What's Green Dot Got To Do With It ??

In an article by Bill Turque in yesterday's Washington Post it turns out that Chancellor Rhee is actively exploring with education iconoclast Steve Barr offering Green Dot an opportunity to run schools in DC. The question to ask is what expertise, if any, does Green Dot bring to the equation? Steve Barr instigated a masterful political movement of parents and then teachers in LA through Green Dot to wrest control of 17 schools from LAUSD and UTLA. He and his people never claimed to know anything about running schools.

I met the newly elected president of the Green Dot teachers union at the most recent Teacher Union Reform Network meeting in June and she seemed smart, genuine, well meaning, and honest in acknowledging that she is totally inexperienced. Even if you begin with the assumption that the schools in LA needed new management and that Green Dot fit the bill, the question remains, what do they bring to the table for DC? Green Dot is just now trying to figure out how teachers in their schools should be evaluated. They have little or no experience in this arena. Green Dot is trying to gin up a professional development program for their teachers, from scratch. To their credit, they acknowledge that they have little experience in either of these arenas, or in running schools. Is this a case of the blind leading the blind? Doesn't running schools take more than blind enthusiasm? Education, after all, does have a knowledge base. Its as if decision makers in DCPS are pretending that there is no experience among long time educators, professional developers, school leadership in other districts or nationally -- no state of the art out there that could be drawn upon. Are the ones who get hired just the ones who's stories get the best press in national magazines? ...the blind leading the blind?

The Reform that's Needed

After reading the previous post, I realized that my January 15th blog entry was my last one. I knew it had been a while, but hadn't realized just how long I've been silent. While there has been plenty to write about, I've allowed the oppressive conditions of working within DCPS to get the better of me this school year. After 9 years in DCPS, I was really feeling discouraged and began questioning if it was time to leave the system.

I kept asking myself why the dysfunctional workings of DCPS got to me like they did this year.

Why? Well, I think a large part had to do with the continuing charade that, despite some recent cracks, still has convinced many that DCPS reform is moving in the right direction. I can't tell you how discouraging it is to witness on a daily basis systemic problems that continue to be ignored while so much time and money are being spent in areas that might make DCPS look good in the short term, but will probably not lead to long term and systemic improvement.

The Saturday Scholars program is a case in point. I'm sure it helped improve our test scores—but who is this really helping? The rhetoric that we have to stop serving “adult interests” doesn't match the reality of adults targeting certain students to make our test scores go up. While I have no doubt that it helped the students “on the cusp of proficiency”, what about the thousands of children who were not targeted because they are several grade levels behind in reading and math and have little if any chance without serious intervention of scoring proficient on the DC-CAS? Where is their Saturday Scholars program?

My criticism is meant not to condemn, but to expose the reality so that we can begin to fundamentally correct what is broken. I don't claim to have all of the answers, but I realize that now is not the time to be silent if we want to make real education reform a reality in DCPS.

My next topic--truancy.

"Saturday Scholars" Program Ripped in Ed Week

In this week's Ed Week Commentary, Columbia University researcher Jennifer Jennings slams Chancellor Michelle Rhee for engaging in practices that make the adults look good but leave the neediest children behind. Echoing Teachers and Parents for Real Education Reform blogger Kerry Sylvia's post from January, Jennings describes how NCLB causes school districts across the country to do what makes the stats come out right, rather than what's good for kids.

Is technology all that?

I had the opportunity to visit the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics annual conference in Washington DC. Unfortunately, few DCPS mathematics teachers were able to attend because of DCCAS testing. I went after school on Thursday evening and Saturday until 12:00 just before the conference ended.
I was struck by the number of exhibits that relied on expensive technology. Texas Instruments, Key Curriculum Press-to name but a few-all have fabulous calculators and software that can be used for teaching.
The exhibits both excited and depressed me. I have a single computer-though access to a computer lab- and a white (not Smart) board that is nearly impossible to clean due to its mottled surface.
I have TI84 calculators-excellent tools-though they do not all feed into a central system. If they did, and I had a Smart Board, I could see all my studnets' work on my screen as demonstarted at the Texas Instruments' booth. I need also point out that I began the year with 25 TI84's and am down to nine.
Are my students at a disadvantage? Am I remiss for not pursuing grants to allow me to purchase these resources? How essential are these tools for teaching math? How technologically behind are DC Public Schools when compared to other schools around the nation?
I think we can assume that in wealthier school districts many of these tools are available. I also know that some, though few, DC schools have Smart Boards.
Suffice it to say that many of the teachers I spoke with referred to their Smart Boards casually-as if they had always had them. I assume they were purchased by the school district and the teachers were trained to use them. I do not assume that the teachers themselves raised their own money through technological grants, though some may have.
Not all the latest, and presumably expensive, gadgets are worth buying, but some are. The DCPS central office should ascertain those that are, buy them for the teachers, and train them to effectively use them.

How to Reform a Teacher Salary Schedule...

A new national study by Ed Sector demonstrates that not all teacher salary schedules are created equal. By studying how experience and credentials are valued differently in different school sytems policy makers and unions can tweak their existing single salary schedule to have a powerful impact without opting for risky and unproven pay for performance schemes. This study should make for interesting reading in the light of the current negotiations between the union and district in DCPS.
Read the study summary here

Juking the Stats

As an Algebra and Geometry support teacher at The Duke Ellington School of the Arts, I am concerned about the influence that national tests have on my, and other teachers', teaching.

David Simon, who is responsible for my all time favorite TV series, "The Wire", was on Bill Moyers last night.

He referred to our national zeal for test taking as "juking the stats", a quote that comes from an episode where teachers in a Baltimore inner city school are told that they must teach strictly from the test for the few months prior to giving Baltimore's version of the DCCAS.

The cop turned teacher from the series is familiar with his city's police force (and incumbent mayors) needing positive statistics and draws an analogy between the school's superintendent needing better test scores and the police chief needing better crime stats.

Simon adds that this need for positive statistics has made real police work nearly impossible, a theme that ran through "The Wire".

Real teaching is also inhibited when teachers are asked to abandon the literature they love or mathematical investigations that involve time and the building of things for mass produced DCCAS test taking practice materials.

A newly minted graduate of Howard University called me recently. She is working as a long-term sub at a DCPS Public elementary school.

She was overwhelmed and jittery. Her 4th graders were badly behaved and could not focus on the materials she had been given to use for the three hour Language Arts block.

"What curriculum are you using?" I asked.

"Test taking skill stuff. You know, read a short passage and pick out the main idea. Or, underline the verb in the following ten sentences. Materials like that. We have been ordered to use them."

"For three hours a day? What about history and science?"

"We have been asked to not teach history and science for the time being because they are not subjects on the test."

“Who's your principal?”

“He is new,” she answered. “Hand picked by Michelle Rhee.”

The friend that called me studied theater at Howard University. She knows how to get kids excited about language, movement, the spoken and written works. She has her favorite stories and plays.

But no, like the Baltimore Police Force, in the name of juking the stats, she has abandoned her instincts and dutifully followed her principal's orders.

How sad is that.

Scandal At Three Ed Reform Organizations

In an unusual piece of investigative journalism by Juan Gonzales, reporter at the New York Daily News, a long-standing kickback scheme was uncovered involving Al Sharpton, leader of the Education Equality project of which Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein are key members, and a Connecticut hedge fund. Also implicated are Education Reform Now, Democrats for Education Reform, and Sharpton's organization, the National Action Network. The Sharpton payoff raises issues about the recent and growing trend of increased business influence on education policy advocacy. (click underlined words above for the link)

Dan Brown makes a great point...

In his recent column on the Huffington Post, DC Charter School teacher, Dan Brown describes here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-brown/hey-nicholas-kristof-and_b_178124.html#comments the fallacy in Chancellor Rhee's argument, not just about the number of "bad" teachers in DCPS, but more importantly about where good teachers come from. This is the point that Teachers and Parents for Real Education Reform has been trying to make for six months -- good school systems nurture good teaching. Good teachers are made by good systems. They don't come from the sky by sprinkling pixy dust. Good piece, Dan.

What's Wrong With Accountability By The Numbers?

Education researcher Richard Rothstein makes a powerful argument that the current accountability system under No Child Left Behind makes all the mistakes that have been proven wrong in the private sector. He argues for a very different kind of accountability system in this month's AFT Magazine (click here). Its a must read for everyone in public education today.

Union Bashing Won't Reform Our Schools

In a thoughtful Commentary in EdWeek today, CUNY Professor Jennifer Goldstein argues that union bashing and union protectionism are keeping us from the important work of collaborating on improving the quality of teaching and learning. Goldstein Commentary pdf version here

In response to a note from Linda Darling-Hammond to friends that she is returning home to Stanford and will no longer be seeking a role in the Obama administration, two prominent education researchers, Gary Orfield and Diane Ravitch articulated a stunning critique of Arne Duncan's direction at the US Department of Education.

Posted on Politico.com On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 by Diane Ravitch, Historian of education, NYU, Hoover and Brookings:

In education, the new administration is as ruinous as the old

Education was not a big issue in the campaign, but it is a big issue for our society. Our future depends on having a strong and effective public education system, as well as excellent institutions of higher education and a variety of successful private institutions of education.

When President Obama ran for office, he promised sweeping change, and educators understood him to mean that he would reverse the Bush administration's ruinous No Child Left Behind legislation. I say "ruinous," because NCLB has been a costly failure. On national tests, given by the U.S. Department of Education, student achievement is either flat (as in 8th grade reading) or has improved less than in the days prior to NCLB (as in every other grade and subject tested). I say "ruinous" because NCLB is punitive, has caused nearly 40% of the nation's schools to be labeled "failing," and has set the nation on a course in which nearly all of our schools will be declared "failures" within the next five years.

NCLB's remedy for "failing" schools is harshly punitive. When a school is struggling, there is no help on the way, just punishment: Fire the staff; close the school; turn the school over to private entrepreneurs, etc.

So it was reasonable to expect that the Obama administration would throw out this harsh regime and replace it with a program intended to improve, help, support, and strengthen our schools.

But along comes Arne Duncan, our new Secretary of Education, and everything he has said to date might have just as well been said by Bush's Secretary Margaret Spellings. Duncan paid his visit to New York City and toured a charter school, not a regular public school. He declared that the nation's schools need more testing, as though we don't have enough information already to act on our problems. He declared his support for charter schools, where only 2% of the nation's children are enrolled.

The one educator close to Obama who actually has experience in the schools--his chief policy advisor Linda Darling-Hammond--was demonized by the new breed of non-educators and their media flacks, and she has returned to Stanford University. There was no room apparently in this administration for someone who had been deeply involved in school reform for many years, not as an entrepreneur or a think-tank expert, but as an educator.

It looks like Obama's education policy will be a third term for President George W. Bush. This is not change I can believe in.

From Gary Orfield:

Diane Ravitch and I come from very different positions on the spectrum of educational and social thought but I have to agree with some of the points she makes. In its early days of discussion of elementary and secondary education policy this administration is adopting rhetoric and making some key appointments that make those who want to continue or even intensity the NCLB status quo happy and those who thought that there was going to be a progressive education policy based on what research and experience show can actually produce educational progress, very concerned. This is puzzling since there is a definite move toward a more progressive stance in higher education and the stimulus bill provided rapid and substantial financial help to schools facing disastrous cuts.

Regardless of ideology, I'm convinced that the vast majority of those who seriously study reform of schools or seriously dedicate their lives to working in public schools see some basic structural flaws in NCLB which are often ruining the potential positive impacts of some other parts of federal education law. They also see very serious problems, such as dropouts, narrowed curriculum, increased segregation by race and poverty, and real high school reform, that have not been addressed at all. The administration risks seriously alienating education leaders and organizations that strongly supported its campaign and feel now that they are being played by a small group of Washington lawyers and advocates who think that they can drop the mandate for change and that the administration should continue emphasizing a Bush-like agenda that sounded good but has accomplished very little once press releases are put aside and the data is seriously analyzed.

This agenda has left the U.S. falling further and further behind almost all of our major competitors in high school and college completion. and has deeply demoralized and discouraged the people most essential to any successful turnaround of schools. Linda's was a voice inside the campaign that many people saw as a great sign of hope for a policy that would positively work with educators, take research seriously, end the attacks on teachers, and reinvigorate the schools and educational professionals.

The Republicans could afford to ram though a policy that attacked schools and their teachers as a wedge issue. For the Democrats, however, educators are a central part of their coalition and the campaign was full of promises to fix the policy failures of the Bush era, not to do more of the same. Educators have heard the same slogans and sound bites since the Reagan Nation at Risk report a generation ago and those will not work again.

Someone with the kind of wisdom and knowledge and experience working with schools, and deeply aware of the profound inequalities across lines of race and ethnicity that Linda represents is very badly needed near the center of this administration if it is to have the kind of accomplishments in education the country urgently needs and to avoid disillusioning large number of its very strong supporters.

Gary Orfield

Professor of Education, Law, Political Science and Urban Planning

Co-Director, Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles

Univ. of California, Los Angeles

New teacher evaluation system...the devil's in the details

On January 16, City Council Chairman Vincent Gray organized a full-day hearing on the state of human capital development in DCPS. National experts and eloquent DCPS teachers testified for 11 hours before the full Council. Councilmembers heard different perspectives, but a powerful critique emerged of a lack of support for high quality teaching in the school system, and a teacher work force largely on their own under very difficult conditions. We offer here, and to the right, snapshots from some who testified before the council because it was a day of tremendous insight about what to do and what not to do in the system’s reform effort.

National author and researcher, Thomas Toch, who has studied the strengths and weaknesses of evaluation systems across the country, warned of the dangers of tying teacher evaluation to student test scores. Jason Kamras, who is developing the new evaluation plan for DCPS, should take heed. Rather,

“Evaluations should be based on clear, comprehensive standards of strong teaching practice that have emerged in recent years. And they should encompass multiple observations by multiple evaluators, with a substantial role going to teams of trained school system evaluators free of the inclinations to favoritism and conflicts of interest that have plagued evaluations by principals-and that led to the rise of credential- and seniority-based pay scales in public education 80 years ago.”
“… Most school systems waste millions of dollars on random workshops rather that focusing on improving teachers' specific strengths and weaknesses, because they evaluate teachers so superficially that it's nearly impossible to learn what teachers are good at and what they need to improve.”
“...Comprehensive evaluation systems signal to teachers that they are professionals doing important work, and in so doing help make public school teaching more attractive to the sort of talent that the occupation has struggled to recruit and retain.”

For the full testimony see the link to the right.

What are DCPS’ priorities?

Right before the holiday break I received an e-mail inviting me to be a teacher in this year’s 2009 Saturday Scholars program. After looking at the details provided, it seems like the program is going to be a huge investment—hundreds of teachers will be paid $30/hour for 5 ½ hours each Saturday, January 24--April 18, 2009 (with a few exceptions like Easter weekend).

With so many students in DCPS behind academically, it would make sense to invest so much money, time and manpower in such a program, right?

Wrong! Once I read the rest of the details, I realized it was a case of the short-sighted and misguided priorities of DCPS.

As stated in the e-mail, the program’s focus is to help, “…DCPS students prepare for the spring 2009 DC-CAS.” As a teacher who continues to witness DC schools still lacking in so many areas—resources, supplies, enrichment activities, teachers—it is extremely frustrating to see more money and programs focusing on "teaching to the test".

To make matters worse, “The Saturday Scholars program is an intervention strategy for students who are on the cusp of proficiency for Reading and Math on the DC-CAS.”

Targeting those on the “cusp of proficiency” makes me wonder if it is only about improving test scores. Where are the programs for the students who are at below basic? What about the students in my World History class who are reading at a 4th grade level? Or, the students who cannot pass Algebra because they don’t have basic math skills? So, not only are we teaching to the test, but we are choosing to ignore those that need help the most.

What are the priorities of DCPS? Is it really about children first? Or is it about making ourselves look good?

Could DCPS' focus on improving its measures of "student achievement" actually be in conflict with what's best for student learning?

Marc Fisher Asks if Working Together Might Be a Better Approach in DCPS -- The Broad Acres Story

In Today's POST Marc Fisher raises questions about Rhee's approach extrapolating from Montgomery County's effort to turn around its highest poverty, lowest performing school. If anything, he understates the extent to which the union/management collaboration was the key. Read the case study to the right here about Broad Acres written by the Mooney Institute and used in courses at Harvard University to illustrate the difficulty of turning around a low performing school. We wish Fisher had read the case.

DC Teacher Chic Packs It In

We were sorry, but not surprised earlier in the fall when our fellow blogger from the trenches -- DC Teacher Chic -- quit her teaching job in the middle of the year, and we're even sadder now that she has decided to leave education completely to take a job in another field. It makes us wonder why it is that some people come in to teaching with all the answers and then stay such a short time. Its not at all clear that DCPS is doing right by kids if it recruits people into teaching who don't stick around. We frequently disagreed with Ms. Chic, and found her cavalier attitude insulting to hard-working, award-winning teachers. Many of the teachers and parents who are members of the team who post here argued openly with comments on her blog. Nevertheless, authentic teacher voices are few and far between, so her blog will be missed. A voice from the trenches with a bit more respect for the difficult craft of teaching would be welcome as a replacement. We wish Ms. Chic more success in her new line of work.