Thursday, March 31, 2011

Education is not a werewolf.

Opinion 4:  Education is not a werewolf. There's no silver bullet. Simply fixing one aspect of education is not going to fix the whole system. I don't see the existence of public sector unions, for starters, as a key issue affecting our education system. A chart has been circulating showing which states do not require collective bargaining and which states explicitly outlaw it. The most common accompanying argument is that the worst states for education correlate with the anti-collective bargaining states. My response: cum hoc ergo propter hoc. There's no evidence supporting the belief that unions or collective bargaining improve education. The above map shows strong correlation with another recent map of poverty state by state. Indeed the correlation is stronger with poverty than it is with collective bargaining. Michigan, for example, has terrible schools but mandates collective bargaining by law; however it is also very poor. Perhaps poverty is a better explanation for poor school performance than unions. Keep in mind this argument works both ways: the data neither supports increasing collective bargaining/union power nor decreasing it. I just don't think it's a big deal either way.

Similarly, many policy makers and pundits are calling for an end to teacher tenure and seniority rules. While the arguments are initially persuasive to me, I'm not sure that it will change much. Take these comments by former chancellor of D.C. schools, Michelle Rhee:
These "provisions make absolutely no sense for children," Rhee says. "The research shows that 1) you end up firing some of your best teachers; 2) you end up having to fire more teachers because the junior teachers get paid the least so you have to fire more of them to cover the budget deficit, and then 3) that it disproportionately negatively impacts the lowest performing schools — the highest needs schools — because they have the largest number of new teachers."
Seems like a few pretty good reasons to end seniority. But think back to that map. Most of the states without collective bargaining also don't have legally mandated tenure or seniority for school teachers. Georgia does not have strong seniority protections, yet its schools are among the worst in the country.

The same argument applies to the push to allow principals to freely fire any teacher. The data just doesn't support it. For example: Cobb county fired 700 teachers last year (only to rehire ~500 of them). They might be one of the better districts in Georgia but they haven't seen much school improvement and they're not unique in their capacity to fire teachers. Atlanta Public Schools can fire teachers just as freely but continually ranks near the bottom state-wide. I think we'll see similar results out of Rhode Island where the Providence school board voted to fire all 2000 of its teachers to get around seniority protections. Most will be rehired but the schools will probably not measurably improve.

This is NOT that Harvard study.
Merit pay is even more specious. Again, the data doesn't tell us that merit pay is the key to reforming public education. In fact, a recent Harvard study finds that financial incentives either don't change anything or make schools worse. We often hear of merit pay as adding free market reforms and therefore creating competition between teachers. This kind of language is attractive to Republicans and Libertarians but we forget that the merit pay is being introduced into a fundamentally socialist system. For a good podcast considering just this issue click here. The effects one might expect are not necessarily going to occur because there's no competitive or free market aspects otherwise present.

If we established a national measure of teacher accountability, Georgia would rank near the top because it has weak seniority protections, principals have the authority to fire teachers, and there are no unions or collective bargaining here. Despite all of Georgia's teacher accountability, our schools still struggle. Maybe, just maybe, a focus on teacher accountability is a bit over-hyped. I also want to note that I don't think we should go completely in the opposite direction and never hold teachers accountable.

Tomorrow, I'll criticize the super trendy charter school movement.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

The continued push toward accountability.

Yo dawg, I heard you liked Race to the Top
so I put some Race to the Top on your Race to the Top.

Obama, a series of left-leaning education think tanks, and news organizations like NBC and the Huffington Post (but not teacher's unions) are now moving forward on proposals that aim to increase accountability, reduce union power, and end teacher tenure/seniority. Obama's proposals include two accountability reforms. First: he wants to implement merit pay for teachers. He already moved forward with this idea in a limited fashion when he required states to implement merit pay in Race to the Top. 26 school systems in Georgia, for example, will be implementing merit pay and the state must then adopt it within 4 years. Merit pay, the argument goes, ought to help teachers hold themselves accountable and it provides an incentive to other professionals who feel more comfortable with a competitive pay system. Teachers' pay will be based (in some way) on the scores their students receive on standardized tests. From what I can tell, Georgia is planning to use a bonus-style system that will add to the teacher's base salary but nothing is finalized yet.

Second: Obama and the education left (but not teacher's unions) want to hold teachers directly accountable under No Child Left Behind. When you hear that he wants to overhaul, reform, or otherwise change NCLB, it doesn't mean he wants to scrap it. He wants to build on it. No Child Left Behind it the foundation of Obama's education policy. Not only should teachers get paid more if their kids do better on tests but school systems should have the authority to directly remove teachers whose students don't perform well on those tests. This would be a much bigger policy change in states with teacher tenure and strong unions than it would be in Georgia. Principals and school systems here already have that authority. Many states, including Georgia, are planning to move away from a single NCLB graduation test in favor of testing students at the end of each year. While, this will probably help with graduation rates as students won't have to remember 3-4 years worth of learning for a single test, the real reason to implement these tests is, of course, teacher accountability. When a student fails the current graduation test in 11th grade, how do you know if it is due to a bad teacher in 9th, 10th, or 11th grade? With the new yearly tests, we'll know right away which teachers aren't adequately preparing their students for the test standards. This will also make merit pay easier to distribute to the "good" teachers.

I don't have many positive things to say about Obama when it comes to education. Most of his education policies seem to be a continuation of Bush era policies (just like his approaches to Wall St., lobbyists, Mid. East warsGuantanamo, torture, and the ever expanding power of the executive branch). This is the case because increasing accountability is the only politically acceptable option. To his credit, Obama is looking to reform the funding structure set up in NCLB. Failing schools that receive funding cuts for failing to achieve AYP often find themselves trapped in a self perpetuating loop: reduced funding yields lower performance which in turn yields lower funding. I expect this aspect of NCLB to end when Obama gets a bill put in front of congress. Other aspects, as I noted, will be carried over. Much of what will change in education is still speculative at this point. The president's attention is elsewhere. The budget is undecided. Both parties are gearing up for the next election cycle. When the reforms do come, don't expect a drastic change from the status quo.

I hope that clears up the current policy choices (at least on a macro scale) that affect schools. I also hope I presented it fairly and objectively. Tomorrow's post will be a bit more editorial as I'll present my criticisms/articles criticizing the accountability movement.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

The Accountability Movement (aka: teachers aren't smart)

Politicians and policy makers rarely ask teachers what they think about school reform and I believe there is a good reason. 

Opinion 3: Teachers aren't smart. It's a very unpopular sentiment to hold. It's also true. You'll hear from time to time that teachers are on average better educated and therefore smarter than most of their peers. It's a lie. As a graduate of a graduate education program, I can attest to the low quality of graduate education education at our 2nd-3rd tier schools. Teachers may have more Masters degrees but they're also B students. Many of my peers were proud of their C averages in undergrad. They thought they had found some special system whereby they get all the benefits of college without any of the drawbacks. At least our graduate professors generally expected us to read (even though we didn't and didn't have to).

The non-exceptionalness of teachers extends into the classroom. We hear constantly of teachers being fired for harassment, embezzlement, sex with students, porn on the school computer, of running side businesses out of the "rubber rooms" in NYC, of refusing to teach evolution, of using the classroom as a pulpit for their political beliefs. In short: teachers are simply a subset of the general population. We're normal. Some of us are good. Some of us suck. Most of us are adequate. Why acknowledging this fact pisses people off is beyond me.

Okay, I lied: I blame Edward James OlmosMichelle Pfeiffer, and Hillary Swank.  Our society puts teachers on a huge pedestal and then is super mad when they can't perform. Go figure out what happened to the real people behind these made-up Hollywood farces. Answers (respectively): Died penniless in Bolivia, quit teaching to found an education consultancy, and quit teaching to found an education consultancy. Of course nobody knows that. They simply expect all their teachers to live up to the expectations set in our culture. Well, teachers aren't smart. We're just not that good. Of course, the same society also believes "those who can't do, teach". It's like our cognitive dissonance has cognitive dissonance. If we could get our heads straight about what we want our teachers to be, that'd go a long way toward recruiting and training "good" teachers.

And for the record: a commitment to social justice and to providing equal opportunities in your classroom doesn't make you a good teacher. Showing up every day doesn't make you a good teacher. Caring doesn't make you a good teacher. You can have the biggest heart in the world and still ruin kids' lives because you're a terrible teacher. I definitely encounter teachers who believe that they're great simply because of their line of work. I care and therefore must be good at my job.

I wonder if that kid got into college.

Policy makers and politicians in the 1980s and 1990s figured this whole "teachers aren't all that bright" thing out and the accountability movement was born. If we could just figure out who the bad teachers/principals/schools were, the argument went, we could get rid of them and put better people in the classroom/school. The eventual policy born of the accountability movement was No Child Left Behind. It was a sweeping education reform movement. One key factor for holding schools accountable was standardized testing. Over the decade following NCLB, standardized tests would be phased in at several grade levels. The purpose was to see which kids were actually learning and which schools were truly educating their pupils. When these test scores didn't improve (called Adequate Yearly Progress), schools were put on probation. If they continually failed to meet AYP, schools would be subject to punitive measures including: funding cuts, administrative layoffs, and state takeover. Teachers, as part of the deal reached to get Democratic support, weren't directly threatened with disciplinary actions if their students failed the high stakes tests.

The 6" binder containing standards
governing one teacher's curriculum.
They were (and are) still scrutinized heavily by their administrators with regard to their teaching of "Standards". Standards are basically everything a student is supposed to know by the time they take the standardized test in a subject area. Georgia's American Lit.Comp. standards, for example, can be found here. They include language like the following:
ELAALRL4  The student employs a variety of writing genres to demonstrate a comprehensive grasp of significant ideas in selected literary works.  The student composes essays, narratives, poems, or technical documents.
Standards must be placed on lesson plans and displayed prominently in the classroom. When administrators observe teachers, they often look for the current lesson's standards on the dry-erase board and they ask students which standards they're working on that day. The idea is to get students to think of the big picture. If they know what they're supposed to be learning broadly, they can understand why the lesson at hand is important to their educational success. Similarly, teachers should consider broad goals when creating lessons for class. Teaching the standards is now one of the primary factors in teacher evaluation.

Schools and teachers, by extension, are now held accountable for their students' success. Under NCLB, schools face scrutiny when their students don't perform well on standardized tests and teachers face scrutiny when they don't teach the standards laid out by the state. While the standardized tests are created from the standards, I'd like to point out that none of the standards specify content that will be on the test. Many have argued that teaching the standards is tantamount to teaching to the test. I don't think that's true because the standards are purposefully vague and don't give, for example, specific reading lists.

That brings us up to the present series of reforms and intended reforms, which I will post about tomorrow.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Beginning a series of thoughts on Education

Instead of one mammoth post (it's about 5000 words long right now) about Education, I will be breaking up my ideas into several posts. I'll put one up each day this week. Hopefully this will allow me to have better organization and me you inclined to read what I've written. First I'll outline my ideas and address some of the stuff in Wisconsin. The second post will be an overview of the teacher accountability movement. I'll move on to criticisms of recent policy and then finish up with my thoughts from working in schools. I'm just going to drop the original stuff in here, please excuse any continuity issues.


A couple of you have asked me about my opinions on education, Wisconsin, seniority reforms, etc. I've discussed it with Lisa a bit. I've even discussed it a little with my family. That's a big deal as they pretty much don't ask about school/education ever. Apparently being a partial educator means people want me to have some kind of opinion about education.

Opinion 1: Education is one of the issues everyone has an opinion about regardless of their expertise. That may seem obvious and non-unique but there are a lot of people who have "solutions" without any time spent in schools. This is both good and bad; from time to time, new ideas from outside a field can provide insights and create beneficial change. More often, the changes that hold sway are flawed in some basic way that could have been avoided with a little insider knowledge.

I want to eventually share some recent history and perspective on the dominant trend in education over the past decade: accountability. And as we'll see, accountability is pretty much the only option on the table for politicians and policy makers. There are no alternatives being considered in the halls of power. Toward that end, I'll link some interesting articles (that David and Laura probably already read. You should all follow us on Google Reader, btw). But before I go there...

Opinion 2: I don't believe the current efforts by Walker and other GOP governors are honest. Yes, they probably want to reduce the deficit but I feel like they care more about breaking the unions' power to organize a political base. There are genuine reforms needed in education unions but those reforms are not the goal of the forces arrayed against unions in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

Do not confuse my desire for reform with a position against unions or against teachers. I think unions have a valuable place in public and private sector. I'm in favor of collective bargaining for unions. Can they stifle growth? Sure. Do they protect workers? Yes. It's a trade-off I'm willing to make. I think unions are learning that they achieve better outcomes by negotiating and that they realize they need to take into account the health of the organization that employs their workers. The teacher's union in Wisconsin agreed to every major provision by Walker except loss of collective bargaining. Even though they were overridden, they exposed the GOP for the bunch of cynical, manipulative bullies they are. I think this is a significant victory in the long run even if the unions are wrecked in the short term.

We need a serious discussion about pension reform, union stubbornness, revamping teacher assessment, standardized testing, and poverty. The Republicans don't want to have that discussion. Until recently, unions didn't want to have that discussion. Processes like the one in the chart (above) or New York City's rubber rooms are absurd. I think a reasonable middle ground can be found between protecting teachers from arbitrary termination and never being able to remove teachers for any reason ever. Even though it is going to be hard for any change to come at the federal level with a divided government, I think having a national discussion about how we teach our kids is healthy.