Teacher Unions
Showtime, D.C.!
Published August 06, 2009 @ 07:04AM PT
As it is with every August in the greater Washington, D.C. area, the forecast is a consistent high-80s/low-90s with humidity and a chance of some sort of thunderstorm just about every day, Congress has skipped town for the better part of a month, and anyone still in the city is staring a hole through the tiny little "September" portion of the August page of his calendar. There are things to do, but there's nobody around to help get them done. It's, quite frankly, a hint at what hell might be like on certain days (except Hell doesn't have a Starbucks or a Cosi on every other corner).
In fact, the only people doing much of anything at this point in time are educators. And in the District of Columbia's school system, the prep for the upcoming school year seems to have higher stakes than usual. Chancellor Michelle Rhee has received an enormous amount of attention since arriving a couple of years ago, and her third year might be a "do or die" year in terms of her public image and future success: it's what most teachers consider their "tenure year"; there's a Democrat in the White House with a new Secretary of Education who supposedly has it in him to get things done instead of drafting NCLB II: The NCLBening; and as the Washington Post reported on Sunday, she's hired some contractors to "fix" some of the District's high schools ("A D.C. Schools Awakening," by Bill Turque, 8/2/09).
Those brought in to fix Coolidge, Dunbar, and Anacostia High Schools, referred to as "takeover agents" in the article's subhead, have met with success before in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, taking over schools marred by failing scores under NCLB and turning them around, and the task ahead of them is substantial.:
This summer, Friends of Bedford, which operates a Brooklyn public high school that has become New York City's most successful, has taken control of Coolidge and Dunbar senior high schools. Friendship Public Charter Schools, which serves about 4,000 students on six D.C. campuses, is running Anacostia Senior High School.
Rhee has also started discussions with Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot Schools, which operates Locke Senior High School in Los Angeles, one of the city's largest and most troubled schools, about working in the District. Barr recently toured Eastern High School on Capitol Hill, although District officials said discussions are in an extremely preliminary stage.
Anacostia, Coolidge and Dunbar are all stark examples of the challenge [Arne] Duncan describes, places where scholarship and discipline flicker weakly at best. Fewer than a third of students read and write proficiently, according to citywide tests. A 2008 review of Dunbar by District officials said, "Evidence of effective teaching and learning was limited to a few individual teachers." On a single day in November, 19 girls were arrested for fighting.
The Toolbelt and Universal Design - Education For Everyone
Published July 17, 2009 @ 04:00AM PT
Education may be understood in one of two broad ways. Either it is about teaching people a discrete set of facts they will be able to repeat – multiplication tables and The Lord’s Prayer are two examples – or it is about helping people learn how to function in the world – crossing the street, using the Dewey Decimal System, reading a map all fit into this category.
The first understanding is not without value. It is important to know an alphabet, basic math facts, or what “President” means. But the second is crucial to survival. Humans, from the very start, needed to know how to hunt, how to recognize safe plants from poisonous ones, how to find their way back home.
And almost as soon as humans began to function as “humans” – this process of learning to function in the world began to revolve around tools. Humans are tool makers and tool users. It truly is our most significant distinction among the species on the planet. Sure, many animals use a few basic tools, but no other creature uses as many tools, or constantly refines those tools, or continuously invents new tools. It is almost a definition of “humanity.”
Our societies are defined by our tools. Our first complex tool is our language, which allows us a huge communicative advantage over most species with which we compete. And our languages significantly define who we are and what we know. The rest of our tools tend to define where we fall in social evolution. We describe much of our history by our tool sets: The Stone Age, The Bronze Age, The Iron Age, The Age of Steam, The Information Age.
This progress explains an important idea to educators. If you are teaching your students the tools of yesterday, you are preventing society from moving forward. Rather, we must be teaching our students to use the tools of this moment, and teaching them how to learn the next set.
Toolbelt Theory
For the past four years I have talked about something I call “Toolbelt Theory.” This began as an idea for allowing students with “disabilities” to learn and choose their own Assistive Technologies. But it very quickly expanded to all students, because every human on earth needs some kind of technologies which assist them in their interactions.
It is impossible for most to climb to the second floor of a building without stairs. It is very difficult for most to get to a meeting on the 25th floor without an elevator. And it is perhaps even more difficult for most to get to work each day if work is 30 miles from home, unless we use a car.
Because we are not whales, we need some form of “assistive technology” if we are to talk to someone 3,000 miles away. We call this a telephone. Because we are not birds or Monarch Butterflies, we need other “assistive technologies” if we are to cross from one continent to another. We call these planes and boats. And because we are not Socrates, we struggle to remember everything we have ever been taught without “assistive technologies.” We call these books and paper, pens and ink.
So we create toolbelts for ourselves. We not only collect hammers, saws, screwdrivers, we load up on books or television, typewriters and newspapers.
A toolbelt for everyone
I began to discuss Toolbelt Theory in my field – for students with special educational needs. I was frustrated when some “school-based team” would pick a single technological solution for a student’s “disability” which the student was expected to use no matter the task, no matter the environment, no matter how the student was feeling that day.
For example, a student with a reading problem might be given complex, expensive literacy software for his computer but not be able to read a menu at a restaurant or a sign on a school door. Or a student without verbal communication might be given a speech-generating device too large to use on the bus as she traveled home. Or lots of students might be given tools based on their “worst day” needs – rather than allow them to use “just” the help they needed.
It was the equivalent of breaking out a chain saw every time you needed to cut wood – even if you were trying to build furniture.
But once I began to see Toolbelt Theory work, I saw that every student needs this. There’s not a human on the planet that doesn’t need to reach for a tool sometime – and knowing how to pick the right tool for the job and moment, how to use that tool well, and how to find new tools, is an essential survival skill.
Universal Design
We don’t call someone “disabled” because they can not saw 100 sheets of plywood in half by hand. We get them a table saw. We don’t call someone “disabled” because they need a power screwdriver or they’ll be exhausted after an hour of putting down deck boards. We put a bit in our drill. And we don’t call people “disabled” because they can’t walk five miles to work every morning. They take a car or a bus or a train.
This is the idea behind Universal Design Technology, and behind Toolbelt Theory. We, as humans, differ. Our tasks differ. Our environments differ. Our circumstances differ. And we pick the appropriate tool.
This Wednesday I could walk much further, cane and all, in the 64 F degree weather in San Francisco than in the 98 F degree weather just south of there in Mountain View. I could decide if I wanted to drive between those two cities, or take the train. Get off early and take BART to my destination, or ride to the station by AT&T Park and walk to the streetcar – What’s the weather? Is time an urgent factor? How does my leg feel?
But without education, I can’t make these choices. I need to know how to know the temperatures. I need to know what transit options are open to me. I need to know how to drive and how to read a timetable. How to operate parking and train ticket machines. I need to know which way the streetcars run, and how to ask for help.
When I read I need to make similar choices. I read really slowly, really badly. But for short things I just tough it out with “ink-on-paper” (or paint-on-signs), though I have a Reading Pen with me if I’m having a very bad day - a day when no alphabetical system connects correctly in my brain. But I also use Click-Speak in Firefox for reading web pages. I use WYNN for big academic reading, and Read-and-Write-Gold – all of which convert text to audio (WYNN and Read-and-Write both highlight each word visually as it is being read aloud). Sometimes I use audiobooks – especially for novels, poetry, or great historical stuff, or I let WYNN, Read-and-Write, or WordTalk convert the text to an mp3 I can listen to in my car.
Without education I could not make these choices either. I need to know how to use those different tools. I need to know how to work with them – say, how to take notes effectively. I need to understand what the purpose of my reading is. And yes, I need to know about these tools, and where to get them.
Are you teaching your students those things?
Suppose your wealthy, white, typically-abled child is heading off to Europe. Can they read maps effectively? Can they read maps on their iPhone or Blackberry so they aren’t “screaming” “I’m an unfamiliar tourist” as they walk down the street? Can they translate information quickly from unfamiliar languages? Can they use Google to convert currency? Or to know if they’re being ripped off? Are they able to figure out the transit system maps when they arrive in a city?
Oh yeah, they’ll probably need all of those tools simply to start college in a new place or to go to that first big job interview in New York or Chicago or San Francisco.
Can they get through that last hundred pages of reading when their eyes hurt? When they need to finish as they drive to work? Can they dictate a text message or email to their boss while driving a 50 mph on the Eisenhower Expressway toward Chicago’s Loop? Can they switch their Firefox spellcheck when they communicate with that job possibility in London? Do they know if it will be better for them to buy the print version of that textbook or the digital?
Or have you left them clueless in the tool store via an education continuously committed to one way of doing things?
T.E.S.T.
Toolbelt Theory, and Universal Design, means there aren’t “disability solutions” and there aren’t “normal ways to do things.” There are just humans and the tools they need. And so we don’t write IEPs for some and insist on conformity for others, but we make the tools of the world available to all, and teach them to evaluate on their own.
We do this because we know, we know, that across everyone’s lives their tasks will change, their environments will change, their skills and capabilities will change, and the available tools will change. Or quick, grab your fountain pen, fill it with ink, look up the number you need in your Manhattan White Pages directory, and dial it via your rotary phone.
So: Task – Environment – Skills – Tools (a specifically ordered re-design of Joy Zabala’s SETT Framework for those educators playing along at home). When students begin a task they need to consider what that task really is – the essential purpose. They need to know where, when, for whom that task must be completed. They must understand their own skill set and capability position (which might vary throughout even the day as they tire). And they must know the range of tools available to them – and how to use those tools.
None of this is automatic. Don’t give me your “digital native” nonsense. People even need to learn to properly hold a hammer – tool skills are not natural. Nor is tool knowledge. Every day I go into schools where students struggling with reading are left in the dark – as if we denied wheelchairs to students who couldn’t walk on the theory that being left on the floor would motivate their legs to work. Every day I go into schools where the vast majority of students struggle – and often give up – as they are forced to use antiquated tools which fit their needs badly.
Teach your children well
We are humans. We are tool users. We are defined as humans by our constantly changing tools. Those tools, in turn, actually change who we are, as they alter our capabilities.
Your school must be a tool shop, where tools are demonstrated, taught, considered, respected, used, and deliberately chosen. Because we can not afford to send our students out without the toolbelts they need to function in their future world.
- Ira Socol
You can find my blog on education, technology, and "special needs" education at SpeEdChange . You can find my books on Amazon.com.
Watching Michelle Rhee
Published June 14, 2009 @ 05:47PM PT
For those who follow education, and maybe even for those who simply follow the news, Michelle Rhee's name should be very familiar. Brought in as the Washington, D.C. schools' superintendent two years ago, she has the job of turning around what has to be one of the most notorious school systems in the country. She obviously knew this coming in and did so with guns blazing, proposing changes that would clean out the garbage and begin to make D.C. schools the type of place that one would expect in the nation's capital.
Of course, she hasn't exactly made friends with everyone and her noteriety, such as a now-famous (infamous, even?) Time magazine cover story, has both helped and hindered her quest to make the improvements that the system so desperately needs. A story on the front page of today's Washington Post reflects on her first two years as superintendent, detailing her successes and setbacks and predicting where her initiatives may take D.C. schools in the future.
Against Teacher Technophobes, and Teacher Messiahs
Published June 12, 2009 @ 02:38PM PT
Patrick Higgins writes an open letter to teachers who hate technology that hits all the notes just so. Share it with those who need it. A taste:
Rather than do what most readers of this letter are expecting me to do and refute your claims, I have to admit that I concur–I hate it too. Yes, I must admit, that comes as surprise, I am sure, but something tells me that our reasons for this shared loathing will not be the same. Let me share mine with you and then we can have an informed discussion to compare and contrast.
First, I cannot stand that I have had to give up hours of painstakingly annotating papers with carefully crafted comments and editing marks. I’ll miss that fullness of self when I return the essays and research papers back to the students and they scurrilously thumb to the last page, jettisoning any comment or edit I made, to find out their total score on the paper.
Secondly, the fact that there will be conversations about topics in my class that occur UNABATED and not in my presence is inconceivable and incorrigible. Thoughts about the content of my class that do not occur during the sanctity of my 50 minute class period belong either as one-on-one conversations with me in the hallway, clearly stated on their homework papers, or held onto in the working memory of the student until the next class period or hallway conversation with me. (Read the rest...)
Chris Lehmann takes on the "work them 'til they drop" model of "good teaching" that is all the rage in the KIPP/Teach for America circles:
We have to come up with a better model of urban school reform than the messianic workaholic model. It is unsustainable and it requires Faustian bargains that no one should have to make. The danger of KIPP... the danger of Dangerous Minds and Stand And Deliver and all the newspaper articles that talk about the unmarried / childless teacher / principal who makes their school their entire life is that it excuses us -- as a society -- from envisioning a healthier model of school.
If we expect teachers to have an ethic of care about our students, we have to have an ethic of care toward our educators. Asking them to sacrifice their lives to teach doesn't get us there. And it certainly doesn't get us toward systemic reform. (Read the rest...)
Video: Six Reasons Value-Added "Growth Model" Teacher Evaluations are Unfair
Published May 28, 2009 @ 06:29AM PT
University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham tipped me off to his latest video, on one of EdSec Arne Duncan's pet subjects: "Merit Pay, Teacher Pay, and Value Added Measures." Willingham gives "six reasons in three minutes" that the idea of evaluating teachers by the value-added "growth model," as reasonable as it sounds, is still unfair. Worth a watch, and good for a couple of chuckles to boot. (I wonder if Perez Hilton plans to sue.)
Besides Dan's six, what other flaws in this idea can you add?
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No Excuses, Teachers: Raise Homeless Students' Test Scores, or Else
Published May 26, 2009 @ 07:42AM PT
Last week I suggested that EdSec Arne Duncan's plan to hold teachers accountable for - and to evaluate, retain, pay, and promote them based upon - their classes' standardized test scores would be invalid, unless they factored in the "one bad apple" effect of disruptive students, which recent research suggests causes lower test scores for their entire class.
Here's another factor that demands to be added: student homelessness --
The National Alliance to End Homelessness has predicted that at the current rate, the recession will result in 1.5 million additional homeless people within two years. According to the advocacy group First Focus, nearly two million children will be impacted by subprime foreclosures, including some half a million Latino children and more than 280,000 Black children. In a national survey of school systems, several hundred districts reported a surge in homeless children last fall compared to the previous school year.
I'm serious. Bleating "No excuses" to teachers for poor classroom performance when their desks are filled with homeless students is unfair to teachers and students - and the schools that face closure for low test scores. No homeless student is going to have the emotional stability needed to excel in class. Simply being bullied in high school transformed me from an A to a C student. Imagine the effects of homelessness on Mary Quaker's grades:
For many families, staying intact may mean staying on the streets. The dilemma may be deepened by a looming fear of separation by child welfare authorities, who may place children in foster care.
For Yolanda James's 16-year-old daughter, Mary Quaker, the threat of separation dwarfed material hardship. She struggled through living in a car, even sleeping in her school gym when her mother could not afford a motel, but she clung to what mattered. "I just wondered," she recalled, "is she going to put us somewhere so we can be able to eat and take a shower and all that? I'd always tell everybody, 'Just don't split us up. We'll all get through it together.'"
So Secretary Duncan, please commission some economic think tank to factor homelessness into your value-added data metrics.
L.A. Times v. L.A. Teachers: America Writ Small
Published May 23, 2009 @ 07:04AM PT
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Fred and Mike Klonsky ask why edblogs have remained silent on the L.A. teachers' and students' walkout last week in protest of education budget cuts and the issuing of thousands of teacher pink-slips.
In "R.I.P. 'Mainstream' Media," Mike points out the role of the L.A. Times in the debacle:
The L.A. Times ran a piece a week before the arrests, quoting schools chief Cortines accusing teachers of "milking the system" and then one on Friday, just before the arrests, claiming that teachers were going to "storm district headquarters" and "jump on some desks." Then they trailed way behind the blogs and Twitter in covering the protest and the arrests. I found this story about the student protests, on Saturday but nothing else. I looked again on Sunday. Nothing. I looked again this morning. Nothing. I combed the national press again today. Nothing.
Actually more people in China know about the L.A. struggle, than do folks here in the U.S.A. I found this story about teachers in Queensland (that's in Australia) going on strike, but nary a word about L.A. Thank goodness for the blogs and Twitter. RIP L.A. Times and the Tribune Company.
Kevin Martinez offers a good analysis of the insidious effects of the L.A. Times' recent education coverage here:
Under the cover of a “special investigation” into incompetence and wrongdoing in the classroom, the Los Angeles Times has launched a vicious attack on schoolteachers in the Los Angeles public education system.
[...] Teachers in Los Angeles, and throughout California, are confronting a brutal assault on their jobs, living standards and working conditions as the result of multibillion-dollar budget cuts pushed through by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democratic Party-controlled state legislature.
The decision of the LA Times to publish the series in this context reveals that the newspaper is making a concerted effort to turn public opinion against teachers, to pit newly hired educators against classroom veterans, and to divert blame for the crisis in the public education system away from the political establishment. Read more...
"To divert blame for the crisis in the public education system away from the political establishment": that analysis isn't limited to L.A. I'd say it applies to the entire country.
