Change.org's Education Blog

Teach Citizens' Journalism with YouTube Reporters' Center

Clay Burell — 2009-07-01T07:04:00-07:00

Older teachers often feel up against a wall when told to teach 21st century skills, and it's hard not to sympathize. When they were students, the classroom was a book, paper and pencil world, so it's no surprise that they resist the new media. They have little to no experience with it, academically.

YouTube is here to help, with the new YouTube Reporters' Center channel. Its blurb:

Ever captured a natural disaster or a crime on your cell-phone camera? Filmed a political rally or protest, and then interviewed the participants afterward? Produced a story about a local issue in your community? If you've done any of these things or aspire to, then you're part of the enormous community of citizen reporters on YouTube, and this channel is for you.

The YouTube Reporters' Center is a new resource to help you learn more about how to report the news. It features some of the nation's top journalists and news organizations sharing instructional videos with tips and advice for better reporting.

I've browsed a few, and here are four keepers -- and one stinker:

1. How to shoot two kinds of interviews

Reuters.com editor Adam Pasick describes how to shoot two different kind of video interviews, including lighting, framing and sound.

2.Katie Couric on how to conduct a good interview

Katie Couric chats with producer Tony Maciulis about what makes a good interview. This video is part of the YouTube Reporters' Center.

3. NPR's Scott Simon: How to Tell a Story

I really like his admonition to be conversational, instead of polysyllabically constipated. No need to throw out "osculate," I tell my students, when "kiss" is the much better word. Simon also discusses openers, purpose, organization, and sentence structure for audio -- an entirely different beast in comparison to print.

4. How to Catch the Latest News on YouTube

This is handy. I didn't know about these tricks.

There are many more good tutorials at Reporters' Center -- and a few eggs.

5. Lord a' Mercy, I don't recommend this one

WaPo White House correspondent Dana Milbank, for example, infamous for his recent hissy fit over Obama calling on HuffPo Iran reporter Nico Pitney during last week's press conference (and for allegedly calling Pitney a "dick" for outing his "journalism lite" propensities -- Obama swimsuit questions, Bush "Mission Accomplished" swooning -- on CNN), offers up a tutorial on "Comedy and News." Watch Milbank's attempt to be funny in the video below -- phew! -- and you'll see why I find his posing as a comedy expert to be, in itself, the highest comedy:

Somebody needs to school Milbank in one of the main commandments of the Church of the Subgenius: "If you're not funny, don't try to be."

J.R. "Bob" Dobbs icon by gordasm

The Asians aren't Coming! The Asians aren't Coming!

Clay Burell — 2009-06-30T07:05:00-07:00

A quick snippet from "Think Again: Asia's Rise" in the latest Foreign Policy, which I hope makes EdSec Duncan, President Obama, and the rest of the "Asian (education) peril" crowd, um, "think again":

Asia is pouring money into higher education. But Asian universities will not become the world's leading centers of learning and research anytime soon. None of the world's top 10 universities is located in Asia, and only the University of Tokyo ranks among the world's top 20. In the last 30 years, only eight Asians, seven of them Japanese, have won a Nobel Prize in the sciences. The region's hierarchical culture, centralized bureaucracy, weak private universities, and emphasis on rote learning and test-taking will continue to hobble its efforts to clone the United States' finest research institutions.

Even Asia's much-touted numerical advantage is less than it seems. China supposedly graduates 600,000 engineering majors each year, India another 350,000. The United States trails with only 70,000 engineering graduates annually. Although these numbers suggest an Asian edge in generating brainpower, they are thoroughly misleading. Half of China's engineering graduates and two thirds of India's have associate degrees. Once quality is factored in, Asia's lead disappears altogether. A much-cited 2005 McKinsey Global Institute study reports that human resource managers in multinational companies consider only 10 percent of Chinese engineers and 25 percent of Indian engineers as even "employable," compared with 81 percent of American engineers.

Hell Freezes: Defending Meghan McCain v. Paul Begala

Clay Burell — 2009-06-29T07:04:00-07:00

Democratic strategist and pundit Paul Begala gives Republican Daddy's girl and instapundit Meghan McCain a smackdown on Bill Maher's Real Time that, on the face of it, is deserved (and delicious). Watch the two-minute clip:
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You're not going to hear me say McCain didn't deserve the schooling: she's posing as an expert all over cable news and the web, so she'd damn well better know whereof she speaks, and in this case clearly doesn't. To cover her rear, she hits Begala below the belt by playing the "I'm young and you're old" card, fully justifying the spanking Begala gives her backside.

But. Begala's response to McCain's ignorance about the Reagan years still makes this history teacher call foul: "I wasn't alive during the French Revolution, but I still know about that."

McCain probably knows a good bit about the French Revolution too. I'm sure she got that in high school, maybe even college. Schools are great at teaching stuff that happened long before the students' parents were born. But they're dismal at teaching all students -- not just the minority who take a "current events" elective -- about the world of their own, and their parents', generation. (This is old news to those of us who have read James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your U.S. History Textbook Got Wrong.)

I'd put money on the fact that Begala learned next to squat, in high school, about the two or three decades preceding his graduation year.

So rather than celebrating the spanking, we should be decrying the curricular reality this little brouhaha points to: we're graduating politically illiterate youths into adulthood.

You've heard of studies like this:

According to a 2006 survey of Americans aged 18 to 24, less than four in ten can identify Iraq on a map of the Middle East; one-third of young Americans cannot calculate time-zone differences; even after Hurricane Katrina, two-thirds cannot find Louisiana on map; almost one-third think that the United States has between 1 and 2 billion, and two in ten, amazingly, cannot point to the Pacific Ocean on a world map.

So sure, as an astute commenter on another blog notes, Meghan McCain might be "the political Paris Hilton: Famous daughter of a rich man and she likes the attention." But worse than that, she's one of our "elite best and brightest" -- you know, the Teach for America talent pool. And by her own admission she knows little about the recent political history of the country her father helps to -- I want to say "serve," but I'm not talking about health insurance and oil corporations here, so I'll choose -- rule.

It's less scary coming from Miss South (or was it "East"?) Carolina. It's full-on disturbing coming from McCain.

And since school history classrooms are every bit as fearful of provoking "partisanship" as it seems our current president is, it's hard to see how this is going to change any time soon. Especially since that president's ed reform seems mostly determined to equate "education" with "workplace readiness," and to hell with citizenship.

Mr. Obama, Tear Down This School!

Tom Panarese — 2009-06-28T07:05:00-07:00

Someone needs to tell Arne Duncan and company that the Berlin Wall didn't come down because Germany wanted to simply "rebrand" itself.

The Washington Post has reported, tongue a bit in cheek, that the Obama administration recently tore down one of the more theatrical symbols of President Bush's No Child Left Behind law -- a red schoolhouse that served as the backdrop for NCLB's signing and for the last seven years has sat on the corner of Maryland Avenue SW, in front of the U.S. Department of Education building.

Tearing down the building is a symbolic gesture ...

"It's like the new Coke. This is a rebranding effort," said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform. "The feng shui people believe you need to take the roof off buildings to allow bad chi to escape. Let's hope this helps."

... and the next act will be to try and change the name of the now-infamous law ...

Matthew Yale, deputy chief of staff for Duncan, said the department is considering a contest to rename the law.

"We want to think about something that's forward-looking instead of something that seems to have a negative connotation," Yale said. "We want to think of something that talks about future and potential."

You know, that's all well and good, but why do I have a feeling that the people in charge of our educational system are working from the Cliff's Notes on "How to Run General Motors"?

Time and time again in this space there has been a breakdown of what the current administration, especially its secretary of education, has been talking about (which is a lot) and doing (which, honestly, hasn't been much) to bring about the change promised in the presidential campaign. We're not the only ones to acknowledge this:

Toxic or not, is No Child Left Behind headed for extinction?

Lawmakers have yet to tackle an overhaul, and Duncan has not offered specifics on how he would like to see the law revamped. But the administration has said it will not back down from testing students or holding schools accountable.

Duncan has said he wants even higher standards that measure U.S. students against peers worldwide. But he said states and schools should have more flexibility in achieving goals.

Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said Duncan sometimes sounds a lot like former Bush education secretary Margaret Spellings. Like Spellings, Duncan has been promoting charter schools and merit pay for teachers.

"Other than kind of the aesthetics of it, it's not clear the schoolhouse represents anything more substantial," Hess said.

This appears to be the first step down the typical "Educational Reform" path, in which a symbolic gesture carrying no weight is followed by a piece of legislation that does very little to change the current situation -- or, like NCLB, adds another layer of bureaucratic gunk to something that's already dirty and gunky. Of course, when said legislation is passed, it will be on a grand stage with smiling children, apples for everyone, and a nice big banner with "NEW EDUCATION LAW WITH CATCHY NAME" written in comic sans or some other font I'd like to drop-kick.

All because the powers that be are politicians whose primary job is to -- wait for it -- get reelected. That's why we have standardized tests, is it not? Oh sure, you can give me some purple prose about how the use of standardized testing is a way to measure that all our children are achieving, or that it's a way of measuring our country's performance on the international stage. But to crib from one of our former presidents, my definition of "is" is a little different than that.

I would like, for once, to see a proposal for an overhaul that plans for beyond the next election cycle. It seems stupid for me to say that, but when you've got politicians crowing about test scores and national standards when there is rampant inequality among the 51 different entities that oversee our public schools, forgive me for not standing up and screaming "USA! USA!" And I'm not saying that we should just throw money at the situation, either, because when that's happened in the past. It just makes me think of that old joke about how a boat is a hole in the water you throw money into.

Don't make me disillusioned in the first six months of your turn, President Obama. It took the last democratic president at least a couple of years and a sketchy dry cleaning bill to do that. When you were picking at the scab that is the NEA during the campaign and challenging their commitment to the status quo -- even if it was just a little -- I was psyched. So please acknowledge ALL of the problems. Lay it out on the table for us to see. Then, let's get started. You know, before 2011 rolls around and you're signing the Children Reaping America's Promises law just in time for the Iowa Caucuses.

Pharmer's Market: The Cost of Producing "Successful" Students

William Farren — 2009-06-26T07:05:00-07:00

[A big welcome to William Farren with this first guest-post. Bill has long struck me as one of the most original and piercing critics of education around. You can see his "Did You Ever Wonder?" video in the left sidebar, below, for a taste. Bill writes at the radically sane Education for Well-Being. - Clay]

Not long ago, I finished reading Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, a book about the high price of cheap food and the disconnected thinking that produces it. It made me think that the way we produce food today--that is, ignoring nature's logic in the quest for efficiency--is very similar to the way we produce "educated" citizens. Ignoring millions of years of evolutionary design has resulted in some interesting (if not disconcerting) similarities between the two camps. Both industrial schooling and industrial agriculture seem to have developed pathological ways of looking at pathology.

Whether in the field, the feed lot, or the classroom, issues of low productivity and dysfunction are commonly attributed to the individual, rarely the larger system that controls it. When a farmer curses a corn plant's inability to repel a particular pest, he does so without reflecting on the fact that the plant has been taken out of its natural environment and placed into a man-made monoculture--a hotbed of disease. Plants grown in isolation lose the defenses and nutrients that neighboring species once freely provided. In homogeneous rows designed for the convenience of machinery, a plant's exquisite defense systems become ineffective. "Corrective measures" in the form of herbicides and pesticides end up coating the plants and sterilizing the soil.

Pigs are faulted for biting other pigs' tails as a result of being weaned prematurely and packed together tightly. Animals living in stressful conditions, denied the expression of their once useful behaviors, lose the will to protect themselves in the face of danger. As a consequence, when infection sets in on a chewed tail, pigs are put down. (It's not profitable to nurse them back to health.) Forward thinking hog farmers, in an attempt to stamp out this "vice", noticed that by docking the pigs' tails they could produce a sensitive nub that would force even the most demoralized pig to fight back.

Cows, ruminants which have evolved to eat grasses and fibrous vegetable matter, are today mostly fed a diet of government-subsidized corn. Here again, we ignore nature's design. Not having evolved for such a diet, cattle end up living in a state of permanent illness, propped up and kept in the system by a permanent cocktail of pharmaceuticals. Big Pharma is only too happy to fill in when nature is ignored.

Our education systems, seeking efficiency through standardization and conformity end up creating students who, just like their agricultural counterparts, are no longer well-adapted to their environment. Michael Pollan reminds us that, "Most of the efficiencies in an industrial system are achieved through simplification: doing lots of the same thing over and over." Like corn planted in a monoculture, removed from the diversity that protects it, or cattle fed an unnatural diet of corn, students today are fed a standardized diet of procedures and reproducible facts. This educational monoculture does nothing to nourish minds that have evolved to seek diversity, novelty and stimulation.

Those numbed by disconnected ideas unrelated to their needs are soon labeled attention-deficient, unmotivated, substandard. Stimulants, antidepressants and impulse inhibitors are used to conform the human mind to a deformed system the same way herbicides, pesticides and antibiotics are used in agriculture's great disconnect. Like the corn-fed cow raised on an unnatural diet of corn, constantly anemic and never well but kept alive through the use of drugs, students raised on disconnected facts, numbing routines, and endless testing often find themselves on the receiving end of a medical prescription. Those who don't have the stomach for such unsatisfying fare, who prefer not to be chemically altered, who'd rather have a more free-range existence, are eventually "counseled out". Simply put: they have not met the required production quotas of a system designed for scalable throughput.

In standardized environments, students with a high tolerance for monotony and the ability to repress their curious gene are deemed the fittest of the bunch. Strangely, curiosity, a trait nature has selected for and which has served us well, seems to be selected against in schools. Blue ribbon students grow their grade point averages en route to graduation and a chance to compete in the "real world". Their farm analogues, purposed for industry, have been selected to tolerate crowding, pesticides, sameness--but most importantly--to be high yielding. The corn farmer with the most bushels per acre is acclaimed for his skill at converting petrochemicals into grain. The feedlot operator's profits depend on how efficiently he can turn grain into meat. The highest ranked schools floss in the knowledge that they can efficiently convert standards and routines into high test scores. Along the way, little thought is given to the soil that is depleted in the field, to the groundwater being spoiled by the feedlot, or to the creativity and innovation being extinguished in the classroom. How productive is all this productivity?

It seems that despite (or maybe because of) our fetish with productivity, many of humanity's most pressing issues seem to be getting worse. The unnatural selection playing out in schools creates what every educational institution's mission statement pledges against: the creation of uncritical, passive, challenge-averse individuals, unwilling and unable to tackle the challenges of the 21st-century. It's simple to blame the students for being unproductive or unmotivated, for lacking curiosity. Indeed, they often are seen as the problem, especially by those who've designed the system. Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus, however, reminds us that "the seed of poverty is in the institutions we have made, not in the person." With more effort and an inward gaze we'd see the deeper connections. We'd see students acting rationally in environments that ignore their evolutionary history. We'd understand that avoiding challenges and dropping out are simply logical responses to a system that discourages risk-taking and too often treats curiosity as a challenge to authority.

In their quest for efficiency and value, consumers have failed to notice the creation of false economies. We are now using more energy (in the form of oil and gas) to produce a calorie of food than we ever have in our history. What nature used to do for free through biodiversity and solar power, now requires pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and pharmaceuticals. In the bargain, our industrial agriculture is destroying our two most important environments: our bodies and our planet. Cheap food has led to obesity, type II diabetes and heart disease. Meat marinated in medicine and the effects it has on people (never mind the animals) never seems to make it into the cost-benefit analysis. Polluted air, toxic water and soil depletion are not billed at the supermarket register. Taxpayers, subsidizing the food that malnourishes them, complain little. Taxpayers, supporting educational systems that miseducate them, complain little. What's the true cost of an educational system which "through simplification: doing lots of the same thing over and over", causes mind and spirit to atrophy, suffocating students' natural desire to know? Maybe the biggest loss comes from the creation of generation after generation who cannot tell the difference between a bargain and a heist.

Michael Pollan writes, "Our food system depends on consumers' not knowing much about it beyond the price disclosed by the checkout scanner. Cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing." Education today requires the same relationship. Educational policies seem to display a meager understanding about the importance of curiosity, awareness, or how we fit into larger systems. Education's checkout scanner--tuition and taxes--provide only a partial accounting of its true costs. Similar to industrial farming, industrial education produces no bargains while diminishing itself in the process. The price of producing a "successful" student may be higher than we think.

-
William Farren: Interested in making education an instrument of well-being. Believes that schools, as the most important shapers of mental models, need to seriously retool in an effort to address the problems caused by dysfunctional economic models, biophobia, “nature-deficit disorder” and an immense lack of planetary situational awareness.

Keeps asking himself, "How is preparing students to enter a system that is at war with itself, preparing them for the future?"

Image by Plearn

More Evidence: Anti-Charter Bias is Reality-Based

Clay Burell — 2009-06-26T01:04:00-07:00

In his June 25 Huffington Post column, Gerald Bracey makes a really important point about the argument that charter schools don't drain public schools of funds because "charters are public schools." Responding to EdSec Arne Duncan's recent claim on Democracy Now! (video above) that "opponents often say that charters take money away from public schools. And we all know that's absolutely misleading," Bracey writes:

No, Arne, we don't all know that because it's not true. Some, and Arne appears to be one of them, contend that since charter schools are public schools, then Q.E.D., they don't take money away from the publics. The more usual argument is that the money going to charters is offset by reduced costs at the remaining public schools. But this is not the case. It might be true if all the kids going to the charter left from Mrs. Smith's class in P. S. 101. Then we could fire Mrs. Smith. Even so, the school operating costs, transportation costs, administrative costs, etc., would remain the same. But, in fact, maybe only 3 kids leave from Mrs. Smith's class. Because money is allocated on a per-pupil basis, that's three fewer allocations. Costs are not lowered but resources are reduced. And if the three kids return to the pubic school, as happens in many cases, the money does not come back with them.

As important is Bracey's straight talk about the recent report from Stanford's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), funded by many pro-charter camps, that found a two-to-one margin of bad charters to good charters, according to lead author Margaret E. Raymond, and according to its press release "reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well as their traditional public school counterparts."

Duncan has already committed himself to charters as a major pillar of his ed reform package in his speeches and, worse, in what amounts to his extortion to states to either lift their caps on charters or else disqualify themselves from his $5 billion "Race to the Top" fund. (It must be cool to have Bill Gates' ed reform clout by being given $5 billion in taxpayer dollars to push the Gates and Business Roundtable agenda.) So this study surely makes all his missionary zeal for charters a bit embarrassing. Duncan addressed it by saying,

The CREDO report last week was absolutely a wake-up call, even if you dispute some of its conclusions or its language. The charter movement is putting itself at risk by allowing too many second-rate and even third-rate schools to continue to exist.

Bracey's response:

Wake up call? Arne, was living in Chicago like living in China? Did Daley preclude you from hearing news from the outside world? Charter schools have been found to be underperforming for over a decade.

Moreover, if the CREDO results are true, Arne, why are you blackmailing states with threats to withhold stimulus money unless they permit charters or lift charter caps? The logic here is astonishing. Suppose I invent a medicine and find it helps 17% of people, doesn't do anything for 46% and hurts 37%. Would the FDA approve and tout my medicine? CREDO is a Stanford University-based think tank and its findings were that kids in charters did better than matched peers in publics in 17% of the cases, worse in 37% and neither better nor worse 46% of the time. As I closed my chapter on charters in Setting the Record Straight (second edition), "Charter schools were born of perceived failures in public schools. So, if the charters are doing worse than the publics, where is the outrage about them?" Where indeed, Arne?

It's too soon to tell, but I think it's a safe bet that Duncan will tout the brand name charters - KIPP, Green Dot, and such - as the "good charters," and promote them, and brand independent and local charters as the "second-rate and even third-rate" "bad" charters. Which means those public funds will be drained from public schools into fewer and fewer - and happier and happier - Charter Management Organizations.

Isn't it funny how the Obama administration is pushing for a public health care plan against HMO's, while he's pushing against public schools for CMO's and private charters? If the HMO's wanted a good argument against the government's faith in its ability to provide good social services, it should just point to the Department of Education.

In any case, check out Bracey's article on HuffPo. He grades a few more parts of Duncan's speech that I don't mention here.

Curriculum Watch: Abstinence-Only and Clean Coal Ideologues in Your Classroom?

Clay Burell — 2009-06-24T17:41:00-07:00

Just a couple of alerts about ideologues trying to sell their schtick to your children under "re-branded" packages:

1.The National Abstinence Education Association (source):

At an April 29 Capitol Hill briefing, Huber told the room that abstinence-only education is "not a 'just say no' message." "This is not abstinence only, this is a holistic message that prepares and gives students all of the information they need to make healthy decisions," Huber said. In fact, the NAEA isn't even calling its programs "abstinence only" anymore -- now they're "abstinence centered."

Similarly, WhyKnow -- a major provider of abstinence-only education curriculums -- recently changed its name to On Point, its tag line to "Direction for Life" and hired PR company Maycreate Idea Group to help recast its image. Lesley Scearce, executive director of On Point, said in an article for the Chattanoogan that the organization is trying to "get teens involved in new, positive directions that lead to a healthier, more fulfilling life. Without a re-naming, re-branding and re-positioning, this new direction wouldn't have been possible...."

Huber...assured her audience that "abstinence education talks about STDs and the medically accurate information regarding that" and that "abstinence education talks about contraception." But of course, the only time abstinence-only classes will talk about contraception is when they discuss failure rates -- often exaggerating those rates or spreading misinformation about the dangers of contraception. In the past, this tactic has been taken to extremes. In Montana's Bozeman High School, for example, teens in 2005 were taught that condoms cause cancer.

2. The American Coal Foundation (source):

An elementary school curriculum designed by the American Coal Foundation suggests that students learn about the costs and benefits of coal mining by using toothpicks and paper clips to "mine" chocolate chips out of cookies. They also go about "reclaiming" the "land" damaged in the process by tracing the cookies’ outline on graph paper. Costs are to be calculated by the amount of time spent per chip and the expanse of graph paper that needs to be reclaimed.

One of the discussion questions to follow the lesson is: "What do you think are some of the costs associated with mining coal?" (Read the rest...)

Things to keep an eye on....

Simple Math

Bruce Smith — 2009-06-23T15:38:00-07:00

It's legendary in the Sudbury literature: the five-month math class. As Sudbury Valley co-founder Daniel Greenberg reports in the above article, it took twenty weeks—a mere twenty contact hours—for a group of twelve kids ages 9 to 12 to cover all six years of elementary-school math.

A miracle? Hardly.

Greenberg's friend Alan White, a longtime elementary school math specialist, wasn't surprised. "Everyone knows," he said, "that the subject matter itself isn't that hard. What's hard...is beating it into the heads of youngsters who hate every step. The only chance we have is to hammer away at the stuff bit by bit every day for years. Even then it does not work...Give me a kid who wants to learn the stuff—well, twenty hours or so makes sense."

This squares with my experience as well. I once taught math to three students who consistently showed up on time. One day, however, I waited and waited...but they never appeared. A bit puzzled, I wandered back to the main room, only to find these students hard at work on their own. They'd gotten too busy and distracted working on math to think about math class.

Another time, a student asked me out of the blue—not in class, just in the course of a normal day—what I knew about counting in base 2 (a.k.a. binary numbers, the basis for digital computers). A spontaneous quasi-class ensued, as she and I looked things up, using a chalkboard to piece together the mysteries, treating it like a puzzle or a grand game: When do you add another digit? When is a 1 replaced with a 0? and so forth.

The way math is taught tells us much about how an educational system works...or why it doesn't. Some of the most powerful arguments on this theme are made in a piece popularly known as "Lockhart's Lament." Paul Lockhart teaches at Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn. Written in 2002, "A Mathematician's Lament" is a scathing critique of math education that has circulated widely, despite having never been published. The remainder of this post offers an overview of this unusually insightful and frank work.

There is surely no more reliable way to kill enthusiasm and interest in a subject than to make it a mandatory part of the school curriculum. Include it as a major component of standardized testing and you virtually guarantee that the education establishment will suck the life out of it.

Lockhart opens with nightmare scenarios of music education reduced to teaching notation, and art education that's mostly worksheets, memorization, and paint-by-numbers. Beyond being absurd, this approach spells death for creativity.

If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is currently being done—I simply wouldn't have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

To Lockhart, mathematics is "the purest of the arts...the music of reason. To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration." Mathematics touches on the very core of human meaning-making: patterns, imagination, and creativity. Yet in schools it is replaced by the sterile doppelganger of decontextualized facts and regurgitated formulas.

Students learn that mathematics is not something you do, but something that is done to you. Emphasis is placed on sitting still, filling out worksheets, and following directions...The main problem with school mathematics is that there are no problems...[only] "exercises." "Here is a type of problem. Here is how to solve it. Yes it will be on the test. Do exercises 1-35 odd for homework." What a sad way to learn mathematics: to be a trained chimpanzee.

Beyond decrying what schools have done to mathematics, Lockhart also delves into what teaching truly means. Rather than training students to perform, teaching is to him a matter of being authentic, making connections, and manifesting the delights of discovery.

Teaching is not about information. It's about having an honest intellectual relationship with your students...You will never be a real teacher if you are unwilling to be a real person. Teaching means openness and honesty, an ability to share excitement, and a love of learning. Without these, all the education degrees in the world won't help you, and with them they are completely unnecessary.

Before I close, here are a few more of Lockhart's gems:

We learn things because they interest us now, not because they might be useful later. But this is exactly what we are asking children to do with math...Of course it can be done, but I think it ultimately does more harm than good. Much better to wait until their own natural curiosity about numbers kicks in.

Mental acuity of any kind comes from solving problems yourself, not from being told how to solve them.

How can schools guarantee that their students will all have the same basic knowledge? How will we accurately measure their relative worth? They can't, and we won't. Just like in real life.

The good news is that the frustrations of misguided education are more than matched by the delights of authentic learning. Whatever your take on math education or Sudbury schooling, all our schools—indeed, our culture in general—could benefit from a massive infusion of this kind of passion for common sense and reason.

The Wonks: Technology Does, and Doesn't, Boost Learning

Clay Burell — 2009-06-21T14:42:00-07:00

I've been meaning to share this one for a while. It offers a good chuckle at the expense of ed wonks. It comes at the very end of the panel discussion at the Brookings Institute last month that followed Arne Duncan's brief appearance. As you'll see from the transcript below, a woman asks a question about training teachers to use technology effectively to enhance classroom learning. The first expert - kill me for not wading through the hour plus video to get names, or kill the transcriber for not including them and instead just calling them "SPEAKER" - basically pooh-poohs the idea that technology can enhance learning, and cites the inevitable study to support his case:

SPEAKER: Well, I can respond a bit to that. The Institute of Education and Sciences within the U.S. Department of Education carried out a large scale study of leading technology products that are used in classrooms to boost reading and math scores found no difference in outcomes for students in classrooms randomly assigned to receive those products versus carry out business as usual.

The developers of those products protested and they said that, well, if the teachers had only used and the students had only used these products for the number of hours intended, they would have worked much better. In fact, it was a study of normal conditions of use and technology in the school.

I think the nation has a frontier in front of it in understanding how to apply new technology to teaching and learning, but I think the results we have in hand suggest that it is a frontier we need to get to rather than a location at which we presently sit. So it's promise and potential, and I expect that some of the stimulus money at the local level, when it gets there, is likely to be used to invest in technology because the machines and the software remain after the stimulus funds are expended.

Let's stop there for a second and parse the language: This wonk seems to conceive of educational technology as "educational products" to "boost reading and math scores" - technology for the sake of test prep, produced as canned software by commercial companies. Digital drill and kill, in essence. It's a remarkably impoverished, 1990s view of technology in education. Yet this view is espoused by a Brookings expert.

The irony comes when the next speaker disagrees completely with the last, and cites different studies to back up his position:

[DIFFERENT] SPEAKER: I'll suggest a little bit different slant on this. My own instinct is that over the next eight to ten years, the biggest changes in the schools will come through technology. I think the I actually think that the economic downturn is going to contribute to that in many ways.

From another body of data, if you look at courses, that is, full courses, often that are now used in many cases for credit recovery, which is often associated with small schools, students they only give biology once every two years, and if a student flunks biology the first year and does not have a chance to take it until senior year and they want to take chemistry later in the senior year, they take a credit recovery course, they take it with technology. These are pretty weak courses in many cases, but the results from them suggest that they are just as weak or as strong as the conventional teacher.

And so we have a long body of research over the last ten or 15 years which indicates that there's no significant difference between the taking the course from a piece of technology, the full course, or taking it from the teacher itself.

Now, that's changing, in fact, it's tipping the other way, and what you're finding in the new technology, in the new courses that are being developed, are very, very high quality materials, with feedback loops in them that give that allow for adaptive instruction, that is, a student is working through this course, they take a little assessment, find the course itself, the technology discovers that the student isn't doing so well, so it cycles it back through the material again, or it gives it another piece of material that may teach the concept in a different way.

Just very quick, Carnegie Melon University, and this is working with freshman and sophomores, so they're very close to high schools, they did a study of a piece of technology like this, what they call a cognitive tutor, and they compared random samples, just a classroom against another classroom, a random sample of students.

The sample of students who took only the technology were only given half the time, they were only given half the semester to take it, and so they took it under their own control, their own speed, they took exactly the same hour exams, exactly the same final exam as the other students, and they did better than the other students. Not only did they do better, they did it faster, obviously. So we're challenging both the idea of a semester and the course load in a semester, as well as do you actually need a lecturer who's going to pace it for you.

Re: that underlined part: I'll have more to say on that in a follow-up post about my own experience of taking Yale's Open Courseware Jewish Bible class by downloading a full semester of lectures and readings, and watching them at my own pace.

How to Break into International School Teaching

Clay Burell — 2009-06-18T06:24:00-07:00

A reader who is also a teacher emailed me the following request, which I include as an example of how the current NCLB environment might be driving people to feel they'd rather teach than, you know, do whatever it is you do instead when you work for many of today's U.S. schools:

I just finished my first year teaching in CA, but like you I'm not big fan of "working for schools". I didn't realize how backwards the system is until I became a part of it. Now I'm stuck with the challenge of deciding whether I try to work within the system or search for other alternatives.

I've always loved to travel and thought it would be a beautiful thing if I could combine my love of experiencing different cultures with my love of true education (read: critical thinking and promoting creativity/autonomy). If you have time, I would love to hear how you got involved with teaching abroad.

So first the nuts and bolts, followed by a report from my last international recruitment fair in Bangkok back in January....

So You Want to Teach Internationally

Here's the skinny: Most schools require certification plus at least two years' experience teaching your subject area.

If you have that, then your next step is to sign up for an international schools recruitment fair. There are several companies that coordinate these, among them International School Services (ISS) and Search Associates. I've used both, and have no complaints: not perfect, not simple, but sheesh, it's a complicated world to enter. Other groups also run fairs, but I lack the experience and knowledge to opine on them.

Give yourself months to complete the registration process for these outfits; in fact, just get started now, since I think your file will remain active for at least a year, possibly more, after you sign up. You have to submit an online resume, cover letter, educational philosophy, copy of your teaching certificate, recommendation letters, teacher evaluations, and gobs more stuff to their database.

Once that's done, these services will let you search their databases for vacancies worldwide in your teaching area and grade level.

Lastly, you have to register for one of their fairs either in the U.S. or abroad. They normally take place from December to the following spring to fill vacancies for the following autumn's new school year. Register early in order to take advantage of the hotel discount where the fair takes place (you don't want to have to commute to your interviews from a neighboring hotel, believe me).

Packages, Pay, Benefits, Etc.

You'll have plenty of opportunity to learn about these things once you've registered with a service, but in general, you should expect health insurance, paid housing, a free round-trip flight to your home of record (or equivalent) each summer, and a shipping allowance. Pay scales vary widely. There is no union for international school teachers that I've heard of, but most teachers don't seem to mind. At the better schools, the working conditions are plenty good enough to satisfy.

There may be a bit of a "career ladder" to climb to get a job at the top-tier schools. Many people start in less selective schools, build a resume there and establish themselves as international school teachers, and expect their next fair to land them a job at one of the better schools.

From what I've seen, European schools have the least savings potential (i.e., they pay the worst), possibly because they consider their location attractive enough from a quality of life perspective. South and Central American and African schools also have a reputation for paying on the low end of the scale. Middle Eastern and Arab schools can pay from middling to very well. Ditto Asian schools.

Beware before signing a contract. If you break it, you may be blacklisted for the next job fair. Strongly consider sucking it up until your sentence ends.

That's about as far as I'll go. Now for that report from the trenches back in January, from my other blog:

The Wonderful World of International School Hiring Fairs

It was wonderful, in a weird way. Talking for hours for four straight days to school leaders around the world about our views on teaching and learning (and most interestingly, though probably most damning for many of my job prospects, about technology in education) is an interesting way to spend the time.

Without naming names of schools or interviewers, here’s a random and sleepy-eyed report of lessons learned from the experience.

1. Bad interviews are good things

No matter the reputation of the school, the people sitting across from you in the hotel room asking you questions in that school’s name are a stronger indicator of how it would feel to work at that school. I talked to English department heads whose questions – and my answers – made it clear to both of us that we would, or would not, make a happy marriage. There was an unsurprising correlation between this marital element and the offering or non-offering of a position at each school. Schools touting themselves as “21st century schools” and banging their laptop program drums – and during interviews with which I expected flower petals to descend from on high – on an occasion or two turned out to instead voice sentiments belonging to, um, people who’d obviously never experienced the literacy magic that happens after a few months writing and conversing behind the wheel of a blog. No rose-petals there – instead, many mental leaves of wet cabbage fell, probably, in both our imaginations. Marriage for the next two years? We think not. Thank goodness for the bad interview, and for the “We’re sorry we cannot offer you a job at this time.” No apology necessary, really – good luck.

2. “Energy is eternal delight” – so its opposite is….?

(h/t to William Blake who, though dead, deserves eternal credit for the eternally delightful maxim.) If, like mine, your own heart seems to pump more espresso than blood, then it may be important to consider the energy coming from those interviewing you. I’m not saying interviewers need to be manic or anything; I’m just saying a lack of excitement, of a sort of buoyancy – of even a decorously restrained intensity – when discussing educational vision while courting for a temporary professional marriage may be, well, a screaming red flag. Granted, the interviewers are stuck in their hotel rooms interviewing candidate after candidate for many more straight hours than the candidates themselves, but still – we’re all teachers, current or past, so we should be pretty good at keeping our energy level up whenever a professional client enters the room, be it classroom or hotel room. The short version? Beware the droopy interviewer, and put a gold star by the inspired/inspiring one. You are, after all, bound to be sitting in many more meetings with them if you sign the contract to work with them. If they’re sleepy, chances are you’ll be a sleepy worker with them. But if they’re exciting – in a way that rings true (and we all have what Hemingway calls a “shock-proof sh!t-detector,” don’t we, to distinguish real from fake excitement, yes?) – then consider fishing your pocket for that ring, and dropping to your knees on the spot.

3. Interview questions make the interviewer.

By the end of the first of my four days of interviewing, it struck me how different interviews are based on the questions asked (and not asked) by the interviewer. Some of them seemed as stilted and scripted as the worst end-of-chapter questions from the worst textbooks (redundant?). They felt less like interviews than exercises in checking off the questions boxes. It wasn’t quite “schooliness,” so can we call it “interviewiness”?

The best interviews, on the other hand, were more free-flowing and responsive, characterized by give-and-take expansiveness as one party or the other heard something no script could predict.

4. Being yourself is better, come what may, than trying to be someone else.

Think about it. Not only does pretending to be what you’re not cheat your interviewer – it also cheats you. Show your true colors now, so you’ll know whether it’ll be okay to show them over the length of your contract. I love the fact that, at my second interview with the two interviewers for the school I chose, Singapore American School, I replied to a question by saying something to the effect of, “There’s no denying that people’s first impression of me is often, ‘Damn, Burell, you’re too intense!’ But after a while they see the rest of me, and realize I’m also mellow in my own way.” “Damn” is a soft enough word these days – and I certainly don’t toss out higher-level profanities in professional company – but I still wondered about the wisdom of the utterance after it escaped my mouth (and this was in like the middle of the second hour of the interview). So somehow the fact that the offer was still made left me feeling even happier than otherwise about accepting it when it came in hour three.

5. Check your ego at the door.

I got about an even mix of offers and rejections from the schools I talked to. One school in particular seemed so right after two interviews that getting the rejection note broadsided me with the force of a turbo-powered school bus. I bumped into one of the interviewers later, and he told me that choosing my competitor over me was the hardest decision they had made the night before, and that it took them over an hour of group deliberation to make it. A rejection can happen for all sorts of reasons – maybe they needed yearbook experience you didn’t offer, or needed that administrator whose spouse happened to be a less-qualified candidate for the position you want. So don’t take it personally.

6. Remember to research.

I’m sure I blew one interview by expressing my desire to get experience in a program they didn’t offer, and expressing my distaste for the one they did. Oops. I’d mistakenly thought they did offer that program.

7. Benefits, preps, class sizes, and student mix.

You don’t offer a flight home after the first year? You don’t cover dependents? 70% of your student population is Korean and you call yourself an "international" school? You laugh off the notion that four preps is too much for new (or old) teachers?

8. Courtesy is cool, good will is good stuff.

When it came down to thinking I’d be choosing between two very attractive schools, I told one of them how I hoped that saying “no” this time, if the decision went that way, wouldn’t close the door to a “yes” next time in years to come. The gentlemanly answer of the man I said this to was so winsome, I don’t know what to say, other than that it made me want to work in this man’s school even more. The answer was no less impressive for its simplicity, which was, simply, “Your saying no to us will offend us no more than we’d want to offend you if we said no to you. It’s the nature of the beast, and we understand that, so no doors will close at all.”

9. Remember to check yourself in the mirror before you leave your hotel room for the day’s interviews.

I can’t believe I forgot my belt. At least my fly wasn’t down.

* * *

Hope that helped. If any of you take the plunge, feel free to contact me privately with any questions.

Image by shapeshift

More Duncanisms

Clay Burell — 2009-06-17T07:53:00-07:00

Do I like reading and writing about our Secretary of Education's words and performance? Depressingly, for this once-hopeful Obamaniac, no. I don't. Here's another example of why:

In a recent interview, Secretary Duncan discussed how he went about assembling his team, targeting people like Ms. Melendez who came from modest backgrounds, had a passion for the work, and showed an entrepreneurial spirit—and were willing to take what was likely a big pay cut to work in a federal job. No education policy or district superstars with big egos were welcome, he said.

“If they’re scared off because they won’t make more money ... or if they wanted a certain job title, ... that’s not the kind of person we want,” Mr. Duncan said. “We want people for whom this is a real passion. This is mission-driven work. Everyone is taking pay cuts.”

Ms. Melendez, by the way, is Duncan's appointee for K-12 chief. Her experience?

She got her superintendent’s job, in California’s 30,000-student Pomona Unified School District, through a nontraditional route: She spent a year and a half at a private education foundation before winning a spot in the 2006 Broad Superintendents Academy, which trains emerging district leaders.

So she takes a "pay cut" in the "entrepreneurial spirit" - can we start a wiki of Duncanisms? - via her shortcut to the top on the tuxedo coattails of billionaire AIG crony and ed meddler Eli Broad. Call me crazy, but you'd think people who were "education policy superstars," who spent their lives in classrooms and later in research, would qualify as "passionate" more than the "missionaries" with an "entrepreneurial spirit." People like, you know, Linda Darling-Hammond, who's devoted her life to knowing through research how to improve education, rather than taking a left turn from entrepreneurialism out of some "money + passion = change you can believe in" zeal.

[Update: Tom Hoffman comments that Melendez has decades of classroom experience before her stint as a superintendent, and suggests she deserves a chance. We wish her well. The point I was trying to make here is that Duncan's rhetoric smacks of a sort of anti-intellectualism and pro-entrepreneurialism, and his staff picks reflect that as well. His DoE staffers are overwhelmingly connected more to Eli Broad and Bill Gates than to universities and classrooms.]

In light of all of this, it's no surprise that the new national standards in the works for math and reading are being written not by teachers, not by academics, but by

Achieve, a Washington-based group made up of state policymakers and business leaders; act Inc., the Iowa City, Iowa-based nonprofit organization that runs the college-entrance exam of the same name; and the College Board, the New York City-based sponsor of the sat admissions exam and the Advanced Placement program.

--ed businesses all. Achieve* is run by politicians and businesspeople; Iowa City and the College Board need no introduction, as we've all filled bubbles for them in our careers to show our learning. You can bet none of these entrepreneurs are thinking pay cuts in the long term. Think of the new tests possible with national standards.

Secretary Duncan, if you want "passion" and "mission-driven," why are you excluding the exemplars of those qualities - the people who've devoted their lives to the work, and never had much room in their salaries for pay cuts because it was never about the money for them? They offer value-added qualities that your entrepreneurs don't: life-long experience, knowledge, and dedication.

*A previous error has been corrected here, which mistook Achieve for a different Achieve. "Achieve" is a popular name for folks in the education business.

Meme: Summer Professional Development: My Goals

Clay Burell — 2009-06-16T18:38:00-07:00

Sioban Curious has tagged me for the Professional Development Meme 2009.

Here's the scoop:

Directions:

Summer can be a great time for professional development. It is an opportunity to learn more about a topic, read a particular work or the works of a particular author, beef up an existing unit of instruction, advance one’s technical skills, work on that advanced degree or certification, pick up a new hobby, and finish many of the other items on our ever-growing To Do Lists. Let’s make Summer 2009 a time when we actually get to accomplish a few of those things and enjoy the thrill of marking them off our lists.

The Rules:

NOTE: You do NOT have to wait to be tagged to participate in this meme.

*Pick 1-3 professional development goals and commit to achieving them this summer.
* For the purposes of this activity the end of summer will be Labor Day (09/07/09).
* Post the above directions along with your 1-3 goals on your blog.
* Title your post Professional Development Meme 2009 and link back/trackback to http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/2447.
* Use the following tag/ keyword/ category on your post: pdmeme09.
* Tag 5-8 others to participate in the meme.
* Achieve your goals and “develop professionally.”
* Commit to sharing your results on your blog during early or mid-September.

My Goals: Read a Lot, Take at Least Three Free Online Courses from Yale, Berkeley, and M.I.T.

Since I'll be teaching grade 9 Western Civ and a mixed grades 10-12 Chinese history classes, I'm going to take some university courses in these subjects - for free, and for the knowledge instead of the piece of paper - via the Open Courseware offerings at Yale, Berkeley, and MIT.

I'm already doing so, in fact. Yesterday, I watched Lectures Five through Nine of Prof. Christine Hayes' Introduction to the Jewish Bible ("Old Testament," to Christians) course at Yale. Think about that: I was able to "attend" two weeks' worth of in-school lectures in one 5-hour sitting in my home last night. I've never done such a thing before, and can tell you that the experience of all of these lectures back-to-back, without the two day waits for the next lecture, enhanced the learning experience for me. No distractions, no forgetting, no losing the narrative thread from one day to the next; instead, it was closer to the experience of reading a novel in one sitting. I can't recommend Hayes' course strongly enough: her synthesis of 200 years of textual and archaeological scholarship on the history of the Israelites and their sacred texts is eye-opening indeed. She frames the evolution of the Jewish Bible as a sort of "civil war" within Jewish culture, between more inclusive henotheists (or even polytheists along the lines of the surrounding Canaanites) and the exclusive Jahwist monotheists. It's a first-rate intellectual adventure story that I only wish our fundamentalists - and their preachers - would watch, in order to learn how misguided so many of their beliefs about the Bible are.

I'm going to follow Hayes' Yale class with Berkeley's "The Ancient Mediterranean World," I think. It's only mp3's, no video, which is a shame. If I find a video alternative, I'll take it instead. It has a hefty number of lectures on the oft-neglected Egyptian and Mesopotamian cultures that so influenced the Greek, Roman, and Christian worlds, so I look forward to the refresher and any new learning.

I just finished reading Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity by Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King - more fascinating looks into the "civil war" of early Christianities as they fought over what and who Jesus was, and the meanings of his teaching. I'm now reading Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why in order to give a more historical account of the rise of Christianity in the Western Civ. course.

After that, I'm going to skip the Middle Ages and watch Berkeley Prof. Margaret Lavinia Anderson's "The Making of Modern Europe" course. I've already written about it here.

Besides that, I hope to spend some time collaborating on the "Critical Supplement to High School History Textbooks" wiki project I proposed here last month. A few other history teachers on the National Council of Social Studies social network have signed on (newcomers always welcome), so we need to develop the framework that will scaffold students' abilities to critically read those so-suspect history textbooks we foist on them.

I need to find a community to help me fine-tune my assessment practices. I feel good about the forms and methods of my assessments, but where I need help is in reducing the overload. I kill myself by assigning too much work that takes too long to assess. There's got to be a better way. Suggestions, anyone?

That's about it. Now I'm supposed to tag some teachers, but I'm going to leave it open. If you want to play with this meme, feel free.

Free and Low-Cost Summer Learning Tips for Parents

Clay Burell — 2009-06-15T19:38:00-07:00

Just a quick share, for parents wanting input on how to keep their children occupied in constructive ways during the summer. This is from an email from Ron Fairchild, executive director of the National Center for Summer Learning at The Johns Hopkins University:

The effort to keep kids learning during summer is based on research that shows that:

Most students fall more than two months behind in math over the summer.

Low-income children fall behind two months in reading while middle and upper-income peers make slight gains.

By fifth grade, low-income children can be 2 ½ years behind in reading.

Only one in five children who receives free or reduced price meals during the school year gets them in summer.

A recent Johns Hopkins study found that 65 percent of the achievement gap in reading between poor and more advantaged ninth-graders is due to unequal summer learning experiences during elementary school years. That gap makes a difference in whether students decide to drop out or go on to college.

"Even in tough economic times, there are many free or low-cost things parents can do to keep their kids healthy, safe and learning this summer," says Fairchild.

SUMMER LEARNING TIPS FOR PARENTS

Locate a summer program that fits your budget. Programs offered by schools, recreation centers, universities, and community-based organizations often have an educational or enrichment focus.

The library is a great, free resource. Check out books that interest your child. Participate in free library summer programs and make time to read every day.

Take free or low-cost educational trips to parks, museums, zoos and nature centers.

If you are taking a day trip by car, choose a place with an educational theme. Camping is also is low-cost way to get outside and learn about nature.

Practice math daily: Measure items around the house or yard. Track daily temperatures. Add and subtract at the grocery store. Learn fractions while cooking.

Play outside. Limit TV and video games. Intense physical activity and exercise contribute to healthy development.

Do a community service project. Teach your child how to volunteer in your community and show compassion to others.

Keep a schedule. Continue daily routines during the summer with structure and limits. The key is providing a balance and keeping kids engaged.

Prepare for fall. Find out what your child will be learning during the next school year by talking with teachers at that grade level. Preview concepts and materials over the summer.

Watching Michelle Rhee

Tom Panarese — 2009-06-14T17:47:00-07:00

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.

Predictably, the story begins with the photo shoot for the Time cover, in which Rhee is in a classroom holding a broom, a shot she says was kind of an afterthought on that day:

Rhee explained that most of the shoot for the Dec. 8 issue involved images of her with children. The idea for the broom, which she gripped while standing stern-faced in front of a blackboard, came up near the end, she said, according to Gray's version of their meeting. She told Gray that it wasn't her first choice for the cover but that the decision wasn't hers. Gray wasn't satisfied.

Thankfully the bulk of the Post's story is not about this cover shoot (which, btw, is right out a recent episode of 30 Rock). As the next paragraph says, the article recalls and takes measure of what Rhee has done:

In her quest to upend and transform the District's long-broken school system, Rhee has acquired a sometimes-painful education of her own. The lessons, in many respects, tell the story of her tenure as her second school year draws to a close Monday: that money isn't everything; that political and corporate leaders need to be stroked, even if you don't work for them; that the best-intentioned reforms can trigger unintended consequences; and that national celebrity can create trouble at home.

There are many directions you can take analyzing this story because of some of the major events: Rhee's fight with the AFT, the closing of schools, her attitude towards teachers, the impact charter schools may or may not have on her initiatives ... I could go on. And I think it's a little too early to pass too much judgment on her because she's only been at the job for a couple of years and that's barely enough time to make a dent in any school district, let alone one like Washington, D.C.

I'll save the argument on those topics for others because what I see in the task Rhee has laid out before her and the reputation she has gained is an example for everyone who is trying to improve the public school system, whether it be on a national, state, or local level. Washington, D.C.'s school system is a huge, urban system like New York's or Chicago's and it has one of the worst reputations in the country - one that hasn't been helped in recent years by stories like the Cardozo High School mercury spill and shootings near Ballou High School. Plus, you have the quagmire that is the D.C. city government, which is probably still remembered by some for the setting of the political career and early 1990s crack arrest of Marion Barry, a reputation that is unfortunate considering that Tony Williams and Adrian Fenty have done much to restore the city's image (although having had to apply for a marriage license in D.C., I can say that if you ever have to do any official business with the city gov't, do as much paperwork as you can beforehand and be prepared to wait a while).

This makes it seem like D.C. is unique, like it's a world away from your average local district in the suburbs or a rural community. But is it? Rhee has had to deal with playing politics with people who have had power and influence for a lot longer than she has, even if those people have been completely ineffective. Think about your local school board or administration. How many people are there because they: a) crawled out of the primordial ooze and founded the place; b) went through the system, graduated, went to college, came back, had 10 kids, and sent all of them through the system; c) ran unopposed for a position and won because the public wasn't paying much attention; d) went to high school/college/grad school or played football with the superintendent/principal; e) all of the above? Now, how many times have you heard the phrase, "Well, we've always done it this way"?

That's the same type of cronyism that rendered D.C. ineffective for so many years and along with other factors stripped the school system down to the crumbling nightmare it was when Rhee started. And it's not that those already in power often don't care, it's that they're complacent and it takes people like Rhee who have the cajones to stand up and say, "Wait a second ..." to shake them up and take them out of their comfort zone. I think she's fully aware that getting D.C. to be an example of what to do right is going to take a very long time and a lot of work, and that she'll probably piss off even more people as she continues to try and change the schools.

Whether or not she's successful, and whether or not she's right, anyone involved in a school district (student, teacher, principal, board member, or parent) should follow Rhee as she continues to reform her city's school system.

Teachers Without Masks: a Sudbury Alternative

Bruce Smith — 2009-06-13T08:04:00-07:00

In a Google Group discussion of Sudbury schooling, Change.org member Don Berg recently posted an interesting article from Teacher Magazine. Written by Anthony Cody, the article responds to Suze Orman's assertion that "students can't learn empowerment from people who aren't empowered." Cody admits, "We can only teach what we actually embody."

One of the teachers I learned the most from...told me, "The subject your students are studying is you. They watch everything you do." He helped me understand that when I taught my students, I was showing them the way a man could behave in the world, the way he respected women, the way he dealt with conflict. All these things were part of teaching—way beyond how many protons there are in the nucleus of a carbon atom...

So Suze Orman is right in suggesting that we cannot teach empowerment unless we are empowered. But this got me thinking a bit more. Are we actually even trying to teach our students to exert power over their own lives?

It seems as if students are being taught the exact opposite. Learn what is on the test, because it is on the test, and doing well on this test will prepare you for the next set of tests, and at some point you will finally finish all the tests and be ready—for what? Certainly not for acting in a powerful way in relationship to the world or those around you!

Those who have read my bio know that prior to my move to Sudbury schooling, I taught in public schools. Today I'd like to consider the differences between these two models from a teacher's-eye view. I agree with Cody that our students study us, and that we teach them far more by example than we ever could in lessons. However, most of the time, in most schools, this sort of instruction is buried beneath an avalanche of mandates and an undemocratic power structure.

When I taught high school, I could never get past the feeling that it was all a performance. My character's name was Mr. Smith, and the most prominent feature of his costume was the necktie. In the classroom, Mr. Smith was a figure of some power: he made the rules, evaluated everyone's performance on tasks he set, and controlled students' freedom of movement. Yet when it came to the conditions of his workplace, Mr. Smith had little to no power. His daily schedule, the curriculum, and the hiring of personnel at his school—these things and more were decided somewhere else, by unknown others, and simply imposed on him and his colleagues.

What's more, relationships of any kind between teachers and students were frowned upon and/or made impossible. After all, one must get through lessons and prepare for tests, and you only have 50 minutes a day, 180 days a year, to do so; then new combinations of students and teachers must go through the same routine. In such a setting, it seems to me what students learn from their teachers is that it's okay to accept situations where you're disempowered, where you do things of questionable value and relevance because, well, that's just the way things are done: do what you're told, complain to the administration and school board if you want—and good luck with that.

With this kind of institutional dynamic, the need of students to learn who their teachers (and, I should add, their fellow students) really are is severely marginalized. There is little opportunity for teachers and students to know each other in any substantive way, no way for this deeper learning to occur. What's really going on in the world, as well as each other's lives, takes a back seat to an agenda dictated by people with no direct, personal stake in what's learned. I think a lot of my public-school students liked me, and got something out of my classes; but in retrospect, I fear the demands of that system sharply curtailed their most valuable learning opportunities.

What's the lesson here? Disempowerment diminishes learning. When teachers aren't free to teach, and when curricula and testing are valued over students' individual needs, everyone loses.

Fortunately, Sudbury schooling extends to its teachers, as well as its students, real empowerment. In fact, the one job title at Sudbury schools is "staff member," since the work involves so much more than simply teaching. All staff members combine conventional functions of instruction, administration, and counseling; more fundamentally, we serve as mentors and role models. Staff work together, with no one person in charge, to do whatever they deem essential to the good of their school and its students. Consequently, everyone's strengths are maximized, and their needs met in the most effective way possible, with maximal flexibility.

Because the power structure at Sudbury schools is democratic, there is no need to maintain an aura of separateness about the staff, no need to prop up their authority. Staff members are addressed by their first names, same as anyone. And because students can attend one school over several years—as many as twelve or more—they get to know their "teachers" remarkably well. In fact, our schools feel less like institutions than extended families in which children benefit from growing up with multiple aunts, uncles and grandparents, as well as siblings.

When teachers are fully respected and given the power they deserve, they are in turn more capable of respecting and empowering their students. Ellen Berg, one of Anthony Cody's colleagues in the Teacher Leaders Network Forum, wrote to him her view that

If our children leave school with anything, they should leave with the sense that they have choices, and that they are in control of their lives. As people, we can't control what happens, but we can control how we react to situations and whether we learn from the horrible things in life.

I've sometimes described my Sudbury career as "everything I loved about teaching, with none of the b.s." I still believe that, but it now occurs to me that the correlation between empowered teachers and effective education is what really matters. It's past time we fully respect everyone involved in education, so that young people may enjoy lives where, as Ms. Berg says, "they have choices, and [know] they are in control."

image by BES Photos

"End Times" for the NYTimes - and for Schooling?

Clay Burell — 2009-06-12T22:40:00-07:00

If you didn't see Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones' segment on the decline of the New York Times - called "End Times" - it's not only hilarious and, in an end-of-an-era sort of way, sad. It's also fascinating when watched with education in mind.

Watch it yourself, and see if it doesn't lead to parallels in your own thinking between newspapers and textbooks, print journalists and classroom teachers, hallowed institutions like the NYTimes and their ivy-covered cousins in academe.
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The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

End Times

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Then read Wikinomics co-author Don Tapscott's "The Impending Demise of the University" on Edge.org, or his request for reader feedback on the same post at HuffPo, and ask yourself: what won't be brought down by the internet?

Watching the Daily Show segment makes me wish some satirist would take on Harvard - or plain old traditional public education k-12, for that matter - with the same wit unleashed on the NYTimes.

Interesting times.

Against Teacher Technophobes, and Teacher Messiahs

Clay Burell — 2009-06-12T14:38:00-07:00

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...)

Newsweek high school rankings: invalid money-makers

Caroline Grannan — 2009-06-11T14:43:00-07:00

Newsweek Magazine has once again compromised both credibility and ethics by releasing its annual high school rankings feature. The "rankings" are based on one single measure - one that is invalid as a gauge of quality and simply does not measure how "good" a high school is. They also violate journalistic ethics, as the gauge is one that directly promotes increased profits for an enterprise run by Newsweek's parent company.

The rankings are based entirely on the single criterion of how many AP (or two other similar) tests are taken by the students in the school. That's it. How the students perform on the tests is not part of the equation.

Newsweek's description: "Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by [reporter/editor] Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate (IB) and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2008 divided by the number of graduating seniors."

This is so clearly not a valid gauge of a school's quality that it's hardly worth wasting words explaining. The criterion is also subject to easy manipulation, needless to say.

Here's why this feature compromises Newsweek's ethics. Newsweek's parent company, the Washington Post, also owns Kaplan, the test prep powerhouse. It's also hardly necessary to explain that encouraging more students to take AP tests directly correlates with increasing Kaplan's business.

Standard journalistic ethics call for avoiding the appearance of conflict of interest. The Newsweek high school rankings emblazon the appearance of conflict of interest across the heavens.

An increasing chorus of dissenters complains each year about this feature - including some of the "winners." In May 2008, the superintendents of 38 high-performing school districts s igned a letter to Newsweek protesting the feature and requesting that their districts be excluded (a toothless request, but a meaningful gesture). This year, a top education reporter in Dallas - the location of two of the top-ranked schools - questioned the rankings' credibility.

It's not just time-wasting but also harmful to pass authoritative-looking judgments on schools based on invalid criteria. Meanwhile, with the very survival of the news media under threat, journalistic credibility is one asset the media should struggle to keep. Newsweek is making a big mistake to compromise its ethics so shamelessly. The magazine needs to eliminate and renounce this corrupt and damaging feature.

Charters Erase Achievement Gap through Innovative ... Cheating

Clay Burell — 2009-06-10T19:38:00-07:00

Three cheers for this charter school network's silver bullet to erase the achievement gap: cheat on the standardized tests. Or so the evidence suggests:

In the past, parents languished on waiting lists before enrolling their kids in Hernandez's [Cesar Chavez Network] schools. Regularly recognized for excellence in serving mostly low-income kids, Hernandez's schools earned a nod from President George W. Bush in 2007 for "closing the achievement gap." The Chavez network was considered innovative, even inspiring.

Is it? Here are some things to consider before enrolling your kid.

Possible CSAP abuses

Cesar Chavez schools in Pueblo are part of Pueblo City Schools (PCS). Elsewhere, they're members of the Colorado Charter School Institute. All of them, like most public schools, are assessed to a large degree on students' test scores.

Robert Vise, PCS executive director of assessment and technology, says he stumbled upon some eyebrow-raising information regarding the 2008 Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) test scores at Pueblo's Cesar Chavez Academy. According to data Vise received from the state, more than 60 percent of the Academy's 684 third- through eighth-grade students were given special accommodations for the test, such as extra time to complete it. These accommodations normally are afforded only to children with established physical or developmental disabilities.

All 220 students in fourth and fifth grades were given special accommodations in the test's reading portion, Vise says, and all but two also received special accommodations on the math portion.

"I've never had a whole grade level at a school have accommodations," Vise says.

The figures were jarring, particularly because Vise's own records suggested a small fraction of the children had qualifying disabilities, and a significant number were actually classified as being "gifted."

[....] In 2005, [John] Brainard, then the Pueblo district's director of assessment and research, documented four phone calls from concerned parents of CCA third-graders, all relating the same story: Their children said CCA staff had brought them into a "CSAP review" following the test, and encouraged them to change some answers.

Along with staff from CTB-McGraw-Hill, CSAP's creators, Brainard was allowed to examine written answers on CSAP reading tests for Chavez's third-graders. Although no one ever accused the Chavez kids of cheating, significant erasures or changes were found in 62 percent of the tests, and some new answers appeared to be done in different handwriting.

Despite the evidence, the test results were never revised. (Read the rest...)

Silly Colorado. Instead of cheating to boost test scores, they could boost them honestly, a la New York, by dumbing down their state tests.

Oh never mind. As Joel Klein and Arne Duncan never tire of telling us, the fact that parents are on waiting lists to get their kids into these schools is proof not of their successful and highly-financed marketing campaigns, but of their quality.

(h/t Susan Ohanion)

Photo by Mr_Stein

Instead of a Fake "Brown," How About a Real "Plessy"?

Clay Burell — 2009-06-10T16:27:00-07:00

Oh, that bedeviling difference between de jure and de facto: On the Forum for Education and Democracy blog, Gloria Ladson-Billings takes on our national pride in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling by arguing it is, de facto, a case of national cant and hypocrisy - and hazards a modest proposal that, since we don't have the national will to make Brown v. Board a reality, we "progress backwards," as it were, by at least accomplishing the "equal" part of the "separate but equal" provision of Plessy v. Ferguson. A taste:

In its 1896 decision, Plessy v Ferguson, the United States Supreme Court said that as long as Blacks had access to equal public facilities, there was no need for them to have access to the same facilities that Whites did. This remained the law of the land until 1954, when the Court reversed itself in the landmark unanimous decision, Brown v Board of Education of Topeka. "In the field of public education,” the Court wrote, “the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place."

However, the real life, on-the-ground enactment of desegregated, equal access to public education remains more of a promise than a reality. My thesis was that it would be better to have a “real Plessy” than to continue with a “fake Brown.” Now, to be sure, no one is suggesting that Brown was not a significant step forward in race relations in the country. My point is merely that Brown, left unimplemented, does not move us anywhere near the equitable education we need and claim to endorse.

A real Plessy would mean that across this country, Black, Latina/o, American Indian, poor and immigrant students would have the same facilities as their White, middle-income peers. They would have a profession of teachers with the wisdom, qualifications and skills needed to provide high-quality instruction – not a “force” of novice teachers who, although eager, are unprepared and under-prepared to teach. They would have access to the same curricula and courses. They would have the same educational materials—textbooks, technology, science laboratory supplies, and fine arts supplies. And they would have the same funding to provide for their schooling.

Brown was a great moral victory. We needed it to remind us of who we strive to be as a democratic nation. Until we fulfill its promise, however, the Brown decision is nothing more than a symbol—a testament to missed opportunities and broken promises. Similarly, the recent election of President Barack Obama represents a powerful symbol of hope and possibility in our nation. But the reality of difficult problems means we cannot afford the luxury of a symbolic presidency. We need this moment of hope to mean something to the educational futures of millions of students throughout the nation. (Read the rest...)