Hammers and Nails

There was an old anecdote in my family about my uncle's lack of skills when it came to repairs.  He seemed to have only one tool: a hammer.  This was clearly the wrong tool when it came to delicate repairs around the house, like fixing pieces of antique furniture.  But apparently he pulled it out on numerous occasions, to the horror of those witnessing the repair work.

Sometimes I feel like that is all we are offered when it comes to problem-solving in America.

In school reform, bringing down the hammer has meant browbeating teachers and systems into producing better test scores and -- theoretically--students who have learned more (though research shows we have been running in place for about a decade).  The recent report on teacher morale shows how ineffective it has been to use the hammer of teacher evaluation based on test scores and public humiliation to bring about change in our schooling system.

I doubt that the real objective for these measures is an improvement in instruction.  Efforts to 'hold teachers accountable' appear to be aimed more at destroying public schooling than fixing it.  If that is the objective, the hammer has been doing a pretty good job of smashing things up.

If anyone is seriously entertaining the goal of improving our system of schooling through these various hammers, all evidence leads to the contrary.

It ain't workin'.

There are other places it feels like leaders wield a hammer where a screwdriver, a chisel, or a dental pick might be more appropriate.

In an online discussion with journalism colleagues about building relationships, the subject of food in the classroom came up.  Teachers weighed in on when, where, why or why not food might appear in the classroom.

The response was interesting.  Schools all over the country have strict rules: No food under any circumstances--or else. Teachers shared what punishments are handed down when the rule is broken.  Personally, I keep some packaged food in my room and have, on occasion, fed a student who seems wildly distracted by his or her hunger.  Interestingly, when an obviously hungry student gets some food nobody clambers for "their share."  Usually the student is grateful and then gets back to work.  But none of that judgement can be carried out under a strict no exceptions ruling.

Others commented on how their administration has responded to the obesity crisis: by punishment.  Rules apparently exist against classroom parties, no sodas anywhere, anytime.  In short, the response has been to broadly punish rather than educate.

The conversation moved on to discuss how other cultures bring food education into the school day by setting aside time to enjoy a well-prepared meal over a mealtime conversation.  France values its food culture so much that mid-day meals includes extensive preparation and instruction on behavior at meals.  The Ontario school system made a concerted effort to re-educate the food production staff--and then consequently the students--on the pleasure and enjoyment of healthy, delicious choices.

Apparently, that won't be a choice for most of Amerca's students.

The hammer comes down in other areas too.  When new reforms are introduced, teachers are "held-accountable" to system-wide professional development by providing a paper trail to prove they are implementing new strategies.  Once the hammer of accountability is removed, teachers often return to their usual habits and the classroom initiative is lost.

The National Writing Project turns that model on its head by inviting teachers to investigate a success in the classroom (rather than a failure) and use inquiry methods to determine why and how it worked so the teacher can reproduce the results in multiple situations.  Most teachers claim to be transformed by the process.  They own their new knowledge and often go on to explore more self-directed learning experiences from their own classrooms.  Helping kids identify successes has similar energizing results.

The hammer is obvious when students interrupt instruction through poor behavior.  Usually the student is removed (as it should be), but often are sent to be punished rather than counseled.  The raft of rules in most schools often have the effect of removing responsibility from the student. (I've been told "There's no rule in the handbook on that" when a student is clearly not behaving in appropriate manner.  Do we really need more than one rule?  "Treat others the way you would want to be treated."  Everything else is just a variation on that. )  Oddly, rewards often have the same effect on a student's (and teacher's) sense of responsibility.

The top-down structure of our school systems have long been hammers looking for nails, but that mind-set also extends into the current American philosophy of criminal justice and political reality.

We can't really punish everyone, can we?

I'm ready for another tool.

State of the [teacher's] Union

Obama addressed the nation on Tuesday night in his annual State of the Union remarks to both houses of Congress.  


Of course, when education is referenced in these speeches, (as it always is-without fail) I perk up and listen.  In general the remarks are hollow rah-rahs for the need for stronger schools. Often, the pablum is packaged in red, white, and blue and little of substance is offered.


So far, I have yet to hear a politician say anything but supportive statements about the need for a strong education system.  The devil is in the details. 


For those who may have missed it, here is the portion of the State of the Union address where Obama referenced our floundering goals in education:

At a time when other countries are doubling down on education, tight budgets have forced States to lay off thousands of teachers. We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000. A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance.  Every person in this chamber can point to a teacher who changed the trajectory of their lives. Most teachers work tirelessly, with modest pay, sometimes digging into their own pocket for school supplies – just to make a difference. Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.

His remarks are shorthand for those who follow education issues and reflect most of what has gone on in the past year.  Here's the translation.


First of all, layoffs are looming.  Most localities will run out of stimulus money this year and will have to increase classroom sizes as they lay off teachers.


Then he references the recent report published in the New York Times on how effective teachers improve a child's earning power.  This report has dubious goals and questionable conclusions about using Value Added Measures which rely on test scores to rate a teacher's effectiveness, so the remark about what "we know" is not exactly all that quantifiable.  It is clear though that effective teachers who are well supported can make a difference. A large part of a teacher's ability to be effective hinges on the system he/she labors within.  Clearly the current system under NCLB has done much to stagnate student achievement in the past decade.  And equal access to a strong educational foundation has widened rather than narrowed.  Teachers argue that their ability to remain effective has been stripped from them.


Obama's line about saving poor children through education is seen by some as a cop-out for the rest of the nation.  Laying the cure for poverty at the feet of the teaching force absolves the rest of us from making changes to a tax code that dooms whole swaths of our electorate to a lifelong struggle for economic stability. Student achievement will benefit when households are not under continual strain.


The "bashing" line comes from the media onslaught starting with Waiting for Superman last fall and continuing in the NBC Education Nation where teachers and their unions have been routinely vilified and sidelined so that billionaires and corporatists can gain credibility in their argument that the cure for public education is a weakened teacher's union and tighter, more frequent measures of teacher effectiveness--i.e. testing, testing, testing, to produce data, data, data. 


The last bit--"let's offer schools a deal" refers to Obama's language in his actual "blueprint" (why is everything a blueprint these days?).  The blueprint was released after the speech and contains the following language in reference to a plan for education:

Attract, prepare, support, and reward great teachers to help students learn: 

Teaching is a profession and should be treated like one. The latest research says a great teacher could increase the lifetime income of an entire classroom by hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

The President is fighting to protect our schools from being hurt by the recession by providing states and communities with funds to prevent teacher layoffs, and avoid increases to class sizes or decreases in the number of school days. 

The President is also asking for a new competitive program that will challenge states and districts to work with their teachers and unions to comprehensively reform the teaching profession by:
o Reforming colleges of education and making these schools more selective;o Creating new career ladders for teachers to become more effective, and ensuring that
earnings are tied more closely to performance;o Establishing more leadership roles and responsibilities for teachers in running
schools; improving professional development and time for collaboration among teachers; and providing greater individual and collective autonomy in the classroom in exchange for greater accountability;
o Creating evaluation systems based on multiple measures, rather than just test scores; o Re-shaping tenure to raise the bar, protect good teachers, and promote accountability. 

So this list looks like the devil's details.  Those who have read the report Transforming Teaching: Connecting Professional Responsibility with Student Learning will recognize some of the bullet points.  The teachers who wrote the report argue that teachers will assume accountability when we have more control over the training, the workplace, and the criteria for advancement.  In other words, ownership of a supportive system in tandem with accountability.


The door is not fully open for professionalizing teaching, but this looks like a window to crawl through.  


Nothing happens until discussion ensues.  Start talking.   Our representatives need to know which bullet points need to be pushed forward in this agenda to lift teachers to the role of professional.  Our children and the future will benefit.

Teacher Effectiveness Measures - What's the problem?

Below are the remarks I was privileged to share before a full room on the VCU campus in Richmond on Saturday, October 1. The topic was "Merit Pay and Teacher Evaluation."  

The panel discussion was hosted by the Richmond Teachers for Social Justice, South Atlantic Philosophy of Education Society, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Education, and the Student Virginia Education Association. 

   I have been a teacher since 1978, and have been in the classroom since the beginning of No Child Left Behind.  Even prior to that, when the Standards of Learning first went into effect in Virginia, I commented to my colleagues that we already knew who was behind and did not need a measuring tool for that.  But removing our ability to evaluate our own students through outside testing was the first step in a campaign to de-professionalize every teacher in America and a clear signal that we would no longer be trusted to perform our jobs.
  What we need, and have needed for the past thirty or more years, are the tools, resources, professional training, and time to educate all children to high levels of performance.  Recently, the lion’s share of resources have been spent in “raising test scores” and not in improving effective practice.  And for that reason, I consider the past decade a complete stagnation, and in some places a reversal, of what teaching professionals consider best practice.
   I would like to state clearly that I am opposed to any merit pay system that is attached to student achievement connected to testing.  There are a number of reasons for my opposition, but the primary one is that it will fundamentally distort the relationship between the teacher and student in potentially damaging ways.
   We should not tie an adult’s livelihood to the performance of vulnerable children.  This immediately shifts our view of our work.  Suddenly children become potential commodities to be exploited or weak performers to be avoided.  This is fundamentally dangerous.  Those who need us most will be least served.
   As the stakes connected to testing have been increasingly raised over the years of NCLB there has been a steady increase in cheating scandals.  We can be assured that these scandals will find their way into individual classrooms and have a profound effect on student learning if teacher performance is measured against these narrow tools.
   The current plan in Virginia, to tie teacher evaluation to student growth causes me a great deal of concern.  To begin with, I do not understand what tools will be used to measure this growth and how they will be untangled from all the factors that affect student achievement.
   To my knowledge there is no reliable tool available for measuring a teacher’s effectiveness within a school year.  The psychometricians have repeatedly argued that Value Added Measures are extremely unreliable.  In addition, the experts clearly state that current criterion referenced tests were never designed to measure teacher effectiveness and is a misuse of their purpose.  In their own words these tools are “highly unstable” and correlate well only to the students in the classroom and not to the work of the teacher in the classroom.  And yet, federal, and now state, policy is being formulated around what amounts to a huge experiment in defining our work.
   One thing that is clear from the Race to the Top plan, which holds all teachers accountable and uses standardized tests as a large percentage of that measuring tool, is that taxpayer dollars will be diverted from the classroom to create and monitor the testing.  This is certain to build more of the downward pressure on teachers that has already proven to have a limited effect on student achievement . It will create a top-heavy bureaucracy that adds nothing to the quality of instruction and student learning.   It is, however, certain to benefit the test makers and the huge testing industry that has thrived during the last decade and has even continued to show rocketing profits in spite of the current economic downturn.
   It has already begun.  In my small district a testing program was purchased over the summer to begin tracking student reading levels, potentially as a measure of teacher effectiveness. Again, a tool never designed for this purpose.  If we are to track “teacher effectiveness” in every subject and grade, there will need to be more tools, some of which are yet to be brought into existence. Imagine what a juggernaut of testing all of our students, even the youngest will face.  Concurrently, our district has had a reduction in force, no salary increases, and cuts to professional development over the past four years.
   Over the past ten years, a the domain of a classroom teacher—evaluating student achievement—has  been “outsourced” to testing companies that produce measurements that are removed in both time and distance from the classroom and are limited in their effectiveness to improve instruction.  Testing programs have systematically stripped teachers of our decision-making abilities while simultaneously holding us accountable for the less-than stellar results. Teachers are frustrated with the decisions made at a distance that ultimately underserve student needs in the classroom.
   Teachers should not be the subjects of experiments in effective teaching.  Teachers must be partners in the study of effective practice.  Studies of effective practice should ultimately result in improved practice, not managerial, personnel decision-making. Is the real goal of the measurement process to pressure school administrators into removing some teachers?  If so, are they also not being trusted to do their jobs?
   We should be celebrating and sharing teacher knowledge, not creating an adversarial relationship with our students and our colleagues as this program promises to do.  Studying our own work, sharing best practice, and developing local, formative assessments will benefit every child and restore teachers to their role as coach, guide and evaluator.
   The current argument to measure teaching effectiveness is, in my opinion, a distraction from what needs to be done to reform our public schools that will create and maintain a robust teaching force ready to prepare our young people for an uncertain but rapidly changing future.

Other panelists were: Kitty Boitnott, President, Virginia Education Association; Tichi Pinkney Eppes of the Greater Richmond Education Reform Alliance; Stephanie Hooks of Richmond Public Schools; Martin Reardon, VCU Education Professor; and Gabriel Reich, VCU Education Professor.