simply because they WON'T improve schools. 

Instead, they're just another #edpolicy disaster that the kids in our classrooms will end up paying for.

 

These Are OUR Kids [SLIDE]

Some of the most exciting work that I've ever done in my professional career was on the first professional learning team that I was ever a part of. 

What made it so different from most of the collaborative groups that I've worked on was our genuine belief that EVERY teacher on our sixth grade language arts team was responsible for the success of EVERY student on the sixth grade hallway. 

(click to enlarge)

Download Slide_TheseAreOURKids

When we looked at numbers -- test scores, attendance patterns, student surveys, students in need of remediation -- we didn't see MY numbers or THEIR numbers.  Instead, we only saw OUR numbers.

And OUR collective commitment drove us to help one another.  To ask and answer questions about practice together.  To spot trends in what was (and wasn't) working -- not because we were playing some game of professional gotcha where spotting successful practice meant spotting successful people, but because spotting successful practice meant spotting solutions for helping kids to succeed.

That shared work was incredibly important for our kids.  Whether they ever sat in different classrooms, they were learning from all of us -- which guaranteed them access to the best of what we knew as a learning team.

But just as importantly, that shared work was incredibly important to me.  Turns out that studying practice together in a safe environment where you can trust the intentions of your colleagues and where helping kids matters more than competing against the guy in the room across the hall can be a heck of a lot of fun.  

Now don't get me wrong:  Pulling off that "our kid" mentality on a learning team ISN'T easy.  It takes time, it takes the right kind of people, and it takes a bit of professional know-how about collaboration around student learning. 

But when you get it right -- when focusing on the OUR in YOUR becomes the norm instead of the exception to the professional rule -- there's nothing better.

#truth

___________________________

Related Radical Reads:

Lessons Learned from One Fat Ox

The Power of PLCs

Why Parents Should Care about PLCs and Poor #edpolicies

 

 

Original Image Credit: Nice Portrait of Tween Girl by pictureYouth

Licensed Creative Commons Attribution on September 26, 2012

 

Quote from Learning by Doing: A Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work