Link(s) of the week:

Teach for America is no longer simply filling gaps in areas with teacher shortages.  The superintendent of Kansas City Public Schools just fired nearly 100 teachers in order to replace them with Teach for America Recruits.  The same thing recently happened in Los Angeles, where teachers were told they would be fired during administration of the state standardized tests.  One teacher who did not lose her job in the L.A. fiasco wrote, “It's been a horrible week here. Very depressing. Plus we're in the middle of our state tests. How smart is that to fire teachers while they are giving their students the TEST?   We work for idiots.”  As I hope I made clear in my previous post “Charity vs. Equity”, I don’t believe the expansion of TFA is a healthy decision for children and communities.  I also don’t understand how this makes financial sense in a time of budget crisis, considering the hefty recruitment fee TFA demands for the placement of its teachers.

*Thanks to Sydney for the link!

Merit Pay and the Myth of Monetary Motivation

Conventional wisdom dictates that providing monetary incentives to employees will effectively increase quality and quantity of work produced.  Arne Duncan and Bill Gates, among other influential education reformers, are buying into this wisdom and pushing for policy changes that would link teacher pay to student test scores.  This works for executives who earn bonuses for meeting sales goals, right?  What could possibly be different about teaching?  And why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?

We HAVE thought of this before- - and it has proved a failure over and over again since the 1920s.  Within the past five years alone, merit-pay programs have been proven ineffective in Nashville Public Schools, New York City Public Schools, and Duncan’s native Chicago Public Schools, to name a few.  The following are direct quotes from the research reports in question, with links to the documentation:

o   Nashville:  “POINT was focused on the notion that a significant problem in American education is the absence of appropriate incentives, and that correcting the incentive structure would, in and of itself, constitute an effective intervention that improved student outcomes.  By and large, results did not confirm this hypothesis.”

o   New York: “I find no evidence that teacher incentives increase student performance, attendance, or graduation, nor do I find any evidence that the incentives change student or teacher behavior. If anything, teacher incentives may decrease student achievement, especially in larger schools.”

o   Chicago: “We found no evidence that the [TAP merit-pay] program raised student test scores . . . We also found that TAP did not have a detectable impact on rates of teacher retention in the school or district during the second year it was rolled out in the district.”

Why anyone continues to push merit-pay programs in the face of such overwhelming data regarding their ineffectiveness is beyond me.  It is unclear why education reformers act on the assumption that education should function like a business, despite all the evidence to the contrary.  To quote Diane Ravitch: “Education is not a business. It is supposed to provide good education to all children, not to segment its market and compete with others in the marketplace. It operates on the principle of equality of educational opportunity, not a race to see who can sell the most or win the biggest market share and beat out the others.”

Furthermore, there is something fundamentally wrong with the market-driven view of children and their education as a product.  In Duncan’s merit pay plan, which bases teacher salary on test scores, the product in question is how well a child does on a standardized test.  I fundamentally disagree with this for two reasons.  First, I argue that focusing so narrowly on this singular metric ignores the true heart of education: a complex process of joy, discovery, collaboration, problem solving, creation, and social-emotional growth.  Second, the tests by which we are currently judging students and teachers are flawed.  At present, there is no accurate way to measure how a specific student has grown over time with a specific teacher.  Teachers are judged on all scores, regardless of how long a student has actually been in their class.  In areas like D.C., where there is a high percentage of charter school students being unceremoniously kicked out come test time, the public school teachers are then assigned the punishment for failing students who have only been in the class for a few days.  Is this a reasonable and fair way to judge teacher effectiveness?

Finally, there is new evidence from scientist Daniel Pink disproving the conventional wisdom that the best way to motivate someone is with external rewards like money.  Pink found in his research that “the secret to high performance and satisfaction—at work, at school, and at home—is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.”  Teachers have known this for hundreds of years.  Clearly, we didn’t choose the profession because we were dazzled at the prospect of earning a few extra hundred dollars for raising test scores.  We do this work because we love “those rare moments when understanding of the world alters and a previously impossible thing is admitted” (Audrey Niffenegger).  In honing our craft year after year, we feel we are, in the words of Daniel Pink, “doing better by ourselves and our world.”  We are already motivated and working as hard as we can.  Let’s stop trying to force merit-pay to work and begin looking at actual solutions.

Easter Sunday and the Texas Miracle

This week has been busier than I expected, so I am still working on my merit-pay post.  In the meantime, I encourage you to check out this article, written by retired principal Katherine Cox.  It tells the tale of “The Texas Miracle”, a well-documented lie that bafflingly continues to influence educational policy today.

Here is an excerpt:

“In the 1990′s, Houston Superintendent of Schools, Rod Paige, made principals and administrators accountable for the drop-out rate and for test scores. When those two criteria did not improve at a particular school, Paige fired the school administrator. Scores suddenly shot up at schools all over the district. Some schools made incredible progress with both the drop-out rate and student achievement scores. When George Bush campaigned for President in 2000, he thought he had found “the magic bullet” to reform America’s public schools and touted “the Texas miracle” during his campaign. But, as we shall see, the improvement turned out to be based on lies and fabrication. Houston had not improved its scores or its drop-out rate.

Even though the sham was known in inner circles by 2000, President Bush, once elected, appointed the very shaman himself, Rod Paige, as U.S. Secretary of Education.”

Unfortunately, this is only where the story begins.  Read the rest of the article here.

Link of the Week:

Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell just announced a plan to spend $3 million on a pay for performance pilot program for hard to staff schools in the Commonwealth.  Citing a previous unsuccessful attempt at a similar program, Virginia’s largest school district declined the plan and all attached funds.  Why aren’t more school systems drawing on actual data and historical record to make reasonable decisions about improving schools?  Paying teachers based on student test scores does not, nor has it ever, resulted in higher test scores or the effective recruitment and maintenance of great teachers.  I am off the rest of the week on an overnight field trip with my class, but check back over the weekend for more on the subject of performance pay. 

A Grave Disservice

         Recently, I signed on to help coordinate volunteers for the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action. I believe in the mission of the March to promote teacher, family, and community leadership in forming public education policy and curriculum; secure equitable funding for all public school communities; and end high stakes testing for the purpose of student, teacher, and school evaluation and punishment.  What I enjoy the most about my new role is the opportunity to collect stories from public school educators around Virginia and help these educators turn their frustration into action as we prepare for the March.

         The following is an excerpt from an email written by special educator about the impact of high stakes testing (in this case the Virginia Standards of Learning exam, ironically given the official acronym SOL) on students with special needs. This teacher describes an experience with the VGLA, Virginia’s iteration of alternate assessment for special needs students.

“Each year the impact of the SOL tests seems to become worse and worse.  I work in a school that pretty much demands that special education students take the grade level alternate portfolios regardless of whether they ethically meet the criteria (meaning without doctoring the data) or should be assessed in that fashion.  With the change in documentation for students to talk the VGLA assessment, I found myself testing my students at an obnoxious and ridiculous level.  One of the criteria is that the students demonstrate that they do poorly on multiple choice tests.  Since my students actually did better on the multiple choice tests, my guidance counselor and principal continuously told me to keep testing until they fail the MC test.  That's nuts, and it's a symptom of life in a public school in the time of high stakes testing especially as more and more decisions are being based on the results of these tests.  

I've also read over and over from groups like Students First and many of their fans that teachers are the root of much of the evil in our children's education.  I'm tired of being vilified and demoralized.  I want to do my part.”

This teacher’s story is not unique.  Special education students are seen as an obstacle to schools trying to make AYP, rather than individuals who have a right to a quality education.  There is extreme pressure on schools to have students with special needs take an alternate assessment, typically a massive portfolio of student work samples accompanied by teacher evaluation.  Students are more likely to pass this type of assessment; therefore their scores will not have a negative impact on the school’s overall test results. With the enormous amount of work required to put the portfolios together, the burden to ensure they will pass review, and the increasing number of students in each special educator’s caseload, there is little time left over for the actual business of teaching.  In addition, a study from the University of Dayton found that states with the most punitive sanctions for schools that do not make AYP tend to place special needs students in more restricted settings, rather than finding the most appropriate and least restricted setting required by IDEA. 

Special educators are overworked, underpaid, and not given the autonomy to do what is right for their own students.  In emphasizing test results above all else, we are doing a grave disservice to all our children, especially those with special needs.

Link of the Week:

The DC Community speaks out about former Chancellor Michelle Rhee's tenure in this video.

Call to Action! Save our Schools!

If you are as frustrated about the current educational policies as I am, there is something you can do!  Oakland teacher and author of the "Living in Dialogue" blog Anthony Cody has drafted a petition to the President asking him to reconsider his administration’s stance on education policy in light of his recent comments on the way in which his own children are taught and assessed.  I encourage you to read the text of the letter below and go here if you agree and wish to sign the petition.

"President Obama, Save Our Schools

Greetings,

President Obama, 

On March 28, 2011, you said the following: 
"... we have piled on a lot of standardized tests on our kids. Malia and Sasha, my two daughters, they just recently took a standardized test. But it wasn't a high-stakes test." 

"Too often what we've been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools. ...one thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test. Because then you're not learning about the world; you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math. All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and the little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test. And that's not going to make education interesting to you." 

We agree with what you have set forth as a vision for education here. Unfortunately, this vision is exactly the opposite of the education policy your office has promoted nationwide. By encouraging states to tie teacher pay and employment to test scores, and continuing the punitive, ineffective “turnaround” strategies of No Child Left Behind, your administration has increased the amount and importance of standardized tests given to children in our public schools. 

Mr. President, what’s good for Sasha and Malia’s education is good for public education. The vision you proposed aligns with the Guiding Principles of the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action. We hereby request that you endorse these principles, and more importantly, we implore you to bring the policies of your Department of Education into line with your vision. We furthermore invite you to address citizens concerned about these issues at the Save Our Schools rally at the Ellipse in Washington, DC, on July 30th.

[Your name]"

If that doesn’t feel like enough and you are still fired up, visit the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action website and consider joining me in the March July 28 – 31.   I would love to see you there! 

The Core Issue: Poverty

The recent frenzy around increasing standardized tests, demonizing teacher unions, and promoting business practices like merit pay completely ignores the core issue of poverty and how it impacts our children.  The frenzy itself is largely a response to poor overall U.S. performance on international tests like the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Trends in International Math and Science Study.  A closer look at these tests reveals that one does not have to take the overall performance at face value.  The PIRLS and TIMSS both disaggregate data according to the poverty rate in each school.  According to the scores, U.S. students in areas of low poverty rank at the top.  Not surprisingly, U.S. students in areas of high poverty rank at the bottom. Journalist Joanne Barkan broke it down this way: “students in U.S. schools where the poverty rate was less than 10 percent ranked first in reading, first in science, and third in math. When the poverty rate was 10 percent to 25 percent, U.S. students still ranked first in reading and science. But as the poverty rate rose still higher, students ranked lower and lower. Twenty percent of all U.S. schools have poverty rates over 75 percent. The average ranking of American students reflects this. The problem is not public schools; it is poverty.” 

Stephen Krashen summarizes the research on the impact of poverty with regard to education in his article “Children need food, health care, and books. Not new standards and tests.”  He describes the negative influence of prolonged hunger on language development; the realities of low access to medical care; the effects of increased exposure to toxins and pollutants on health and behavior; and lack of books and other reading material.  Full service models of education like the Harlem Children’s Zone and Neighborhood House Charter School are a step in the right direction.  These schools house many social and community services like healthcare, dental care, and even parent training programs.  Unfortunately, these models rely on many private sources of funding and it is currently unclear how they could be scaled to reach a greater number of children.

Teachers are not, nor should they be, Superman.  We cannot solve these problems on our own and should not be blamed when we fail in our attempts to do so.  How exactly do we expect children to focus and be enthusiastic about learning when they arrive at school hungry, sleep deprived, and without having ever been to a doctor or dentist?  How exactly do we believe students who regularly bury their friends and neighbors from violence on their streets will automatically trust teachers and be inspired to learn new things?  How exactly does increased testing provide an accurate measure of student or teacher performance in classrooms where student turnover is so high due to homelessness that a teacher might end the school year with only a small portion of her original group?  Any one of these problems on their own could be a significant barrier to effective teaching and learning.  The combined impact of these issues makes cultivating healthy, positive, and confident students like “growing roses in the concrete” (Duncan-Andrade*, 2009).  It can be done, but it requires a significant amount of hope.  I want more than just hope for our students in poverty.  I want food, healthcare, and books.

* Jeffrey Duncan-Andrade is both an associate professor at San Francisco State University and an Oakland high school teacher.  He explored the impact of poverty on our students eloquently and viscerally in his 2009 speech “Note to Educators:  Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete”.  I highly recommend anyone with a strong interest to watch the complete video of his speech here.  

Link of the Week:

Why do politicians continue to insist that people with zero educational experience can lead schools and school systems?  Parents and teachers saw this one coming from a mile away. . .

Charity vs. Equity

         At the start of my career, the news that I was teaching in an urban public school was invariable met with the response, “Cool!  Teach for America, right?”  As if going through TFA were the only reason a fresh young college grad would concede to such a flat and ambitionless career.  Somehow, the fact that I chose to pursue a degree in education seemed to disappoint people.  Upon receipt of this information, many potential new friends dismissed me as unmotivated, mediocre, and not worth their time.  Shocking though this may be, popular opinion of career teachers was, and is not exactly positive.

Although I will freely admit I am not a fan of Teach for America, I will say that I know and love many brilliant and dedicated people who have pursued work with TFA either as an entry point to a career in education or a learning experience prior to further study in graduate school.  I think the program does help as a stopgap measure in areas that have low pay and poor teaching conditions, and therefore have difficulty attracting quality, credentialed educators.  The problem is that people have come to view TFA as a permanent fix, rather than actually tackling the underlying problems of poverty and inequity that led to the teacher shortage in the first place.  In addition, die-hard supporters of TFA tend to inflate the program’s impact and “suck the air out of any public discussion about restructuring and improving the profession.”

The issue that has disturbed me the most about TFA however, was recently addressed by TFA Alum Marie Levey-Pabst in an article titled “Will the Teach for America Elite Save the Poor?”  She writes, “What I don't hear people talk about as much, which bothers me, is the fact that students of color really become ‘training material’ for mostly middle and upper class white ‘leaders.’”  The idea that the privileged, white elite can fix all the problems in our education system if only they spend about two years seeing what life is like on the wrong side of the tracks is an absurd notion.  Why is it ok for our nation's poorest, most disenfranchised neighborhoods to serve is a training ground for the next leaders in educational policy while wealthy suburban areas enjoy their pick of only the most seasoned educators?  (This is especially frustrating in light of recent events, revealing corruption and misrepresentation of performance data in charter organizations and school systems run by TFA alums.)

My friends and fellow teachers Gemma Cooper-Novack and Masha Wasilewski describe this dilemma as the “charity model vs. the equity model” of education. It seems as though, in embracing and promoting TFA, the U.S. has settled for a charity model, in which quality education for the poorest children becomes the responsibility, should they choose to accept it, of the wealthy elite.  We should be working instead towards an equity model, in which quality education is the right of all children, and the responsibility falls on all of us to create and maintain the conditions necessary for such education to take place.