ED Thoughts: Education Views and Support

Right now I teach with skills in mind, but also work to enrich student progress. For example, we could read about hoplite shields, OR we could make a hoplite shield, color it, and place a paragraph summary of the Peloponnesian War on the back. I choose the latter. But I have always felt this way.

Perhaps I need to take my teaching in another direction. Perhaps I stick to the texts I’m given (goodbye novels and things outside of the literature book) and hello to textbook only and drill and kill in reading and language arts. I could also do this in Social Studies with short readings and short responses that are similar to what would be on a standardized test.

Perhaps we just work and work and work and instiutionalize the once quiet practice of teaching to the test so that our kids can increase their scores above previous levels of expectation. That’s what the state wants.

Perhaps I should. *Vomits in Mouth*

The Florida House of Representatives recently approved a modification to the way teachers are retained in their state. From the New York Times:

The legislation, which positions Florida as a leader in the teacher tenure battle, would require new teachers to work under one-year contracts beginning in July, effectively ending tenure. As of 2014, contracts would be renewed based on evaluations, half of which would be tied to how students perform on assessment tests. The evaluations could lead to raises, or dismissals if teachers perform poorly two out of three years. Tenured teachers could opt into the merit pay system, but they would face the possibility of dismissal because of unsatisfactory evaluations regardless.

I understand the allure of teacher pay or retention based on assessment tests (or partly based on those tests). That said, if you spend enough time in a classroom you will see that some students do not perform to the minimum acceptable score. This doesn’t mean that we can give up on a student or not try as hard with that kid. All students deserve our best. But here’s the deal, I can’t dunk when I play basketball.

What I mean by this is that I don’t do as well as some other people when playing basketball. In school, I didn’t do as well at math as some of my classmates. But when I played basketball, my coach didn’t give up on me and my math teachers never did either. Some kids, because of inclination, strength in different subjects, possible learning disabilities (not that kids with a disability(s) can’t pass, but a learning disability, if it is in an area that effects the subject being tested will make passing that test more difficult than a student who does not have that disability), something in their lives outside of school, a bad hair day, etc… won’t pass the test. The teacher can do everything they can, and to judge them and possibly fire them, based on a test that isn’t within their control, is very discouraging, and *gasp* unfair.

If you want to judge on performance, look at how the teacher interacts with the students, what they are doing in the classroom to teach, their knowledge of the subject they are teaching, inclination to help other staff, ability to be flexible, etc…

I can’t imagine how demoralizing this development would be to teachers in the state.

I’ve already written on this subject in another post. It’s one of my favorites so far. To get how I felt one day about test scores used in teacher evaluation, give it a look:

Judge Me With Test Scores? Want to give my student the paper to take the test?

I was very interested to watch the President’s speech when I got home.  My daughter was sleepy and settled in on my chest.  We got about 10 minutes in and then I was asleep.  Ok-attempt 2.

At first I thought it was the baby pheromones that caused my drowsiness.  Turns out it was the lack of substance in the speech.  You can watch the 27 minutes if you like, but I’ll get to what I thought the meat of it was right here.

Most interesting part for me: Race to the Top costs less than 1 percent of the Federal Education budget and but has led 40 states to change their approach to education.  [Seems to me to be a sign of the desperation for funds that public schools were facing during the recession].  Ok, the most interesting part.  The Obama administration is going to open up the money and let local school districts apply. This is very interesting. We know that much of RTT is about teacher evaluation (including using test scores as part of evaluations).  It will be fascinating to see what individual districts do.

The speech itself didn’t have a lot of meat to it.  For that, you need to turn to the White House Fact Sheet released this morning.  Some selected parts:

By focusing on teacher effectiveness and driving reforms based in part on evidence of student learning and achievement, this plan will place a greater focus on helping a greater share of  teachers excel while rewarding those that are most successful in the classroom.  The President’s plan provides resources to back the development of teacher evaluation systems that use student learning and other measures to support and identify good teaching…

NCLB Status Quo: Teachers and principals don’t get credit for improving student scores.
The Obama Plan:Replace the current pass-fail school grading system with a system that rewards teachers, principals and schools for showing they’ve helped students improve and doesn’t just judge them for how students did on one test on one day.

Basically, this is saying that teacher evaluation and possibly some form of compensation “while rewarding those that are most successful in the classroom” will be tied to student test scores.  How else would you evaluate student learning?  You’re not going to ask the teacher, especially if their pay is connected to it.  Not saying that I or any teachers I know would be dishonest, but I studied game theory and that’s a situation where you’re just begging the actor to cheat.

So we’re back to the test.  During the speech the President said:

Now, I want to speak to teachers in particular here.  I’m not talking about more tests.  I’m not talking about teaching to the test.  We don’t need to know whether a student can fill out a bubble.  We do need to know whether they’re making progress.  We do need to know whether they’re not only mastering reading, math, and science, but also developing the kinds of skills, like critical thinking and creativity and collaboration that I just saw on display with the students that I met here.

Ok, so the bubble isn’t the way the president wants to evaluate students, and he wants to go beyond reading and math (yay!).  So what to replace the simple bubble test with.  By the way, in Oregon we don’t fill in a bubble, we click on it

NCLB Status Quo: Rely on unsophisticated bubble tests to grade students and schools.
The Obama Plan:Support better tests.  The Obama Administration has invested $350 million to support states in their efforts to create more sophisticated assessment systems that measure problem solving and other 21st century skills and that will provide teachers will timely information to help them improve instruction.

Can someone find a link to a developed and field tested example of this?  I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, I am genuinely curious how a standardized test can be created, administered, and quickly scored for a states’ worth of children.  I see that New Mexico wants a new test, but no details yet.

How can we adequately determine a student’s problem solving without talking to the student, or reading every step they took to solve a problem (or something like that)?  Further, these problems can’t just be math, because we are going beyond math and reading to real world problems?  Remember that the tests must be administered for several years, across an entire state, and scored quickly.  And, and…it has to be cost effective.  In Oregon, to score writing samples, it takes teams of teachers all of spring break.  How are we going to afford or logistically implement real authentic assessment on a large scale?

In the end, I wasn’t expecting a lot out of the speech, but I had hoped to see some real details.  Something I could really think about.  I walked away with “We need to improve education by helping teachers do better, not just focusing on the test, and making sure all students succeed.”  This has been said for years.  Fine, but where are the new ideas?

When your student takes an Oregon OAKS Test, they must meet a certain score to “meet” and another to “exceed.” Oregon has been standardized testing for years, and we continue to do so in an effort to meet No Child Left Behind standards. These scores may be changed.

The scores are called cut scores. Below is a table showing what the current reading cut scores are for this year, and what the Oregon State Board of Education is considering for next year.

I’m all for pushing our students to do better (and of course a post about high stakes testing will be coming out at some point), but I have some real concerns with this.

We normally hope to see about a 5 point increase in a year. So let’s say Johnny is right at a 6th grade cut score of 222. If the current cut scores held, he would have to hit a 227 next year. With the new cut scores he will go from needing a 222 to a 227. This is a 40% increase in the number of points needed (not total score) and 40% above what we usually see.

Ok teacher- so figure out how to get Johnny’s score up that additional 40%. Hey, I agree…but let’s see the issues that may hinder this attempt… and why I’m concerned about the proposed changes.

Add New Classes
Why not add more classes for Johnny to take so he can increase his reading scores? This is a zero sum game folks. If you followthe news you will easily read about districts cutting. So we can’t add new classes with current staff levels because in many of your districts staff levels are being reduced or if you’re lucky, remaining stagnant. So what should we cut? Art? PE? Music? Those are usually the low hanging fruit. What if we keep those?

So what now? Well, the only scores that matter for NCLB are reading and math, so what if we cut social studies? Or science? Diane Ravitch puts it well:

A well-educated person has a well-furnished mind, shaped by reading and thinking about history, science, literature, the arts, and politics.

So let’s keep things as they are (if you’re lucky and you keep your teachers, assistants, and materials budgets) and change our teaching methods.

Let’s just teach differently
There’s some merit here. We can always adopt different methods to try to incorporate more literacy and mathematics instruction. There are places to do this, but what are the best methods? The teachers need good training and resources, but even that costs money and time (and time is money). There’s that funding thing again.

We can do some of this on our own. The work I do on my own to improve myself is done for my students and I don’t request compensation (because I don’t think a teacher should request it for spending their own time trying to improve themselves) but even at that, there are only so many hours I can spend away from my family. Sometimes it’s efficient for the district to provide training.

Class Sizes
According to the Oregonian back in July:

Oregon had 19.2 students for every teacher — 22 percent more students than the national average of 15.8 students per teacher. And as The Oregonian reported Sunday, the state’s high schools classrooms are even more crammed, with 19.9 students for every high school teacher on staff, including special education teachers and other specialists who work with a small number of students.

I average 28-30 students a class, and in my talking with teachers in other districts, it’s about the same. I don’t know where these numbers come from. See above to learn about cuts. When you cut a teacher, the students don’t go with them. Take each cut teacher and then disperse their students.

For example, take a department of 8 teachers with 30 kids a class. With 30 kids in a 45 minute period, you can have a minute and a half of 1-1 time. That doesn’t give you any time for large group instruction or things like classroom management.

Now reduce that staff down to 7 in the department. Disperse the 30 students and you add about 4 to every class. Now you have a class of 34. The teacher has a minute and fifteen seconds per student. Again, not counting talking to the whole class or dealing with classroom management.

Ok, the difference between 1:30 and 1:15 is small, and does a teacher only spend that much time per student per class period? No. We do small groups or sometimes rotate teams, or sometimes go in depth with students on different days, but when you increase class sizes your child will have less time with the teacher.

I used to believe the claim that large class sizes didn’t matter because it’s the quality of the teacher that ultimately decides how well students learn. That’s partially true. What that statement leaves out is that the larger the class the more issues you have with student behavior (and even the best teachers will have classes with students who require more direction). Student conduct issues are compounded when you cram more kids into a set space. Further, with larger classes, the more papers an individual teacher needs to evaluate. Yeah, I know, assessment doesn’t need to be paper based all of the time, but it’s still done for a lot. For those that scoff at this, why not ask for many of your boss’ directions and corrections to your work be done verbally.

So What Do I Think We Should Do?
Let’s delay raising the scores for a year. Don’t throw the idea away, let’s do it when Oregon’s economy stabilizes and we can do this thing right. Let’s bring back the teachers and the assistants; get the training materials, and reduce the class sizes so we can better equip these kids for their tests! If you’ve ever seen a 12 year old afraid to click a mouse button because it would score their test, or hear from a colleague about students crying after a test, you may be inclined to agree.

I’m a member of the Oregon Education Association, the National Education Association, and I’ll never cross a picket line unless my wife or daughter depended on it. So it was a major surprise to me that instead of being so angry and upset at Waiting for Superman I wanted to take a nap and not think about the problems in education (and there are) I felt something different.

I was moved. I was ready to head to my classroom and get some work done. Ok- I finally started the Facebook and Twitter for my class instead.

What? How does a “tenured” teacher, a class of human that the film spends a considerable amount of time essentially degrading, like that movie?

Dana Goldstein is right when she wrote:

Here’s what you don’t see: the four out of five charters that are no better, on average, than traditional neighborhood public schools (and are sometimes much worse); charter school teachers, like those at the Green Dot schools in Los Angeles, who are unionized and like it that way; and noncharter neighborhood public schools, like PS 83 in East Harlem and the George Hall Elementary School in Mobile, Alabama, that are nationally recognized for successfully educating poor children.

However, I don’t think that the film was trying to say that charters were the only way. Of course, their silence on successful public schools is important to note, but the big thing here was that in some places the schools are awful and kids and families have to *hope* that they get into a better school…

They shouldn’t have to.

But the film degrades tenure!

So what- this is true. It is hard to get rid of a bad teacher. Now I know that tenure has it’s place, but if someone isn’t trying, is degrading to students, doesn’t take direction, and isn’t getting it once they get warned? How can we defend that?

But the film portrays charters as the magic solution to the problems in education!

I didn’t really see that. I think that the filmmaker has a problem with tenure and unions, but the big point I believe the film was trying to make was that in neighborhoods where the schools are so bad that most kids don’t leave with skills and knowledge deemed necessary, then of course the students and parents are going to try to find an alternative.

But the film doesn’t recognize the good work that public schools do!

So what- wait, this is a good point. This isn’t a feel good movie about public education, but there are good things happening that could be adopted in many schools.

I know that this is a quick review and doesn’t get real deep into the issues of the film, but it’s my first reaction. So many pixels and ink have been spilled over this that there isn’t much I can add to the conversation beyond what one regular teacher thinks. However, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments and we can discuss the film.