Are We Asking The Right Questions About Education?
For those of you sick of my education posts, feel free to move on! Truthfully, I had no intention of writing about education today, but then I stumbled across this Daily Kos diary, entitled:Charter Schools Not the Answer, Especially if We Fail to Identify the Question. Go read the whole thing!
One pattern of failure in education reform is that political leadership and the public focus attention and resources on solutions while rarely asking what problems we are addressing or how those solutions address identified problems. The current and possibly increasing advocacy of charter schools is a perfect example of that flawed approach to improving our schools across the U.S.
Let’s start with two clarifications.
First, the overwhelming problems contributing to school quality are pockets of poverty across the country and school policies and practices mirroring and increasing social inequities for children once they enter many schools.
Children who live under the weight of poverty attend buildings in disrepair, sit in classrooms with inexperienced and un-/under-qualified teachers, and suffer through endless scripted instruction designed to raise their test scores. Citizens of a democracy share the responsibility for eradicating both the out-of-school and in-school failures often reflected in data associated with our public schools.
Then, what is a charter school and should any state increase resources allocated to charter schools, and in effect, away from public schools?
There’s the opening – Now, go read the whole thing. When the topic turns to education – whether we’re discussing traditional public, private or charter schools – everyone runs to their educational corners and the insults fly. If you can get past these comments and ask about improving education you’ll find that everyone has an opinion. From uniforms to discipline to funding to STEM, everyone has a solution. But as the kos diarist points out, we aren’t asking the right questions and most of these discussions devolve into apples and oranges comparisons.
The diarist makes an important point:
Here, we must acknowledge that if charter schools are a viable solution to the serious problems I have identified above, a much more direct approach would be simply to allow all public schools to function without the restraints we know to be impacting negatively their ability to produce strong educational outcomes.
If innovation and autonomy are valuable for educational reform, then all public schools deserve those opportunities.
[…]
“[T]here is a fairly well-developed body of evidence showing that charter and regular public schools vary widely in their impacts on achievement growth. This research finds that, on the whole, there is usually not much of a difference between them, and when there are differences, they tend to be very modest. In other words, there is nothing about ‘charterness’ that leads to strong results.”
The diarist then goes on to point out the red flags coming from the Charter movement, most of which we have discussed here. Go read the whole article! In Delaware, one of the main problems is the Charter School Law. Hopefully, given this weeks events, we’ll finally be addressing the flaws in this law.
Finally, the diarist sums up the reality: There is no evidence that traditional public, private, or charters are better or worse than each other. That’s probably a fact that should be addressed. Often.
Charter schools in theory represent a belief in innovation, experimentation, and school autonomy. If these qualities are valuable and if they can address the out-of-school and in-school causes of educational outcomes, then we simply need to allocate funding and policies to insure that our public schools are afforded the same, while also admitting that we have no evidence that a school type—pubic, charter, or private—insures the outcomes we seek.
There are many myths circulating about public, private and charters – most of which aren’t true. Not all public schools are awful, and not all charters are great (in fact, only 17% of charters perform better than public schools). And until everyone accepts that all types of schools – public, private and charter – are not created equal we will not be asking the right questions, nor will be finding solutions.
Tags: Charter Schools, Education
There is a strong bias against asking the right questions, when you start out knowing all you need to know. Your observation that everyone runs to their educational corners is spot on.
here’s a question: since all students are not created equal…. SHOULD all schools be created equal?
Since all students in one school aren’t created equal… all schools should have the same programs and educational opportunities/assistance available.
Pandora,
Great read. Good find and thanks for sharing.
all schools should have the same programs and educational opportunities/assistance available.
Serious question because I’m unsure what you mean here: are you talking things like core academic areas or literally everything . . . .
For example, if there are some schools without band programs, or after-school math tutoring, does that mean to you that NO schools should have them if ALL schools don’t?
I think I would argue that to achieve the end you’re looking at it would make more sense to tailor educational support programs to the data-based needs of the student populations being served. In a school where 90%+ are, say, achieving math standards, is there a need for math tutoring, or should that money/resource be devoted to the science courses where only 65% are achieving the standard?
What I think I would view here is a menu of services that ALL schools must be prepared to offer if there is a demonstrated need, and that menu should be the same everywhere.
And maybe schools would not be allowed to offer niceties like band or chorus until the demonstrated needs had been met.
I’ll answer you nicely, Steve, even though I’m annoyed with you and think you should say “sorry.”
No, I’m not referring to band programs or after-school tutoring. What I’m referring to is how high poverty schools usually lose challenging, high achieving (wrong word, but bear with me) programs. It’s like an educational ceiling is placed over their heads – they can only excel so far because the more challenging classes aren’t there. So I sorta like the demonstrated need, but I’d be careful given that grouping kids is common (smart kids, athletic kids, special ed kids, etc). Not sure how it would work, but it would be worth discussing.
What I mean was demonstrated need on, like a school population basis: like, say you had a menu of six different levels of math support for an elementary school, ranging from after-school weekly group tutoring up through enrichment programs for high-achieving students. Then, like Free/Reduced Lunch in a way it would kick in like
if less than 90% of students meet grade-level standards you must be offering Option A
if less than 80% of students meet grade-level standards you must be offering A & B
… and so on …
You could, ideally, do the same thing with high-level enrichment programs if you could find some way to score and categorize them, but I think you’re aiming for (wrong word bear with me) basic education here.
And you can be ticked at me, it’s ok. I did miss your comment (and I was the one, by the way, who asked Kilroy to modify the comment stream so that we could all keep up with them.)
So sorry.
Apology accepted.
Okay… thinking about the menu idea. How would it work if 90%+ of the students didn’t meet grade level? Would the enrichment programs for the 10% standard and high achievers in the school still exist?
This has always been my concern. I’ve watched far too many really bright kids be derailed due to lack of programs and resources at their neighborhood school.
And while I believe 100% in diversity, I’d probably shut up (okay, quiet down) if we were affording all kids the same educational opportunities.
And by the way, if you want to talk about one of the best possible immediate fixes (in terms of not requiring new organizations, but still costing money) then it would be to extend FAPE qualification rules to low-income and under-performing students, and require them to all be offered ESY (extended school year). Again, the research is very clear that retention and regression across the summer months are markedly correlated to poverty. But our schools (and especially our schools in Delaware, where I have advocated for special needs students for over a decade) try every trick in the book to avoid allowing even special ed students to qualify for ESY–and yet it is proven to be the single most cost-effective remediation strategy going.
I don’t know exactly how it would work. What I do know is that what happens now–leaving diversity aside for the moment–is that Delaware’s 19 school districts all look at the same academic problems and come up with about 26 different solutions.
So (and I’m making this up) Red Clay puts in twice-a-week after-school math tutoring in a middle school, while Brandywine with the same issue in a similar school puts in home access to an online tutoring system, and Christina has kids do an extra enrichment period during the school day. There is no system to it, but you can’t condemn the administrators who are each working to do the best they can with the resources (both financial and personnel wise) and are just throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.
But then you’ve also got the funding problem, which is the elephant in the room. You often cite Brandywine as a district to emulate, and I agree it is a great school district. But… Brandywine has a significantly smaller student population and a stronger tax base, and is in position to spend roughly 25-30% more per pupil than Christina. I’m not sure how to do it the research, but I suspect that we would discover that the funding differential is just as important as many of the policy choices.
Are the residents of Brandywine willing to accept the idea that in order to bring the kids in Christina up to the same standard of spending in a common economic area, the money available to their students on a per-pupil basis would have to drop 10-15%? Because, in a very real sense, the desegregation ruling that created the four upstate districts uintentionally did for Brandywine something similar to what charter schools are doing in other districts. It created one significantly smaller, white majority district with a significantly stronger tax base, and said, “Well, if you’re fortunate enough to live in this area, your kids get 30% more funding each year for their education.”
My point is not to knock Brandywine, but to point out that this same dynamic works in many scales beyond the whole charter argument–including state-drawn district lines and vo-tech schools that have the advantage not only of selectivity but raising taxes without a referendum.
First, there are too many damn fiefdoms, um… school districts in Delaware, so if we can get rid of this problem that would solve the tax base problem – which, I agree, exists.
I praise BSD, not for financial reasons, but for the way they went out of their way to make their least desirable schools desirable. They could have used their money to create public/private schools, but they didn’t. And while they’re not perfect, at least everyone sees them trying. You know… seeing school districts actually flippin’ trying would take the wind out of my wailing sails. It’s the disregard that infuriates me. It’s why when district officials look at me like I’m revealing great secrets, even after pointing out the same problems for 10 years, I want to pull my hair out.
I don’t know what I’d do if I asked about an educational program for a high poverty school and received an answer other than uniforms, parent resources and disciplinary programs. Sometimes it seems like the solutions I get from people in charge of education to education questions involve everything but education. (Everybody follow that last sentence?)
But even granting you intent in Brandywine, and I know some of the people who have been in charge there over the years, there are options open to them there that simply do not exist in, say, Christina. And therefore I don’t think you can take the financial issue off the table.
Think of it this way: take two third-grade classes, one in Brandywine and one in Christina, each with 25 kids and each with roughly the same diversity mix (although Brandywine is significantly less diverse as a district). In Brandywine the district will have $75,000/year more to invest in that one classroom. $75K buys a lot of things. For $10K you could improve teacher salaries and benefits packages so that you retain the best veteran teachers. For $45K you could put a dedicated para in that classroom. For another $20K you could actually buy every kid in that class a computer. I don’t know what Brandywine actually does with the money, apparently it’s something effective.
But I do know that if I were a low-income parent in Wilmington who fell into Brandywine as opposed to Christina, I would feel pretty much like those Christina parents do who won the NCS lottery, and I would fight like hell to keep anybody from moving me to another district for any reason.
Hello? I agreed with you and won’t take the finances off the table. I see the advantages, and your point. But… finances aren’t the only reason for Brandywine’s success (and by success I mean, for the most part, parent satisfaction).
As a district, their thumbing their noses at the Neighborhood School’s law (moving quickly to offset poverty overwhelming certain schools) and responsible use of Choice has contributed to where they are today. All the money in the world couldn’t make this happen without leadership – and there were plenty of BSD parents furious when BSD all but ignored NS Law.
Ironically, one of the reasons Brandywine got away with ignoring neighborhood schools law was insider political clout, pure and simple. You had some folks on the school board at the time who had the connections to keep the State backed off from enforcing the law.
Ah, but there’s the rub. That time having people with the clout to evade the law was a good thing, apparently, but then it becomes more difficult to throw stones effectively at other people who are doing exactly the same thing in pursuit of a different agenda. Ends justify means? Malcolm X thought so, but I’ve never bought the argument.
I’m not a big ends justify the means kinda gal.
Here’s the deal, and I’m just learning about Christina so I won’t pretend to understand all the issues facing them. Neighborhood Schools or not, BSD created demand (and lessened poverty) for their least desirable schools by putting their most desirable programs only in those schools. Simple, but effective.
But how do you “lessen poverty” in the least desireable schools when over 60% of your population is poor, and at least another 20% are not safely very far above the poverty line? In Brandywine the situation was the reverse: you had non-poor (“non-poor”?) kids who could be moved around. In Christina they don’t.
Christina has problems, no doubt. I’m for consolidating districts.
Brandywine and Red Clay are almost identical in their numbers of low income and special ed. How do you explain the differences in their city schools and their high schools? Because there are plenty of parents who wouldn’t send their children to more than a few RCCD schools. What happened there?
They are close to identical in percentages, not numbers. That’s a big distinction since RCCSD is about 50% larger than Brandywine. Absolute numbers count for a lot more than stats in logistical and program terms.
As for the rest, I think your argument only rests on a handful of elementary schools.
The only high school in the district with that kind of perception problem is Dickinson. You don’t see that at AI, at Conrad, at Cab, or even at McKean, which is clearly an up and coming school with rising enrollments. And given the STEM program it’s not like the district isn’t trying there.
I don’t see the unwillingness to send children to any of the middle schools.
As for the elementary schools, the situation is a lot more complicated that people would like to make it (and more complicated than I have the energy left tonight to explain; we can come back to it), but you have to look at where the population is growing–more rapidly in Red Clay than in Brandywine–and you have to look really closely at communities and individual school leadership. The district has sunk a ton of resources into Warner and Lewis in an attempt to better service the existing populations and to make them more attractive.
But here’s again another comparison for you, Pandora, which speaks to the issue of reality vs perception: Brandywine is again a smaller district and spends at least 30% more per pupil than Red Clay. If you look at many of the key indicators of academic success, the differences in their performance don’t seem to bear out many of the criticisms of Red Clay.
For example, Red Clay’s graduation rate for all students, for Whites, and for African-Americans almost exactly match that of Brandywine, while Red Clay’s graduation rate for Low Income students is several points higher than Brandywine’s, and Red Clay’s graduation rate for Special Education students is significantly better than Brandywine’s (which is under 50%). So for all the hoopla and criticism, something is obviously working.
Parent satisfaction? Interesting standard, but the large vote totals and large margins that both referendum questions passed by are indicative of something. I know you had issues with how Red Clay conducted its referendum campaign, but the fact of the matter is that over 10,000 people came out to vote, when the average school board election in the district usually only garners about 2,700 voters (and that is the highest level of participation in the State, usually). How many people do you expect to vote in your upcoming referendum?
For all the attempts to portray Red Clay as somehow severely dysfunctional that have been mooted about on the blogs for the past couple of years, actual results–including results for minority, low income, and special education students–have been comparable to what Brandywine achieves while spending 30% more per pupil.
As for Red Clay and its charter schools, there are two points to be made: (1) because RCCSD and not the state chartered them, the district has a lot more leverage about what happens there than Christina does with NCS. For example, look at the fact that CSW now has students with 504s and IEPs attending; look at the fact that CSW responded to the board and took virtually next year’s entire freshman class from inside the district (I believe almost all the exceptions were sibling preference); look at the fact that CSW provides all the sports team opportunities for Cab Calloway, or that CSW students log literally thousands of hours each year tutoring and mentoring in the city elementary schools. Look at the fact that Red Clay receives debt service payments on the half of the Wilmington High School building that CSW occupies. Is there work to be done in increasing minority enrollment–absolutely. But it is disingenuous to argue that the CSW/Red Clay relationship is somehow parasitical. Every year there are dozens of students accepted at both CSW and AI who choose AI over CSW.
Second note: say whatever else you like, but the financial management of the schools chartered by Red Clay has never run into the rocks and shoals of many schools chartered by the State. So Kilroy’s fear fantasy of Odyssey or CSW going broke and suddenly dumping hundreds of kids back into the system is not going to happen.
[Oh, and you should also notice that RCEA doesn’t shout too loudly, in union terms, about choice and charter in RCCSD because if you were to nose around you would find that an awful lot of teacher’s kids go to CSW, Conrad, or Cab.]
My point is not that Red Clay is perfect; it isn’t. Not any more than Brandywine is perfect. But the actuality of the district is a whole lot more complex than most of these conversations make it sound.
By the way: in a perfect world I’d consolidate districts. Not gonna happen here in Delaware unless school board elections get moved to November, which I think would be a huge disaster for everyone, because then the candidates’ ideas would no longer matter alonside the question of whether they were R’s or D’s.
If your argument is that Brandywine is a smaller district with a higher tax base than Red Clay and Christina, well… I guess you win.
My point is that BSD took steps years ago to keep their least desirable schools desirable. Red Clay did not – it abandoned most of its city schools and Dickinson and McKean. I was at the meeting where people asked what happened to those two high schools – the former RCCD superintendent’s answer was that he had taken his eye off the ball.
I was at the Highland’s meeting last month where parents asked RCCD what plans the district had for their school. The answer: It might not be an issue since there’s talk of a city school district and the new BofA charter will be a “game-changer.”
As far as the referendum… well, if you advertise selectively and frighten suburban parents with the threat of sending their children back to those city schools I’d expect a high turn-out. That little tactic spoke volumes.
Before BSS opened everyone saw the writing on the wall – the principal at Warner, at the time, tried to put a desirable program in place to lessen the hit. That didn’t happen. Which surprised me since creating specialty schools has always been a RCCD trademark. This decision had nothing to do with money or the size of the district. To this day, I don’t understand why RCCD didn’t step in and try to keep schools desirable and viable.
I tried to answer this twice, but then the website wouldn’t let me on and I forgot what I was going to say.
Oh well, couldn’t have been that important.
Steve & Pandora,
You guys certainly know a bunch of this stuff.
I just posted on Kilroy’s, in response to a question from Greg (presumably Meece), about “if NCS’ application is rejected next month, what do you propose?”
I said
Greg,
You raise good questions.
IF the DOE rejects the NCS expansion application on April 19th,
One approach is …
The community, not just NCS administrations, but the entire community should come together, and explore launching a public charter high school solution, likely a CSN, Charter School of Newark, designed as a college prep focus, with a science/math emphasis.
Yes, the name is patterned after the CSW, for good reason. One of the reasons behind the desire to expand NCS to a high school is the lack of NCS students’ access to spots at CSW. NCS families and non-NCS families within CSD have expressed their desire to have a dependable academically rigorous high school solution available for their children.
The CSN charter school application will be submitted to Christina School District, in recognition that placing a new high school into CSD has a direct impact on the school district, and the best approach is to work WITH the local school district.
One possibility is for CSN to be housed in (a portion of) Glasgow High School.
CSN will NOT provide preferences for past students at NCS nor siblings of current/past students of NCS. This school would be independent of NCS.
A task force will study the admissions policy for CSW, take the best features, and improve the others, to create the admissions policy for CSN.
To address ‘the divide’, all will be welcome to participate in the organization of CSN, however those who, from this point forward, encourage ‘us versus them’ and ‘my school my choice’ exclusivity will be dis-invited. This program is to create a community high school, not owned by 100 or 200 families,but owned by the entire school district.
Key stakeholders including a CSD board member, a senior DOE staff member, would be needed to take a leadership role in the creation of the CSN.
Within ten years, CSD will strive to incorporate CSN as a non-charter high school, and thus make it eligible for state capital funds, but also subject to all rules/regulations of non-charter public schools. In this manner,this school will aim to satisfy one of the goals of the Charter School Law of Delaware, bringing successes from the charter school experiments into the non-charter public school population.
Note that the issues that the NCS application experience has raised is that the Delaware Charter School law and regulations are dearly in need of re-examination. The NCS application has somewhat been a victim of dis-satisfaction with the consequences of the current law and regulations.
This law/regulation review process needs to be led by the General Assembly and the DOE, but to be successful, should also aggressively seek out public input at every possible stage, not just at the last stage.
I’m certain that I missed some major issues, and further certain that you will be able to point them out. I’d appreciate your input
I like the idea of actually testing charter schools. This is where the experiment always stops. Charters need to show that their successful programs can be applied to all kids.
PB, pretty sure that is not Greg Meece. This Greg is an active parent of a student at NCS.
JY..thnx
John:
I think your proposal has the same problems as most charters. It would provide quality education to a small fraction of students without guaranteeing positive spillovers to the remaining.
Don’t you think that if we focus on improving the quality of education of all k-8 children HSs will improve? At least that seems to be an implicit assumption in the impact study of the NCS proposal.
Newark,
Here’s the rub in your statement if we focus on improving the quality of education of all k-8 children…
In the early 1990s, at the beginning of the standards/assessment movement, Delaware re-did the standards for all the core academic subjects. They were by and large top-flight standards. And both the state and the feds poured money into Delaware for about five years, doing professional development and adding resources, and doing all the things traditionally considered to necessary for that improvement of the quality of education you’re talking about.
That was all undone in less than two years by the General Assembly and the US Congress.
First, the General Assembly: the DE Content Standards were written to be assessed with something called “authentic assessment,” which (although it is too complex to go into here) would have had portfolios of work, teacher assessments, practical exercises, and even parent/student input in an attempt to build a balanced picture of what each student knew and was able to do. Ironically, authentic assessment has much in common with what Newark Charter’s approach is. But then, after a five year run-up, the General Assembly decided that authentic assessment would be too expensive to fund, and required a traditional paper test instead, and the DSTP was born. So we had students and teachers spend five years preparing for Assessment type A, but then actually gave them Assessment type B, and never seriously went back and matched the content with the new assessment (I could tell you stories about that which would truly horrify you.)
Second, the US Congress: then bought off on the ridiculous NCLB process, which was an unholy marriage between those who wanted to use it to junk the existing public school system and those on the extreme far left of the “assessment-drives-instruction” crowd. Included in this mix was the patently ridiculous notion that eventually schools would only be considered successful of 100% of their students met the standards 100% of the time. Equally bad, even though NCLB is slowly biting the dust, what that legislation did was sanctify the flawed concepts that (a) assessment must always drive instuction and (b) the Federal government must always drive the assessments.
There is no longer any way to simply concentrate on improving instruction. If you want reality, three suspects killed education for the students of the Christina School District: (1) the radical theoretical reformers who got the upper hand in the 1990s; (2) the Delaware General Assembly that had the chance to embrace something different and balked at the cost; (3) the US Congress, which passed legislation that effectively neutered US public education for at least two decades.
Yes, part of the reason that the charter schools that work well do work so well is the population exclusionary feature that everybody rants about. But that’s not all of it. What schools like NCS, CSW, DMA, Odyssey, and etc. bring to the table that nobody else can is a limited but significant freedom to ignore the assessment-driven models of instruction that have been imposed by the Feds and the State, and get back to a focus on teaching.
Among other things, when you are actually able to teach classes, with the teacher really in control of the material, discipline problems either go down or even evaporate, because the classroom can become more responsive to student needs than a public school teacher is usually allowed to be. (Public school teachers are required, in virtually every lesson, to justify everything they teach in terms of the content standards. Everything. This is ridiculous. Research–a lot of it from Boston U.–clearly establishes that content standards in the K-8 realm should specify no more than a 35% core of all the material taught.)
Yes, their students take the same tests and do comparatively well on them because of a dirty little secret: if you allow teachers to teach, and to control their own content and pedagogy, and then you make sure you hire strong teachers, mentor them well, and give them access to training and resources, guess what? Their students will have a comparative advantage on ANY test.
But if you do what the State and the Feds mandate, which is to strangle any creativity, insight, or individualized instruction that a teacher might bring into the classroom by requiring constant oversight via data coaches on benchmarking student success toward a particular test, then you will also strangle public education.
Damn, Steve…
Your comment is great, but that last paragraph totally nailed it. I just posted it to Facebook. Thank you for encapsulating it perfectly!
AMEN
I’d encourage teachers to take the long view. RTTT and data coaches are a transient phenomenon. RTTT funding and RTTT work rules are like a bulge passing through the snake. At some point it will come to an end, and hopefully we can get back to local control with local funding. Let’s work and plan for that day.
Yes, data coaches (as currently conceived) are a horrible and offensive mistake. Even worse, DDOE failed to synch the arrival of the data coaches with the arrival of the data technology. And the June workshop that defined Delaware’s educational metrics was essentially a rubber-stamp of what was already built by Texas and Double Line Partners. Delaware’s metrics are literally a copy of the Texas metrics with a few changes; they didn’t even bother to replace “Texas” with “Delaware” in a many places. The time for teachers to speak up was last June.
But frankly I am tired of hearing RTTT and data coaches held up as a reason why teachers cannot bring “creativity, insight, or individualized instruction.” I see them doing it every day. Yes, some of the RTTT rules are cramping. So roll with it. Every job gives you some cross to bear. Look at it harder and find the parts that can be useful.
Stop using RTTT as a crutch. In my experience most of the faulty work rules I see come from the districts and pre-date RTTT. Ask parents for help.
I know if one or more teachers contacted me and let me know details about what unnecessary requirements were preventing them from teaching my child, I’d be breaking down the District door the next day. But I’ve heard nothing, apart from the 90-minute PLCs.
And from what I’ve seen, the PLCs need to be repurposed but not eliminated. In my own experience there are too many teachers who are not data-aware and are even data-hostile, and don’t even know how to use the tools of their trade when it comes to data and communication. The PLCs are also supposed to make sure teachers talk about their students in common. Let’s make sure those conversations result in meaningful interventions measured within days or weeks, not marking periods or years.
Not to mention, teachers have a union, which is more than most of us can say. Get them on the data coaches’ case. Read the Wireless Generation contract – it specifies a whole set of data coach deliverables that essentially are personnel reports on individual teachers. Did you really agree to that? There’s also a whole set of WG responsibilities lsted in the contract. Are they meeting them? Make sure they are.
I didn’t see any teacher signatures on that contract. FOIA those damn reports and get to the bottom of it. Rein in the data coaches and make them help you, not terrorize you. They are supposed to serve you, not monitor you.
Thanks, Mike. Do you have the copy of that contract? I remember reading it online somewhere, but I’ve lost the link.
Something very interesting happened at our PLC on Friday and I’m ready to write about it. I’d like to see the contract first, though.
Mike M, the contract was obtained by Nichole Dobo of the News Journal, and she posted it on her blog a while ago:
http://blogs.delawareonline.com/delawareed/2011/10/common-planning-time-for-teachers-we-noticed-your-questions/
It’s a scanned PDF, and I’m working on converting it to a searchable Word document. I’ve OCR’d it and started to clean it up, but cleanup is time-consuming. If anybody has time and wants to help clean up the document, let me know and I’ll send it. Email me at mike01@seventhtype.com.
Thank you! That’s where I remember seeing it!
And remember, data coaches are just teachers from some other district who saw a good job and applied for it. They’re just doing what their employer asked them to do. It’s not their fault, so don’t be hard on the individual data coaches.
Back to Newton’s comment for a second – we are giving away the one competitive advantage that the American educational system has over other systems; the ability to produce creative problem solvers.
“RTTT funding and RTTT work rules are like a bulge passing through the snake. At some point it will come to an end, and hopefully we can get back to local control with local funding. Let’s work and plan for that day.”
Are you unaware that RTTT is supposed to test ideas that will go nationwide? Or are you of the opinion that it will eventually wither away because the feds will eventually give up?
If it’s the latter, I believe you are almost certainly wrong. The problem with having nationalized standards is that now there are deep-pocketed corporate players in this game, and they will spend tens of millions on lobbyists to make tens of billions in profits. That’s all this is to these people, a giant pot of profits with pretty pictures of schoolchildren on the outside.
“I know if one or more teachers contacted me and let me know details about what unnecessary requirements were preventing them from teaching my child, I’d be breaking down the District door the next day.”
Right. Because THAT would fix education in Delaware, you breaking down your district office door.
Don’t be obtuse. Unless you work for the government, you have no idea of the meaning of “paperwork.” If your boss told you that part of your job was now documenting every single activity in your workday, including how many staples and paper clips you used, you’d quit before the month was out to go work someplace less insane.
True, Mike. I’ve never been hard on our data coach. In fact, I always preface my issues with just what you’ve written above: “I have no issue with you, but…” Our data coach is perfectly cordial, but I do feel most of them are out of their depth in their inability to realize just how little they’re actually bringing to the table.
Sorry Mike… I got up on my soapbox and wasn’t talking about you in particular.
@jason–Correct. And that’s one of the appeals of charters (at least the ones generally under discussion here–CSW, NCS, DMA, Odyssey, Kuumba, etc.) for the parents–those schools have achieved some (but not unlimited) ability to return to a problem-solving mode of instruction.
When people cite all the data nationwide that charters do no better in preparing students for standardized tests than other schools, they miss a major point: they are using a false measure to examine success. That’s not why parents send their kids to charters.
Oh I know you weren’t. 🙂
I’m just so tired of these meetings. We led our own PLCs last year and they were so much more vibrant and useful. We were able to discuss MULTIPLE topics and strategies for our students. Yes, not all of them were directly tied to DCAS or any testing for that matter, but damn, sometimes our kids require more of our attention than just harrassing them about increasing scores on a damn test.
RttT’s singular focus seems to be on the test, the whole test, and nothing but the test. How have we come to this?!?
@Geezer – I’m saying that at some point the Governor will have to go to the voters for money to continue the majority of RTTT policies. That will change things.
“If your boss told you that part of your job was now documenting every single activity in your workday…”
Geezer, I have no doubt something like that exists, But I have never seen such a report, or seen the requirement for it.
Put that report and the underlying requirements in my hands, and I will bring it with me to every District meeting I attend, and use my floor time to denounce it.
The private sector has long since solved many of the Dilbertian paperwork requirements you describe using Business Process Reengineering which, despite its faddish sounding name, actually works to reduce unnecessary work (BPR slogan: “Don’t automate – obliterate”).
BPR worked so well that it is now part of standard business practice. But schools have never attempted it.
By the way, “breaking down the District door” is a metaphor.
“RttT’s singular focus seems to be on the test, the whole test, and nothing but the test. How have we come to this?!?”
That’s because Delaware’s metrics focus on three things: Attendance, Discipline, and DCAS scores, with a nod to marking period grades and year-end grades. Daily classroom grades aren’t even in the underlying data model.
I wrote about this here a year ago, well before the June metrics workshop. The chance to change the course of history was that workshop, but nobody was paying attention.
When people cite all the data nationwide that charters do no better in preparing students for standardized tests than other schools, they miss a major point: they are using a false measure to examine success. That’s not why parents send their kids to charters.
That may be true as to why parents send their kids to charters, but it does counter the main charter myth: That charters perform better than public schools. They don’t. And if we want people to stop citing nationwide data pointing out that fact, then charter proponents have to drop the PR/marketing spin that promotes the myth that charter schools are superior.
Most charter schools aren’t superior. Most public schools aren’t dangerous places that offer a poor education. There’s a lot of talk about individual approaches to education. The next step might be dropping the PR stereotypes associated with schools.
Mike,
Do you honestly feel that had teachers spoke up in June things would have changed?
I just listened to testimony at the State Board meeting Thursday in which the Teacher Unit testifies on DPAS II components. They answered a direct question by Mr. Heffernan as to why DPASS II component 5 will not be deployed, that all five sections count the same….component 5 juts triggers some things.
No, Component 5 triggers the overall rating and consequences. It literally overrides the the 4 components. The subject at hand wass RECLASSIFYING ALL of DE teachers into 2 buckets (DCAS teachers and Non-DCAS teachers….that is so motivational no?) Why do DOE employees go in front of our sate board and shade the truth with bullshit nuance? 1) Because the can 2) they hope the SBOE won’t notice.
Notice in the discussion I didn’t even mention that Component 5 is based on using tests designed for kids to make determinations about adults.
“Stop using RTTT as a crutch. In my experience most of the faulty work rules I see come from the districts and pre-date RTTT. Ask parents for help.”
I’m convinced, it isn’t the crutch right now. It spawns policies in data, teachers, testing, school turnaround, recruitment, retention…all with little to no coordination. It is gumming up so much of what our teachers need to do to succeed. And it’s all being done with Lies, Lies of omission, nuanced bullshit analysis, and the ultimate kicker, almost no research to back it up.
Teacher’s know this, and its killing them inside. At least a strong majority of those I speak to and with about it.
I agree about asking parents for help, but teachers need to help themselves first. Get up, Stand up….you know the rest!
“Do you honestly feel that had teachers spoke up in June things would have changed?”
Yes.
Invitations were sent to everyone with a DDOE single sign-on account. District liaisons were asked to flog turnout. But the workshop was met with a collective yawn and a rush to the beach. So now you have to live with the outcome.
I had one district administrator tell me she stopped attending the one-week workshop because “it was going too slowly.”
If teachers were so concerned about overreliance on DCAS, they should have gone to the workshop and rocked the joint.
According to the Education Insight website:
RTTT does have the requirement that teacher accountability must be based in part on growth-based tests. So that part probably would not have changed. But it could have been publicized and greatly mitigated. DDOE does respond to pushback, as seen by the one-year delay in Component 5 consequences.
Remember these workshops were a fallback from the original plan to have an expert roundtable sponsored by outside experts as well as Delaware stakeholders. There was no public announcement and no parent representation. I would have loved to have been there.
Mike, After watch our DOE in action, I simply just come to a different conclusion. They are not listening. They are carrying out their agenda. No. Matter. What.
Delay does not equal change. The fact that they react to pushback using delay just shows they are mindful of the political implications. Markell stated at the Vision 2015 trumped up news event last October. Component 5 is coming eventually, there is no stopping it.
Mike, it is unfortunately a leap to conclude that the 175 participants had an impact. This state has written not one, but two RTTT plans before/during public feedback periods. I would guess almost 95% before. They cannot/will not produce documents to show how the feedback they receive actually influences policy.
I sat in GHS last Tuesday as Governor Markell, with a straight face, told 8 HS students that 65-70% of teachers love the new PLC’s and the 30-35 who don’t, just haven’t been in one run right.
Talk about tone deaf. I submit that I admire your optimism about the intentions of our policy makers, I just think you’re wrong.
“Invitations were sent to everyone with a DDOE single sign-on account. District liaisons were asked to flog turnout. But the workshop was met with a collective yawn and a rush to the beach. So now you have to live with the outcome. ”
This presumes that participation would have actually yielded a different policy. I firmly believe it would not have.
It’s like saying that because you didn’t vote against President Obama, you now have to deal with RTTT, even though no one’s individual vote would have decided the election and in this case every single teacher in DE could have voted McCain and we likely not have had RTTT (though we would have somethings else probably as bad).
Teacher need to rock the joint now, even though they didn’t participate then. This is bad policy, with almost ZERO evidence supporting it’s efficacy. Rolling with it is bad advice from my standpoint.
The 175 participants had little observable impact. As I said, the metrics that were supposed to have been developed during that workshop and customized for Delaware’s needs, were in fact copied from Texas and rubber-stamped. In this project, Delaware does nothing that hasn’t already been built by Texas via Double Line Partners. Yes, a greater teacher presence would have made a difference.
Apparently there was nobody there who spoke out about the overreliance on DCAS.
My own peeve was I wanted to see metrics derived from daily gradebook events, specifically homework/classwork completion rates, running grade averages, and timelines for communication events (i.e., teachers posting assignments in advance of due dates). But there was no opportunity for parent input.
“The fact that they react to pushback using delay just shows they are mindful of the political implications.”
Good. Then we need more political implications. Skipping the few opportunities for RTTT input won’t help create more political implications to achieve results. And let’s not forget, teachers are organized to create political implications when needed.
Remember my perspective is to take charge of RTTT resources and force RTTT to work for us, not to burn it to the ground. A little political heat goes a long way to make that happen.
Mike:
All Race to the Top does is perpetuate the educational-industrial complex. That’s all it does. It keeps a whole industry chugging along. This may sound cynical, but on some days I really believe that this industry relies on continued “failure” of our schools so they can continue to dip their grubby hands in the public coffers to fund their pseudo-science known as education reform.
I know, Mike. I’ve blogged about this very thing. But there has to be SOMETHING we can do with a flood of money and resources. We can’t afford to get lost in cynicism. And remember, as the flood of RTTT money retreats, local control will slowly return.
Local control should have never left, Mike. RttT ceded too much of that local control for a temporary infusion of cash that came strapped with too many poison pills to count. TFA. Data Coaches. Consultant-palooza. It should have never happened. We should have worked locally to figure out sustainable ways to lower class sizes and help close the achievement gap by better servicing our higher-needs schools. I keep hearing folks like you saying “Let’s be patient. Let’s be patient. Let’s let it work for us.” I’m sorry, Mike. But the only ones this is working for are the ones to whom the checks were cut.
Mike M. I believe you are 100% gone and that’s why Mike O and I actually agree on almost everything except tactics. I think burning down RTTT is the only effective way to turn back the tide of the aptly named EIC you just dropped on us….
Oh, and every time I watch Lowery and or Markell literally sit in front of professionals and either lie or pretend to listen,it makes me furious.
Pretending to listen is their tactic. We need to fight fire with fire…..
Steve Newton;
I initially thought your comment was in response to my two sentences, but either I am mistaken or you made way too many wrong inferences from what I said.
Thank you for stating your position on the topic.
“Local control should have never left, Mike”
Spilt milk. We were all snoozing when it happened including myself (except Kilroy of course). And besides, isn’t RTTT like halfway done? At least the Federally sponsored leg of it.
We need to stop making excuses for it, though, Mike. I sometimes get frustrated when I read your posts. They make so much sense and then you insert the usual defense of RttT. “Oh, well it’s here, so we should just go along with it.” I’m sorry, but I was on Red Clay’s RttT committee at the state and local level. We did level these complaints about consultant-palooza. We did call into question the amount of funds that our schools would never see. We did call into question these data coaches. NOTHING WAS DONE.
And it’s not spilt milk to say local control should have never left. I will say one thing, though. We need better and brighter school boards to make sure they’re holding up their end of the bargain in holding these administrators’ feet to the fire and offering firmer pushback on the administration and DoE. Frankly, I’m tired of the bullshit. Obstruction is what we need here. Let’s get back to educating our children and stop this data-driven madness.
I think the Federal RTTT money gives DDOE and the Governor a big helping of unaccountable power. Or rather, the accountability is to Washington rather than Delaware. I think that explains the implacable, inexorable nature of RTTT at this point in time. But at some point the Governor will have to ask Delaware voters for that money, and then we’ll see where all of these programs fit into Delaware’s budget priorities. Once the money dries up the consultants will flee.
“Data driven” is not a dirty word; it’s just that we’re not doing it right.
Look at it this way, as I imagine the Governor sees it: The heat teachers can bring on him for any RTTT policies is NOTHING compared to the political inferno that will descend on him if RTTT is aborted midway through by our own hand. That seems to explain his ferocious defense of following RTTT to the letter. Even so, we have seen amendments, flexibility, waivers, etc. So there is a process for mitigation. Look to create more of those, and better ones, instead of an abrupt end.
No, data driven is not a dirty word. It’s already inherent in what 90%+ of teachers do. My problem with “data-driven” is it HAS become a dirty word in the sense it’s joined our educational lexicon of bull shit. Where every term we’re used to has been replaced by some edu-newspeak term concocted from some graduate student’s thesis and then co-opted by some business millionaire looking to stick his fingers in the every growing field of education consultancy to make a quick buck.
Yes, there are waivers, Mike. And they’re a joke. Just like that idiotic ESEA waiver the state is submitting for NCLB. I mean, come on, why not FIGHT! We know 100% of our students will NEVER be proficient. NEVER. So instead of kicking the can to another administration (the year 2020 is the new target), then we should FIGHT to have the language appealed and once and for all say 100% in UNATTAINABLE!
“Look at it this way, as I imagine the Governor sees it: The heat teachers can bring on him for any RTTT policies is NOTHING compared to the political inferno that will descend on him if RTTT is aborted midway through by our own hand.”
Mike O, we are changing the PZ willy nilly in CSD, sometimes with approval, sometimes not. It is an absolute joke. The control factor from DOE is so poor it is unspeakable. I rail against it at essentially EVERY board meeting now. The Governor is NOT holding us to our RTTT plans, even after threatening to withhold 11MM dollars last April when pour board dared to defend teachers.
RTTT and it’s policies are simply pernicious.
“Data driven” is not a dirty word; it’s just that we’re not doing it right.
Yes, it is. When you make decisions on data with no account, the ability to make decision TO drive the data come into play, and these are almost always the wrong ones. We are there, no account.
Data informed is much more palatable a term.
@Mike M.
the waivers are worse than that. We are abandoning all pretense of 100% proficiency. That is no longer the target. Under ESEA Flex it will be achievement gap closure.
Read this to see what it is doing to our schools, and this is from a PRO RTTT guy: http://www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/20110919_Hess.pdf
A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor described the value of analyzing data for
high school educators. (“Numbers Game Grows in Education, Healthcare,” March 4, 2010–no
link available). The article uses the California Partnership for Achieving Student Success (CalPASS)
as an example of how “data-driven discoveries are helping to revitalize educators’ efforts.”
CalPASS has a database of more than 355 million student records from kindergarten through college. It uses business intelligence software to analyze the data and provides reports on its findings.
One study found that students who stopped taking English courses after 10th grade required the same level of remediation in community college as students who continued to take advanced English courses through 12th grade. Teachers naturally wondered how this could be true, which caused them to examine the differences between what they were teaching and the expectations of community colleges. According to Brad Phillips, executive director of CalPASS, “educators learned that high-school courses emphasized literature, while community-college courses covered writing and grammar, and four-year colleges emphasized analysis and argumentation. As a result, officials changed high-school teaching to create better alignment.”
From a Baldrige perspective, this means that high school teachers identified community colleges and four-year colleges as their customers, identified their customers’ requirements, and changed their curricula to better meet those requirements.
That’s an excellent start but I’m not sure it will solve the bigger problem, which is preparing high school students to succeed in life. The changes high school officials made should help their students be better prepared for college, but are colleges preparing their students to succeed after they graduate? Are they teaching the right things in English? How do they know? Where are the data from employers, graduate programs, and graduated students that show the effectiveness of English taught in college?
High school officials either made an assumption that colleges know what students should learn in English or they made colleges their most important customers. Neither assumption does their students justice. The danger is, as Russell Ackoff wrote, that “for too long, we have educated people for a world that no longer exists.”
Hope this provides some insight.