Despite a regular stream of criticism from politicians and educators about the law--some for its complete abolition, others for severe revision to the point of rendering it unrecognizable from the law's original goals--the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 remains, for the most part, safe and unchanged.
That's not to say that it hasn't been challenged and at times, threatened. But one of the more serious threats was unmistakably denied last week, when a federal judge ruled against Connecticut's lawsuit challenging NCLB as an unfunded mandate.
The root of Connecticut's lawsuit was a claim that the cost of fulfilling the annual 3rd through 8th grade testing requirements of NCLB was greater than the amount of money the federal government was providing the state in Title I funding. Connecticut sought an exemption from the US Department of Education to continue testing only in 4th, 6th, and 8th grades as it was doing prior to the law's passage. But the federal circuit court judge ruled that Connecticut had failed to provide any evidence that the federal government was not providing enough money to pay for the testing. NCLB's mandate to test every year between 3rd and 8th grade and once in high school, in other words, was sufficiently funded.
The case itself was simple in its holding, and relatively uncontroversial. The more interesting question for those of us concerned with the implications for chilrden is, where is all of the anti-NCLB sentiment coming from? The law has pretty universal goals, after all: to reduce the achievement gap and ensure school accountability.
My observations about the origins of anti-NCLB sentiment among educators is that it is partly due to top-down teacher union influence, and partly due to a bogey-man type mentality. In the former regard, national level officials in the NEA and AFT have long regarded NCLB as a problematic path for reform, since its chief proposal (school level accountability for student achievement) diverts attention from policies that would enhance teacher union membership or teacher benefits (such as class-size reduction or across-the-board teacher pay raises).
In the latter regard, my experience is that a significant number of teachers are upset about NCLB because of a post hoc ergo proper hoc* logical fallacy. Essentially, teachers get frustrated about their jobs for a multitude of reasons (low administrative support, lack of staff-wide teacher quality, poor student behavior, pay that they believe to be too low, to name a few). Many of these reasons may just have to do with the fact that teaching is, of itself, a challenging job. But since the passage of NCLB, teachers have attributed their angers and frustrations to the laws, rather than to more subtle demands that have long existed on the profession.
In short, teachers are blaming the NCLB-bogey man for non-NCLB-related problems. A great example of this is when teachers blame NCLB for high-stakes testing policies that school districts and states decide to implement. NCLB itself says nothing about making a certain grade level test a requirement for grade promotion; the states are to blame for it!
Sadly, this kind of attribution problem is probably par for the course any time a significant policy change is made without immediate results. But what we must make sure to avoid is giving up on a potentially positive policy because of wrong-headed backlash.
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NCLB in the Classroom: Observations from the Front
Debates about No Child Left Behind (NCLB) often come down to fractures based on perspective. Many of the educators I've met ground their opinions on the law in their experiences in the classroom. To these educators, NCLB's annual testing requirements have turned schools into factories where innovative lessons have been replaced by rote test preparation. Moreover, the annual tests have placed onerous expectations on students, filling some youth with such anxiety that they shut down or disengage from school entirely.
On the other hand, policy makers analyze the law from a perspective that can be characterized generously as a birds-eye view, or cynically, as an ivory-tower view. From their vantage point, requiring regular standardized tests in schools is crucial to ensure that schools are successful in their core purpose of advancing student achievement. Moreover, detailed, thoroughly examined data on how our students are doing within each racial and socioeconomic grouping is absolutely necessary if we want to close down the pernicious achievement gap affecting low-income and students of color.
Now, I'll be the first to admit that for most of my time in the education policy arena, I've fallen squarely in the latter camp. But now that I've taught and gone through a year where standardized testing has been a serious challenge, I am better able to understand the nuances of the debate.
The basic problem boils down to a simple fact: students of all ages and all backgrounds are already not inclined to test-taking. Now, some tests are easier to stomache than others. Tests that are relevant and reasonable are always better than tests that seem arbitrary and unnecessary. Tests that students feel well-prepared for are also more likely to be taken seriously than tests that seem overly difficult.
On both of these fronts in my school this year, however, NCLB-required standardized testing did not fare well with my students. Since passing the tests is not required for grade promotion (which, contrary to popular belief, is usually the case with most of these tests), the students did not see any direct reason to try hard on the tests. Moreover, the tests asked many questions that were inaccessible to the students, particularly on the math and science sections. So students who were already uninspired to try hard on the tests found themselves frustrated with confusing questions.
When that happens, the natural inclination for almost all of my students was to quit trying. There was a lot of random bubble-filling going around my room, and test sections that should have taken an hour only took 15 minutes. And there were a lot of angry students lashing out at teachers and other staff members who they perceived to be the reason why they had to take the seemingly unreasonable tests.
But here's where the rub is. Because the students did not try hard on the test, the data from the tests will not actually be a reliable way to measure our school's success! So the education policy maker's original goal of getting data to evaluate schools will not be met, and the process will only anger children and their teachers in the process. No wonder why there are so many educators who are upset!
Yet to demand that NCLB's testing requirements be shelved also misses the point. Because the real root cause of the controversy over the tests is that many of the students, in my school at least, find them so difficult that they refuse to try. Addressing this root cause problem by demanding an end to standardized tests makes as much sense as a shopping mall getting rid of its security cameras when it finds out that there has been an outbreak of theft.
The solution?
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Tough Education Choice for Sen. McCain
A great blog called "Education Election" has been running courtesy of the National Education Writers Association at Edelection. It covers news stories in which presidential candidates have discussed education, and adds a good bit of analysis as well.
One intriguing note is that Barack Obama has made news with his positions and proposals for education a total of 37 times since the start of the campaign season, Hillary has been covered 34 times, and John McCain has been covered only 10 times. Though it doesn't mean anything about the content or quality of their views on education, there may be some conclusion that is reachable regarding the priority with which each campaign views education as an election issue.
You don't need to take it from me or the education writers association, however. You can take it from the McCain campaign itself, which has all but admitted that education will not play a major role in his campaign. Indeed, "education" only appeared on the issues section of his website very recently, and he has refrained from virtually any substantive discussion thus far.
Why has the Arizona Senator said so little about schools and school reform? This terrific article by Richard Whitmire on Politico.com explains it well. Basically, McCain has a choice to make. On the one hand, he can do what most GOP nominees have done for the past quarter-century and minimize education as a federal election issue by mostly talking up school choice, empowering parents, and avoiding tougher issues around NCLB and accountability. This is what worked for Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush.
On the other hand, Senator McCain can do what the current President Bush did back in 2000 and 2004, which was to encroach upon traditionally democratic territory by pushing more centrist and aggressive reforms such as charter schools, teacher quality reform, and other ideas that are less appealing to the Republican base but more promising from a student achievement perspective.
Which one will he choose? It looks like the former right now, except for the fact that his chief education advisor is a woman named Lisa Graham Keegan -- a real firecracker who has made major waves as chief of schools in Arizona and as the head of a DC based group called the Education Leaders Council (*full disclosure -- I worked for Ms. Keegan as an intern back in 2001 and was quite impressed with her passion for finding solutions to help children learn*). Arizona is perhaps the premier state in the country when it comes to putting conservative talking points on school reform into action, as it has widely available charter schools, vouchers, and other parent choice mechanisms in play. The results haven't been conclusive however -- one study, at least, has gone so far as to rank Arizona last in K-12 education outcomes.
It will bear watching in the coming months, while the Dems continue to slug it out, whether Sen. McCain sets up an aggressive reform agenda on education, or whether he lets it serve as a back-burner issue to Iraq and national security.
Also, I wanted to leave you with this humorous video from Comedy Central's the Colbert Report that is education-related:
Teachers Union in PA Goes Heavy on Endorsement Ads, Light on "Ed"
As millions of eyes have been trained on Pennsylvania for the past six weeks, incredible numbers of ads, speeches, and other forms of political messaging have hit the airwaves. Some of these ads have been though provoking, many have been negative, and all of them have been expensive. But one ad caught the attention of some education advocates last week.
The ad was a radio spot purchased by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) in Pennsylvania, for the cost of $329,425. The ad supports Hillary Clinton for president, although previous AFT ads in New Hampshire and Iowa also supported Senators Obama and Edwards.
You can listen to the ad and read the script here. As you listen or read, pay attention to what is NOT said, bearing in mind that the ad was bought by the nation's largest urban teachers union, which has nearly one and a half million members.
If you don't have time to check out the ad, I'll cut to the chase for you. In 57 seconds of talking, the American Federation of Teachers advertisement mentions the word "education" a grand total of zero times. It mentions the word "school" just once -- when a woman named Margo announces that she is a public school teacher. Margo's next line should be about Hillary's plan to improve schools, help students learn, refocus our national energies on our children, right? Instead, Margo says that she supports Hillary Clinton because "She's capable, she's experienced, and she's a fighter."
In other words, the major education lobbyist group at play in the Democratic primary is buying ads that are education free. What hope do our children have if even the teachers don't think education is an issue that merits our attention this election cycle?
Pomp, Circumstance, and Fudging Numbers
Try and make sense of these two sets of facts:
Fact set 1: The state of Missouri reported an 85.8 percent high school graduation rate for the 2006-2007 school year. In the same year, New Mexico reported a high school graduation rate of almost 90 percent to the US Department of Education. Multiple states provide similarly high rates in their official reports to the federal government.
Fact set 2: At the middle school where I teach in St. Louis city, no fewer than ten eighth graders have dropped out of school or have been expelled without any intention or re-enrolling elsewhere. This means that our junior high school graduation rate is just over 90 percent.
How can these two sets of facts co-exist? To be sure, part of it owes to the nature of the St. Louis City school district, which has lower school completion rates than Missouri as a whole. But the main source of the dissonance is something altogether different, and worse: most states are simply lying when they disclose their high school graduation rates.
There is little surprise as to why the states are so willing to lie about their graduation rates -- it's just good public relations. Admitting that thousands upon thousands of students are quitting school early does not win points with current residents, potential residents, and certainly not voters. The more perplexing issue is why we (the public, the federal government, America as a whole) have not made a fuss about it.
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Triangulation: The Inept Teacher's Best Friend
Triangulation. It is a practice that I never realized took place in schools, at least not to the degree that it happens in my school.
The best way to explain it is to start with why it happens. It happens because incompetent teachers often have a moral compass, despite their lack of interest in enriching the minds of their students. This moral compass manifests itself roughly four times a year, right around the time when grades are due for report cards.
The moral compass cries out to a teacher if the only lessons they have imparted to their 8th grade science class this quarter involve coloring sheets and word searches. It cries out in a panic, 'How do I know what grade to give this student!?! I don't want to fail a student who is actually a good worker, and I don't want to reward a student who is actually a slacker. But how can I tell, if I've never given homework, graded in-class work, or asked my students to take a test?' Without any real concept of a student's academic ability, work ethic, or improvement, the inept teacher turns to his colleagues and pulls out a saving tool: triangulation.
Because a teacher at my school can see what grades a student is earning in their other classes, I am sad to report that many of the teachers base their grades solely on the grades that students are earning in other classes. In other words, they "triangulate" and come up with a safe average. If student X is earning an A in social studies, a D in math, and a B in reading, then it would be a safe bet to give them a B- or C+ in science. In this way, a teacher shelters themselves from risk in two directions: students will not complain about their grades if they get the average of what they've received in other classes, and administrators will not be able to question outlying grades.
And the benefits do not stop there! When a teacher chooses to "triangulate" his or her grades, there is no need for grading papers, no need for giving out assignments, no real need to even design a lesson plan. Effort becomes unnecessary, and the entire school year can pass by with minimal stress (and minimal learning). These are, all too often, the kinds of teachers we have in our lowest-performing inner-city schools. I know, because I work with several of them.
ACLU Sues Over High School Dropout Rates
In a notable development last week, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Palm Beach County School District in Florida over what it claims is a violation of its students' basic right to quality education as promised in the state constitution.
In the lawsuit, the ACLU argues that the county school district has failed its students --especially kids from communities of color -- by not offering a "uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high quality education." It is, on the face of it, the same argument that has been made to varying effect in more than 20 states to date: states are not providing children the quality of education that they promise either implicitly or explicitly in their constitutions. But the ACLU has taken a different angle in the latest lawsuit, because rather than suing for a more equal distribution of school spending and other resources, the group is instead suing for the district to improve high school graduation rates, particularly among low-income and students of color.
It may sound like a minor distinction, but it is a meaningful one in both legal terms and practical terms. Legally, any precedent set by decisions such as the ones in New York State, and New Jersey does not apply because the existing suits challenged resource distribution within the state. ACLU is making no such complaint in this case, arguing instead that it is the responsibility of the Palm Beach County School District, and not the state of Florida, to make the needed changes.
Practically, I think the lawsuit is, perhaps regrettably, loaded with potential pitfalls. For starters, while the focus on graduation rates is on-point to the degree that a high school diploma is virtually a necessity to compete in the 21st century job marketplace, the ACLU's suit fails to acknowledge that a diploma is only valuable if it actually represents real skills and knowledge learned. By concentrating on a single measure of output (graduation rates) without regard for whether the measure is an accurate representation of student learning, the ACLU may just be trading one education injustice for another by a different name (would the ACLU be happy with this news headline in 2012: 100% of Palm Beach County Students Graduate High School; Only Half Can Read"?)
Secondly, the lawsuit fails to recognize the fact that the Palm Beach County School District is not singularly accountable for law student achievement. If anything, the lawsuit sends the onus of legal accountability in the wrong trend from state-level suits. If states have not been able to level the educational playing field in the past two decades, how much less successful will we be, if we try to rely on individual school districts? From a scale perspective, is the ACLU going to file a similar lawsuit in the 15,000 other school districts in the country? To improve educational outcomes for all youth -- including low-income and youth of color --we need to be talking about this as a problem of a crucial, national scope.
It's 7 a.m. and My School is Leaking
It has been raining for the past 48 hours in St. Louis, and my school is leaking.
I get to the building at seven every morning, but on rainy days I am confronted with a vexing decision: which staircase should I take to my third floor classroom?
If I take the south stairwell, I will have to step through large puddles and risk slipping and falling on the stairs. The puddles are generated by a constant flow of water out of large holes in the ceiling, such as the ones in the pictures to the right.
If I take the north stairwell, a different source of unpleasantness confronts me: a school security guard who believes that every teacher in the building is her enemy. Her particular gripe with me? I think it is that I am too kind to students when I ask them questions like "what are you doing," "where are you going," and "why are you doing that" instead of immediately assuming that they are guilty of something and writing them an office referral.
This choice that I face on each rainy morning conveys a challenging, parallel problem that faces our nation's efforts to improve chronically failing public schools much like the one where I teach. The problem is this: with a scarce amount of resources available, should it be a priority to fix physical capital shortfalls, or human capital problems?
It's a tough choice to have to make. But it's an even harder admission: do we really have to tell parents that either the building their child attends will have roof leaks and ancient textbooks, or their child's teachers and other personnel will be lackluster?
The answer? Yes... in the current political climate. WIthout a sea change of political will to bring about smarter, better resource allocation and tough, common sense policies, principals will continue to face impossible decisions. We have one working water fountain and, for a time, we had one working boys bathroom in our entire building. But we also had several negligent teachers who were wasting hundreds of hours of students' lives each week. With a budget already $600,000 in the red, what room is there to fix both problems?
Making Home-Schooling... Illegal?
California's Second District Court of Appeals issued a ruling last week that declared thousands of parents who currently home school their children to be in violation of the law. The ruling represented a stunning reversal of a growing trend in American education, as the number of children being home schooled has grown steadily to a total of over 1.1 million children last year.
The ruling received immediate criticism from key policy makers in California, including the state's chief of schools Jack O'Connell and from the Governator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is almost certain to be appealed to the California Supreme Court on a fast track.
What were the grounds for the decision? To begin with, the ruling all stemmed from an isolated incident in which two parents who had been homeschooling their children were suspected of child-abuse. The Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) then sought relief from a juvenile court, asking the court to send the children back to a public school where they would be safer and where teachers could spot signs of physical abuse. The juvenile court judge ruled, however, that the parents had a right to homeschool their children. Last week, however, the LA-based 2nd District Court of Appeals ruled that no such right existed in the state constitution and that consequently, only parents who have credentials from the state department of education to teach in a public school should be eligible to home school their children.
Forget the glaring irony of the ruling, which is that the state is now requiring home-schooling parents to have a teaching credential that tens of thousands of state-paid public school teachers are themselves lacking. The question we should ask about this decision is whether, in the end, it helps or hurts children. Will students have more access to quality educational opportunity if parents are forced to get a teaching certifiicate in order to home-school, or less access?
In my estimation, they will have less access to quality educational opportunities if the Appeals Court decision is affirmed by the state Supreme Court. But I believe this for a different reason that you might think. Educational opportunity will, I believe, not suffer principally because home-schooling parents do a better job than the public schools. It will suffer because of the implicit foundation of the court's ruling: that somehow, going through the process of getting a teaching certificate makes a person a better teacher than they were before.
How long will it be before policy makers, educators, and judges recognize that a piece of paper, a "teaching certificate" earned through taking an arbitrary number of fluffy, un-rigorous, and un-proven education classes does not make someone a good teacher?
There are many homeschooling parents who do a better job of educating their children than their public school counterparts today who are not credentialed, and plenty of credentialed teachers who are worse than teachers in the next room over who are teaching on emergency certificates. Until education starts hiring, retaining, and rewarding teachers based on the quality of their outputs--that is, student learning--and not on the quality of their inputs--a fancy piece of cardstock issued by state bureaucrats--precious little gains will be had for our students, in California classrooms, kitchens, and anywhere in between.
On Camera: Boston Parents Discuss Charters
I find it fascinating every time I hear about the achievements, struggles, and general state of charter schools in cities across America. Amidst all of the mistakes, failures, and outright tragedies that have taken place at my first-year charter school in St. Louis, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture with the charters movement.
It is a truism nowadays to observe that charter schools, in the aggregate, are similar to traditional public schools insofar as there are some that are exceptional, some that are in need of shuttering, and a great many more whose quality is in between the two extremes. And while the charter school I work at is a definite example of a case where greater autonomy has not led to improved outcomes for our students, it is always refreshing to watch videos like the one below that show how charter schools can thrive on the other end of the achievement spectrum.
What is it that makes some charter schools first-rate, and others not? From my vantage point, it's all about the people. The obvious manifestation of this is how even the best of intentions in classrooms cannot succeed without high quality teachers to implement lessons, follow up with parents, manage classroom behavior, and contribute to a positive culture of high expectations. But human capital issues play out in many more ways in schools than just the one-on-one interaction with students.
The best example of this is with how decisions are made by school leaders in charter schools. Because charter schools are bound to a lesser degree to specific state and district processes on resource allocation with schools, principals and other decision makers have the ability to leverage their budgets and staff hours in much more fluid and effective directions. But a necessary quality for these decisions to take place is that the school leaders must be wise enough to make the right choices. In the absence of this wisdom and sound decision making, the absence of beauracratic red tape over school-level decisions can actually make charter schools comparably worse than traditional schools.
Think about it this way. It does no good for an NFL head coach to install a new offense where the quarterback has the freedom to call whatever plays he sees fit from the line of scrimmage, without knowing who his quarterback is! Of course if you have Peyton Manning or Tom Brady to make decisions you want to empower them to make calls on a case-by-case basis. The same is true in charter schools. Allowing dedicated, intelligent principals to make decisions instead of a far-removed assistant super-intendant over a curriculum decision, school day schedule, discipline process, or staff placement can have positive effects. But what if you have a rookie quarterback who has not shown the ability to make good decisions? In this case, increasing the amount of devolved autonomy can actually hurt the team--or the school in the case of a bad principal.
It seems to me that the Boston Charter Schools have some talented principals and strong teachers who are willing to work extra hours and have the right expectations for students. In St. Louis, sadly, we do not yet have these kinds of people in numbers sufficient enough to make charter schools any better than the traditional alternative.
High School Students Tell the Truth About Their Schools
A California teacher asks his students, "Why should I care?" as a group of boys walk out of his room to cut class.
A high school psychology teacher hands out textbooks ... and then asks her students to color gingerbread men for a grade. When some of the students ask the teacher to teach them more information, the teacher responds by challenging her students to transfer out of her psychology class if they don't think they're learning anything.
These are just two of many tough, honest stories being shared by students across the state of California through a project called Right to Learn, which is being run through the terrific youth website YouthNoise.com. As a judge for a contest they recently held to pick the five best stories submitted by students so far, I was deeply impressed by the degree to which young people care about their schools, and the degree to which they realize that our nation's leaders are all-too-often cheating them out of the high quality education they deserve.
As the co-director of an organization that has engaged over 20,000 youth in an effort to call attention to the problems in our nation's schools, I of course believe in the power of young people to effect change on the problems facing our schools. It is a simple theory of change, really. Our schools suffer from a lack of quality educators, a culture of failure, insufficient resources in many cases, and a dearth of tough, common sense policies to bring about the change we need. And the only way to fix these problems is to call for a sea change of public pressure on politicians to do better.
Make no mistake: the victories that the American people have won to change the direction of our society in the past century have all benefitted from youth leadership. The Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War protests, women's movement and more have all had critical youth elements. Student sit-ins and protests have won victories from East Los Angeles to St. Louis to Boston, on a wide range of issues. I've embedded a video below of a student sit-in that took place in St. Louis just last year.
The challenge facing youth activists who aim to attract public and political will to improve our schools is that there has yet to be a smoking gun image that pushes the movement over the top. For instance, when video footage of Bull Connor sending attack dogs and fire hoses against peaceful protestors in Birmingham made it to TV sets across the country, the Civil Rights Movement took flight. But what is the parallel image in our schools? Crumbling buildings and inept teachers are the norm, but they do not appear to be enough to spark mass action. It may not be until such an image is created and disseminated when youth and other advocates experience the progress they seek.
Last week, two Denver public schools took a bold step that may lead to significant change in the way schools are run throughout the country. The two schools, Bruce Randolph Middle School and Manual High School, received approval from the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (the local affiliate of the NEA, the nation's largest teachers union) to break from key parts of their union contract. The union's approval signified a major development in a long legacy of teacher union control over American schools, as both schools will now have newfound freedom in the teacher hiring process, teacher pay, and in altering the length of the school day and year.
Word of the schools' breaking away from key union contract provisions spread rapidly across the nation. Denver's school board, which also has to approve the modified contract, looks poised to approve Manual's changes--especially because they already approved changes in Bruce Randolph weeks ago. The upshot? As many as 18 more Denver schools are now considering similar proposals to break free of teacher union rules that some find restrictive and negative for student achievement.
Some have watched these developments with great excitement, as reducing teacher union control in schools has long been a change sought by elements in the school reform arena--particularly conservative ones. The theory adopted by these reformers is that teachers unions get in the way of what is best for students by protecting bad teachers, stifling creativity and innovation from potentially excellent teachers (since these teachers will not be paid more for their success under union contracts), and by generally being out principally for the best interests of teachers--which may sometimes run counter to what is best for kids. Union supporters, on the other hand, point to the great gains won by unions in workplace regulations and treatment of employees, especially in improving pay and conditions for female employees over time.
The key question to watch for in Denver, however, is not about politics. It's not about whether the two newly freed schools prove anti-union proponents wrong. It's about whether the schools are able to make any substantive changes for their students. In the end, the greatest way that they can do this is to dramatically alter the makeup of their teaching staffs to have as many dedicated, intelligent, and effective teachers as possible. If they can find these kinds of teachers, retain them, and reward them for their excellence, then the idea of increasing individual school autonomy will have gained staem. But if the schools face the same old problems, it will just prove that unions are not the be-all and end-all problem plaguing urban education.
As much as I respect the view points of both camps in this debate, my suspicion from my own experiences in a non-unionized charter school here in St. Louis is that the newly freed Denver schools will quickly realize that the increased autonomy is not a guarantee of any kind of success. Many charter schools already experience the same freedom from union and district bureaucracy as Manual and Randolph have fought for, and it hasn't always done these charter schools good. Better to think about individual school freedom as one of many fences that is needed to cage in the problem of under-performing schools. Reducing union power alone is not a sufficient means to educate every child, but in some cases it may help.
Money For Tech Not the Cure-All
I was very impressed to read this honest op-ed in The Washington Post on Sunday, written by a veteran teacher at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia. T.C. Williams is an intriguing high school for many reasons, one of which is because of how it represents an unique cross-section of American diversity. For instance, 43% of the student body at the school is African-American, 25% is Hispanic, 24% is white, and 6% is Asian. 31% of the students at the school are qualified for free or reduced lunch, which means it has more low-income youth than the state average. And it is a fairly large school as well, with 2,100 students split among just three grade levels, 10-12.
But the most intriguing thing about T.C. Williams is that it is one of the highest spending schools in the country. In a state where the average per student expenditure is just under $9,000--close to the national average--T.C. Williams spends a staggering $15,000 per student per year. As the op-ed points out, all of this money has been spent on a luxurious set of facilities, including a new $98 million school building, a universal laptop initiative that began three years ago and that provides every student in the school with a free laptop computer, and countless other technologically advanced instructional devices. If you're looking for a state-of-the-art high school, 30-year English teacher Patrick Welsh suggests that you'll be hard pressed to find one more advanced than TC Williams.
But what has the return been on this incredible investment? If student test scores are one measure, not much. Out of the eleven subjects tested at the school as part of Virginia's Standards of Learning proficiency exams, Williams outscores the statewide average in just two subjects: chemistry and algebra II. In the other 9 subjects, the school's students perform below state averages.
Why hasn't the school been able to get more bang for its buck, so to speak? Mr. Welsh suggests that the school's administration has been overwhelmed by the "technology bug" - a tendency among school leaders to lose sight of the most important objective (student achievement) in lieu of headline grabbing technology purchases. Mr. Welsh gives the example of a $40,000 expense to buy 77 "school pads" for $500 a piece. The school pads are supposed to make teachers jobs easier, except many of the teachers in the building had expressed no interest in using them. One teacher even said that the $40,000 investment seemed to be little more than a refurbished version of this old toy that was popular twenty years ago.
From my vantage point in a school where education technology is a laughable luxury (one teacher who asked if we might be able to buy security cameras to watch over areas where students were vandalizing, bringing in weapons, or even engaging in inappropriate sexual activity with other students was literally sneered at for the idea), it's hard to imagine that Williams teachers are actually up in arms over administrative requirements to utilize technology in their classrooms. I would give anything for a computer system that could track attendance throughout the building, let alone a TV and DVD player in each room. But the TC Williams example makes this much perfectly clear: throwing money at the problems in our schools will not alone solve anything. Without clear direction as to what purchases will and will not have a significant impact on our schools, too many administrators are just making blind guesses as to what will work best.
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Pay for Teachers' Performance Plans Gain Steam
Three separate events--one research paper, one op-ed in a prominent daily, and one clever pop culture reference--all discussed different sides of a compelling systemic school reform idea within the past week. The multi-faceted appearance of these three pieces seems to show a growing momentum behind the idea of paying important school stakeholders--students and teachers--for success.
The first item that was released this week was a research piece commissioned by the National Governors Association on the prominence of pay-for-performance system in virtually every other profession. The report finds from cross-sector analysis (i.e. looking at how people are paid in the business sector, other public sector fields, and so on) that there is hardly any evidence of a pay system failing to improve employee productivity when the pay system rewards those who are adding greater value to the company's end goal. In other words, when you reward the best people in your company, it brings the whole company up because: 1.) the people already within the company all strive to be the best, and 2.) people outside the company see the direct benefits of working hard at this company and want to work there too.
The researchers, Emily and Bryan Hassel, suggest that the conclusion policy makers should arrive upon is that there should no longer be debates over whether to pay teachers based on how much they are able to increase their students' learning. Instead, the debate should be over how to switch to this pay system. On this front, they suggest a couple lessons learned from other careers, namely that paying teachers with performance bonuses is more effective than bumping up their salaries and that pay bonuses must be significant enough to actually change employee incentives and behavior.
The second article is an op-ed from the Washington Post that talks about a Baltimore City Schools plan to spend over $1 million on paying students for performance. Although a much less refined idea than teacher performance pay in that few districts have implemented substantial pay plans for student success, this is an outside-the-box idea that has great potential for success, particularly in low-income rural and urban schools where junior and high school students face greater pressures to leave school. It will be fascinating to see how Baltimore's plan works in the coming years and whether the end result is higher graduation rates, college going rates, etc.
Lastly, a New York Daily News column from a respected education expert Kevin Carey draws a clever parallel between the current teacher pay debate and a debate that happened within professional baseball a decade ago. Fans of the book Moneyball will recall the book's protagonist, Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, and his at-the-time heretical idea of eschewing scouting reports in favor of hard data on young prospects. Beane's premise is that subjective and qualitative evaluations of baseball players was only a very rough predictor of future performance and that statistical data was a much stronger indicator. This is the same idea that pay-for-performance fans are suggesting: let's stop basing teacher pay on superficial and input-oriented measures, and start paying those who are getting on base and show good plate discipline (i.e. increasing reading and math scores the most)!!
To Tinker or To Turn-Around: A Bold Experiment in Chicago
This news out of Chicago yesterday will provide a great deal of data on a much debated topic in urban school reform: how effective, if at all, are efforts to transform schools by completely starting over in a school building with new teachers and new leadership? Chicago school officials, including Chief of Schools Arne Duncan, are proposing to fire the staffs of eight low-achieving schools and replace them altogether with new educators.
There is little evidence thus far to indicate whether such drastic steps will work. Even though sweeping school-wide restructuring including staff reconstitution is one of the proscribed punishments in the federal No Child Left Behind Act, few schools have yet produced enough student learning data to show whether the turn-arounds actually work. To be fair though, there are thousands of examples of schools that have tried the tinkering approach--a slight policy change here, a couple new teachers there--with little success either.
Some experts who support the plan argue that the only way to bring about wholesale change in chronically under-performing school is to scrap existing cultures of failure and to replace them with new leaders, new teams of teachers, and fresh outlooks. Opponents of the plan point out that identifying and building these kinds of high quality, highly-motivated teaching teams is itself unlikely due to a sub-par urban education job market. Students are likely to get more of the same, but at a steep price in restructuring costs under the turn-around plans according to these detractors.
From my vantage point, I believe that the turning around these schools in such dramatic fashion can be an opportunity for great progress, but nothing is guaranteed. On-lookers are right to note that teacher and principal quality is the most important variable, and that if the newly hired teachers are no better than the old ones, reconstituting the staff will have been all form and little substance. With this in mind, many parents are right to point out that any existing teachers who are on staff and who have proven to increase student achievement on a consistent basis should be retained--there's no reason to throw out the good with the bad.
Let the experiences in my first-year charter school, however, serve as a caution. There is actually much to be learned about traditional public school turnarounds from the experience of newly opened charter schools, since both enterprises have similar opportunities for student benefits: newly hired teaching staff, new curriculum goals, new leadership, new culture. But all too many first year charter schools struggle out of the gate, and a large part of the reason why is that schools are frequently rushed to get ready for the start of the school year. If these Chicago schools slated for turnarounds are not able to attract the best and most dedicated staff, and if they are hurried in the hiring, planning, and preparation processes, I'm afraid that all of the trouble will have been for very little value.
Aaron Tang is the co-director of Our Education, a non-profit organization working to build a national youth movement for quality education. He also teaches 8th grade history in Saint Louis, MO.