Responses to the proposed legislation to put a freeze on NCLB reporting and other requirements until the bill can be reauthorized have ranged from relief to horror.

Just for the record, in case I haven't said it lately: NCLB is a poorly conceived, horribly implemented piece of legislation.  Anybody remember what the road to hell is paved with?

In much of the debate around NCLB, one area that is regularly ignored are rural schools. The recent article from Utah's Deseret News about the effects of NCLB on rural schools was disturbingly refreshing (yes, that's an oxymoron).

One well-meaning person argued recently, "Well, NCLB isn't perfect, but it's better than doing nothing to improve education, especially for the kids stuck in low performing schools."  No, it isn't better to increase burdens on those who are already struggling under tremendous inequity and disadvantages, just so we can say we're "doing something." 

I want to see the shift in this society to whenever a question or concern comes up about education, the FIRST people we turn to for answers are our best TEACHERS. The House Ed Subcommittee has begun to move in that direction during its hearings on NCLB by inviting a wider range of persons to the table than were in the drawing room when the legislation was initially developed. That includes highly accomplished teachers, effective administrators, perceptive parents, excellent homeschoolers, articulate students, visionary business leaders...

Crafting a thoughtful, effective, workable education policy is not impossible, but it is hard-work. For one thing, the planning needs to include a broad group of contributors. Those who have done (or are doing) education well should be the ones to whom we turn for leadership in re-designing education.

The recently completed Mississippi Teachers Working Conditions Survey conducted by Center for Teaching Quality (sponsor of this website and my blog) provides a glimpse of the serious discord between teachers and administrators over the reality of teacher’s professional lives in our schools.

The report highlights that teachers in Mississippi do not have as much control over our working conditions as we should have in order to provide effective instruction. More disturbing, however, is the apparent deafness or indifference of building level administrators to how big a problem teacher working conditions really are.

“School leadership and teacher empowerment are critical to retaining teachers” (7)  “…teachers believe that the quality of leadership in their schools is the most critical influence on their future career plans” (19) [i.e., whether to stay at a school or leave] There’s a growing body of research that lack of teacher control over significant aspects of our work directly impacts the quality of instruction students receive. If teacher empowerment is not a reality, then real teacher accountability can not be

The problem in MS: “Administrators believe that teachers are central to decision-making and that they are empowered on many fronts, but teachers disagree. In fact, the gap between administrator and teacher perceptions of all working conditions is very large” (5)

The survey reveals some startling cacophonies:

89% of the principals said teachers are respected as professionals but only 57% of the teachers agreed.

84%  of the principals assert that teachers are centrally involved in decision making about educational issues, but  63% of teachers said, “Not

95% of the principals believe teachers are trusted to make sound professional decisions about instruction, while only 63% of their teachers said that was so.

There was closer agreement on whether the faculty is committed to helping every student learn –95% of principals said, “Sure they are.” But only  83% of teachers agreed that their colleagues had that same commitment.

95%  of the principals are convinced their teachers feel comfortable raising issues and concerns that are important to the faculty, but 46% of their teachers reported being slightly to totally uncomfortable doing so.

99%  of the school leadership in the survey say they consistently support teachers when needed, only 64% their teachers agreed.

“…more than one-quarter (27 percent) of all teachers report playing no role in the selection of the professional development opportunities available to them, and more than half (58 percent) say they play no more than a small role. Additionally, teachers are not engaged in school improvement planning (60 percent play no more than a small role) or in determining how Education Enhancement Funds [state funds raised by a special tax and earmarked for classroom supplies] will be spent (over 40 percent report playing no role at all)” (21).”

The report continues, “Research suggests that participation in decision-making of this kind is often associated with keeping teachers in the profession [Ingersoll, R.M. 2003 Who controls teachers’ work: Power and accountability in America’s schools], yet teachers in Mississippi appear to have limited involvement in many of these decision-making arenas. Indeed, many teachers want to play a role in school decisions to ensure that they can be effective with their students, but it appears that a large number of teachers in Mississippi are not playing a significant role in many decisions that ultimately impact their schools” (21).

What does this huge range in perceptions say about the working relationship between teachers and their instructional leaders?

I suspect many of these well-intentioned administrators believe that what they refer to as “teacher input” is sufficient for saying teachers are involved in the decision-making process of their schools. This is not just semantics. Professional educators need the power to make decisions related to curriculum, instruction, assessment, their own professional development, as well as larger issues of school reform and management.

The findings from Mississippi are consistent with those heard around the country as highlighted in EdWeek’s Quality Counts 2008.  In a Jan. 10, 2008 article, "Working Conditions Trump Pay,"  Debra Viadero summarizes the findings that distress over working conditions, not pay, is the primary reason for teachers leaving schools or refusing to teach in certain settings. The working condition cited most often  in the exit surveys of departing teachers, according to the Mississippi Department of Education, is the lack of administrative support. That finding has been confirmed by working condition surveys conducted by CTQ in other states as well (Arizona, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, and Nevada).

CTQ tactfully suggests: “The state should encourage and help its administrators to assess their leadership and empowerment practices, along with their interactions with teachers, in order to move toward improvement in these areas and toward establishing stable faculty communities” (9). For more on the research

Thankfully, the state now has a Blue Ribbon Commission examining how to improve the quantity and quality of school administrators, including changes in the preparation and on-going training of principals. We’re hopeful this will start to bring some much needed harmony between  teachers and administrators on to best serve our students.

As a former journalist-turned-educator, I was bemused by the spin USA Today decided to take on the Education Sector's recent report of its nationwide teacher survey. Although the survey and the report cover many important topics, the point the editors chose to highlight was "Teachers Agree: Bad Teachers With Tenure Tough to Fire."

From the headline, you'd think teacher frustration with tenure was the major finding of the survey.

Not.

True, 55% of the 1,010 teachers surveyed agreed that it is difficult and time-consuming to remove teachers who should not be in the classroom. But how did that rate the headline over some of the reports other findings, such as: "Almost eight in ten teachers (78 percent) agree that 'Without a union teachers would be vulnerable to school politics or administrators who abuse their power' '(p.8). Even here in the open-shop South, 65% of the interviewees concurred with the need for union protection. Many Southern teachers voluntarily join one of the major teacher unions, even in places where collective bargaining and striking is illegal, just to get the malpractice insurance and the legal representation.

Interesting to note, the major reason cited by the teachers for this need of union protection is one of the same reasons they identified for keeping bad teachers in schools: the inefficient, ineffective teacher evaluation system.

The authors themselves note that the nation's 3.2 million teachers have wide-ranging views that can't be comprehensively represented in one survey. Still, the report, which deserves a thoughtful read and better coverage, is a helpful step in bringing the views of teachers into the public thinking on teacher quality and school reform.

You owe it to yourself to read the recent blog by one of my favorite teacher-scholars, Gloria Ladson-Billings: 'A Letter to Our Next President' at The Forum for Education and Democracy.

She argues brilliantly that what we call the "achievement gap" might more accurately be described as an "education debt" that needs to be paid.The article outlines some of the historical threads that have created the current web of inequality in which so many of our public school students find themselves trapped.

Drawing from history, economics, politics, as well as pedagogy, Dr. Ladson-Billings paints this analogy:

"I liken the yearly exercise of constructing the federal budget to the notion of the achievement gap. Every year public schools publish the results of standardized test scores. At some schools we celebrate and say we have 'balanced the budget.' At other schools we bemoan the fact that the standardized test scores reveal we have produced yet another 'deficit budget.' Again, lurking behind this yearly exercise of producing achievement test scores is the education debt of longstanding inequities and educational disenfranchisement. I believe this debt is historical, economic, and moral."

I hope the next President (and the rest of us) are brave enough to face these truths and pay up.

Ah, Spring! Snow melting, birds chirping, and buds sprouting -- not to mention the beginning of mandatory state testing season in most public K-12 schools. The climate in higher education is also showing signs of change, as pressure for greater accountability begins to show up more and more, particularly in the accreditation process.

I have spent most of the past year as the point guard on our community college's reaccreditation team. This is my first such review at the college level, but I have participated in several in the K-12 sector (both as a member of a review team and of a candidate school). What's been interesting to watch is how uncomfortable many people in higher ed are with things their elementary through high school counterparts have come to accept as standard operating procedure.

Academic deans and professors outside of the Colleges of Education are having to learn a new language: student learning outcomes, multiple assessments, standardized tests! 

Remember, college professors are used to basking in "academic freedom" -- which means most of them get to teach what they want, when they want, how they want, and pass or fail students as they see fit. Turning in a syllabus to your department chair or dean is not the same as turning in weekly lesson plans to your principal or having a checklist of objectives to cover this grading period. This freedom is a cherished right in the academy, and the pressures to be more accountable are seen by many as a direct threat to that right (or is it a privilege?). The vast majority of college faculty have had no pedagogical training at all and methods of teaching and assessment are all over the map.

Gerald Graff, President of the Modern Language Association, touched off a small war with his Feb. 21st piece at Inside Higher Ed called Assessment Changes Everything. Frankly, I agree with Graff that too many colleges and professors have fallen into the trap of elitism (through both admissions policies and sloppy teaching) that Graff calls "Best-Student Fetish" and describes as "a symptom of the increasingly obsessive competition among colleges for the cream of the high school senior crop."

Graff continues: "The more I thought about the Best-Student Fetish, the more perverse its logic seemed: It is as if the ultimate dream of college admissions is to recruit a student body that is already so well educated that it hardly needs any instruction!" 

I've had numerous discussions with college colleagues who whine about the "unprepared" students arriving in our classrooms. This would be an easy and tempting trap to fall into in any teacher's lounge, but it begs several questions. First, why do we act as if we are unconnected and unresponsible for the education of children all along the K-16 line? (Nod to my Carnegie colleague, Kati Haycock, of Education Trust) Second, as statistics tell us, not everyone finishes high school, at least not directly. Not everyone who finishes high school is in the top 5% of the class. Especially here and at other community colleges, students are going to arrive with varying levels of abilities, experiences, and skills. That is why we call this thing we do teaching.

Education Secretary Spellings, through the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, made it clear that the Administration wanted to bring public colleges and universities under the same type of scrutiny in terms of output and student performance that it has applied to K-12 via NCLB. Certainly, college instructors should be wary of the type of problems that NCLB (and some of the ir-rationale behind it) has spawned. However, colleges, like all levels of education, should be willing to ask some hard questions about what we are teaching, why we are teaching it, and whether students are benefitting from what we do.