worse than you think

I've mentioned several times our family mottoes:

It's always worse than you think.

and

No common sense-y. (No common sense-y is less apropos now that Jimmy is living in a group home and Chris has graduated high school.)

Under the category of worse than you think: "I'm not writing, I'm drawing."

button

more fun with Terc

Be sure to read the comments.

"Confessions of an Instructional Leader"

excerpt from:
The Learning-Centered Principal by Richard DuFour
Educational Leadership - May 2002

When I entered the principalship a quarter century ago, the research on effective schools warned that without strong administrative leadership, the disparate elements of good schooling could be neither brought together nor kept together (Lezotte, 1997). I heeded the message and embraced my role as a strong leader with gusto. I was determined to rise above the mundane managerial tasks of the job and focus instead on instruction—I hoped to be an instructional leader. I asked teachers to submit their course syllabi and curriculum guides so that I could monitor what they were teaching. I collected weekly lesson plans to ensure that teachers were teaching the prescribed curriculum. I read voraciously about instructional strategies in different content areas and shared pertinent articles with staff members.

But my devotion to the clinical supervision process at the school was the single greatest illustration of my commitment to function as an instructional leader. I developed a three-part process that required me to be a student of good teaching and to help teachers become more reflective and insightful about their instruction.

During the pre-observation conference, I met with teachers individually and asked them to talk me through the lesson I would be observing in their classroom. I asked a series of questions, including What will you teach? How will you teach it? What instructional strategies will you use? What instructional materials will you use? During the classroom observation, I worked furiously to script as accurately as possible what the teacher said and did.

During the postobservation conference, the teacher and I reconstructed the lesson from my notes and his or her recollections. We looked for patterns or trends in what the teacher had said and done, and we discussed the relationship between those patterns and the lesson's objectives. Finally, I asked the teacher what he or she might change in the lesson before teaching it again. I then wrote a summary of the classroom observation and our postobservation discussion, offered recommendations for effective teaching strategies, and suggested ways in which the teacher might become more effective.

The observation process was time-consuming, but I was convinced that my focus on individual teachers and their instructional strategies was an effective use of my time. And the process was not without benefits. As a new pair of eyes in the classroom, I was able to help teachers become aware of unintended instructional or classroom management patterns. I could express my appreciation for the wonderful work that teachers were doing because I had witnessed it firsthand. I observed powerful instructional strategies and was able to share those strategies with other teachers. I learned a lot about what effective teaching looks like.

In Hot Pursuit of the Wrong Questions

Eventually, after years as a principal, I realized that even though my efforts had been well intentioned—and even though I had devoted countless hours each school year to those efforts—I had been focusing on the wrong questions. I had focused on the questions, What are the teachers teaching? and How can I help them to teach it more effectively? Instead, my efforts should have been driven by the questions, To what extent are the students learning the intended outcomes of each course? and What steps can I take to give both students and teachers the additional time and support they need to improve learning?

This shift from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning is more than semantics. When learning becomes the preoccupation of the school, when all the school's educators examine the efforts and initiatives of the school through the lens of their impact on learning, the structure and culture of the school begin to change in substantive ways. Principals foster this structural and cultural transformation when they shift their emphasis from helping individual teachers improve instruction to helping teams of teachers ensure that students achieve the intended outcomes of their schooling. More succinctly, teachers and students benefit when principals function as learning leaders rather than instructional leaders.

[snip]

By concentrating on teaching, the instructional leader of the past emphasized the inputs of the learning process. By concentrating on learning, today's school leaders shift both their own focus and that of the school community from inputs to outcomes and from intentions to results. Schools need principal leadership as much as ever. But only those who understand that the essence of their job is promoting student and teacher learning will be able to provide that leadership.

Professional learning communities: ALL POSTS

AND SEE:
ruining Lemov

pop quiz

re: ruining Lemov

Try this forced-choice exercise: if a principal wants to improve the quality of
teaching and learning in his or her school, which three of these will have the greatest
impact?

• Observing and evaluating full lessons, preceded by a pre-conference with each teacher and followed by a detailed write-up and post-conference;
• Systematic walkthroughs of the entire school focusing on target areas (for example, the quality of student work on bulletin boards);
• Mini-observations of 3-5 classrooms every day (five minutes per visit) with face to face follow-up conversations with each teacher;
• Quick “drive-by” visits to all classrooms every day to greet students and “manage by walking around”;
• Collecting and checking over teachers’ lesson plans every week;
• Requiring teacher teams to submit common curriculum unit plans in advance, and discussing them with each team;
• Having teacher teams use interim assessments of student learning to improve instruction and help struggling students.

What's a Principal to Do? When You Can’t Do It All, What Are the Highest-Leverage Activities?  by Kim Marshall
Education Week September 20, 2006

flip

A taped lecture isn't a lecture.

ruining Lemov...

from Allison's post:

I've now seen schools ruin Lemov's Teach Like a Champion, too. They do this by using it as a micromanagement tool--lesson plans must look exactly like this, word choice must sound exactly like this, etc. to beat the teachers into submission.

Another timely observation.

I've just learned, via another ktm writer & commenter, that "professional learning communities" can be used to exactly the same end: to insure classroom-to-classroom uniformity.

Every teacher teaches the same lesson the same way.

That's fine when we're talking about a relentlessly field-tested, scripted Direct Instruction curriculum that is built to produce results.

It's not fine when we're talking Inputs instead of Outputs.

The entire point of professional learning communities, as I understand it, the reason they were revolutionary, is that Richard DuFour had the revelation that he should stop thinking about teaching and start thinking about learning. In the "PLCs" he invented, teachers didn't write lessons together. Teachers wrote tests together. They wrote tests together, and they essentially designed the curriculum together, in the sense that they decided what would be taught and when. They met on a regular basis, they worked with the state standards and/or the district's curriculum documents, and they decided which (which!) standards they would teach and when they would teach them.

Which and when, not how.

They taught as they thought best, and gave students the common assessments they had written.

Then they analyzed the results together and adjusted their teaching accordingly. As professionals might do.

As far as I can tell, and I've read a fair bit of DuFour's work, in the original PLC model there was no focus on telling the teachers how to teach. "Stop worrying about how the teachers are teaching" was pretty much DuFour's discovery (as I understand it). He had been a hard-charging "instructional leader," he was working around the clock, observing classrooms, reviewing lesson plans, meeting with teachers to provide feedback, and.... nothing. Same results.

Everything changed when he stopped focusing on how the teachers were teaching:

[DuFour] greatly reduced the time he spent trying, frenetically, to be the consummate, traditional “instructional leader.” Instead, he began to focus on the simple elements of learning communities—ensuring that teams met on a regular schedule and documented their progress on self-made formative assessments. And he honored and celebrated every success at every faculty meeting. These simple steps lightened his load, gave him focus, and led to years of dramatic, uninterrupted progress on every kind of assessment— from teacher-made tests, to state assessments, to college entrance exams. The success rate on Advanced Placement exams at his school rose by 800%.

Learning Communities at the Crossroads: Toward the Best Schools We've Ever Had by Mike Schmoker

AND SEE: Confessions of an Instructional Leader

Niki Hayes, part 1: what is constructivism?

I'm insanely late getting a stand-alone post on Niki's article up, but a number of things directly related to Niki's piece have come together in the last few days, so tonight's the night:

Has Constructivism Increased Special Education Enrollment in Public Schools?

As a teacher and administrator for 28 years, I rebelled against the disastrous fad of constructivism that began in the 1980’s. While its drumbeaters declared it was a higher form of intellectualism, it didn’t seem all that “intelligent” to me. Frankly, I thought it would help create failures among all groups of students—regular, special, and gifted.

For those who don’t know what “constructivism” is, it is an educational theory that, in practice, looks like this in America’s classrooms:

It is students from kindergarten through high school “discovering” their own answers by using manipulatives, working in groups, contriving “real world” problems through “project-based’ activities, moving and talking –a lot, and surviving in a hierarchy of those students who can lead and those who must follow according to their skills.

It is lots of colorful, jazzy pictures in books and on classroom walls that show many different ethnic groups, women, with gender-neutral stories, and with child-directed activities that only require teacher “facilitation.” Children rule the day.

It is feminized instruction that supports the goal of public education to provide egalitarianism or equity, especially to girls and minorities. That’s the priority placed over building excellence, since excellence smacks of cognitive exceptionalism. That ability is not appreciated nor encouraged where equity is to be the norm in classrooms.

It ridicules practice and repetition as “drill and kill” and believes anything that requires memorization is a waste of time that should be used for “creative” thinking.

It focuses on process, not results. “Process” is the actual “product” of learning.

It believes that if students are having fun, according to perceived “learning styles,” they will like going to school and they will learn the academics they need to prepare for the world of work.

No one will ever be able to determine how many hundreds of thousands of children, who came from dysfunctional, even chaotic, home environments and who entered the constructivist classroom with its lack of boundaries, no right or wrong answers, and the expectation to “discover” their own answers, were shuffled from the “feel-good, tolerant, and fun system” into special education programs. For some strange reason, these kids were declared “discipline” problems.

AND SEE:
Mathematics Education: Outwitted by Stupidity by Barry Garelick
Growth of Special Education Spending and Enrollment in New York since 2000-01

Our schools do ruin Singapore Math

SteveH has said a few times "Our schools would ruin Singapore Math." Well, we can dispense with the "would". Schools routinely ruin Singapore Math, just as they ruin every other initiative brought in. Not all schools do, of course, but badly run schools ruin everything --professional development, curricula, assessment, leadership initiatives. Bringing in good materials to a bad school doesn't work at fixing the school. (Whether it saves an individual student here or there is an open question.)

I have now seen schools ruin Singapore math. They do this by not reading Primary Math's own materials, not understanding or seeking out anything about how Singapore taught using Primary Math, by not getting their staff any professional development at all for using Singapore Math. So their teachers know nothing about how the lessons are supposed to be taught, what "Concrete->Pictorial->Abstract" means, and teach math the same way they taught before. Typically, they don't even get them a full complement of materials. I've seen schools where the teacher NEVER read the teacher's guide, and just assumes that since the textbook looks simple to them, there's nothing more to it.

Then they ruin it some more by teaching it out of order to "match the state standards"(more on this in an upcoming post next week.) Since nearly everything in Primary Math is carefully predicated on what has been taught before, this makes no sense at all.

I've now seen schools ruin Lemov's Teach Like a Champion, too. They do this by using it as a micromanagement tool--lesson plans must look exactly like this, word choice must sound exactly like this,   etc. to beat the teachers into submission. Then they ruin it some more by using the lack of techniques present during a class to penalize a teacher during an evaluation.  Nothing like making the teachers hate the administration, or that their lesson planning is a waste, or that all "teacher improvement" is really just a cover for a method for trying to fire a teacher to make the school function!

I've now seen schools ruin PLCs, too.

What is the common denominator?  cargo cult education.  To shamelessly quote myself:

Unless they understand what's underneath the "lessons of the high performing school" (the high performing parents, the high performing teachers, the high performing students) then it won't matter. Unless the "lessons" they grab are that they need teachers who already know classroom management skills and content, need solid curricula that can be built to mastery, need ability grouping rather than differentiated instruction, need schools that already enforce discipline and control their students' behavior, need raised expectations for all students, and more, then they will be missing something essential."

In each case, these schools have no idea what the actual function of teaching is, what knowledge you're supposed to impart to the students. So they grab PLCS, or TLAC, or Singapore Math, but it's just coconut shell headphones. Their teachers don't know that their students don't know 10/9 is a fraction; their teachers don't know that you can't teach the chapters of a math book in another order; their teachers don't know why place value works. Their principals don't know that their teachers haven't read the Teacher's Guide at all; their principals don't know that "accountable talk" isn't the same thing as explaining your bar model; their principals don't know that their teachers didn't follow any scope and sequence this year; their principals don't know what their teachers and students don't know. And they may test prep their way to better scores, but their students will still not know enough to succeed in high school, let alone college.

The real question is: can you find a school that isn't practicing cargo cult education? How would you know?

Project

I attended a meeting today as an advocate for a student, something I've never done before. It was great. I think the outcome was very good --- I sure hope so.

One of the central issues was projects. The student cannot handle projects. Period. He is a SPED kid, and he can't handle projects. Can't handle projects is plainly stated on the IEP, the help on projects that will be provided is specified, etc., etc ... and the upshot is that his mother has spent the entire school year trying to find out whether there is a project due, what the project is, what the instructions are, where the instructions are, what the instructions mean, and on and on and on. She's been run ragged, and she's extremely stressed juggling middle-school projects and a full-time job (in a business with daily lay-offs and salary cuts and all the anxiety that entails).

On top of all this, the grading of projects is bizarrely harsh, so harsh that a student who has had a string of 100s on tests gets bumped down to a B or a C entirely on the basis of an F- or two on projects. Projects trump tests.

So, in the meeting, we went round and round on the question of projects. (I won't get into anything else because I don't want to give away identities.)

After traveling down a number of blind allies, I asked whether the student could just stop doing so many projects. Could we solve the problem that way? I said I didn't see how failing a project was contributing to his education; if he is failing projects then he isn't actually doing the projects, not really (leaving aside the issue of grade deflation, of course).

No one expected to hear that, and at first no one knew what to say other than "No."

When I persisted, the chair of the meeting explained to me that American schools are moving away from teachers standing at the front of the classroom and teaching content: today classes are interactive. Someone else said that the goal is for students to learn to work collaboratively, and another person said it's important for students to solve problems.

I said I didn't do projects when I was in school, I don't assign projects in my classes at the non-selective college where I teach, my husband doesn't assign projects in the selective college where he teaches, and I just wasn't seeing the value in XXXX being assigned projects he couldn't do and then receiving failing grades when he didn't do them.

The chair got hot under the collar. "You come in here and you question our philosophy ----- !"

We got past that, and continued to go round and round on the project issue .... and quite a bit later I asked a teacher in the room, who had taught in the high school, how many projects students actually do in grades 9-12, which is where XXXX is headed. It had suddenly occurred to me that the high school kids probably weren't doing nearly the number of projects the middle school kids are doing.

This turned out to be the case. The middle school kids do many projects; the high school kids do far fewer.

The chair explained that, in the high school, students have to pass Regents exams, so, unfortunately, teachers must spend a fair amount of time preparing students to pass the test.

The flipped classroom is going to sweep.

That's what I'm thinking at the moment.

AND SEE:
Has Constructivism Increased Special Education Enrollment in Public Schools? By Nakonia (Niki) Hayes
Mathematics Education: Outwitted by Stupidity by Barry Garelick
Growth of Special Education Spending and Enrollment in New York since 2000-01

leafy

Last week’s speech by Mitt Romney, in which he presented his education reform plan to a group of Latino leaders in Washington, drew attention mainly because he criticized teachers’ unions and endorsed private school vouchers. But those points were perfectly predictable for a Republican candidate and not especially newsworthy.

But another part of his plan that potentially veers far from the usual conservative talking points received almost no attention: Mr. Romney would give poor students and those with disabilities the right to attend any public or charter school in their state.

Romney's School Surprise
By JAMES E. RYAN

So, first of all, this is a NONPARTISAN BLOG. (I mean it!)

Second: given what I've been dealing with here in the leafy suburbs, I experienced a moment of glee, reading this. A couple of them. No one's gonna be happy to hear that out here in the leafy suburbs---

Ed, on the other hand, was grumpy: "Obama could never get away with that!"

True.

... Mr. Romney’s proposal would target the real source of educational inequality in this country: school district boundaries, which wall off good school systems from failing ones. The grossest inequalities in educational opportunity today exist between school districts, not inside them.

White schools good, black schools bad: people take this as a given, and talk of busing is back. (Folks are really not gonna like talk of busing out here in the leafy suburbs, and, by the way, I agree.)

No one seems to understand what is actually happening inside suburban schools. Certainly no one seems to have absorbed the evidence that good teachers are everywhere:

...there was no relationship between a school’s demographics and its number of high- or low-performing teachers: 26 percent of math teachers serving the poorest of students had high scores, as did 27 percent of teachers of the wealthiest.
Teacher Quality Widely Diffused, Ratings Indicate By Fernanda Santos and Robert Gebeloff February 24, 2012

Mitt Romney can send urban kids to the suburbs; I hope he does.

But he better make sure they've got money for tutors.

News flash: my own extremely well-funded suburban school district is going to be implementing a rigorous and enriching 21st century curriculum.

Jen on not teaching in her district

"Teachers CAN'T assign whole-class books, but CAN be held accountability for reading scores?"

That sums up why I won't teach in my district now. I can either teach the kids the concepts needed for their grade OR I can follow your curriculum script in the way you want it followed.

They do not lead to the same outcomes, however. And to require the script and then say it must not have been followed assiduously enough if your scores don't go up is a no-win situation for a teacher, especially a newer teacher who hasn't had years of experience in subverting the requirements!

I'd be careful though of referring to yourself as "reform-minded" -- the word reform itself has been co-opted by larger forces than yourself (not in suburbia, but in urban areas) -- and they too are pushing policies like you want to change. Content free understanding, knowledge not something you need to impart, they can google it, etc.

Teachers should run schools. Or else we should forget about schools, and just have teachers.

vouchers boo hiss

sigh

In just the past couple of days I've come across two Bad Things about vouchers ....

From 2003, this is one; and there's something going on in Indiana re: Catholic schools, vouchers, and state accreditation of Catholic schools receiving vouchers....

I have to say, there are times when I simply think that schools, as in schools per se, are unworkable, with notable exceptions of course. Around these parts I'm hearing stories about the two local private schools ... hedge fund owners joining boards, athletic directors being fired because hedge fund owners have joined the board -- and this in a school that until recently was a) a girls school; b) an arts school; and c) the safe and nurturing school where kids who were getting bullied in their public schools went for middle school....

Now it's got hedge fund owners on the board firing the athletic director because hedge fund owners on the board want a sports school, not the art school that used to be a girls school they've got.

(Have I mentioned I don't like boards?)

Back on topic. I remember, years ago, when a friend of mine was getting married, talking to her fiance's best friend about the blessed event. He was a semi-confirmed bachelor, and he said to me: "Marriage is a great institution, if you like living in an institution."

As it turns out, marriage is a great institution (marriages don't have boards!), but I think the quasi-bachelor's 'living in an institution' observation applies to and awful lot of schools.

Schools are a great institution if you like living in an institution.

They all do what they do, it's just that some of them do it well.

children choosing books

It goes without saying that when children choose their own reading material, they don't select "Charge of the Light Brigade."

onward and upward

student achievement in my district

Help Desk: retaking the SATs?

800 - critical reading; 750 - math; 590 - writing

These are the scores obtained by the son of a friend of mine when he took the SATs for the first time this year as a high school junior. I should mention that he's no longer a high school junior: a few weeks ago he decided to drop out of school because he found it too boring. (The school in question is one of the very top public high schools in Philadelphia). He hasn't taken the PSATs, or done any test prep whatsoever. Nor, as of yet, has he taken any SAT IIs.

So here's the question: given this boy's current scores, would it be a good idea for him to retake the SATs?

5% a year

what happens if we increase taxes 5% a year every year? 

I must say, the Wu Wei Wordpress theme is fabulous.

It's pretty in black, too.

union negotiations in another small town

Steve H writes:

Our issue is that the union contract is negotiated separately from the annual budget crisis. When the budget battle begins, this leaves only other smaller areas for cuts. The town council gives the school committee and the school a dollar figure for the cuts, and they come up with cuts that push the most hot buttons for parents. They fire up their automated phone system and email list to rile up the parents and get them to the meetings. We get automated phone messages not just from the school, but from the chair of the school committee about the budget. The town council threatens to take control over the selection of the line items. However, the town council pays little attention when the school committee negotiates the terms of the union contract. Many towns desperately need professional help when those contracts are negotiated.

We have nothing this complicated.

In the spring, one or two members of the Board of Education announce that Next year we won't have layoffs. Then the next year we have layoffs.

This spring the same guy who announced that we wouldn't have layoffs said we will break the tax cap in 2013. ("The folks in the press can quote me.")

So maybe that means we won't break the tax cap.

Thank God this guy isn't on the Federal Reserve.

come to Ed's talk!

Ed Berenson at the 92nd Street Y

Ed's new book!

Take it out on the students

My son is finishing up a multi-subject portfolio for his sophomore US Lit honors class. Exemplars from each subject must be collected and put into a notebook. Students are required to list a specific CCSS standard and then explain how each piece of work relates to that standard. One that my son used was: "F-TF.1. Understand radian measure of an angle as the length of the arc on the unit circle subtended by the angle." He then had to explain how the work fit this standard. This project came, of course, after the teacher complained about how he was required to do this for all of his lessons. My son has to do this for all of the subjects in the portfolio, even those (like music) that don't have a specific standard defined. This is a teacher who doesn't hand back homework with any explanations. You have to make an appointment to meet with him after school to find out why he graded the way he did. And, if you somehow fail to get to this appointment, he will create a new grade of zero for you in his gradebook. This is a teacher who prides himself on grading 10 points lower than all other teachers. Got to toughen up those soft little honors kids. Also, this portfolio has to include your resume to be accepted into the junior class. You are interviewed and have to orally convince the teacher (or some volunteer parent) that you should be accepted. You also have to create a resume for an imaginary job sometime in your future, listing all of your degrees and experience. It has to include imaginary letters of recommendation. I told him that he is learning creative resume enhancing skills. Of course, he has a PhD from Harvard. It reminds me of how some teachers ask students what grade they would give to themselves. I told my son to always say 'A'.

one year later

Peter Meyer on the Parents Forum