It’s always refreshing to me to be among other teachers, exchanging ideas. I’ve spent an interesting couple of days with teachers, administrators, and representatives from an unlikely mix of education reform groups at a conference sponsored by the Gates Foundation in Arizona. I came to present with two of my co-authors about our book, Teaching 2030 (which was warmly received by educators present).  Dozens of them came to us afterwards with questions and thanks for a vision of what could be in American public education, and for giving a welcome and hopeful action plan to counter the litany of the problems and attacks we been experiencing.

What was even more fascinating to me were the ideas and information I gathered from the teachers at this meeting. Much of the talk among us was about teacher evaluation systems: the good, the bad, and the ugly. One of those discussions was with a group of excited teachers from Tulsa who bragged about how teachers there—through the leadership of their local union—had developed their new teacher evaluation instrument. Originally field tested with over 35 indicators, teachers and administrators later pared it down to a more manageable and effective 20 items.

 According to the Tulsa teachers I met, the new system is not only more effective, but has resulted in eye-opening, and sometimes painful, revelations for many teachers who used to get routinely “satisfactory” ratings based on the old much more subjective system.  The teachers argued that the clarity, transparency, and consistency of the new system made it easier for teachers to see where they really needed to improve their classroom practice.  During that same breakfast chat, however, they also realized that they needed to do more to help inform more teachers across the district that the new evaluation was credible because of how it was created.

A little later, a teacher from another city explained how she shares the teacher evaluation criteria in her district with her high school students, so they can have a better understanding of what her job really is. I thought: “What an empowering idea for students, and wouldn’t that be great to share with parents as well.”

On the other hand, teachers from several parts of the country talked about how the evaluation rubrics and classroom observation protocols used in their districts do not take classroom context and teacher knowledge of students into account. These are critical weaknesses for a teacher evaluation system.  Truly effective teaching is highly contextual, and highly accomplished teaching starts with deep knowledge of each student, as evidenced in the standards for certification by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (who were also part of this meeting).  As one teacher from Memphis noted: “To properly evaluate a teacher, a principal or observer would have to know the evaluation rubric or checklist thoroughly enough to know what it does not include, and be well-trained enough in classroom evaluation to know what questions to ask before and after the observation.”  Barnett Berry, president of Center for Teaching Quality, pointed out that “the modal year [sic] of experience for public school teachers in America is now one (1), as opposed to 20 years ago, when it was 15 [years].”  If so many of our most vulnerable students are being taught by our least experienced teachers, how does that reality affect their students? Should those teachers be evaluated or expected to carry the same load as those who have demonstrated ability to work effectively with students, particularly in high-needs schools?

Mind you, these discussions were taking place against the backdrop of the release of teacher performance data in NYC (see more extensive commentary on that from my New York colleagues Ariel Sacks and Jose Vilson). I wondered how useful that data would actually be for parents or teachers.  Was the release preceded or accompanied by a clear explanation of how the data was obtained, and what it really represents?  Probably not.

I was dismayed that some teachers at this event still misunderstood what “value-added measures” are, the many different formulas by which those are obtained, and what makes that data so inherently unstable. If teachers ourselves are still not clear on these topics, how can we help parents and policymakers understand them?  Happily, the teachers do understand and earnestly accept that it is our responsibility to move our students’ learning forward while they are in our care, and that the real measure of our effectiveness is student learning, not just student achievement.

The Gates Foundation’s stated purpose for hosting the Elevating and Celebrating Effective Teaching and Teachers (ECET2) Conference was to show that “teachers’ voices matter.” How closely they and other policy-influencers/policy makers listen to teachers remains to be seen. Diane Ravitch, among others, have made major shifts in their thinking about what is needed (or not) in public education. Bill Gates’ recent public statement against the publication of teacher performance data in NYC, and his admission that value-added measures are not a reliable measure of teacher effectiveness suggests he and the Foundation may be learning that real education reform is not possible unless and until we do listen to teachers. 

When I was in junior high school in Detroit (long before its current meltdown), my classmates and I were taken to a wealthy suburban public high school for an “exchange visit.”  We were stunned to see carpeted, well-stocked libraries; working restrooms with warm water and hand towels; real science laboratories; and a gym building with indoor track and swimming pool. We were never told what the purpose of the trip was, but its net effect on our young minds was to confirm that we were worth—less than rich people’s children.

My hard-working, middle-class parents, like millions of American families, depended on their neighborhood public schools to provide quality education for their children, and rightfully so. Certainly, all parents in the U.S. should be able to choose the educational option that works best for them and their children. Most important, in this nation, every family in every community should have access to good schools. The only difference among schools should be perhaps each having a different focus. No parent anywhere in these United States should have to move or risk arrest in order to secure quality education for her/his child(ren).  

How is it then, that millions of American children live in neighborhoods with schools chronically neglected by the same political/educational system that now wants to condemn them as "failing"?  In such settings, it is hypocritical and cruel to use the illusion of "choice" and "free-market competition" to justify closing or taking even more resources from those same schools; sending parents scurrying for scarce or non-existent schooling options. 

In a widely read New York Times op-ed last December, a black, middle-class mother from D.C. described "Why School Choice Fails."

"But I’ve come to realize that this brand of school reform is a great deal only if you live in a wealthy neighborhood. You buy a house, and access to a good school comes with it. Whether you choose to enroll there or not, the public investment in neighborhood schools only helps your property values.

For the rest of us, it’s a cynical game. There aren’t enough slots in the best neighborhood and charter schools. So even for those of us lucky ones with cars and school-data spreadsheets, our options are mediocre at best.

Today, I live in and my own chldren matriculated through a school district that is still dragging its feet about ending the inequities of segregation ("Justice Department Files Motion.." May 2011).  Most of those with whom I have taught here in the Mississippi Delta have done amazing work, sometimes under disgraceful conditions, helping many of our students go on to productice lives. I often wonder how much more those children could have achieved, and how many more we could have helped, if all schools had the resources and support of our better situated colleagues? Real school choice should start with making every public school worthy of choosing.

The supposition behind publicly sponsored school choice plans is that the way to improve schools is by generating competition that would force schools to either get better or close. In reality, as  Cheryl Williams correctly notes that, "to the extent we rely on competition to improve some schools, others will be left behind. In that situation the losers are always children, and ultimately the rest of us as well."  What such plans promote is abandonment of schools in the neediest communities, and the students whose parents for whom moving/transferring is not an option. It is a simplistic to suggest, as some voucher proponents do, that we just "let the money follow the students." The already insufficient resources at many of these schools cannot be easily or adequately sliced off on a per student basis without causing multiplied damage to those left behind.

Shouldn’t ending such longstanding inequities be a higher priority than funding faulty school choice schemes?

Cross-posted at National Journal.com, Education Experts

Maybe some of our teacher education programs aren't producing enough high quality teachers because they're too busy trying to meet the over 400 reporting requirements demanded by the Federal government?  Working out the newest version of those reporting duties and deciding what counts as proof of a high quality teacher education program is being thrashed out now by a federal panel.

As with other aspects of ESEA, it is the establishment and implementation of these Federal rules and regulations where the law actually touches the life and work of schools, students, and teachers. More on this little-known, but critical component at this piece from Inside Higher Education  (hat tip to my friends at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching).  Also detailed coverage of the two-day meeting over at EdWeek.

On the one hand, some teacher prep programs have come under increasing (some would argue, burdening) regulation, while most alternative, quick-fix programs receive almost no oversight. These double standards and mixed messages have contributed to the educational inequality in this country. I'd advise those genuinely interested in professional preparation of teachers to watch these rules developments closely.

"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---"

So wrote Emily Dickinson, who could have been foreseeing the current debate around the legacy of NCLB on the occasion of its 10th anniversary.

I was among several people invited over at Education Week to share my thoughts on what ten years of life under NCLB has meant. As I read the responses and the discussions in other media, I found one constantly repeated point to be particularly irritating, resulting in my posting an angry tweet:

@askgeorge I am SO tired of folk claiming we didn't know 'bout ed inequality until NCLB. Shows how much Blk tchrs & parents were ignored. (@TeachMoore Jan 6)

Supposedly, NCLB's one highly positive attribute is that, as Rep. Miller put it, "It turned the lights on in our schools." He and others credit NCLB with uncovering what was supposedly a deeply hidden secret: That some groups of children in our country, particularly, Black, Hispanic, and special needs children, were generally getting far lower quality of education than their peers. That is the truth, but here's the slant: It was not a secret. In fact, these inequalities are the results of long-standing, deliberate, systemic practices in American education. What's more, parents and teachers, particularly minority parents, students, and teachers, had been complaining loudly and bitterly about those problems for a long, long, time. Perhaps it was policymakers who needed the evidence from NCLB, as Rep. Miller claims, to be "convinced that all children can learn and succeed."

Miller and others argue that "we" didn't have data on how each group of students was performing, and without that information, "no one felt the urgency to fix the problem." Truthfully, what's being preferred as data wasn't that scarce; we have elementary school standardized test scores and college admission scores going back decades. The lack of urgency (again, on whose part?) was because of whose children were being affected. NCLB supporters insist that the law provided impetus, in the form of real penalties, to correct these problems. In most cases, however, those pressures have been applied, not to the designers or perpetrators of the inequities, but more often to those who had been trying for so long to shine the light on these problems: students and teachers.

As I've shared before, many of the schools we currently label as failing, are in fact too successful at doing exactly what they were designed to do: under-serve specific groups of children. How can we hold every child and every school accountable for the same standards, while we simultaneously and deliberately give some students inferior resources, underprepared teachers, inadequate facilities, and put other unnecessary obstacles in their already difficult paths? It did not take ten years of humiliation and frustration of millions of children to learn what we already knew.

Real education reform starts with truth and equity.

Cross-posted at National Journal.com

Great piece in New York Times on how schools on America's military bases are closing the achievement  gap. Here's a slice:

It has become fashionable for American educators to fly off to Helsinki to investigate how schools there produce such high-achieving Finns. But for just $69.95 a night, they can stay at the Days Inn in Jacksonville, N.C., and investigate how the schools here on the Camp Lejeune Marine base produce such high-achieving Americans — both black and white.

They would find that the schools on base are not subject to former President George W. Bush’s signature education program, No Child Left Behind, or to President Obama’s Race to the Top. They would find that standardized tests do not dominate and are not used to rate teachers, principals or schools.