Finding the Best Split for Neighborhood K-8 Schools
Early intervention programs have overloaded K-8 schools. But the model for educating children in neighborhood schools through puberty remains a fine idea. Movement to adjacent schools offering PreK-3 and Grades 4-8 seems like a better idea than going back to the old middle school concept.
The K-8 elementary school model created continuity for children as they evolved from concrete learners to more complex thinkers, keeping their core identities intact as they came of age as young adolescents. The milieu provided a wonderful blend of physical and intellectual growth within the context of a nurturing community of educators, families, and other supporters who knew each child well. However, early intervention programs have front-loaded elementary schools with crucial new programs for younger children who are at-risk for developmental and learning disabilities. The schools are straining under the burden of too many missions.
Some have advocated for a retreat to the middle school model for the upper grades. However, new information suggests that grade six may hold too great of a transition challenge for the children. Indeed, a study from Harvard University found that movement into middle school in grade six had a greater negative impact on student outcomes than the transition to high school in grade nine. The middle years clearly need special attention, but existing models no longer fit.
A win-win for elementary children could be a neighborhood-based solution that splits schools in fourth grade. The buildings could be physically adjacent and continue to share resources such as libraries, playgrounds, cafeterias, and athletic facilities. Still, the smaller learning communities could address the unique needs of divergent age groups. Communication across faculty groups would be facilitated, and the children could continue to benefit from interaction through programs such as mentoring between younger and older students.
A school for grades 4-8 would recognize the movement from basic skill building to applied learning that is most significant in grade four. In addition, it would shift the change in school to an age that is less complicated physically and emotionally. Children could solidify their identities based on emerging intellectual strengths prior to tackling the upheavals with the onset of puberty. By grade six, their introspection and social development could occur in a safer and more familiar place.
Business Leadership in Education
Education leadership is being given an injection of general management training as traditional schools of education are realizing synergies with business school partners at leading institutions. Instructional leadership will not take a back seat, but there should be real gains in resource allocation and staff development. Philanthropy may be more effective as well when sophisticated turnaround experts refocus funding on the primary mission.
Last week, Yale University’s School of Management announced a design competition for its graduate students. The subject is public education, and it will culminate in a school leadership conference next spring. Earlier this fall, Harvard announced a new PhD program in Education Leadership that is a joint venture between the Graduate School of Education and Harvard Business School. The Ed Leadership doctoral program has already added executive coaching in school turnaround to its curriculum. Similarly, the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia has introduced a dual-degree program with the Darden School of Business.
This is not the first time educators have considered input from industry. Local business leaders have sponsored programs to extend the school day or offer tutoring in addition to job placement for students. Many CEOs have explored Principal-for-a-Day gigs. Mid-career transition programs have brought experienced managers into teaching. School leadership programs have included MBAs in their induction programs. However, all have shared the requirement that newcomers see education through the lens of the profession. Folks have to drink the Kool-Aid to get in the door then go to the back of the line for seniority or access to power brokers if they choose to stay.
As a mid-career transition teacher, I entered the field expecting to share contributions from my healthcare management experience but found little interest among my colleagues. Indeed, most members of my cohort of teachers with prior business lives had left the field in dismay within a couple of years. I recall one particularly frustrated co-worker who had managed the electrical systems at a manufacturing plant. Our school had a complex power outage that he had accurately diagnosed…three days before the problem could be corrected. Each day, he would shake his head as 1300 members of the school community would return to the building only to be sent home after spending a few hours in the dark as the latest sure-thing failed. No one would listen to him…they would rather sit in the dark.
Much has been said about MBAs contributing to education management. Large urban school districts publicly welcome MBAs to apply to their customized leadership programs, which combine coursework with principal apprenticeships. While this seems like a great pathway, it requires as much time as a second MBA, and cohorts are small. Each year, traditional ed schools produce thousands of new administrators whose licenses are rubberstamped. In the meantime, a handful of experienced MBAs are vetted individually by high-level committees for participation in small but visible demonstration projects. Their impact on the industry is limited because of their numbers. In addition, the tight cohort model supports a singular vision of the problems and solutions. Holding onto one’s good business judgment can be confused with failure to “get” the education milieu.
Likewise, philanthropic efforts from the business community often seem like no-brainers. School districts are chronically strapped for funds, and good corporate citizens always are welcome to lend a helping hand to sponsor school programs or to offer support during out-of-school time. However, the benefactors tend to assume they shouldn’t try to understand the setting; rather, they should allow the educators to define the problems and possible solutions for them. Unfortunately, keen insight can be lost when a poorly conceived solution gains acceptance under the guise of the esoteric. Educators can spend a lifetime in a single building. Institutional myopia abounds, and access to executive talent may be undervalued simply due to inexperience.
Education is a field in need of new leadership and vision. The industry is resistant to change and insists on co-opting interested parties and indoctrinating them into the system themselves. Essentially, one must adopt their world view to be allowed access to the problem. There is a real opportunity for schools of management to challenge this status quo as equal partners in a new school leadership model.
The End of Pedagogy Wars
A dozen or so years ago, there was a glimmer of hope in academia for teaching diverse learners in the mainstream. Learning styles were analyzed and some number (usually eight) of unique approaches was defined for reaching the whole class. Theorists designed units of study that combined these approaches, ranging from independent reading to full-scale construction projects. What happened?
Since the introduction of the New Math in the 60s, educators have been drawn to pedagogical fads. Staunch supporters of all-or-nothing swings in teaching methods have ruled content areas, and a throw-away culture has had its way with the tools of the trade. These single-minded approaches always failed to meet the needs of a segment of the student population. Eventually they would get discarded – baby with the bath water. Given enough time, as any veteran teacher will assure you, each was resurrected, once its antithesis had been explored and unanimously dropped for its own short-comings.
Debates over pedagogy have continued to treat many decisions as binary, and persuasive dialogue has quickly devolved into the usual Good versus Evil dichotomy. While this would seem to be wrong intuitively, research often has supported the conclusion that the most recently released version of teaching was better. What could be wrong with that?
The paradox of the short-term blip in achievement in responses to any new strategy accounts for part of the problem. Essentially, students who were receptive to a particular strategy would internalize it and activate it independently with repeated exposure; less receptive students would be neutral or worse. Over time, the strategy would grow stale, and any valid innovation would have a better chance of stimulating learning, especially if it hit the mark with children who were underserved by the previous technique. All the same, confetti would fly heralding the discovery of the new magic bullet for education woes.
The greater flaw has been the limited bandwidth for learning styles, processing speeds, and vehicle preferences. Pedagogical swings or biases have prevented access to meaningful lessons for some of the students all of the time. A more robust model of student engagement and choice could keep the whole menu of learning strategies in the mix with less risk of overexposure. Versions of “broadband” learning, such as the Felder-Silverman Learning Style Model or Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences, have appealed to academics but found limited success in K-12 schools. I suspect that early innovators had difficulty implementing them within the context of technological support and traditional classroom management.
Today, the time is ripe to revisit the case for teaching every child by design. Technology has become ubiquitous with a wide variety of platforms and applications. Accountability for special populations has exposed shortcomings in inclusiveness of education systems. And scrutiny of teachers has led to a mixture of sharp criticism as well as heightened support for valiant efforts. A longer vision will allow us to exploit these challenges and opportunities for our own growth.
Truly student-centric education will rely upon further evolution of classroom resources and redefinition of the role of the teacher. The new classroom must be technology-rich and multi-purposed, or students must have access to alternatives in the form of dedicated activities rooms or virtual learning opportunities. Teachers will need to release control over instruction in favor of milieu design, coordination of the learning workshop, and guidance of student decision-making, as well as observation and feedback. Educators need not worry about discarding teaching methods. Let the children try them all to see what works. Best practices match strategies to learners; they should never limit the field.
Reinvention of the teacher is not a personal quality issue so much as an opportunity to diversify skills and take professional risks. Knowledge cannot be personified in a single teacher, nor can complex lesson plans be developed and applied in isolation. Collaboration and interdependence among educators will be crucial. Deep knowledge of content and pedagogy will remain essential; however, the ability to work in a team and foster self-advocacy in students will be equally important. Individual variations arising from professional experience, style preference, or demographic factors must be seen as sources of insight rather than divisiveness.
Securing the Floor to Raise the Ceiling
Sometimes both sides are right. Standardized tests do not confirm that students are doing their personal best work. Yet an inability to pass a grade level assessment does suggest that students have a deficiency in prerequisite skills for the next level. Can we agree to keep all students challenged and making progress…regardless of whether they are catching up or surging ahead?
When you bump your head on the ceiling, it’s the designer’s fault. When you bump your head on the floor, you may need to look in the mirror. It’s that way with student test scores, too. No one ever said that accountability testing was designed to limit how high achievement could get; rather, it was to ensure that no child was left behind because he or she was unprepared for the next level on the climb to the top.
Early intervention programs seek to catch developmental issues as soon as possible for young children. They pay off for a lifetime. So do basic reading and numeracy skills developed by grade three…and applied math and literacy skills by grade eight…and emerging abstract reasoning by grade ten. These are benchmarks that secure the floor for each age group.
Every child is born with gifts and challenges; it is our job as educators to provide the best possible platform for learning. This means multi-tasking as leaders. We do not receive our missions and instructions from regulators. We must actively design our agendas for all children. School leaders who simply following a formula of priorities set for the lowest common denominator are missing the point and trying to blame the regulators. The whole reason for benchmarks is not to define an endpoint, it is to quickly measure achievement of a goal and move on.
We continue to try to build education on a shaky foundation for too many children. Let’s fix that and move on.
Occupy Wall Street – Show Up for School
The Occupy Wall Street movement is a vitally important cause with many supporters as well as cling-ons. Please leave its crucial message on the US and world economies intact. The legacy of education reform is essential to our children and our economy, but we must maintain a separate identity. Please…Don’t call it Occupy the Schools.
The world is trapped in the trenches economically. We must address our woes through stimulation of the economy, investments in local production, and reversal of the toxic alchemy in financial instruments. There is nothing more vital to the survival of our political economy than substantive change in the form of long-term redistribution of wealth away from imprudent investors, the alienated ultra-rich, and our overseas creditors. Implicit in that political economy is a market economy that is responsive to money as well as the political strength of the democracy when lack of money silences too many would-be participants.
The Occupy Wall Street demonstration is functional, meaningful, and deserving of fiscal and monetary policy response. We must cautiously avoid added baggage on the coattails of the movement that might reduce the impact of its primary message.
Funny Business
The Autism Spectrum is no laughing matter, but the cognitive science of humor offers hope in our link to children who suffer alone too much of the time.
Susan LaPierre was a friend and personal hero before her children were born. Fifteen years later, watching her older son smile, laugh, and reach out for hugs, I realized she had achieved stardom. Children with Asperger’s Syndrome rarely watch people, wait patiently for an opening, and then delight them with ironic observations. Not everyone has a mother who teaches them the cognitive path to humor.
Unlocking children on the Autism Spectrum has become a subject of great concern as the incidence rate for the diagnosis has accelerated. The biopic on Temple Grandin offered hope arising from one woman’s perseverance and the family members and mentors who championed her cause. Yet, the reality of education today is the creation of isolated autism programs serving this burgeoning population. Online educational programs and “virtual peers” simulations have demonstrated improvement in some outcomes, but early diagnosis of language acquisition disorders and patterning by well-trained parents may offer the most promise in preventive treatment of the underlying causes of the relational aspect of the disorder.
I was intrigued by an interview in the Boston Sunday Globe with Matthew Hurley, one of the co-authors of “Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind.” Hurley is a cognitive scientist working on his doctorate at Indiana University, who had conceived of the idea in an undergraduate term paper. He considers humor to be universal, yet uniquely personal, and is looking at it as an important path to truncating our pursuit of erroneous thoughts and actions. So, what are the implications for one who has been bypassed in this otherwise universal trait? Can we reverse-engineer the humorless world of autism?**
Seeing children change as they begin to “know” the jokes that they cannot instinctively “get” can be heart-warming for all involved. The therapeutic value of humor in the sense of belonging in social settings and the intrinsic reward of successful interactions should not be underestimated.
**Cool coincidence…On Amazon.com, notes on the authors of “Inside Jokes” included the comment below from Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology and Director, Autism Research Centre, Cambridge University. It doesn’t answer my question, but I really like the idea that these guys know each other…
” What’s so funny about a robot with a sense of humor? In this highly original analysis, Hurley, Dennett, and Adams try to locate the holy grail, the essence of a joke, by using a variety of tools (from computer science, cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy, and even evolutionary psychology) to dissect why we laugh. This powerful team of authors goes a long way to explain why and when we laugh, and in doing so uncover insights about how the mind works. But like the proverbial millipede who, trying to analyze how he lifts each of his legs in the precise sequence, starts tripping over, readers should beware that getting inside a joke risks dehumorizing it!”
Tarnished Seals of Approval
There is gold in the teacher quality debate, just not for the children. Quality assurance programs are lining up for funding in exchange for promises to track teachers from their prep programs through the next several generations of their progeny. However, there seems to be a charlatan factor that has already gotten under the radar.
A year or so ago, I discovered that my principal certification was not transferable to a new state because the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University was not a quality leadership program for educators. Okay, so the echo chamber of education does not recognize the validity of general management training. Looking further, however, the School of Education at Northwestern did not make the list, nor did the Curry School of Education from my undergraduate school, the University of Virginia. In fact, I discovered that my best chance for adequate credentialing would be enrollment in one of a plethora of storefront correspondence schools scattered across Long Island and the Bronx. They had met the requirements for the national seal of approval.
It seems to be the case that only a handful of major university education programs have applied for accreditation in the new teacher quality programs. And the reason may be that they don’t have to…their work stands on its own merit. Why would they undergo yet another tedious review procedure to prove to the narrow field of education that their world-class standing is, indeed, deserved?
School districts know the sources for strong teacher preparation. They are more likely to have trouble hiring and retaining new teachers from high quality programs because of LIFO and seniority issues, the limitations of career advancement, or the pension trap. Further, teachers who offer promise but deliver less success over time may reflect their employment environments more so than their original training.
I believe in continuous quality assurance. I cannot endorse expending serious resources to raise the barriers to entry in a field that lacks commitment thus far to annual goal setting and performance reviews once access to the field has been achieved.
PS, What are the chances that you are getting some of your best insights from alums of one of the perennial boot camp teacher prep programs that bypassed most tradition quality hurdles?
The Lawrence, MA Situation
The Mayor of Lawrence, MA has invited the Commonwealth to take over the city’s school system. Chronic failure within schools was complicated by the indictment of the Superintendent almost two years ago. Despite local turnaround efforts, the system has only gotten worse. The good news? Renewal through external oversight offers an opportunity to get reform ideas out of the incubator and into practice.
State takeover of the Lawrence Public Schools sounds like a big-budget, centralized administrative challenge modeled, perhaps, after the takeover of the Chelsea schools by academics a couple of decades ago. On the other hand, why not go for a decentralized model with the big bucks going straight to the schools and a high-powered leadership team?
Suppose every school in Lawrence had…
- Leadership by a team consisting of a general manager with private turnaround experience, an instructional leader from within education, and a community outreach liaison.
- Weighted-average funding of students directly to decentralized school budgets with a small percentage paid back to the district to support overhead.
- Aggressive goal setting for student achievement with whole-school incentive pay for turnaround results
- Data support to measure student performance, longitudinal progress toward grade level proficiency, psychosocial benchmarks, and personalized learning objectives.
- Extended school days to bring all students closer to grade level achievement
- New teacher contract with annual goal-setting and performance review
- Access to health centers, counseling, and career services
- Community-based centers to support academic and extracurricular activities for out-of-school time
Students would attend either a PreK-8 school or a high school characterized by…
- Neighborhood PreK-8 schools with adjoining PreK-3 and Grades 4-8 facilities, or
- Larger regional high schools with a campus atmosphere of small learning communities and shared facilities for science and technology, the arts, sports and physical education, and culinary arts and other vocations. (See details of The New Urban Academic Campus here.)
Given the large number of English learners in the city and high truancy and drop-out rates, student re-engagement and ELL programs would be priorities across the district. Previously shared Thoughts on English Language Learning can be found here. Also, I have some ideas about re-engagement in Middle School here, and High School here. In addition, my approach to Special Education would include the children in the dialogue with school leaders and special educators by grade four as summarized here.
College Readiness is About Life Readiness
Many well-meaning observers challenge the goal of college readiness for all high school graduates. While it is valid that alternate paths deserve consideration, critical thinking is required for success in all walks of life.
College readiness is not just about higher education and career paths; it is about having the knowledge needed to understand one’s world well enough to negotiate one’s self interest successfully. Undereducated children are more prone to misread situations and act rationally using a primitive analytical model. Their decision trees are missing so many branches that they may be doomed to frustration and failure in many aspects of life as they miss opportunities or take poorly calculated risks. Failure to learn to think critically in school predisposes them to take the same approach as adults, seeing the world as chaotic and themselves subject to luck, popularity, or brute force. Instead of controlling their destinies in a world of possibilities, they tend to seek to control their inner circles in an ever-decreasing sphere of influence. Education is the key to breaking that failure cycle.
If Not Now…When?
My mom came home from a PTA meeting and vowed never to go back. My high school principal had addressed the recent proposal that students must read at a 10th grade level in order to graduate from high school. It had never occurred to her that he had assembled the parents to reassure them that he would do whatever was necessary to fight this literacy movement. It was 1971, and urban educators were under siege. I write today, like my mother, in disbelief that in 2011 the same battle cry against baseline intellectual integrity could seem so logical to so many.
Over 40 years ago, I transferred to an inner city school as part of a court-ordered desegregation plan. I had been born during the year of the Brown Decision, and sixteen years later a local judge declared that it was time to do the right thing. A handful of my classmates and teachers went with me as I was bussed to a school that was, ironically, only half the distance of my home from my previous high school. Actually, I walked to school, quite literally crossing the train tracks to see first-hand what the policy of Separate but Equal education had failed to deliver.
Ten years ago, I returned to urban education on the other side of the desk, attending a boot-camp teacher training program for mid-career professionals. Crossing the threshold of a high school in the fall of 2001 felt eerily like entering the halls of that inner city high school to which I had been bussed when I was 16. I was in a different city and decades older, but little had changed in the outward appearance of urban education. The building was an aging classic, materials were scarce, and my classroom furnishings Spartan. There was talk of an achievement gap that seemed based in demographics. Benchmark exams loomed as graduation requirements, creating a crisis for students with poor math and literacy skills. Time had stood still for an underserved population.
Recalling the urban high school experience of my youth, or even the era of the late 60s and early 70s that formed its context, I am struck by the differences that we take for granted today. Many civil rights are secure [although serious evidence to the contrary has been demonstrated since this post was published in 2011]. There is girl power to spare, as long as talk does not turn to titles and salaries. Smoking is bad, recycling is good. And pacifists have learned to hate the war but love the warrior. Still, the double standard in education has persisted, and access to superior schooling remains in the hands of the elite. For minority populations with low incomes, the separateness seems greater than ever.
When No Child Left Behind was enacted, the commitment was made to ensure that children entering kindergarten that year could be guaranteed college readiness by graduation 12 years later in 2014. Short-sightedness distracted us from that goal. Schools quickly became caught up in the race to graduation for the high school students who were not ready to pass any test. Somehow, the legacy of NCLB was not realized as the youngsters in urban elementary schools fell further and further behind their peers elsewhere.
Many of my former classmates have grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren, who are being ripped off in their schools, educationally underserved. NCLB was an attempt to say ”This stops here.” We set a date and were supposed to have meant it. Our 2014 goal is no longer in reach, leaving us a painful question. How many more generations must wait before public education is a right, not a privilege, for everyone’s kids?
Show Me the Reports
Step 1 in any merit-based compensation program is training around the definition of merit. A template for performance measures and evaluation thereof is shown to the people who will be subject to them. Then the forms are filled out and discussion ensues. At some later date, these criteria are used for actual merit pay. Trust comes from knowing the people and the tool. It is not the basis for signoff on a system to be designed later.
With all the talk about teacher effectiveness and compensation, there must be hundreds of teacher effectiveness reports out there, right? Of course, they are based on well-developed records of student outcomes…which don’t really exist yet either, do they? Please tell me I’m wrong. Show me the reports.
Children learn with outward results; however, they also internalize many things that will manifest themselves later. We will never know all that we have taught them, the good, the bad, or the rest. That is why we look at teacher effectiveness with an eye to process and outcomes. Accordingly, multiple measures have been tossed around with regard to teacher performance. Now it is time for the report designers to just put the templates out there and validate them.
Similarly, children take tests to show what they have learned, their ability to analyze and solve problems. Children also demonstrate their habits of learning, their creativity and industriousness, and their civic mindedness. All will contribute to a foundation for lifelong learning. Additional measures that document intellectual and psychosocial development track their successful growth toward adulthood as well as highlighting need for intervention. Schools have built databases that cover some of these elements, but the models are not robust enough to be fully instructive or actionable. Still, it is time to print them and share them.
Absent good data, the debate over student outcomes and teacher effectiveness is being held in moot court. It is time for demonstration projects to reveal themselves and share what they have got, warts and all. Be prepared for flak, but don’t be surprised if you get more than a bit of praise from real reformers. We all need something tangible to turn this discussion into a problem with a solution.
Prior posts…on teacher effectiveness…on basic student data…on psychosocial development
Health Economics Rant
Healthcare costs for government employees and retirees have been bones of contention in contract negotiations across the nation. However, a perfect storm of rising costs, recession woes, and aging of the population could be offset by introducing the laws of economics to the supply side of healthcare.
The supply of healthcare products and services has been subject to relatively unrestrained inflation and economic rents for decades despite policy initiatives to contain costs. Aside from some success with government as the payer, healthcare providers have been in a position to mandate rising payments for services. They have taken advantage of their position as controllers of supply and demand for products and services, and they have wielded this power to eliminate the law of diminishing returns with increased volume. Cost containment efforts have produced shadow-pricing in products and procedures; technological innovations have become the cornerstones for institutional expansion and growth for the bureaucracy. So why isn’t there more aggressive opposition?
Through tough economic times, healthcare stocks have offered the rare growth opportunity. Healthcare providers and suppliers have increased their contributions to employment. Facilities expansions have boosted new construction. Despite the fact that healthcare has crowded out other investments in our economy, especially the factors of real production, we have come to rely on these benefits, however short-sighted, as bright spots in a dismal economy. Costly therapies have spun out of control, and we cannot afford to get well. Still, no one wants to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.
For a visionary, there is a way out of this mess. And it comes in the form of an opportunity that many prefer to see as the challenge that is going to sink us: the aging of the population. We merely have to begin to analyze the supply side of health care with an eye to diminishing returns that lower units cost of product/service provision. The resulting drop in unit price would be offset by growth in unit demand with population redistribution toward middle age and old age. If done right, employment would be stable and healthcare stocks would not have to crash.
We are not helpless in the face of rising healthcare costs, nor are we beholden to it for what remains of our wealth. Ideally, we could contain total healthcare expenditures to a stable percent of GDP while addressing healthcare needs in the private markets. The industry might grow a bit faster than the economy initially, but there would be an incentive for orderly transfer of investment out of healthcare and into emerging growth markets.
Twenty years ago I watched in dismay as we made key bad decisions that vilified the managed care industry and gave carte blanch to provider groups. The latter consolidated their power in local markets and eliminated the crucial role of health insurers as agents of purchasing power for the consumers. Key provider groups began to walk away from price negotiations, and insurers caved lest they lose all of their customers. Today, not even the largest state employee insurance pools have the power to bid down prices in healthcare. That suggests that healthcare providers function as monopolies in their local markets – a role that baffles them all the way to the bank.
Eventually, with the aging of the population and unrestrained healthcare inflation, there will be enough pain in the industry for politics to overrule on the supply side. In the meantime, we can use enlightened management of costs within these operations to reduce the redistribution of wealth from ourselves to healthcare providers and suppliers. Alternately, we can go broke watching the gradual erosion of healthcare provision and outcomes in that coming Perfect Storm.
Updating Decision Architecture for Student Success
The decision architecture for education was designed to support macro level management of Federal exigencies. Micro level decision support has been cobbled out haphazardly across the nation by educators without the strategic vision of economists, production planners, or profiteers. These are dirty words in education, but there are lessons from microeconomics that could guide the way we create decision architecture for local management of student outcomes.
The debate over the role of Federal and State governments led me to an analysis that, for the first time, gave me insight into why we keep our books the way we do in education. It also explained why we don’t seem to fund student learning. Now, there will always be questions about how firm a hand government should have in local operations. However, the real solution lies in teaching the States how to micromanage the learning process, and I mean that in a good way.
The Federal role in public education could be suggested to include…
- Special grant funding and financial reporting standards
- Common Core standards for interstate portability
- National data standards
- Management of “market” imperfections
- Food and transportation for the poor
- Disability benefits
- Incubation of innovation
If data and reporting are indicators, we already have much of the accounting and decision architecture in place for these functions at the macro level. A continuing dialogue is needed, of course, especially in the following areas…
- Rethinking financial standards that are student-centered
- Common Core State Standards – revisions and adoption
- Refinement of data needs for student outcomes and education effectiveness
In addition, today’s emerging global economy demands that the US take a stronger role in the education of its people to remain competitive. Now for the micro level…
At a local level, States and their school districts address the following exigencies…
- Student populations and their learning needs and distributions
- Matching of resources to students
- Creating the milieu/incentives, for effective learning
- Managing the quality assurance process
Trouble is…we have been try to do this while accounting for budgets for
- general education,
- special education,
- food,
- transportation, and
- capital spending.
In a world where our mission should be maximizing student outcomes while minimizing costs, we have been managing the costs alone. And we have been linking the money to the Federal concerns, not the local students.
Financial accounting standards made business performance transparent nearly a century ago. Public services, such as PK-12 education, have similar needs for mission-driven budgets and performance measurement. In addition, existing regulatory accounting places undue control over resources in the hands of specialists who operate in a relative vacuum and, without whom, leaders cannot read or present their financials. Inefficiencies, myopic vision, and episodes of corruption are guaranteed until financial standards for schools support greater transparency.
Because You Laid Them Off
The high rate of turnover among new teachers is highlighted as a major problem in urban education. I call it a symptom. Bewildered analysts are trying to figure out how to fix teacher prep or change the compensation. In reality, some people just can’t keep going back year after year seeking employment from someone who keeps firing them.
Staying employed in the same urban education district for the first three years of one’s career takes dedication and nerves of steel…Not because of the pay, the conditions, the long hours, or anything else intrinsic to the work. It’s the process of getting laid off each spring and hanging on until the last gasp of fall hiring brings you back to work.
By May each year, provisional, or non-tenured, teachers have gotten a notice that their employment status is not guaranteed. Within a few weeks each will be officially laid off. Large urban districts have well-oiled machines for these annual layoffs. By contrast, the restoration of these same jobs seems to happen with great delay. Many who would love to return to their prior assignments simply do not have the stomach or the financial wherewithal to turn down opportunities elsewhere while holding onto that verbal reassurance from a headmaster who vows to rehire them eventually.
Yes, we need good teachers from the start, people who have spent quality time in many learning environments, who have learned their own lessons well, and who are committed to growth in the profession. We need formalized teacher induction programs, facilitated by the school district and managed by the leadership within the developing teacher’s milieu. We need to compensate teachers fairly and equitably. However, none of these help us keep teachers who have found themselves too often in the water, hanging onto a lifeline that used to be attached to a ship that has since sailed away.
As we research our issues with new teacher turnover, can we differentiate among teachers who fled the field, those who got the boot for cause, and those for whom the timing just wasn’t right? In the first two cases, authentic preparation and induction processes offer remedy. In the last case, however, the urban district’s loss just might be a gain for another district with greater agility in the HR department…a critical success factor that will only grow in importance with innovations in functional teacher mobility.
Promote Teacher Quality with Career Mobility – Not More Regulation
Professionals often get their first jobs because of their educational backgrounds; they keep getting jobs because of where they have worked and what they have done. They enter each job well-prepared and committed to keeping themselves current, energized, and growing. Obstacles are hurdles to be overcome; problems are opportunities for leadership and accountability. These are NOT the values of regulation; they are the values of entrepreneurship.
Historical patterns of regulation in K-12 education tended to erect barriers to entry in lieu of professional quality assurance. Teachers and administrators have had to complete required coursework and apprenticeships as well as passing exams or other assessments to achieve licensure. They then entered the profession, often remaining in the same school district for the duration of their careers. Periodic recertification required professional development and, in some cases, additional formal education. However, by that time, most had achieved tenure. They were IN the system, and every financial incentive from paycheck to pension created barriers to exit.
The US Department of Education has determined that this regulated approach to teacher quality has failed. What we need is…drum roll, please…regulation to make the barriers to entry higher. Huh? Yes, let’s make it harder for those closest to the energized newbie end of the spectrum, new teachers-in-training, to get the job. Not sure how this addresses the problems of hiring and retention in urban education, but it clearly does something that even the toughest blame-game champions have never been able to accomplish: assign accountability for failures within the public education system to people who have not yet participated. Way to keep the peace guys!
I am truly disappointed. This is not Change I Can Believe In. This is further abdication of leadership. We have an opportunity to inject entrepreneurship into the system, challenge bureaucratic procedures, and reset the way we motivate leaders in the classroom and in the front office. Let’s rethink this thing. And not with the institutional myopia of a group of insiders whose vision comes from the wrong end of the telescope. It’s time to let people in education come and go as they please, and to bring a more cosmopolitan approach to problem-solving. I’m talking removal of the barriers to exit.
Suppose teachers and administrators had freedom to move about the education system, seeking new experiences, sharing expertise, and disseminating best practices…without severe financial penalties. Suppose a great teacher wanted to go for an MBA instead of an MA in school leadership…to bring new management tools back to the system. Suppose an empathetic school leader wanted a burned-out educator to get to a better place…without losing the ranch.
Educator quality arises from openness to change, which, when managed correctly, translates into professional growth. It is predicated on trust, fair evaluation of performance, and safe harbor while taking calculated risks and exploring creativity. It is stifled by rigid regulations, inflexible pay and benefits, and scapegoating behavior. We will not build a better education system with a slow trickle of teachers from more tightly regulated teacher prep programs. We have a lot of great teachers. We need to set them free.
Symphonies Simplified
Great music for new musicians may be out there if we could get the community of performers to share their translations.
In a recent Education Week article, Peter DeWitt’s guest blogger, music teacher Michael Albertson, shared his frustration with the dearth of sources of music for beginner instruction that is authentic for high school students. Oddly enought, this reminded me of a tour I once took through the Boston Ballet’s studios.
One of the most intriguing revelations on the tour was a music studio in which someone was translating a symphony into a single melodic rhythm for the piano. The purpose was to distill the music to be played by the full orchestra into its essence for purposes of choreography and dance rehearsal. Suppose one were to use it for the reverse – a simple piece to help beginners connect to great orchestral music.
With the accelerated evolution of technology, the procedure I described must be way out of date – not even *last* year. However, there should be a treasure trove of work out there that could be a joy to hear on any instrument…even played by a beginner. Any sources out there?
Student Surveys Predict Outcomes
Melinda Gates reported to EducationNation yesterday that students can tell who is a good teacher. Gates Foundation research found that students who felt they had a good teacher demonstrated better outcomes than students who perceived they had weaker instruction. More on this, please.
A high correlation between positive student outcomes and positive student perceptions on the ability of their teachers seems like good news. Now I am anxiously awaiting the next round of related research. In the meantime, I cannot resist the urge to explore some possible reasons for this phenomenon. I wonder if…
- Children who receive effective instruction recognize it and appreciate it, especially when they take a test and realize they have been prepared well.
- Classically strong teachers and motivated students are more likely to be matched within the education system. Less responsive students are turfed to marginalized programs staffed by rookies and other less-empowered educators. The latter case does not enhance engagement, performance, or satisfaction with instruction.
- Kids who like their teachers are more likely to engage in learning.
- Good teachers attend to the whole child, including discussions with them related to their intellectual and psychosocial development. This enables the children to be more self-aware and to recognize adults who have helped them grow. Alternately, students without such support are more likely to perform at a lower level and assign blame for failure on others, including their teachers.
- Children want to learn, and the adults who listen to them and work with them make better teachers.
- Nothing succeeds like success. Each test is a cumulative evaluation of the system. Those who have done well historically will enter new classes ready to learn and do well; those who have lagged in the past will not assimilate well in the future or perform well on assessments. The best teachers combine the ability to sustain growth in some while breaking failure cycles with others.
Thank you, Ms. Gates. So what did the kids say?
College-Ready Is About Freedom of Choice
Every child deserves the right to choose to pursue college or career options after high school. To preserve that freedom, I have no choice but to prepare every child for either path. Besides, sophisticated new materials and technology are making it harder to differentiate the two.
College is not for everybody, especially as an immediate next step after high school. Jobs, volunteerism, or vocational training may be better choices at any given time. However, it is not up to me to sort out who belongs where. Even when a child is adamant that he or she wishes to prepare for a trade, I must remain committed to ensuring that college remains an option.
A child may not demonstrate academic focus or commitment at a given time. A common response to the pressure of choosing colleges and applying for admission is to opt out of the process. “I don’t want to go to college. I think I’ll be a …” In many families, a proud tradition within a profession may limit perceived options. Further, education finance may create a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. None of these short-term factors warrants closing the door on college forever. And that is the choice I have made for the child whom I fail to prepare. I do not have the proxy right of that future adult, especially when acting out of lowered expectations.
Building a life on the platform of mechanical ability is not guaranteed. Local technical schools that include heating and plumbing or carpentry expect students to be well-versed in trigonometry. Physics and other sciences may figure heavily in construction and electrical systems. Persuasive speaking and effective communication pay off in marketing and operations. A successful entrepreneur or company tradesman might show tremendous leadership ability; however, he or she would be hamstrung without training in finance or managerial decision-making. The future holds unknown possibilities, and lifelong learning is crucial to everyone.
Choosing to continue ones education after high school is risky as well. The intent to pursue higher education must be matched with strong skills to meet academic challenges. There is little that is more discouraging than an encounter with a former student who is unemployed and saddled with debt from an unsuccessful year or two in college. Genuine college preparation is part of the sacred trust between educators and their students. All of them.
Bait & Switch?
Or How to Gain New Standards without Losing Accountability
NCLB has our backs against the wall. An escape hatch is in sight with the Common Core and its related assessments. The urge to latch onto the new approach prematurely will not enhance its implementation. Nor will it benefit the children who are being excluded in strong schools or lost in the mayhem of chaotic schools.
One cannot adopt the current draft of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and quickly swap out NCLB accountabilities. Any new set of standards must evolve over time to reflect the shared vision of a global village as large as the US. Beta testing of new assessments necessarily will trail the solidification of these standards against which to judge performance. In the meantime, our children cannot wait. So, how do we achieve a national curriculum while keeping our promise to the children who have not been served?
Ironically, success with CCSS hinges on short-term extension of NCLB. There is a perception of urgency for adoption of the Common Core. One real reason for this collective unreality is the closing window on leaving children behind. As NCLB puts our backs against the wall, we can either work even harder to educate the children, or we can rally around the Common Core and NCLB waivers. True proponents and false prophets of the Common Core both are banking on the latter.
CCSS authors are legitimately pleased with their work. As realists, however, they also see the need for an orderly transition from NCLB to the Common Core and new measures of accountability. Undermining NCLB with waivers, however, falls short as an interim strategy. Once in place, waivers will allow a huge, collective sigh of relief. Let off the hook, educators will be back in their comfort zone, happily debating pedagogy and the details of standards and their corresponding assessments indefinitely. This loss of momentum will be devastating to another generation of children at risk.
High stakes tests for NCLB are real. Assessments related to the Common Core are analogous to vaporware. Adopting CCSS today has nothing to do with accountability to our students. Nor will the industry move quickly to encumber itself with new performance measures once freed from them.
The Long View on Special Education
A post-high school longitudinal study of children with disabilities has confirmed the results of leaving these children behind in school. Their success rates on a number of academic and career measures lag those of their peers without disabilities. So, how can we close that achievement gap instead of allowing it to widen for life?
We must stop leaving children behind. The National Center for Special Education Research has completed a longitudinal study of students with special needs after high school. The results are not promising. Now can we begin our longitudinal study of the achievement gap for children with disabilities during their K-12 years? How did we get here? What happened along the way? Are we finding children in need soon enough? Which of our interventions are working? How can we become more focused in our interventions?
This study validates important policy initiatives from Seven Keys to Education Reform. Point 1.2 calls for longitudinal student data. Point 6 calls for opening the dialogue with students with Special Needs before they enter high school.
On the data issue, regulatory policy requires periodic snapshots of a student’s abilities and progress toward goals. What is missing from this series of pictures is tracking of comparative data over time. A child with a disability who is not making suitable progress in school qualifies for services; however, the effectiveness of those services in bringing the child closer to grade level proficiency also should be evaluated and met with corrective measures as needed. Too many children continue to lose ground academically even as they receive a high level of service that should be enabling them to overcome obstacles and compensate for their disability.
Beyond service delivery, the students themselves need more empowerment in understanding their growth potential and managing their progress toward goals. Children with disabilities are brought into the formal education planning process as part of their transition from high school to adult life. These children would benefit from involvement in the process in grades 4-8. These are crucial years for actively engaging students as they begin to establish their identities as capable, lifelong learners as well as managers of their special needs. Absent this involvement, many students with disabilities enter high school with a mixture of dependency on adults and avoidance of academic challenge.
Armed with data and partnership with the students, special educators will be better equipped to facilitate mastery of math and literacy basics within their students by the end of middle school. This is an absolute necessity for closing the achievement gap for students with disabilities. High school must be a time of growth in academic sophistication and analytical capability. A loose patchwork of supports exists after graduation for students with serious residual issues. However, for the vast majority of students with moderate disabilities, services end with high school.
Extending remedial support beyond high school is looking backward with regret. Today’s twenty-something young adults with disabilities may deserve support in light of our failures, but this is not the stuff of progressive policy. These young adults would have been far better served through intensive development of compensatory abilities at an earlier age.
SchoolsRetooled TM 