I have been preparing for my plunge back into the kiddie pool since last Tuesday when I learned I would be teaching again. Tomorrow is the big day. As I have been preparing I realized I had lost much of the knowledge and skills I used on a daily basis when I was teaching. I have never felt the truth of the statement that administrators lose touch with the reality of the classroom within three years more purely than right now. I decided to give myself a dry run on teaching today by visiting another class. As I sat in front of 15, 3 year-olds I realized I didn’t remember how to play even my most basic of songs for kids. I hit the wrong note, sang badly, and even had to ask the kids if it sounded right.

But, I did it. I can see how an administrator could lose touch with the reality of teaching. I can especially see how it could cause them to really change how they interacted with the teachers in their charge. I had forgotten how hard it is to motivate that many young children to move in the same direction of learning. As I rediscovered my knowledge in skills I felt like I was finding things I had forgotten I needed.

Its been like digging through my old toy box.

I also found some things I know I won’t need anymore. I won’t need to feel that pressure to make children conform in order to drive instruction like I did when I was teaching before. I won’t cut children off if they are talking about things that aren’t in the curriculum. I will be present, in the moment, responding, leading, challenging, encouraging, and loving the children right in front of me.

Maybe that is what happens to administrators who leave the classroom. They forget about all the knowledge and skills in their toy box and just throw the whole thing away. Maybe that is why the line between those who teach and those who lead schools should be blurred. If the the administrator re-learns what was important to them about education (and gets to keep their toys) and teachers learn what really matters in the bigger scheme (and realize that some toys are necessary) we have a more balanced learning environment.

The video above is one of my favorite stories to read to children. Can’t wait to do it again.

John,

Thanks so much for re-igniting this conversation around public schools. Right now, I’m typing to you from sunny Orlando, FL, the site for the General Electric Developing Futures Conference. It’s a week-long conference, and this year’s theme surrounds the ramping up towards the Common Core Standards. Each of the districts represented here has a heavy stake in the success of the CCSS and the transition to this new set of standards may usher new types of summative, high-stakes assessments for all these schools. Speakers like David Coleman (from my state) and Katie Haycock of Education Trust have already spent a great deal speaking on the lay of the land in terms of what policymakers see as an effective framework for how school districts should run.

While this conversation floats around, there is still a tangible fear of what’s to come. In the interest of not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I’ll say that the math Common Core State Standards have serious potential to refocus us on core concepts that really matter. Teachers will inevitably have to fill in the gaps in terms of approach and implications for students’ real-life applications. Yet, standards only go as far as the policies and assessments let them. Hand-in-hand with this idea is the tangible end of No Child Left Behind, surely a policy that could signal the closure of hundreds of public schools if we allow that to happen.

2014 ends NCLB and ushers in CCSS, a symmetry I’m not comfortable with.

Will this mean that, by the end of NCLB, the schools that open up will become charter schools by default? All signs point to yes. If so, then the general public will not only have a right but also a necessity for transparency for both of these two movements, irrespective of whether business leaders privately fund these efforts or not. If we’re getting into this new movement of questioning, then the general public will not only need to know what it means for how teachers will teach concepts. We will have to create environments where doors are more open, scary as that sounds. I’m interested in making schools public institutions, and the farther we lean from that movement, the more we will perpetuate some of the problems that plague our schools now.

This also means that we’re going to have to re-discuss what an education means, a discussion we ought to have sooner than later. Personally, I believe that we should have schools that teach students to a level that they will succeed no matter where they end up, not simply for a career, but for life skills. I’d like to help students reach their highest human potential. But that can only happen after we’ve built the bridge from the rigid data-driven expectations of Thorndike acolytes to those of us who want the second coming of John Dewey. This is the best time possible.

I urge you and everyone to consider more transparency in the way we teach children, not just in how we operate as an organization, but also as change agents for the millions in front of us daily.

Jose,

I really enjoyed your piece on how to change education featuring the queen of all media, Lady Gaga. I have to admit, I am not a big fan of her music but, I knew the minute I saw her second video she was going to stick around. What has always impressed me is her ability to challenge perceptions and constantly evolve, two traits I hope teaching can take on as a profession in the future.

When I think about the story of teaching 2030 as it is becoming, I know that it is the story of a new generation of teachers. Many of these teachers are passionate and even more committed to creating a more equitable society than the group of teachers I started with 15 years ago. These teachers are willing to take risks and do what is right for kids but, they will also expect to be fairly judged on their practice and rewarded for their contribution. Recently a group of young teacher leaders in Denver took on the task of describing what they believe about being evaluated fairly and with the intention of making education better for students. Their report titled, Making Teacher Evaluation Work for Students: Voices from the Classroom (pdf) is a challenging perspective on what it means to evaluate with the intention of making teaching better for students. As I read the report I started thinking of one of your favorite ESPN segments, Odds Makers. The idea of percentages in public education policy has a kind of arm chair quarterback feel so I thought, why not try it here.

As I read the report I started thinking of one of your favorite ESPN segments, OddsMakers. The idea of percentages in public education policy has a kind of arm chair quarterback feel so I thought, why not try it here?

Let’s break down the laws of reason and join each other in this virtual space for a little OddsMakers session on teacher evaluation. Let’s kick it over to Anthony “There’s No Way I Thought I’d End Up In A Blog” Reali!

Reali: Alright, fellas. Here’s the first question. What percentage of the teacher evaluation system should be based on student assessment?

Holland: According to the report, in Colorado this will be 50% beginning next year. One thing I like that the report does is put the qualifier, “meaningful” in front of assessments. If the assessments are to be meaningful, I have to ask, meaningful to whom? I would say that student growth on assessments that are meaningful to the students themselves should be higher than 50%, maybe 70%. If, however, these assessments are meaningful to adults with the usual political and social agendas (like they are now), I think student assessment should be 35%. I say 35% because because I think that the specific context of a school or classroom can account for much more than 50% of a teacher’s effectiveness. I also think a teacher should be held accountable for more than 1/4 of that context. It could actually be higher in lower grades for students have not gone through the DING! process of individualization, like in preschool, but we don’t have time to quibble so, 35% of the evaluation should be assessment based.

Vilson: Yes, John. I’m totally with you there. What concerns me is the clowns who make too much of tests that aren’t supposed to be used for teacher effectiveness. If you ask kids what they prefer, they love the idea of portfolios and student-created assessments. Of course, teachers have their hands in it, but it can still be rigorous and student-created. Mostly. If it’s student and teacher-directed, I’m still with the 50%, but if there’s any tainting of state assessments in there, I’ll go as low as 15%!

Holland: One thing I think we agree on about assessments is that we need to move towards performance based assessments for students AND teachers!

Reali: Next up the importance of school context in teacher evaluation!

Images: It is with great respect and appreciation for Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon that we have “remixed” their images and the concept of Odds Makers from Pardon the Interruption. We also borrowed Anthony Reali’s image for verisimilitude. If you want to watch the image we remixed click here.

Glossy Robot with Magnifying Glass

John,

In the interest of going to something less controversial than teacherpreneurism, I was hoping to address the rise in online classes for students in K-12 systems. Everyone agrees with the approach of online classes and thus, I should probably stop blogging here.

Except that it’s not so simple. For some reason, people still believe that, once we put computers in front of students, we can remove teachers from the equation and thus never have a question about teachers ever. We undermine questions of teacher capacity by eliminating teachers and all our national edu-problems are solved. All the great online teachers I’ve met, most of whom I’ve met through our book writing, can still do a great live lesson in front of any given audience.

I believe in differentiated pathways for learning, and in many ways, we need to dissolve our ideas of time spent in the classroom or grade levels instead of advanced life skills our students need. In a New York Times piece written recently, the writer discusses how a student dropped a question into Google, got an answer from Wikipedia, mimicked the language of the article, and e-mailed it to her teacher. Will the Googled learner learn how to ask the right questions or simply repeat what others have said with no context? Will the Googled learner develop their own methods for self-investigation or rely on the vast amounts of misinformation on the web as their determinant?

That’s where the teacher comes in.

Transformative pedagogy is so critical to the 21st century that we can no longer accept that we the teachers are the epicenter of all things educational. However, the one thing we can accept responsibility for is teaching students how to learn. The rigors of our most growing fields demand that we push students to learn those skills even when we have no idea what’s on the horizon. For content teachers and generalists, it means very similar things in that, no matter what the content is, there’s a certain set of skills that every student must use irrespective of whether they’re doing it on an iPad, a computer, or with a pencil. Teachers don’t have to be gatekeepers anymore, just mentors and experienced guardians.

Just today, I had the privilege of listening to Linda Darling-Hammond speak to a few of us involved with the Common Core performance tasks here in NYC, and she told us a quick story about her teaching days here. As she was teaching 12th grade English, she realized that some of her students in the back of the classroom couldn’t read. She discarded teaching the Dewey Decimal system unit in favor of teaching kids how to read, and was chastised for doing so. Now that the Dewey Decimal system is irrelevant, we still see the value of reading. While we’re reframing pedagogy for what’s necessary in the 21st century, we’re also making sure we delve deeper into the more critical skills from the past and present that our students need now and in the future.

As Barnett Barry would say to us, online learning and in-person learning is a false dichotomy. Learning can happen anywhere. It often depends on who the teacher is, and if they’re the closed-source programmer who only lets students perform certain functions, or the open-source programmer who helps others build upon their own code so they can develop their own operating systems.

John,

You bring up really good points about attribution error in your latest. Realistically, anytime you have a system of accountability, you have to wonder who benefits from that system of accountability. Without more involved parties in the decisions, you end up with a plethora of one-way mandates and little discussion. It brings me of this new byproduct of President Obama’s Race To The Top: The Common Core Standards. I’m not sure where we’re running in this race, but I’m somewhat intrigued by these new learning standards. It certainly has its flaws; critics have called many of the standards vague, and people who haven’t read it immediately dismissed it as prescriptive. One of my blogger friends, JD, said that we should disregard the CCSS (Common Core State Standards) because of the current myopia with accountability and test scores. I agree to a certain extent: if people think that a test at the end of the school year can accurately determine the breadth and depth of knowledge my students know about any standards, that’s dangerous for the execution of any mandate, no matter how well-written.

Yet, I look at our state’s current batch of standards and see a huge opportunity for all involved to transform the idea of accountability that benefits all involved. For one, after several reviews of the document, I prefer this for a couple of reasons:

• It’s better designed / suited for classroom teaching.
• There are less standards to cover.
• Simultaneously, we’re asked to cover the few topics we have in more depth.

Bonus points for the multicultural contributions of the reading lists in the literacy standards. As a math teacher, I’m ecstatic that I’m only covering about 2/3rds of the material currently covered. As someone who’s tired of following pacing calendars to a tee when I know my students still struggle with topics from 2 grade levels earlier, I clamor for and appreciate getting more time to expound on topics important for success in future levels of math. I love showing multiple approaches to topics so I can develop deeper understanding for the students who don’t get it the minute I put the topic on the board.

Yet, under this climate of skewed accountability, we risk losing that richness of understanding by determining that the assessments for these standards will function in the same capacity as the ones given by the test, as one-dimensional gauges for student and teacher performance.  Anyone with a basic knowledge of schools knows the three pillars for teaching: standards, pedagogy, and assessment. The standards and the assessment are book-ends to the complex experiment of teaching. Yes, external factors matter (poverty comes to mind immediately). Yes, people outside of the parent-teacher-student paradigm matter.

But everyone involved has a stake in mitigating the factors that prove destructive for our young children, and much of that is systemic. Here are three quick cultural things we can fix that policymakers should know before we arrive at the 2014 mark for Common Core accountability:

1. Give us time, and lots of it. When education policy leaders first announced the Common Core Standards, the messages traveled at light speed through district leaders and superintendents that principals, teachers, and coaches needed to integrate the standards into the curriculum well before even the individual states had ratified the document and revised it under their auspices. It’s a helpful exercise for some of us ed-geeks, but the average teacher gave a collective shrug because it came in the middle of the school year … while we’re still under the old standards. Under this, we should also include granting us liberty from current accountability systems in this transition period.
2. Let us figure it out first internally. Time and again, the most powerful experiences for teachers don’t come from higher-ups telling us what to do: it comes from people within our PLN demonstrating for us the processes behind the standards. Let us ask ourselves “What’s the difference between our old standards and our new ones?” or “How does any of this transform my teaching? What’s my focus now?” These questions come better from the people we know still breathe the air of the collective student body, not people who occasionally drop by. Speaking of which …
3. Walkthroughs should be put on hold until 2013, and be given new rules to boot. The #1 weapon outsiders use to criticize a school is the walkthrough. After a few minutes in a building, they believe they have a pulse of the entire school systemically. Maybe some people do, but the majority of us don’t. Thus, it’s important for people who decide to walk through to make careful observations, and ask careful questions without judging them subjectively.

Regulation is important to any institutions’ vitality, but if we regulate the wrong facets of the institution, we create chaos within it. Let’s make the Common Core standards mean a new face for how we view teaching. Flaws and all, the standards represent a means for us to grade against the standard and not based on arbitrary political whims.

In many ways, John, the Common Core Standards represent a shift in national education discussion. If we carry the same biases we had before, we might as well show the groundhog his long, overarching shadow, cast over another long season of excessive focus on bubble sheets.