Posts by jessica shiller
No need to pack a lunch: Online learning in K-12 education
Published June 09, 2009 @ 05:33AM PT
Usually urban school systems are trying, often desperately, to recruit new teachers, but Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City schools, wants to reduce the teaching force by 30%. It is not the economy. Unlike Los Angeles and other parts of the country, no one has been laid off in New York yet. Yet, Klein has said a long term of goal his is to reduce the city’s teaching force. While TIME magazine encourages young people to choose teaching as a career, the city’s largest teaching force may be shrunk by almost a third.
Klein does not want to fire teachers but to implement a distance learning model which he claims would enable more students more access to education. Inspired by a new book by Terry Moe and John Chubb called Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics and the Future of Education, which advocates for online teaching. On page 7 of their book, Chubb and Moe list the benefits of online instruction:
1. Curricula can be customized to meet the learning styles and life situations of individual students, giving them productive alternatives to the boring standardization of traditional schooling.
2. Education can be freed from geographic constraint: students and teachers do not have to meet in a building within a school within a district, but can be anywhere, doing their work at any time.
3. Students can have more interaction with their teachers and with one another, including teachers and students who may be thousands of miles away or from different nations or cultures.
4. Parents can readily be included in the communications loop and involved more actively in the education of their kids.
5. Teachers can be freed from their tradition-bound classroom roles, employed in more differentiated and productive ways, and offered new career paths.
6. Sophisticated data systems can put the spotlight on performance, make progress (or the lack of it) transparent to all concerned, and sharpen accountability.
7. Schools can be operated at lower cost, relying more on technology (which is relatively cheap) and less on labor (which is relatively expensive).
Sounds great, right? It seems to solve some of the problems for public schools, like cost. Not so fast though. First of all, since most online education exists at the college level, very little research has been done on online learning for K-12 students, let alone any research that has shown its effectiveness. Second, online schooling presumes that all K-12 students have computers at home, which is not the case for low income students. Not to mention the costs of technology upkeep for these virtual schools.
Thirdly, who are Chubb and Moe? Why should we trust their ideas? As early advocates of market-based school reforms like charter schools and vouchers, Chubb and Moe claimed opening schooling to the marketplace would solve educational inequality. We still have an achievement gap, in spite of the implementation of market-based reforms. So, why should we trust their latest reform idea especially when it suffers from the misguided belief that technology will solve all of our problems? I am no Luddite, and believe in the power of technology to do great things, but Chubb, Moe, and Klein are looking for a cheap and simple solution to a complex problem.
Moreover, they discount what is important about having physical schools- as expensive as they are- and that is their culture. Schools provide a space for students to cultivate relationships with people who share a common experience. For children, who are just developing their social skills, even an occasional face to face meeting, which Chubb and Moe say should be part of K-12 online schooling, is no substitute for a school culture. Call me old fashioned or sentimental, but as a teacher in public schools, I found relationships between teacher and student and among students to be vital. It was what got many students out of bed and into the classroom every day. Chubb and Moe might say that kids would not have to get out of bed for an online school, but they miss an important point. Ask anyone what got them to love learning a particular subject, and they will often say it was a particular teacher. A person, not a computer. Even if you have a MacBook to cozy up to, there is no replacing a great, inspiring teacher. So, to Klein and friends, I ask: Why not put some funds into cultivating more great teachers? If you’re going to try only one reform, that’s where I’d put my money.
A Case for Charter Schools?
Published April 20, 2009 @ 11:15AM PT
[Jessica Shiller is an assistant professor of education and coordinator of the master’s program in teaching social studies at Lehman College, City University of New York.]
Charter schools, one of the most hotly-debated policy issues in education policy today, has divided proponents who see charters as an innovative way to improve student achievement and the opponents who see charters as death sentences for teacher unions and community voice in schools. Raise the topic in any gathering and you will find people fiercely arguing both sides. Yet, the debate as it has currently been framed misses the boat almost entirely. Whether you're for or against charters, the question to ask about charters is: Who benefits?
The data shows mixed results on charter performance with some showing incredible achievement gains, and others not showing any. In the end, there is no clear evidence that charters on the whole are better than a well-performing public school. That is why charter schools are mainly absent from suburban communities where well-performing schools are easy to find. It is not that suburbs are resistant to charters, but like any community with well-performing schools, they are content with what they do have. Why shouldn't they be? By and large, in middle class suburbs across the nation, schools are performing well. So well, in fact, that urban parents will risk getting arrested to get their children into those schools.
As a result, charter school advocates have carved out a niche in the under-served urban communities across the country. In cities, where schools and neighborhoods have been under-resourced for some time, residents cannot claim that their schools are doing so well they do not need charters. Just the opposite is true, which makes the charter school movement hard to resist. Consequently, charter schools have proliferated in cities. And why not invite charter schools in, many might ask, since public schools were not performing so well there anyway? With urban parents literally "crossing the border" for better schools, it is clear that they want better performing schools too.
But are charters the answer to a better education? Proponents say that charters can provide a 21st century education, one that allows teachers to engage in innovative practices, use technology effectively, and manage without bureaucratic red tape. These are not radical innovations, and already have been implemented in regular public schools in New York, where I am from, but also in other cities. So, again why are charter schools being pushed so hard as the silver bullet?
The answer lies in our initial question - who benefits? Obviously some families have benefited from charter schools, but the venture philanthropists who start charters have benefited too. In New York, many of them have received millions of dollars through no-bid contracts from the city, and stand to get millions more in stimulus package funding promised by Obama and Duncan.
With clear evidence that charter schools' so-called innovations can be implemented in regular public schools, we need to ask why charters are necessary. It would be naive to think that charter proponents are only motivated by a desire for a 21st century education for all children. There is a lot of money in it for the charter founders. Just like with many education reforms that preceded charters, a trend is set, dollars flow, and reformers come from all around to exclaim its virtues.
Problems with Rating Teachers by Test Scores
Published March 10, 2009 @ 07:34AM PT
[Jessica Shiller is an assistant professor of education and coordinator of the master’s program in teaching social studies at Lehman College, City University of New York.]
When I read recent news that the New York City Department of Education wanted to rate teachers on the extent to which they raised test scores among their students, I got shivers. We have already seen schools’ ratings tied to test score improvement under No Child Left Behind, but to tie ratings to individual teacher performance makes it completely unambiguous that teachers should be teaching toward a test and divides a school staff among teachers who test prep well and those who don’t. What could be worse for improving academic achievement and building a positive school culture?
A first-year teacher working in the Bronx extolled the virtue of a such a rating on his blog, saying that his low rating helped him “focus [his] expectations for the rest of the year.” What he did not say is how his teaching would change. What new strategies would he use? What support would he be getting to improve his teaching practice? There are no provisions in a rating system like this to support teachers to improve their practice. Instead, teachers just get a grade, and are on their own to find ways to improve. Not easy for a first year teacher in a Bronx public school. I suppose you can drill the students more in their weakest areas on the test, but what about next year’s class? Does this teacher wait for his scores to come back and do the same thing again? In any case, this is not a recipe for the students or the teachers to learn more.
Despite that fact, the city is spending $1.5 million to expand this rating system. Without supporting teachers to improve their practice, rating teachers will only tell us which teachers are not improving test scores. The main goal of this seems to collect evidence to label teachers as failing and then to fire them. It will be the No Child Left Behind of the teaching profession. With school districts finding it hard to recruit and retain teachers as it is, this seems like a misguided strategy at best.
The more significant issue though is how a rating system of this sort undervalues the teaching profession. First, it assumes teachers are expendable. Rather than investing in professional growth and longevity, this system will require a never-ending supply of new teachers when current teachers fail. Think computer upgrade. Second, teaching will be by definition a short-term profession. If their ratings are not strong with in a couple of years, teachers will need to move onto something else. Third, with virtually no money poured into professional development of teachers, and all the emphasis on test scores, teachers know that what they need to do is probably best learned from Stanley Kaplan rather than the Harvard Graduate School of Education, fueling a whole new sector for an already profitable industry. Finally, there is no test-rating system for teachers in affluent districts. If you ever tried to introduce it, the relatively well-paid and well-respected teachers would likely fight it. So, why urban schools? What does the New York City Department of Education say to that?
Comic by Marshall Ramsey of
the (Mississippi) Clarion Ledger
Can One Person Run the New York City Schools?
Published February 21, 2009 @ 06:59AM PT
[Note: Enjoy the guest-post by education professor Jessica Shiller. Bio below - and welcome aboard, Jessica. - Eds.]
Recently, a middle-schooler testified at the New York state assembly in support of mayoral control of New York City public schools. He said, “The dishes are more likely to get washed if only one family member has sole responsibility for them.” He's right. When one person has the responsibility for doing something, it often gets done because we know who to blame when it’s not done.
The question is: are the schools like a set of dishes?
If you're not from New York City, it seems like Mayor Bloomberg is the greatest dishwasher in the world. The press shows him taking his responsibility seriously and prints his claims that the schools have been cleaned up. If you are from New York City, you know Bloomberg is not doing so great. Which gets to my point about dishes. One person doing dishes? Yes. Making decisions about schools? No.
Here are four reasons why:
- With the mayor in charge of schools, the pressure is on him to show improvement quickly, but the numbers are not shaking out. Between false claims of how much test scores have improved, and stagnantly low high school graduation rates, NYC is still at the bottom of the nation in academic achievement. It's hard to call that improvement.
- One person in charge has meant quick implementation of reforms, but now we are stuck with reforms that have made little gains. In the last 6 years, Bloomberg converted most of the city’s high schools into “small” schools, starting over 200 schools since 2002. By and large, this has not been a success. Bill Gates, the major funder behind this project, is shifting funding to other education projects, thus causing a major loss to the city schools.
- It's true that, if there are complaints about the schools, at least we know who to blame. But how do we get that person to listen? In a 2004 decision over social promotion policies, the mayor fired members of the body, the Panel for Educational Policy, who had some power to disagree with him on the decision. In his honor’s own words: “Mayoral control means mayoral control, thank you very much. They are my representatives, and they are going to vote for things that I believe in."
- It's also true that, if you don’t like mayoral control, you can vote the mayor out. Great: first you have to wait 4 years, and then? You may not get a new mayor you like any better. In the meantime, your kids have had four years of schooling you weren’t happy with, and you couldn’t do anything about it.
Still not convinced? Come visit some of the schools in the Bronx that I work in every day. You will see lots of hard-working people - children and adults - who don't believe Bloomberg's hype. They know better. They know that improving schools takes a long time, that you need lots of support, that high test scores don't mean that students learned anything, and that there are amazing educational moments going on everyday that go unrecognized because they are not quantifiable.
They also know that if you buy the hype, you miss what is real in New York City's schools.
Jessica Shiller is an assistant professor of education and coordinator of the master’s program in teaching social studies at Lehman College, City University of New York. Her research interests include urban school reform, social justice education, community activism and youth, and education policy. Prior to becoming a professor, Jessica taught in New York City public high schools for eight years, and then coached and mentored new teachers for the next five. She also currently sits on the board of Girls Career Workshop, a non-profit dedicated to building college and career opportunities for disadvantaged girls, and is a consultant with Teachers Unite, a non-profit working to strengthen relationships between teachers and community-based organizations.
Photo by andy in nyc
