The known unknown

So last week I submitted the following list of questions prior to the high school administration's Common Core presentation:

On math:

• Jason Zimba, “lead architect” of CC math standards, says that CC math will not prepare students for STEM careers or for admission to selective colleges (see attached). How are we dealing with that?
• Has the high school coordinated with grades K-8 to discuss whether teachers in those grades are using CC’s slower math sequence – and if so, with how many students?

On ELA:

• Whither the flipped classroom? Common Core requires more reading, more challenging reading, and broader reading: how does “more reading” square with students spending up to two hours a night watching Powerpoints?
• Are students reading any texts written prior to the 20th century?
• Are students reading any of the exemplar texts recommended by Common Core guidelines?
• How much time in English class is devoted to nonfiction?
• What types of nonfiction are students reading in English class?
• Has The Lucifer Effect been retired?
• Will next summer’s reading lists be consistent with Common Core’s emphasis upon serious works of literary fiction and nonfiction?
• Has any thought been given to creating a coherent, sequential, historically-organized curriculum in literary studies that would allow students to perceive the influence of earlier works on later ones (a critical component in understanding and appreciating fiction)?
• Has any thought been given to providing a serious survey course in British literature?
• Has any thought been given to teaching the Bible as literature (again: critically important to understanding the allusions in fiction)?
• What does “close reading” look like at Irvington High School? (Since we last spoke, I’ve read the CC exemplars of close reading. The middle school’s work example, although it does show a student using evidence from the text to support a point, isn’t a close reading as CC defines the term.)

Superintendent response:

Catherine,

The presentation that has been planned for tonight is consistent with those that were delivered for the elementary and middle school levels and highlights the shifts associated with CCLS. Tonight’s presentation will not address specific concerns or topics within any one curriculum area.

Kris

Kristopher Harrison, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools

That's not the right answer.

GRE scores by intended field of study for college seniors

Source: Educating School Leaders, p 32

super

The superintendent who fought back

Jen on good administrators

Jen wrote:

I've bumped up against some excellent administrators -- at the principal level, that is. I don't know if there are really exceptional higher level administrators, though I assume they must exist at some (small) percentage of the population.

I've also run up against really horrendous principals.

Differences in principals are hard to describe -- it does feel like a "you'll know it when you see it" situation.

Good admins encourage things -- that is, they support the ideas and activities of their teachers. That's not to say that all ideas are then fully implemented. But, they are secure enough to allow innovation and change and also enough of a leader to then analyze results and reward the good and end the bad.

Going along with that -- they don't expect every teacher to look and sound and teach alike, though they do expect that all teachers will have the ability to teach and move kids toward the goals that should be set in the district/school's scope and sequence.

They are not wedded to ONE current idea about instruction/behavior/etc but are able to use the better ideas from a selection of "best practices."

Great admins are NOT loved by every employee and parent, but they do get a lot of respect and are able to deal honestly with people who disagree with them.

Bad admins are generally ONLY liked by a few employees and parents, who are thought of as their "pets" by the majority of teachers and parents.

Good admins deal directly with the people they have problems with and clearly spell out those issues and their expectations for what needs to change.

Bad admins drop hints, tell other people about the problems, do not listen to both sides of an issue before making decisions, and generally keep covering their own butts as their main goal.

I think that you could revise these attributes upwards for higher level admins -- just adding that their interactions with principals should look like a good principal's interactions with teachers and parents.

"bad teacher" - bad parent?

I AM a special education teacher. My students have learning disabilities ranging from autism and attention-deficit disorder to cerebral palsy and emotional disturbances. I love these kids, but they can be a handful. Almost without exception, they struggle on standardized tests, frustrate their teachers and find it hard to connect with their peers. What’s more, these are high school students, so their disabilities are compounded by raging hormones and social pressure.

As you might imagine, my job can be extremely difficult. Beyond the challenges posed by my students, budget cuts and changes to special-education policy have increased my workload drastically even over just the past 18 months. While my class sizes have grown, support staff members have been laid off. Students with increasingly severe disabilities are being pushed into more mainstream classrooms like mine, where they receive less individual attention and struggle to adapt to a curriculum driven by state-designed high-stakes tests.

On top of all that, I’m a bad teacher. That’s not my opinion; it’s how I’m labeled by the city’s Education Department. Last June, my principal at the time rated my teaching “unsatisfactory,” checking off a few boxes on an evaluation sheet that placed my career in limbo. That same year, my school received an “A” rating. I was a bad teacher at a good school. It was pretty humiliating.

[snip]

When the assistant principal walked in, one of these students, a freshman girl classified with an emotional disturbance, began cursing. When the assistant principal ignored her, she started cursing at me. Then she began lobbing pencils across the room. Was this because I was a bad teacher? I don’t know.

I know that after she began throwing things, I sent her to the dean’s office. I know that a few days later, I received notice that my lesson had been rated unsatisfactory because, among other things, I had sent this student to the dean instead of following our school’s “guided discipline” procedure.

I was confused. Earlier last year, this same assistant principal observed me and instructed me to prioritize improving my “assertive voice” in the classroom. But about a month later, my principal observed me and told me to focus entirely on lesson planning, since she had no concerns about my classroom management. A few weeks earlier, she had written on my behalf for a citywide award for “classroom excellence.” Was I really a bad teacher?

In my three years with the city schools, I’ve seen a teacher with 10 years of experience become convinced, after just a few observations, that he was a terrible teacher. A few months later, he quit teaching altogether. I collaborated with another teacher who sought psychiatric care for insomnia after a particularly intense round of observations. I myself transferred to a new school after being rated “unsatisfactory.”

Behind all of this is the reality that teachers care a great deal about our work. At the school where I work today, my “bad” teaching has mostly been very successful. Even so, I leave work most days replaying lessons in my mind, wishing I’d done something differently. This isn’t because my lessons are bad, but because I want to get better at my job.

In fact, I don’t just want to get better; like most teachers I know, I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I have to be. Dozens and dozens of teenagers scrutinize my language, clothing and posture all day long, all week long. If I’m off my game, the students tell me. They comment on my taste in neckties, my facial hair, the quality of my lessons. All of us teachers are evaluated all day long, already. It’s one of the most exhausting aspects of our job.

Teaching was a high-pressure job long before No Child Left Behind and the current debates about teacher evaluation. These debates seem to rest on the assumption that, left to our own devices, we teachers would be happy to coast through the school year, let our skills atrophy and collect our pensions.

The truth is, teachers don’t need elected officials to motivate us. If our students are not learning, they let us know. They put their heads down or they pass notes. They raise their hands and ask for clarification. Sometimes, they just stare at us like zombies. Few things are more excruciating for a teacher than leading a class that’s not learning. Good administrators use the evaluation processes to support teachers and help them avoid those painful classroom moments — not to weed out the teachers who don’t produce good test scores or adhere to their pedagogical beliefs.

Worst of all, the more intense the pressure gets, the worse we teach. When I had administrators breathing down my neck, the students became a secondary concern. I simply did whatever my assistant principal asked me to do, even when I thought his ideas were crazy. In all honesty, my teaching probably became close to incoherent. One week, my assistant principal wanted me to focus on arranging the students’ desks to fit with class activities, so I moved the desks around every day, just to show that I was a good soldier. I was scared of losing my job, and my students suffered for it.
Confessions of a Bad Teacher
By WILLIAM JOHNSON
Published: March 3, 2012

As far as I can tell, there are two approaches to accountability: roughly, top-down and bottom-up.

Top down means state tests, substantially reduced teacher autonomy, and lots and lots of principal observations.

Bottom up means professional learning communities.

At least, that's the way it looks to me.

I gather from some of palisadesk's comments that top-down can work. At the same time, I've spent the past 6 years of my life trying to function as a parent inside a tiny district headed by a top-down superintendent, and those were six long years. I never want to hear the words "work up the chain of command" again ever. Or "Thank you for your ongoing cooperation and support." I don't like being thanked for my ongoing cooperation and support. I feel that if there must be ongoing cooperation and support, I would like to be the person receiving the said cooperation and support at least occasionally.

Anyway, blood over the dam, but my point is: I don't think top-down makes for happy teachers, and I know for a fact that top-down in my district produced a very large cohort of unhappy parents.

I'm reading that in Finland teachers function as professionals, and it looks like maybe that's going to happen in my district.

I vote for teachers as professionals.

And I vote for Richard DuFour's "professional learning communities" as the best way to get there.

change

Superintendent's Resignation Linked to Performance Review

Agreement and Mutual Release

irreconcilable differences

another year, another budget free-for-all

in Irvington

per pupil funding: $30k

superintendent compensation: $256k

district size: 1796 students

administrator to student ratio school year 1999-2000: 213.9 : 1

administrator to student ratio school year 2009-2010: 112.4 : 1

Time to re-litigate the curriculum director position.

And here's Andrew Cuomo on administrator compensation.

let's not and say we did, part 3

My copy of the Harvard Education Letter arrived in the mail yesterday:

These days, everyone is trying to get students to think about their own thinking--and take that thinking to a higher level. To do this, educators are urging teachers to help students teach--and even assess--each other, since the success of so-called student-centered instruction is predicated on getting students to collaborate and take charge of their own learning.
Like Teacher, Like Student
by Dave Saltman
Harvard Education Letter
January | February 2011
p. 4

I'm sure we'll be seeing more of this in my district now that our curriculum department will once again have a full-time curriculum director.

under the Christmas tree, part 1

Yesterday morning I got up, came downstairs, and there under the tree was a bright and shiny new curriculum administrator wrapped up a red bow!

more

If you're looking for a real-world example of the growth in hiring by public schools, click the 'role' button on the Math in Focus Contact page.

They list fourteen different job titles:

Teacher
Principal
Assistant principal
Director
Assistant Director
Superintendent
Assistant Superintendent
Coordinator
Chairperson
Team Leader
Coach
Staff Development
School Board President
Director of Education

I guess we can all be grateful coordinator of learning immersion experiences didn't make the cut.

The U.S. Economy Needs Fewer Public School Jobs, Not More by Andrew Coulson

Erin Johnson on public school management

in a comment on Flypaper, Erin Johnson wrote:

Given the wave after wave of ill-conceived curricular reforms that have been imposed upon teachers (Whole language, Constructivist math, etc.) how would eliminating tenure affect teachers that are “being held accountable for student performance” and yet are being told by their administration that they must use poor curricula. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place.

If we wanted principals to “stop acting like middle managers and start acting as true CEOs of their school” then we should be holding principals accountable for performance not the teachers. Or how about holding district superintendents or curricula specialists accountable for the misguided materials that they insist that teachers are to use in the classroom? In business, the leaders are always more responsible than their direct reports.

there is more

that was quick

Elsewhere in the edu-world, the town of Avon, CT hired a new superintendent last fall, only to discover, via a story in the newspaper, that as of March 4 the new superintendent of Avon has signed a contract to become the new superintendent of Berlin, CT.

The reader comments are priceless.

Berlin introduces David B. Erwin as superintendent

Meet Corliss Archer

"The Algebra Problem"

Barry just sent the link - apparently in 1954 fathers still knew high school algebra.

Today Assistant Superintendents for Curriculum don't know high school algebra.

"complaints can improve your school"

I'm pretty sure I would kill to have this person running my district:

Here are a few tips on do-it-yourself complaint resolution. Or consider this advice that will help to avoid hiring an expensive consultant to tell you what is wrong in your school or district.

• Seek complaints. Ask for the compliments and the bad stuff. Don’t become defensive when you hear bad news. Instead, probe for the exact nature of the problem, the resolution sought and ideas for how to accomplish this. A well-stated problem in operational terms can really help get a resolution under way.

• Let the person closest to the problem attempt to resolve the problem prior to your intervention. I always tell the educators with whom I work that I support them. However, I also let them know if they have made a mistake they need to get on top of fixing it or apprise me of the situation so I can attempt to resolve it (or at least get into damage-control mode).

I advise educators that if a school constituent calls me with a complaint, the first thing I will do is ask if he or she has contacted the educator in question. If not, then I probe for further information and ask the constituent if I can have the educator call him or her. If a resolution is not reached, the constituent is to call me back. In 99 percent of the issues, I never hear from the constituent again.

At the same time, the educator feels supported because I have allowed him or her to resolve the problem. The educator understands if he or she doesn’t resolve the problem, then I will do so because if I don’t, the problem will go over my head and someone on the school board or in the local news media will resolve it — and probably not to our satisfaction.

• Do something. It’s not good enough to hear a complaint and then agree with the complaint. If you can’t do anything, chances are the complainant will find someone who will.

The most effective job you can do is to listen dispassionately and objectively. Is the complaint reasonable? Is it coming from a reasonable person who has not gone off the deep end because his or her child has ADHD or SAB (simply annoying behavior)? You must be the professional who provides advice on dealing with a difficult child or educator instead of throwing up your hands and blaming someone else.

Find resources, find help, find solutions. You won’t have just one ADHD or SAB student in your schools nor will you have just one difficult employee so find help for the parents, and you will find help for your employees and yourself at the same time.

• When you don’t know how to solve the complainer’s problem, simply ask, “How can we make this right?” Not only will you get a solution that the constituent will agree with since he or she is suggesting it, but there’s a good chance this idea of how to make things right will require less work or worry on your part than what you would have come up with minus the input.

Systemic Answers
• If there’s a pattern to the complaints, then address the pattern. A systemic problem needs a systemic approach to resolution. You are the one to be able to see a recurring complaint that your team and you can address. Adopt the attitude of fixing the problem rather than living with it.

• Find ways to have your employees adopt a schoolwide culture of using complaints as a way to improve practice. State it in your mission or school district goals, but constantly press for this way of seeing school operations from everyone in the system (from central office to principals, teachers, custodians, etc.). Constantly model an appreciation for complaints and resolving them by using this same approach with your employees, and point out what you are doing. Do not make problems your problems but our problems, and remember to get the complainers to help resolve the problem.

When you start to look at complaints as an opportunity to improve your organization rather than an attack on your organization, then you will (after a brief moment of regret and irritation) take your organization to a new level of performance. Wouldn’t it be nice if when community members left your schools they remembered their experience with schools as one of the best of their lives?

Embracing complaints will help you to make a positive difference in the lives of our students. And that is, after all, why we are all here.

Complaints Can Improve Your Schools
by Jan Borelli
The School Administrator May 2009

My district requires parents to "work up the chain of command." That's the way the superintendent always puts it: work up the chain of command.

Our school board has actually adopted a Code of Conduct for parents requiring that we work up the chain of command:

B) PARENTS
A cooperative relationship between home and school is essential to each student’s successful development and achievement. To achieve this relationship with school, parents have a responsibility to insist on prompt and regular attendance by their children and to ensure that they are prepared to participate and learn. Parents are expected to show an enthusiastic and supportive attitude toward school and education and recognize that they and the school are jointly responsible for their children’s education. In addition, parents are expected to teach their children self-respect, respect for the law, respect for others as well as respect for public property. It is their responsibility to ensure that their children are aware of and abide by all district policies, rules and regulations. Parents are expected to follow a process for effective communication with school, which includes first addressing any concerns with the individual teacher involved and then his/her immediate supervisor before involving any other parties. Parents should also be aware that they are responsible for any financial obligations incurred by their children in school. This includes lost books, damage to property, etc.

C) SCHOOL PERSONNEL
School personnel play an important role in the education of students. In view of this, it is incumbent upon all school personnel to promote a climate of mutual respect, treat students in an ethical and responsible manner, and demonstrate desirable standards of behavior through personal example. All school personnel are expected to report violations of the Code of Conduct to a building administrator. Violent behavior shall be reported immediately.

Irvington Code of Conduct
Policy 7310
Adopted by the Board of Education July 2, 2001
Revised and Adopted by the Board of Education July 1, 2008

Notice that the Code for parents is twice as long as the code for school personnel.

That's because parents don't have a union.

p.s.: The board's Code of Conduct for parents is legally unenforceable. I asked a lawyer. A lawyer for a school board, in fact.

inside the black box

I asked the union lackey about ATRs [Absent Teacher Reserve]. He said, they just got a great deal from the DOE. Smart principals will hire them in a minute. I reminded him of the fact that principals do not like experienced teachers, that they don't like teachers that think and have minds of their owns. Years ago, principals hid vacancies whenever they could. No one wanted a veteran teacher who would not jump when told to. He said smart principals did not think like that. I said the smart ones were few and far between. He just kept talking about the one smart principal he used to work for.

Pissed off teacher

Speaking of inside the black box, When Galaxies Collide is back!

meet the parents

another Niki Hayes alert:

Come January, when the election frenzy is over and it's time to fix (again) our endlessly collapsing U.S. public education system, I can already see who'll be sitting around that West Wing conference table helping you craft your policies (aka, calculate the flow of dollars): the usual passel of political appointees, lifer administrators, think-tank policy wonks bearing white papers funded by the Gates Foundation, rock-and-rolly inner-city charter school innovators and the "social entrepreneurs." No actual public school parents like myself will have the remotest input.

Want Schools to Work? Meet the Parents

By Sandra Tsing Loh

Sunday, September 14, 2008; Page B03

No actual public school parents will have the remotest input except when our districts spend tens of thousands of dollars staging "Community Conversations" with a view to co-opting, reframing, or otherwise squashing the views of dissident parents.

exemplar:

My own district's Community Conversation seems to have transformed a widespread parent interest in "Singapore Math" into an item entitled "Global Awareness," which if all goes well will be inserted in the "Character education" portion of the revised Strategic Plan.

Now that's input.


bonus points:

Eduwonk admonishes suburban parents.

Up the administration

I’m new here as a writer (though I’m a longtime reader), and would like to thank Catherine for allowing me to post anonymously when I feel I have something to say. I work in the education industry, and blogging under cover gives me an opportunity to share thoughts and observations that I otherwise could not share.

I’d like to start my blogging career here by pointing to an issue that doesn’t seem to get much play. And that’s the role of school leadership in the problems we see today.

Teachers, and policies related to teaching, seem to get all the attention. There’s a lot of talk about teaching methods, certification, retention, unions, class sizes, and more. And certainly those are important issues: I’m we’ll aware of the research showing what effect a good teacher can have on the life of a child (or on the flip side, the effect a bad teacher can have).

But in all this talk about what happens in the classrooms, it really seems as if school leadership gets to cop a walk. We’re all talking about the crisis in teaching and learning, but no one’s talking about the crisis in leadership, which could absolutely have an impact on teaching practices and on many other factors involved in good schooling.

Principals have the authority to direct resources (staff, funds, and other resources) as they see fit. They set expectations and lay out the ways in which teachers will operate. If there are problems in education today, I believe that school leadership is just as responsible for them as are teachers, and I’d personally say that the school leaders are more responsible for any other group.

Do school leaders share this point of view? Oh lord no.

A few weeks ago I attended a conference for the state chapter of a national school leadership association. Despite all the problems the rest of us see in public education, this group of school and district leaders clearly felt that they had the bull by the horns: they were the solution, not the problem, and they were doing a pretty darn good job of things in their own eyes. And things would be just perfect if just a few things would happen, like eliminating NCLB or giving them a “better” (assumedly richer) group of students to work with.

It’s frightening to hear the leader of any organization saying that things are actually really good in the face of substantial evidence to the contrary, and also believing that anything that’s not good is out of their hands. To see that this thinking isn’t isolated, but is instead the norm, is alarming indeed.

I did some checking after the conference to follow up on what I heard, and came across a fascinating survey report by Public Agenda titled “The Insiders: How Principals and Superintendents See Public Education Today.” Here’s the blurb from the site:

The fourth in a series of Reality Check reports finds that most public school superintendents -– and principals to a lesser extent -– think local schools are already in pretty good shape. In fact, more than half of the nation's superintendents consider local schools to be "excellent." Most superintendents (77%) and principals (79%) say low academic standards are not a serious problem where they work. Superintendents are substantially less likely than classroom teachers to believe that too many students get passed through the system without learning. While 62 percent of teachers say this is a "very" or "somewhat serious" problem in local schools, just 27 percent of superintendents say the same.

So yes, I think it’s worth talking about effective teaching methods and materials, and also talking about how we can get individual teachers to change their ways for the better. But until we address the leadership issue, from which many of these problems originate, we’re going to be treating the symptoms and not the real problem.

Stubborn to a fault

I attended our school's budget meeting tonight. Apparently, we are in dire need of a reading consultant, phonemic awareness tutorial program for scaffolding, and a mathematics intervention specialist. Yet somehow, this remediation isn't supposed to reflect on the efficacy of our chosen curriculum, which is, by all accounts, focused on critical thinking and 21st century skills.

There is a serious breakdown happening at some point early on. I can't even count the number of bright kindergarteners and first graders that have been held back due to no fault of their own. Had these children been taught well, there wouldn't be so many 8 and even 9 year olds in first grade. As Catherine says, "they do what they do."

The other side of this coin is that they want to keep spending taxpayer money on all this stuff that is clearly not getting the job done. Another item in the proposed budget is the purchase of an inquiry-based science curriculum that will eventually require remediation by some kind of science specialist or scaffolding program.

This is insane. The chosen curricula and/or pedagogy is clearly not working for a significant number of children and not only do they want to keep buying more of it, we now need remediation that may not have been necessary if these children were taught properly in the first place.

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.

.............................

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.

.............................


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.

re: hiring a new superintendent

This comes from Thinking Out Loud, an attorney for the school board association in another state (not CT, NY, or NJ):

What the community should be asking [the school board] is process questions:

• HOW are you going to go about doing a superintendent search?

• HOW are you going to involve the community?

• What is the vision of the board for this school district?
  

• What steps has the board taken to see if the board's vision for the school district is the same as the community and staff's vision for the school district?

• How will these visions be reconciled into a comprehensive vision that works for all players?

• What would the characteristics be of the right leader to make the vision happen?

superintendent to retire
re: hiring a new superintendent
why was the budget defeated? (student study)