A Study of Lesson Study, or, One More Thing We Aren't Doing to Support Teachers

They are doing this program on WBEZ by American Radio Works, Teaching Teachers, about teacher prep programs and teacher practices in the US versus other places. These kinds of things are difficult for me to listen to, because of both the state of things now and the old, rusty feelings from when I was teaching (and when I quit). But the radio just stayed on through the program, so here I am accidentally listening to it and accidentally writing about it.

And it is indeed hard to listen to. Just now, a former math teacher just articulated exactly the pattern of events that led to me quitting all those years ago: 1) He'd identify an issue in his teaching he wanted to solve; 2) He'd go to a training or professional development on it and get great ideas; 3) He'd come back and implement it in his classroom, but he or the kids would have questions he didn't have answers for; 4) At the end of the day he'd sit down at his desk under a towering pile of student work needing review, discouraged because lessons didn't go well, and with no one to talk through his ideas and efforts, no way to see anyone demo new ideas, no way to practice methods, and no time to process anything except--on his own time--that paperwork. He felt alone, exhausted, and without any way to learn and get better, so he quit.

In the US, teachers are expected to "just figure it out," "just make it work." That's not the practice anywhere in the world with an effective education system; and even more challenging, even the most individual, solo learners do not have any time to learn and grow. Many countries have "lesson study" (Japanese method) or similar practices, where teachers in schools have plenty of time to get together and work on a specific teaching problem by sharing ideas--and that puts the focus on better teaching through practice and professional collaboration, not "better teachers." This is a mid-century American method that many countries adopted from the US but that is pretty absent in the US now. This is among the various topics the program addressed.

There are Lesson Study groups anew in the US, thanks in part to Tom McDougal, the guy whose story I summarized above--here's his organization. In the US it's mostly in math classes but in some others, too--there's one in Chicago for learning how to teaching using the Common Core framework. But teachers in the US mostly need to find a way to do it on their own time, if they are interested.

H.e.a.r. Chicago Talk August 6 Recap

The theme for the H.e.a.r. Chicago Talk Summer 2014 is Art+Data=Communication. Each speaker prompted us to ponder an element in this equation.

Art: Rena Grosser had been pondering the question, "What is a classroom?" To begin to answer, she and fellow artist Ariela Robinson created a traveling installation of school desks in outdoor settings. The experience was galvanizing for them: Rena's ending question was "Where should we take this (installation idea) next?"

Data: Dr. John Gasko asked if noncognitive factors matter for academic success, a question he and his colleagues at UChicago Impact have been pondering for a while. The data, definitions, and processes he provided to answer the question were fascinating, each slide offering more chewy food for thought. John's ending question was, "How can we change the non-cognitive factors in the classroom?"

Communication: J.D. Van Slyke was recording the event for a new podcast, RefreshED, that he is launching with colleague Amanda Kilibarda Gutierrez. He spoke about his wish to capture and share the stories of the brilliantly energetic, creative, and caring educators and social service providers he'd met throughout Chicago.

Thank you, August speakers, for uwittingly creating my new favorite way to capture the concept of idea conveyance!

The audience questions are always my favorite part. I just love hearing the diversity of mindsets and experiences captured in the questions. Among my favorite questions this time around were:

• How are you recording the lessons that surfaced in your mobile classrooms? How will you share? (for Rena)
• How do you transfer non-cognitive factors (grit, perseverance) learned on the street to those same factors applied in the classroom? (for John)
• What do you mean by "radically re-imagine" and how can a podcast promote this? (for J.D.)

Everyone has a chance to discuss any question of interest after the presentations in a more casual setting than a formal Q&A--though I think at some events that happens more than others. I'd like to figure out a way to ensure people do get the chance to discuss the ideas they want to.

And on that note, I'd like to get some feedback on the event. Now is the time for it to grow in depth, strength, and reach. If you've been to one of the H.e.a.r. Chicago Talk events, please take this survey.

Walter Dean Myers

I'm very sorry to hear that Walter Dean Myers has passed away. He is one of the strongest young-adult writers I know of in terms of his writing, and his connection to his young readers is real, important, and enduring. He has had a deep positive impact on generations of young people, especially young men, especially young men feeling trapped by economic or social circumstances. Rest in peace, Walter Dean Myers, and thank you. What a life well lived.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/nyregion/walter-dean-myers-author-whose-gritty-tales-spoke-to-youths-in-cities-is-dead-at-76.html

H.e.a.r. Chicago Talk: Spinning Right Round and Finding One's Path

Tuesday was a gorgeous summery day, and the Map Room a nice spot for the evening, with its big breezy windows. We started with pizza and chatting; the music turned off and mic came on a little after 7:00.

Unfortunately, some element of the sound system was picking up a television signal, and presenters and audience found themselves having to compete with television programming--and not just any programming, but Alvin and the Chipmunks, culminating in a soul-destroying rendition of Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round." But let's just repurpose that disorienting (if theoretically hilarious) element of the evening into part of the theme that emerged: I'd call the theme for this installment of H.e.a.r. Chicago Talk "Identifying that which disconnects us, and recapturing our path."

Adam Heenan asked how high school teachers can help students develop an active voice in their own  education. He detailed some factors leading to students' rudderlessness (standards, testing) and described his solution: helping them apply the methods used in advocacy-organizing to their school experience.

Questions from the audience for Adam included, among many:

• What are the implications of students who stand up to the "machine?"
• Could there be a high school Local School Council [an LSC is usually made up of parents, community members, and school leadership]?
• What if the students don't want to engage in this way of thinking, but are more comfortable being told what to do?

Lisa Clay asked why we persist in doing things that we know are bad for us. She explored the notion that, if self-defeating behavior is composed of a trigger, a routine, and a reward, focusing on changing the routine will yield the best results, since we humans are designed to develop and repeat habits. Lisa approached the question as it applies to nutrition (why do I eat sugar when it makes me feel awful?), but ended with an invitation to consider the concept's application to education contexts. 

Questions from the audience for Lisa included, among many:

• Sometimes bad habits just happen, without a specific trigger. What then?
• How do you get yourself to want to change the routine, or have the wherewithall to do so?
• How do we get buy-in from friends and family when we want to change a habit?

Throughout the evening, I asked audience to submit their own edu-questions they'd been chewing on, which I posted to the wall on butcher paper so people could brainstorm ideas after the formal presentations. This activity didn't get much attention, which is all right, because everyone was talking with each other instead, sharing ideas, which is the point, after all. Attendees represented a fertile mix of teaching and communications disciplines--classroom teachers, informal educators, people in advertising, body/movement therapists, and so on.

However, I'm interested in the butcher-paper questions: 

1) Who won: Karen Lewis or Rahm Emanuel?

When I read this question aloud, the classroom teachers in the room kind of snorted and laughed--they didn't see this as a real question. But the submitter, a "layperson" in terms of edutalk, told me he found the whole situation confounding and inaccessible, and he would have been interested in responses. I think this is really telling. Talk about these issues can become very insular, knotted up in impenetrable thickets of history and context. When a critical mass of people--well, voters--can't access information or reasoning, that gap ultimately contributes to a disconnect between education policy and good practice.

2) What does respect for teachers look like?

This question got a bit of interaction, but merits more.  Maybe someone will explore this in a future H.e.a.r. Chicago Talk!

This week's round-up

All right then! It's been a long time since I blogged...so long that even after my last project finished up and the holidays calmed down and technically I've had the time and inclination to do so, I just...couldn't do ir. This big electronic piece of white paper is a little angry and intimidating when you haven't visited with it in a while.

So, I'm not going to try write anything profoundly insightful today. I'm going to write about what, in brief, I've been thinking about.

I've been thinking about the Friends of the Chicago River Student Congress I volunteered at last Saturday. Our poor river...it just doesn't get the glory that our lake does. I'm so glad Friends exists and Chicago governance in general seems a bit more focused on giving our hard-working, surprisingly calm and pretty river its due. Now to just make it as clean as it is pretty. I was especially impressed with the Cook County Forest Preserve District's brand-spankin' new Urban Ambassadors initiative, which was made possible by a special grant the CCFPD received. Cook County Forest Preserve District in general has been really hiring some fantastic people and making some exciting, productive efforts to get folks of all ages and backgrounds out into nature. I'm looking forward to the next Calumet Stewardship Initiative's Green Drinks, at which CCFPD head Arnold Randall will be speaking.

I've been thinking about Instructional Design. There's an awful lot of learning--of all kinds, not just K12 learning--being facilitated by software, and benefiting from the power and perspective that digital and online tools can offer. Real-time models, maps of all sorts, research sources, interactive scenarios...it's pretty amazing. The possibilities are pretty exciting.

Now, if only teachers could be given the space, time, trust, and resources to learn those tools, and incorporate them fully into their practice--you know, like folks who work in corporations get to do without question or delay or weird overbearing evaluations or random people and entities inserting themselves into every step.

On a related note, here's a great post about how everyone thinks they know what teachers do, because everyone went to school--and how that is hurting our education policy and outcomes mightily.

And with that--I think I'll sign off. Two posts a week, folks, two posts a week. Talk soon!

If it ain't broke, replace it with something ill conceived and untested

Montgomery County, MD's school system has been looked to as a model and inspiration by other districts for good reason. Kids, teachers, and principals excel, stakeholders collaborate, and resources are allocated reasonably. One of the many things they are doing right is their teacher evaluation system, called Peer Assistance and Review (PAR), which prioritizes and fully funds and supports peer coaching for new and struggling teachers. The system is proven effective and is highly regarded, yet, as this WaPo blog posting details, it is unacceptable under Race to the Top rules because it does not include students' test scores as part of the evaluation. What stupidity. This has been coming down the line for a while--this article is from June 2011.

I think Race to the Top has some reasonable principles and many strengths. But there are parts of it that were not thought out well, or not done knowledgeably. This sort of outcome is idiocy.

HEAR Chicago Talk heard and talked about; or, A Mad Attempt to Transform a Moth Into a Caterpillar

HEAR Chicago Talk 1.1 went off, pretty much without a hitch.

Here's the room where we had it.

Photo courtesy of Schubas

We had four presentations, starting and ending with questions. Mine was about the possibility of experiential learning in the local outdoors.


Yoli Maya Yeh, who teaches yoga in CPS schools, spoke about reducing violence among Chicago youth through yoga, meditation, and peace activities.

Kids gain valuable character, skills, and techniques from Peace Within YOUth

Ari Frede, founder of arts charter the Orange School, spoke about pedagogical underpinnings and everyday examples of giving children authentic choices in the classroom.
 

Christine Krumsee reminded us that the importance of reaching people through meaningful activities does not stop at age 18. She spoke about her work with Helping Hospitalized Veterans, an organization that brings crafts kits to veterans as a sort of informal art therapy. 

Photo from VA Maryland Health Care System

After each presentation, the audience had one minute to ask questions. As we got into the third and fourth presentations, audience questions started focusing more on connections among them, especially Yoli's and Christine's. That was unexpected and perfect.

The one-minute-question part is just questions, no answers. That way, questioners feel freer to ask wide, deep, or speculative questions--ones that can't be answered right away, but can be thought about--and presenters get more to chew on without the pressure of having all the answers. After the structured part of the evening was through, folks had plenty of time and opportunity to find each other and discuss the questions if they wished.

Following Christine's presentation was a brief open mic portion where audience members could chew for one minute on their own edu-questions; and then, people settled in for drinks and chats.

So--I think it worked! People ate and drank. Technical equipment operated. The presentations provoked thought and interest. People introduced themselves to others and traded contact information. I hope that with regular installments, HEAR Chicago Talk becomes a go-to place for educators and other communicators to reflect on their practices, articulate their goals, and trade and test ideas with others. The next one is September 18, y'all! Mark your calendars and contact me here or here if you're interested in presenting.

A reporter from Medill (Northwestern University) was there and wrote this cool little article (which content makes it clear to me that I must immediately work on articulate and pithy pitches about the format, the goal, and the reason for the not-Q-&-A part. Dear god).

True to the format of the evening I'm going to end with a question (well, several). Ironically, or something, really nothing presented was new by a longshot--rather the opposite. Learning through experience in the outdoors dates to the dawn of humans; yoga has been around for thousands of years; Dewey's work on student choice was done at the turn of the last century (as was Maria Montessori's); and Helping Hospitalized Vets was founded in 1971. What's happening here? Is the "innovation" actually the stuff that's not working: forcing kids to sit in seats all day, thoroughly separating out subjects, testing to the point that teaching and learning are punishing instead of transcendent activities?

Hey--what IS innovation when it comes to a timeless practice integral to every human society, anyway? And is wanting to transform it to be authentic, relevant, enjoyable, and equitable as naive as wanting to transform a moth back into a caterpillar?

A brief break from outdoor learning to present: HEAR Chicago Talk!

I am putting together a forum where people can share ideas about reaching folks and teaching folks. Click on the tab labeled HEAR Chicago Talk: Coming In June! to learn more...and possibly to help. I am looking for:

• A venue: A low-key bar or café with a designated performance space would be ideal. The venue should be fairly central (near north or near south side of Chicago), accessible by public transportation, and comfortable and welcoming for people of all backgrounds and ages. Please comment or email me (hear.k12@gmail.com) for suggestions, contacts, or offers.

• Presenters! Here's the prompt (modeled after Pecha Kucha): 

   In twenty slides of twenty seconds each, present something you’ve done or seen that has inspired you or others.

• Audience! Tell all your friends about it! Keep checking the HEAR Chicago tab for more developments!

Finland, Korea, and then fourteen other countries, and then us

Everyone should listen to this excellent program from NPR's On Point. Finland and South Korea are first and second in the world in education as determined by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures fifteen-year-olds on math, science, and reading. The U.S. is seventeenth. On Point's Tom Ashbrook speaks with Finland's  Pasi Sahlberg, South Korea's Okhwa Lee, and the U.S.'s Marc Tucker about these results.

Finnish and South Korean schools almost couldn't be more different. Finnish schools are relaxed and friendly, with decentralized pedagogy, relatively short school days, and little testing; South Korean schools are intensely competitive even for young children, with long school days followed by after-school tutoring and a strong emphasis on high-stakes testing. While South Korea has admitted to significant challenges in its schooling despite its high ranking, mostly related to the amount of academic pressure the children feel, Finland's school system has been a positive example in the edunews lately. Finland and South Korea share some key features in their education system that the U.S. lacks.

• Teachers are highly respected and highly sought after, the way people medical and legal professions are. We don't do this in the U.S, the guests point out.

• As with other high-status professionals, teachers are highly educated through a rigorous standardized training program. We don't do this in the U.S, the guests point out.

• Teachers are afforded working conditions and pay commensurate with the importance and prestige of their job. They have professional autonomy, time to work with colleagues, and opportunities to continue their own professional development. You know, the way people medical and legal professions are. We don't do this in the U.S. On the contrary.

• Funding follows need--schools that have greater need get more money, because they need more money. Quality resources and  facilities are equally distributed, not clustered in better-off areas. We don't do this in the U.S. We do the opposite.

• There is a strong focus on primary education. We don't do this in the U.S.

• Families place very strong value on education. The guests didn't comment on the U.S.'s behavior here, but I will: we claim we do,  but in reality as a society we do not respect educators, we do not feel that other children necessarily deserve the same education as our own, and we hold intellectual achievement, at least as reflected in our public discourse, highly suspect.

So, in short, the two most effective education systems in the world value fair funding, careful attention to the early years, and respect for educators, and we do none of these things.

Generally the immediate rejoinder one hears to praise for Finland's virtues is that we're not Finland, in terms of our demographics, economics, or much else. But Korea and Finland are different in these ways, as well, and extremely distinct culturally, and yet they share these virtues in their education system--of course they manifest them in different forms, just as we would. We can't simply overlay deep cultural dna such as education and child-rearing from one society onto ours, but we can take some key points and make them our own, can't we? We think we can't learn from anyone except ourselves?

MAP-Making and Unmaking

Well this is interesting. Seattle teachers and parents are boycotting the administration of a standardized test given to students.

The MAP test takes three and a half weeks to administer to all the students in his school who are required to take it, Michie said. It's given three times a year, and the school has only one computer lab, which means that for ten weeks a year, the lab is available only for MAP testing.

This follow-up article quotes an op-ed penned by the president and CEO of the company that makes the MAP.

Matt Chapman, NWEA's president and CEO, responded to the Seattle boycott with an op-ed in the Seattle Times. Teachers were "rightfully concerned" about high-stakes testing, he wrote. "In a decadelong quest for accountability, we have lost sight of the real purpose of assessments in the schools, and the mission of public schools themselves—student learning."

But MAP was no ordinary standardized test, he said; in fact, it was "the anti-standardized test."
"Developed by researchers, educators and psychometricians, MAP yields immediate insight for teachers while they still have an opportunity to teach and influence a child's learning," Chapman wrote. Legions of teachers were using MAP results to tailor their teaching to individual students, thereby improving learning for "countless kids," he said.

What this tells me is that the test's intent is valuable, but its application is not realistic. The MAP assesses students' growth over time, starting with a diagnostic and including a midpoint (hence the three times per year)--that is good. Much, much more sensible than an end-all-be-all once-time end-of-the-year  big ol' honkin test. The MAP uses the flexibility afforded by digital technology to adapt instantly to each child as he or she works through the test--that is good.  Much, much more sensible than a one-size-fits-all, static, mute, unresponsive thing. The MAP includes extensive training to help educators use the results to customize instruction for their students--that is good. Much, much more sensible than that one-time end-of-the-year test, which the teachers for that grade level don't even see, and which is fairly useless for guiding instruction (as well it should be, as it is a summative assessment, not an instructional guide).

But the MAP seems to have been developed without the benefit of piloting in schools or modeling in realistic schoolish circumstances. Testing children ten weeks a year (and that's only one test--the students must take additional standardized tests as well) is absolutely silly. That's about 30% of their instructional time! Tying up the school's entire digital capacity for that amount of time is almost as silly. And the mountain of data produced may just be too steep to reasonably climb. Actually that last thing always seemed to me to be the inevitable quandary of any meaningful standardized data collection, ever since state standards gained momentum at the turn of this century--when we finally got around to producing a useful test that provide substantial data at a level of detail that actually helps target instruction, given the large number of students, well of course the data pile was going to be impenetrably gargantuan!

And as always, as ALWAYS, can I say it loud enough, as ALWAYS, the implementation is where even good policies go to die. Because, while we come up with thing upon thing upon thing upon THING to add on to the teetering piled mess of school initiatives, we do not change educators' working conditions. Even the most engaged educators trained most diligently on the most sublime of instruments can't make headway if their working conditions are outrageously lacking in the time they need to guide, nurture, mediate, evaluate, remediate, communicate, encourage--and teach.

The comments in the first article turn almost immediately to Testing Is Bad No Testing Is Good Shut Up No You Shut Up. That's inadequate.Wouldn't it be amazing if the teachers and parents were listened to respectfully and without fuss, the MAP-makers went back to the drawing board with some valuable feedback and perhaps a new development model allowing for a more iterative process, and the result (be it MAP or something else) were a more practical and less obtrusive, and therefore more useful, assessment tool?

On PBS's article, "The Battle Over Education Reform"

This past Tuesday, PBS's Azmat Khan wrote about K–12 education reform as part of the Frontline series, The Education of Michelle Rhee. I have not yet watched the series, so perhaps some of the things I talk about below are addressed there. But the article, anyway, at once summarizes the divisions in ed reform and illuminates why this frustrating debate is going nowhere.

One of the most contentious movements in ed reform now is the charter school movement. Charter schools started as grass-roots, small-scale alternatives in communities important to the individual founders. This was its state when I taught in San Francisco at the turn of the millennium. Nowadays, many charter schools are run by large networks with a central office resembling something between a business and a school district. These networks are often backed by wealthy foundations and, with some notable exceptions, the teachers are not unionized.

And therein lies the hullabaloo. Where some see innovation and opportunity, others see privatization and carpetbaggery. In the public discourse, at least, there are pro-charter reformy types and anti-charter teacherly types, and never the twain shall meet. Of course, there is a multitude of nuanced opinions one may have, but those are not given much breathing space.

So back to the article. Khan describes charter schools' structure, their financing, and their promise as well as their pitfalls, and then summarizes the carrying on in the edusphere about whether charters yield better results than traditional public schools.  Pro-charter folks say the data favors charters;  anti-charter folks say the (same) data doesn't. This horse-race calling is never ending. It's  also an empty proxy for philosophical differences and territorial disputes. Isn't this data based on test results? Test results are a tiny component of what makes a high-functioning school. Educators all know this, whether they are charter school supporters or detractors (though charter school funders and policy-makers don't seem able or willing to understand this, and that unfortunate ignorance has railroaded  education policy for the past twelve years). What about student safety? What about teacher safety, for that matter? What about study and work conditions? What about facilities condition and management? What about orderliness, clarity of function and purpose, a caring tone combined with an expectation of excellence? Children's needs, and schools' success along a multitude of vectors, are poorly represented through test scores, to say the least. Test scores being equal, one school might still be vastly preferable to another.

It seems to me two things have to happen: first, policy-makers, legislators, and the wealthy people and institutions who invest in schools these days need to develop a better understanding of the uses, and especially the limitations, of testing; and secondly, as the article mentions, folks on all sides need to get serious about culling the stuff that works at charter schools and applying it to the traditional public school system without either side starting a spitting contest. Until then, charter-lovers will use incomplete, interpretable data points to make the claims that benefit the beliefs they already have, and charter-haters will do exactly the same, with the same data, and nothing will change.

Next up: teacher reforms. The article outlines the discussions around teacher tenure and tools for evaluating teacher quality. I'm not going to get into how flawed evaluating teachers on children's test scores is--that's been discussed enough elsewhere, and the Khan article doesn't dwell on it either. It spends more time talking about attempts to improve teacher training programs, which I'm glad to see, but there's another big piece here that is missing and that just doesn't come up much in the discourse.  There is little acknowledgement that the last century's working conditions are not conducive to this century's expectations, and that last century's attitudes about teachers and teaching are disrespectful and out-of-touch in the lens of this century. Yes, let's ensure smart people well-suited to teaching enter the profession--but let's also be honest about the disconnect between what America expects of its teachers and what America thinks of them and provides for them.

Those are the two most controversial items, and the ones for which the debate simply must be reframed lest we hurt ourselves with all the gnashing of teeth and cracking of knuckles and hitting of heads against walls. The article also touches on character education programs and the search for the best way to instill values such as curiosity, self-control, and grit (note to funders and pols: not testing!), and on the strategy of improving schooling through deep investment in whole communities, such as with the Harlem Children's Zone.

Khan notes that some question whether investment in a community's health, nutrition, and safety is "the practical way forward." I was dumbfounded by this--what could the argument against healthy kids growing into adulthood in an environment relatively free of violence, uncertainty, and fear possibly be?--so I looked at the Brookings Institute report Khan cites and...I'm still processing it. I guess that is a blog for another time.

2013 Predictions?

It will be interesting to review this list of predictions for 2013, put together by past NEA president John Wilson, and see where they've gone. It reads more like a wishlist than a set of predictions to me, but I am congenitally incapable of donning rose-colored glasses, so maybe I'm just not seeing it right.

EdWeek's Rick Hess makes 2013 predictions, too, infused with tongue-in-cheek hyperbole (which strikes me as an excellent way to hedge against coming out too terribly wrong 365 days from now--clever!). His overlap some with Wilson's but strike me as more realistic, less utopian, and more nuts-and-bolts.

Hack Education's Audrey Watters opted out of making ed tech predictions this year, citing her incorrect predictions last year--and sounding as super articulate and insightful about her own self-doubt as she does about any other subject she covers. Do you read her blog? It's smart.

2013 ed predictions: What are some of yours?

Finland's Model: Do the Opposite of What We're Doing

There has been a lot of talk about using Finland's education system as a model for our own. Their highly successful and much lauded system is the result of carefully planned and executed reform efforts in the '70s and '80s. This brief Atlantic article by Anu Partanen highlights the key principles that Finland decided were important, as detailed in the writing, speeches, and other tireless communication efforts of Pasi Sahlberg, the director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility. It's a pretty telling series of things, because they are all things the U.S. summarily ignores or outrightly rejects. To whit:

• The driving force behind Finland's reform efforts was, and remains, equity, not excellence. Therefore all schools from kindergarten through university are public, and all children receive health care and adequate nutritious meals.

• Teachers are embued with responsibility, not held to accountability. Correspondingly, teachers are highly educated and highly trained. teaching is a prestigious and well-paid profession, and teachers assess students when and how they see fit. They also have ample time to collaborate with their colleagues, as described (along with a ton of other well-researched information) here.

Partanen summarizes how others have addressed concerns about the difference in our country's size--we have local and state school control, not federal--and in demographics--not as large a difference as one might think. As an aside, while the local-control thing is true, I don't think it is fruitful to minimize our astounding ethnic and cultural diversity, nor our country's unique and powerful history of multiculturalism and immigration. That said, though, I feel we face a far greater challenge to developing and executing Finnish-inspired change: our insane attachment to signposts of individuality, to the point that we fear baseline health and nutrition provisions and prefer to cultivate our own ignorance rather than accept others' knowledge.

The "R" Word: Summing it up and Breaking it Down

This review, from way back in 2010, of Diane Ravitch's book is the best summary thus far of the lessons learned from recent education initiatives.

This Edweek blog is the best breakdown I've read yet of where we should go from here (though I'd add to his list of ideas to discuss a no-b.s. look at funding sources for schools, and an intelligent and serious look at teacher training and pay).

11/28/12 Update: I fixed the link to the EdWeek blog; it should point to the correct article now.

After the Election, a Welcome Complexity

As outlined here and here, Tuesday's election results make clear just how much the education currents are churning. Republican states voted down Republican sponsored bills related to imposing stringent evaluation systems on teachers and limiting collective bargaining and other rights, but charter schools generally did well, too. Folks seem to not know which way they're supposed to stand on Common Core; and, in Indiana, voters elected a Democrat to the office of state superintendent over the incumbent Republican--a Republican who has been a supporter of our Democratic president's education initiatives. Dogs and cats, living together...mass hysteria.

But maybe not. Could it be relatively non-partisan consideration of issues and viewpoints? That would be a refreshing switch from the angry hunkering-down that has characterized the last ten years of politics and the last zillion years of education.

Am I being naive? Is it too much to hope that these issues can be talked about outside of our silos? The force of If You Think This You Must Also Think This Sweeping Array Of Other Things is so terribly tiresome and energy-sucking.

On a sort of related note, I am realizing and accept that I must give in and leave behind the term "reform." I must call what I want something else. The term is too loaded. The co-opting has been complete and successful. This is unfortunate. Diane Ravitch is a harsh critic of "reformers" but calls for real ingenuity and creativity. Well, yes, please; that would be awesome. Can I be a part of that? What word shall we use?

Instead of "No," how about "Yes And."

It's been a long time. I've been winding down my curriculum work and trying to prepare my home and myself for this edu-switch. But I've also hit pause a bit on the blogging as I process the Chicago teacher's strike and speak to teacher-friends about policy and politics, charters and parents--and my  interest in school reform.

It is unfortunate that "reform" and "innovation" and "improvement" have become dirty words among many educators. When I mention my interest in K–12 education reform to my teacher-friends, a tense, expressionless curtain drops over their features (and how many of you either shivered or snarled when you read that phrase?) But I think most people who feel dedication to and passion for  public education have similar goals. It's disappointing that phrases become slogans or buzzwords and eliminate, rather than encourage, communication.

I think excellent teachers are the key to excellent learning outcomes, but it's nonsense to hold them solely responsible for making changes--they are within a system and a paradigm that requires dramatic change and over which  they have little control. Evaluating the hell out of them won't help, and is mostly a way for policy-makers to avoid the hard decisions and for politicians to look like they care about their constituents' children.

That said, I think there's nothing wrong with setting up accountability structures to track performance and growth. All places of employment should have this. It's just that doing so without setting up sensible, thoughtful support structures, and without providing the time needed within the workday and throughout the school year, is unfair and will not work.

I think teachers' ideas, opinions, and efforts are essential, monumentally important components in real change--but they're not the only components. Bigger-picture observations and considerations related to conditions outside of the school building are also essential, and there are systemic things that have to happen to support, replicate, and institutionalize the sort of success individual schools have built.

I think teachers are treated horribly. I think they are not regarded as or paid as professionals or as practitioners of one of the most important arts in a society. But I also think the union does not protect teachers from indignities. The union fights hand-to-hand combat, beating out tiny victories while the whole ship on which those battles are taking place is sinking.

I think the whole model needs to change. Teaching should be a highly competitive profession, but equally highly paid and respected. Teachers should spend many years in a residency learning to teach with excellence, artistry, and rigor, and be coached regularly there--and, once they make it through the residency, they should be trusted with their students like the professionals they are. They should be provided with the resources they need and the time for research, study, collaboration, and grading outside of the classroom.

The immediate response to this Finland model idea is often that it could never work in a country like ours, a gigantic, sprawling place with an unbelievable richness of demographic texture. First of all,  we haven't tried it, so we don't know; of course we will need to make it our own, but there must be many valuable concepts and processes we can take form that model. And secondly--okay. Great. I'm game: so what ARE  you thinking? Let's do it. Let's not just stop at saying No. Can we take a note from improv artists? Instead of "No," let's try "Yes, and."

The Strike

I have weeks of backlogged blogs to catch up on, but in the meantime Andrew Rotherham and Rick Hess have some insightful and articulate things to say, as usual--this time about the teacher's strike happening in Chicago. I highly recommend these two postings, here and here.

It's amazing how consistently very smart policy makers make very stupid policy, or they make foolish and untenable implementation decisions about potentially good policy. But I'm also so, so sick of the teachers' union fighting the wrong fights and expending its voice and human capital to protect a lousy, to say the least, status quo. As usual, this fight is about the adults, not the kids, and you're not a teacher-hating Mr. Monopoly if you think that. I like teachers. I want teachers to have the job they should have-- a coveted, highly respected, highly paid, correspondingly challenging to attain job--and the union, among a great many other powerful stakeholders who benefit from the status quo, is obstructing the path to teachers getting that.