Garnering Knowledge for Teaching

This morning, the Dallas Morning News described a recently released study noting the failure of a Texas teacher merit pay experiment.  It is interesting to note that the results did not necessarily say merit pay was a failure.  It noted that the design of the system set up in Texas was seriously flawed and did not establish the incentive atmosphere intended.  It seems well performing schools…wait for it…have the highest performing teachers, and that some schools, instead of giving larger sums to “high performing teachers”, split the money among many teachers in a building.

Can you imagine being the teacher who doesn’t get a bonus?  I’m not sure how that necessarily provides an incentive.   I do think there must be ways we can reward teachers who are stellar and encourage those teachers who are hanging in there, and address the issues of teachers who are spinning downward.  It is similar to a student who has lost motivation.  Taking away something loses all meaning when the punishee doesn’t care about what was taken.

I work with teachers and people who are learning to become teachers.  I believe that most  are dedicated professionals who devote an inordinate amount of time to their work for much less pay than others who spend 60+ hours on the job.  Overtime is not a celebrated task (meaning extra money for the bills), but an expected job responsibility. And before you begin to tell me how much time teachers have off in a year, think about the math…

An average individual working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year will put in 2,080 hours if that person does not take a vacation, sick day, or time off.  For argument’s sake, we take two weeks off of that total for an average amount of time an American takes off each year as 2000 hours (I imagine the number is far greater).

Teachers are in class with students for a minimum of 180 days a year in most states.  Divide that by 5 (for a school week) and you get 36 weeks of contact time with students.  Add to this 2-3 weeks before school starts (the first two to get the classroom and curriculum pulled together and the third is the week of inservice the district provides before the first day of school).  Also add to this a week over the winter holidays and the week of spring break.  For argument’s sake, I will reduce the number of hours for these weeks because, although teachers do work at home on their vacation weeks, they do not generally put in 40 hours.

So,

36 weeks at 60 hours a week: 2,160

Approximately 5-6 weeks at 25 hours a week: 125-150 extra

Going total: 2,285 hours per year.

And I believe that to be a low end estimate.  If you doubt that teachers work 60 hours a week during the school year, go to your teacher friends and ask them.  See what their number is.  I can guarantee 90% of them will tell you it is more than 40 when you include grading, data collection, lesson planning, lesson preparation, training, meetings, parent contacts, testing, test prep, and all the various other minutia that make up the day/week of a teacher.

So, we have 2,285 vs 2,000 (heck, I’ll even throw that 80 back in for you workaholics that don’t take days off).

Still, there is a difference here.  This also does not really include the after school activities and weekend fund raisers that teachers are often required to attend or conduct.

Acknowledgment #1: Teachers work hard and they work for a long time.

Back to the Dallas story: the perspective behind incentive pay for teachers assumes that teachers need some kind of incentive to do their jobs well.  The story, and the investigation into the program, state that the pay involved in the program was not enough to motivate teachers to do more.  To me, this insinuates that teachers are simply getting by and that is why students are failing.  Teachers are slackers who don’t want to do their best at their chosen profession so we need to bribe them to be better.  AND not only that, but the measurement of this bribe will be the state standardized test scores that are now attached to your teacher identification number.  NOTHING ELSE…just the test scores.

I talk to my teacher friends and I hear more of the same thing: they have more paperwork to fill out, more extensive lesson plans to turn in, more frequent testing dates to prepare for and more expectations as to what types of lessons are planned, written out, and executed.  All of this must be done with more students, less administrative support (most buildings run with one administrator these days), and less classroom supply money, not to mention a reduction in or lack of  curriculum supplies.  We want them to do more with less and then do even more with even less.

I hear my partner talk about the teachers of his high school days.  The teachers who did not care and who read the paper while kids napped in the classroom.  I try to tell him that I do not believe those teachers exist any more.  But I do not know that for sure.  I still see kids sleeping when I walk by classrooms (especially in high schools).

The teachers I know work hard and are being expected to work harder. I do not have issue with high expectations.  This is critical to educational excellence.  I do have issue with a lack of respect for the hard work that is already occurring around the country.  I have issue with the general vilification of the teacher as the bad guy in our education drama.

There are multiple, complex factors that come into play for education.  Even now, as state budgets are being passed, cuts are coming deeper to public education and yet the expectations of AYP success are still high.  Teachers face larger classrooms with fewer supplies and textbooks.  Some teachers (and this is not an exaggeration) must even bring their own toilet paper and cleaning supplies from home to work. They also face students from challenging circumstances who come to school hungry, tired, and worried.  According to Maslow, kids who don’t know where their next meal is coming from will have a very difficult time relegating brain power to multiplication tables.  Teachers need to find a way to make their classrooms safe, welcoming places where those base needs are met, in order to establish an environment of learning.

I believe we need to hold teachers to high standards.  But those must be measured in the classroom, not on a test.  That test is not only measuring what a kid might have learned last year with a particular teacher, it also measures whether she ate on a regular basis last year, how many homes did she live in over the course of the school year, how much parental support there is at home to promote student learning, or simply to provide a safe home, and how effective every teacher before this teacher has been in educating this child.  We don’t even mention whether the school district has the funding to provide consistent and fully supported curriculum throughout the grades for the students moving through from teacher to teacher.  So many complex experiences come together for one test.  Should that test make or break a teacher’s career?

I am hesitant to endorse merit pay because so much of it rides on an inaccurate measure of teacher quality.  If only there were another way to identify excellence and encourage growth in this demanding profession.  The National Board Certification program moves towards identifying master teachers, but it does nothing to address the needs of teachers who are struggling in the classroom.  How can we bring everyone up and give teachers realistic and motivational goals to achieve in order to make their teaching more effective and successful.

Perhaps if we put that funding towards simply paying teachers more for their 2,285 hours a year, or better yet, put it towards classroom supplies and curriculum, we would eventually see those gains we are seeking.  Maybe if we acknowledged the time and energy of teachers instead of treating them like human resources, it would help motivate and encourage growth and enthusiasm.

NCLB and the Highly Qualified Teacher requirements have already had an effect on what happens in public school classrooms.  Teacher certification standards have become more complex over the last decade, and the teaching force will be undergoing an experience change over the next decade as many teachers retire.  I noted in my previous post, seeing gains from reform will take time. We need to stop, and sit a moment to see where the painting is, before continuing to brush on the colors of a new bandwagon.

My thoughts for this new blog post marking my return are inspired by this story run about a month ago.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/child-left-overhaul-sights-obama-administration/Story?id=8663957&page=1

This isn’t the only story that has caught my eye in the last few weeks.  This story discusses research showing how “failing” districts using Supplemental Service funds do not appear to improve after utilizing those supplemental service and this lovely evaluation from the CATO Institute is a cautionary tale about using NAEP scores to determine the success or failure of a particular reform in the last thirty years.  It beautifully demonstrates how reformers from multiple perspectives can utilize the same national scores to support their particular reform.

Over the last 6 years I have watched the NCLB train with a mixture of curiosity and horror.  From my time as a teacher, I know that student assessment is vital to appropriate pedagogical planning.  How do you know what your students need unless you evaluate where they are developmentally and within the curriculum?  How do you know that your instruction is effective unless you find some way of discovering whether your students “got it?”  My curiosity of NCLB lies in this assessment question and in how effective it is to place centralized goals, regulations, and measurements upon a largely decentralized system.  My horror lies in the thought that the centralized regulations are designed so that by 2013, nearly every school in the country will be failing.  No matter how much progress they have made, the final goals are so unreachable, that no victories will be visible, except for a rare few schools.

So why is the current administration considering keeping NCLB?  Schools have made progress during the last few years and much good has come of the reform.  Some students from groups historically ignored by school systems, are receiving new attention from administrators and teachers.  My research has noted a change in school administrators’ thinking towards placing students with disabilities into general education classrooms.  In short, there is a move to provide real curriculum to all students and that cannot be understated or lost in the move to change what the old administration left behind.  Most policy analysts will tell you, it takes years, or decades to fully comprehend the effects of a full-scale policy implementation such as NCLB.  School administrators are just now fully internalizing the regulations of IDEA, a thirty-plus year old policy, it will take time for the good intentions of NCLB to show demonstrable and sustainable gains.

That being said, NCLB can be negotiated without being decimated.  The bathwater can be changed without the baby going out the window.  That first negotiation should concern the unreasonable AYP goals and deadlines.  Every school system has a unique set of challenges, and as long as those challenges are being addressed responsibly, that system should not be punished.  It is impossible to raise scores when districts cannot afford to fully fund a math or reading curriculum (ie: buying some books and none of the supplementary materials).  Assessment is tricky and states are spending millions of dollars to test and score and report.  Where else could that money go?  How can we hold teachers and schools and STUDENTS responsible without ripping away a month from the school year to “measure” how much students have learned?

Also, there needs to be some type of direct funding unit that feeds to school buildings and classrooms.  Politicians say they have spent record amounts on public education and the money seems to make no difference.  If that is true, I see no evidence of it when I walk through the buildings of my local city school district.  I see distress, crumbling infrastructures, recycling of everything, and much doing without.  Meanwhile, many districts with huge budget deficits, seem to boast the highest spending on superintendent salaries.  One would think that a person with a conscience would decline an obscene six figure salary while teachers and assistants are losing jobs. I am not so naive to believe that cutting administrative salaries would solve the education funding issue.  I am, however, confused as to why the money never seems to make it into the classroom, especially for large, poor districts.

Change can be good.  But, change for the sake of changing in a decade that has been nothing but change may not be the best answer.  There are many things wrong with NCLB, but there are some things that have gone right.  The Department of Education needs to ascertain what is working and make sure those pieces are preserved.  Perhaps we could model the changes for what is going wrong, after the things that are going right.  Maybe states have some ideas about how that could happen.  Have we, as a nation, taken time to listen to the people implementing this policy on the ground level?  I imagine that they would have pertinent suggestions as to how the ideas of NCLB could work and be useful to everyone, including students.

I try not to worry.  But with the current economic conditions and the further destruction of public education funding, I wonder how much can American public education take before completely falling down?  What happens if all children (going to public schools) are left behind?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/health/03rewa.html

Need to be dissertating, but I couldn’t resist a short commentary on this one.  I’ve often discussed the benefits and drawbacks of using rewards in the classroom.  I am one of those who believes that some type of reward system can be a useful tool in maintaining a positive classroom culture.  I have also seen this type of system go haywire and lose its effectiveness.  My students will tell you I think the reward should reflect the activity done to achieve the reward.  It must be a meaningful reward or it will simply be another “thing” in the child’s life.

Here are a few thoughts about some of the reward systems discussed in the article:

• Several of the rewards discussed were monetary and had to do with AP tests.  I’m not sure this is where the debate should reside.  Just getting cash for a good test seems shady to me and could encourage misappropriation.  I also feel that paying teachers for their students’ good scores, although an admirable thought, opens doors that might not be conducive to true learning.  A more reasonable approach could involve students scoring high on AP and standardized test scores would earn funding for a public college.  That would be a more appropriate reward and would maintain the focus on further learning.  Kids take the test to be able to go to college, not to get paid.
• It seems to me that paying for achievement is a frightening road to run.  Only the best and brightest would get paid and that already happens. If we want to use the work analogy, then kids should get paid for showing up.  That’s what most people get paid to do…show up and do a job for a specified period of time.  Only in upper levels are people paid more for productivity or for achieving a goal.  The general work force gets paid for their time.  Period.  So, yeah, kids go to school.  That’s their job.  But there are other ways to help them see that besides paying them.  That’s why kids strive to eventually become adults, to finally earn their own money and be independent.  Isn’t that the real goal of education?  To produce independent, productive, adult citizens of this United States?
• There is a real question here of how can we make academic achievement more palatable to our students?  How can we help them understand the intrinsic rewards we are always blathering on about?  What does that really mean?  Have we structured our educational system to reward all thinkers and inspire children to WANT to do more?  We are just now moving away from a system that waits for children to fail before they receive some kind of special attention.  We are still burdened with a punitive system of accountability that only offers normalcy for those who achieve high standards and spends time and energy on punishments for those who do not.
• Do we really want to employ a business model that rewards the top 2% of the corporation with unimaginable wealth and rewards workers on the bottom level by allowing them to keep their jobs? Our culture has already seen the devastating effects of a materialistic society gone wild.  Money can’t be the answer.  There just isn’t enough of it to go around.  But what about freedom?  What about earning responsibility?  Who would work for the opportunity to determine what your next project would be instead of having it handed to you?  What if rewards were appropriated based on individual goal achievement instead of being at the top of the class?  Those who feel progress=victory will not like an arrangement of such equanimity.  But, what if our children are ready to see the playing field leveled out just a bit?  To see the system tip away from what you can get and towards what you can do would make too much sense.

In my classroom, I often had rewards available such as additional reading time, or computer time (which involved an educational exercise of some sort), or some free time (a truly valuable commodity in an elementary classroom). To me, rewards were a celebration of a goal completed or a recognition that a student has been making good choices.  I used little slips of paper and verbal praise to constantly reward my students and let them know I noticed when they worked and tried.  The little rectangles of paper had some celebration of the student and a place for her/his name.  They placed the papers in a box in the back of the classroom and on Friday we drew names.  Those who got their names drawn were able to choose from the rewards I mentioned above.  Sometimes I included tangibles such as pencils, books or other educational supplies.   Sometimes I would award a student with free time or reading time outright for a particular achievement.  My students understood that everyone was on their own footing.  I did not expect Sue to achieve exactly the same way that Jan did, but I did expect her to improve from where she was.  They were learning self-management skills and how to reward themselves for their own achievements and how to delay gratification for that reward.  These are all necessary adult skills to be independent.

I have to agree that we can’t set up a system where our students expect reward for all of their achievements.  Unless you are already in the upper 5% of the population, that will most likely not happen in the real world after school.  We can, however, set up a system that mirrors what we would like our society to be.  One that rewards hard work with choice and freedom and those rewards in turn allow a person to achieve for their own purposes. “Crazy talk” one might say.

My big question is, how can we do that in a society that produces “Marry a Millionaire”, “My Super Sweet 16″, and “Real Housewives of Orange County”?  We revel in excess.  We wallow in it and flaunt it as a society and make it seem as if this represents a large number of our citizens.  But in reality, 97% of us do not live those lives and have NO CHANCE of ever living those lives.  How can we make our culture more reflective of its people and less reflective of its elite?   When will we draw our young students’ eyes away from the bling they see and desire, to something more achievable, sustainable, and tangible to them?

Again my Sunday ponderings begin with the New York Times article examining class size philosophy in these troubled economic times.  Essentially, small class sizes are getting districts/states into economic trouble.  Due to some state laws governing class size, districts find themselves needing to hire more teachers and find more classroom space to meet student enrollment needs.  The Times article cites and links to information about the STAR study done in Tennessee in the 1980’s, that provided evidence small classes were beneficial for students, especially younger ones.

However, when put into action as state law, class size reduction had the potential to become a state-wide nightmare as noted in a 2002 study by the Public Polcy Institute of California (also linked in the NYT article.) California found itself with a need to create hundreds of classrooms and hire as many new teachers, some of whom were inexperienced and not certified.  There was even an indication that a class size reduction in the third grade resulted in lower achievement in the fifth grade in predominately low income schools.  WHAT??!  So how is that helpful?

I try to wrap my head around that last stat.  I’m reporting this after reading the information pdf linked from the Times article, so I haven’t had a chance to peruse the actual study report.  But HOW can an intervention result in negative effects in later grades? That’s not an ineffective intervention, it’s a negative gain intervention!  What happens between 3rd and 5th grade to make such a thing possible? The study report mentions a flood of experienced teachers into suburban openings the law created.  This left urban and poor schools with multiple openings that were filled with new teachers, those with alternate certifications, and I’m sure, plenty of TFA folks as well (they’ve had six weeks of training!)   So the gains  that are measured in the earlier grades in mostly economically poor schools eventually become moot because students in later grades have teachers who are inexperienced in connecting pedagogy and curriculum in a meaningful way for learners who are just delving into concepts becoming more and more abstract.

This is not an easy task, especially if you haven’t had the luxury of  spending a few semesters talking about Content Knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge.  If you haven’t had the opportunity to write a few lesson plans and try them out with a chance to revise after feedback from your cooperating teacher and university instructor.  Sure any Joe can walk in off the street, pick up a teachers edition of a textbook and go to town.  I’m sure with enthusiasm, they could actually inspire students and learning will occur.  But what will be learned and how will that inexperienced teacher measure that learning?  What are the skills that build up to the concepts in the lesson and how does one know if the students are ready to learn it?  How does one scaffold a lesson so that all of the learners have some access point to the concepts presented?  This is not something the teacher’s edition always addresses, nor can the TE magically read individual students and understand where they are in their concept development.

These ponderings are what should be going through every teacher’s head for every lesson every day.  It’s eventually something that is automatic as one plans and prepares for each day.  It is something that can only be honed on the job, but the mental habits that lead to this skill development are honed in teacher education.  A person CAN be a teacher with six weeks training, but if a person wants to be a QUALITY teacher, then some time should be invested in that enterprise.  We cannot believe that our education system is in such disarray that a version of the Peace Corps is the only way to save it.  I have to believe that path leads only to a weakening of our system as a whole.

We need quality teachers who can tease out the nuances of a classroom.  We need quality teacher education programs that show our teacher candidates HOW to see those nuances.  Finally, we need a system that rewards quality with professionalism and respect.  Teachers are highly educated and mostly well-trained professionals who are often treated or viewed as child-care providers.  They are so much more!  They NEED so much more!  What if, instead of a small class, a teacher had training and PD, enough desks and books for all of her/his students, and supplies that last through the year and provide experiential learning opportunities?  What if we funded learning?  Really funded learning?

I wonder what effect that would have?

Now that we have seen the debates, it’s time to examine the education policies.  I’m fascinated that education, which once seemed like a top priority issue, has taken a backseat to many other issues.

It is understandable that the economy has taken center stage.  All policies will be affected by the coming economic fallout. But we also need to understand where our future leader intends to take the education system and more specifically, NCLB.

If you are undecided, here are the links.  If you have made up your mind, do you know what your canidate advocates?  Here is your chance to find out.

Obama/Biden campaign

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/

McCain/Palin campaign

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/issues/19ce50b5-daa8-4795-b92d-92bd0d985bca.htm