Rafe Esquith at Mindless Math Mutterings

it's always worse than you think

A teacher pal in the Midwest tells me that the single worst thing about her district (where she's happy & has taught for many years) is the chronic implementing of new programs without aforethought.

Every five years the district implements new stuff. Without fail. (Last summer they bought Lucy Calkins, but then didn't use the curriculum; they also piloted TERC, but decided against it - whew.)

Administrators come in, implement stuff, and move on to better jobs where they implement more stuff.

It's the same everywhere, it seems. If I remember correctly, and I think I do, the material sent out to parents last year, introducing our new middle school principal, said he'd implemented character education in his school in Albany.

And that was it, pretty much.

He implemented character education in an urban school attended by disadvantaged kids. So, apparently on the strength of that accomplishment, he was hired to implement stuff here.^*

Of course, what do I know? If you listen to the New York Times, character education is what disadvantaged kids need.

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The fact that the star teachers in our schools -- and most schools are going to have a star or two -- have to sit around listening to professional developers instead of creating and providing the professional development themselves and being paid to do it really cheeses me off, and always has.

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churning the curriculum

Paul Hill, an education researcher at the University of Washington, sees parallels between education practices and medicine as practiced in the Colonial period. "There was not a lot of science behind medicine then," says Hill. "It was swept by fads." Each patient's suffering was thought of as unique, a special case. There was no broad research that demanded standardized responses to standard ills. Each patient was in need of individualized care. Ever hear one of your child's teachers use that word? We provide individualized instruction. Each class is unique. "Physicians used to say the same thing," says Hill. "There was a natural tendency to think of everything as much too unique to want to generalize your practice."

But while medicine has moved into an era of standardized practice driven by medical research, education remains in the era of leeches and bleeding. Where was the research that demanded teachers drop phonics, teach in "open" classrooms or try "new" math? Where, for example, was the research that led so many elementary school teachers to tinker with "heterogeneous grouping," where children of mixed abilities were put into groups with the hope that the faster learners would tow along the slower learners? Like so many educational fads, it sounded like a good idea, but it rarely worked in crowded classrooms lacking the talented aides who could pull it off.

At Harvard, former teacher Tom Loveless teaches a subject on this very topic: "Controversies in Education Reform." The syllabus, which consists entirely of required readings on school failures, resembles an indictment of a Mafia chief. Loveless has a personal feel for the problem that dates back to his nine years of teaching in Sacramento public schools. "This is an industry with tremendous turnover at school sites," says Loveless. "Half the principals change schools every six or seven years and superintendents even more frequently. I went through three or four principals, all of them saying: "I have some new ideas and we're going to change things." In come the big changes, out goes the principal within a few years, in come more big changes. "Nobody would stay in one place long enough to be responsible for outcome," says Loveless. "By the time everyone figures out what they're doing doesn't work the principal is gone and you're off to a new approach."

source: Neglected Evidence

The beauty of this system is that taxpayers get to pay for all this stuff. If you're a taxpayer and a parent, you get to pay for the tutors and the time-off-work to (try to) fix the problems, too.


^* Middle school model in our case. Our middle school is apparently destined to become exemplary no matter what the parents think.