Category Archives: teaching

August 25, 2014 · 12:32 pm

Welcoming a New Generation of Teachers

My university welcomes the Class of 2018 this week which means that I will begin teaching a new class of first year students enrolled in our secondary education and secondary/special education programs.  It goes without saying that I am consistently impressed with the caliber of young person I meet each year.  They have committed themselves to a program requiring hard work from them early in their college careers, and they have committed their talents and futures to a profession that is intellectually and emotionally demanding.  These are the types of young people I have admired since I began my work in teacher education in 1997 at the beginning of graduate school, and it is genuinely exciting to know how many of them over the years have stayed in teaching, honing their craft, becoming leaders and teaching many 1000s of young people over the years. This is incredible work.

My first year students were born in 1996, when I was still a high school English teacher, and they began Kindergarten in 2001.  This means that among the myriad of things the media likes to remind us that Millennials have “never known”, this class of Millennials has never known a school system without the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization of 2001, popularly known as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).  Hailed by President George W. Bush as refusing “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” NCLB ushered in an age when school districts, schools and teachers were to be held accountable by student results on mass standardized tests.  While President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” (RTTT) program was billed as loosening the punitive measures of NCLB, it has further entrenched mass test-based accountability by pushing states to adopt common standards and to include the results of students’ standardized test scores into teacher evaluation.  Any current hot potato issue in elementary and secondary education, from the Common Core State Standards, to the mass standardized testing and the use of those tests to evaluate can be traced back to the premise of both of these laws:  accountability of schools for students’ annual “progress” on mass testing is an appropriate lever to effect positive school change.

The cumulative impacts of these reforms on teachers, teacher morale and schools is a subject for another blog, but suffice to say that despite recent efforts to paint the picture more rosily, overall teacher morale has suffered and has suffered more in our schools that need help the most.  It hardly helps that most high profile efforts to “improve” teaching focus solely on weeding out teachers deemed to be ineffective and placing pressure on all teachers to demonstrate effectiveness via standardized test scores.  Absent in those reforms?  Improving school working conditions, increasing teacher collaboration and leadership, emphasis on markers of student learning and accomplishment outside of mass testing, addressing community poverty impacts and looking at what opportunities actually exist in our economy.

Despite all of this, I will meet a group of young people who want to teach.  Experience tells me that all of them, despite the environment in which they grew up, believe in the transformative potential of education and are genuinely committed to inspiring future generations of students.  

But this is also where a cautionary note must be sounded.  The process of becoming a teacher is not one that actually begins with university classes.  Most people begin to make the commitment to teach many years earlier.  Talk to an elementary school teacher, and you will frequently find someone who began with make believe games set in an imaginary classroom.  Talk to a secondary school teacher, and you will often find someone whose love of subject matter set her apart from peers from middle school forward.  During their long “careers” as K-12 students, future teachers observe upwards of 15,000 hours of teachers teaching which forms the backbone of what Dan Lortie called “the apprenticeship of observation” with which all teachers enter their formal preparation.  Unlike professionals in medicine and law, most students of teaching are intimately familiar with being the recipients of teachers’ practice, and it is that familiarity that largely inspires them to enter the field and informs their deeply personal visions of what it means to teach.

Many researchers have noted to much of what future teachers learn from this apprenticeship is incomplete and fails to capture all of the work that goes on beyond teachers’ in classroom performances.  Regardless, it is a beginning, and an important one to people who want to teach — it is our job in teacher education to layer upon it, making elements of it problematic so they can be revised and adding to it the hidden pedagogical skills of teachers that are not generally learned before teacher education.

If learning to teach, if the very commitment to learning to teach begins with the process of one’s own K-12 education, then it is vitally important to the profession and its future that we are mindful of the kinds of schools in which the future’s teachers are currently enrolled.  I would argue that we have done a poor job historically, but especially in the past 15 years, of listening to what teachers themselves believe will help them be better at their profession.  According to Francie Alexander of Scholastic, INC., a survey conducted for a joint Scholastic-Gates Foundation study by the Harrison Group found the following: 

  1. Most teachers feel heard in their own schools, but 69% do not believe they are listened to by district, state and federal players.
  2. 71% believe they need more time to study and understand the Common Core State Standards before implementing them.
  3. Teachers value collaboration, but 51% cite a lack of time for collaboration as a challenge.
  4. 99% of teachers believe their work goes beyond academics.
  5. 88% of teachers believe the rewards of teaching outweigh the challenges.

While that survey cited high levels of teachers “enthusiastic” about the Common Core standards, more recent surveys have shown significant cratering in teacher support.  Further, the overall satisfaction reported in this survey has to be weighed in contrast with the 2013 findings of the 29th annual Metlife Survey of Teachers which found only 39% of teachers said they were “very satisfied”.

There is a lot of “churn” in the waters of education today, and it is beyond admirable that so many teachers are able to take professional satisfaction in the concept of the “small victories” many of them routinely see in their work with students and community.  It is equally admirable that young people with exceptional talents and skills seek to join the profession.

But we must be careful that reforms are not allowed to alter the aspects of schooling that make it such rewarding work.  Mass test-based accountability that reduces teachers’ work to an “effectiveness rating” tied primarily to test scores is a toxic approach.  Not only does it disrespect the fullness of the work teachers know that they do, but also it over emphasizes what can even been learned from such tests, and few current reform advocates put their efforts behind better support, collaboration and leadership.  Schools must remain humane places where teachers and students can meet as far more than average annual progress calculations, or we will lose those who wish to become teachers because they want to do good in the world.  If our vision of school tilts too heavily towards the technical/rational aspects of measurement in learning and ignores the humanistic development side, we will end up with future teachers who lack a rich and full vision of their profession.

Think of it this way:  If you have a baby born this year, she will be ready to enter high school in 2028.  Many of her potential ninth grade teachers were born in 2006 and are beginning 3rd grade this Fall, the grade where most high stakes testing begins in earnest.

What kinds of school experience do you want your child’s teachers to have?

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August 19, 2014 · 4:06 pm

Frank Bruni and the Failure of the New York Times

For more than a year now, I have despaired of the New York Times’ editorial page whenever the topic of education reform has come up.  It is not because those pages have disagreed with me, although it would be pleasant to occasionally see representation of lively and vital debate make it on to those pages.  It is because the editorialists who have opined on the reform efforts now engulfing America’s public education have appeared so ill-informed that there even is a debate to be had, writing pieces that have graced the pages of America’s “Gray Lady” of journalism with what could have been submitted to them as brochures from Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee.  On topics from the Common Core State Standards to the issues and concerns with teacher preparation, columnists such as David Brooks, Joe Nocera, Frank Bruni and Bill Keller have provided staggeringly limited perspectives and have even taken effectively discredited organizations and reports at face value.  Again, it is not that these columnists do not see things my way that is the problem, but by entirely failing to engage the arguments even in passing, they have acted as if those arguments do not exist.

Today, Frank Bruni entered the fray again with a remarkably one-sided piece about teacher tenure.  I will not dissect all of its problematic assumptions here, but I will point out that Bruni’s source on the “problems” with tenure is ONE individual, a former TFA teacher and current state senator in Colorado who was central to efforts that tied teachers’ contract renewals to multiple years of student gains in, you guessed it, standardized testing.  For his take on an issue that effects the working conditions and workplace protections of the millions of public school teachers in America to be limited to one source is staggering. Mr. Bruni also directly quotes the judge in the California Vergara lawsuit as if there were not reams of critiques of the judge’s legal reasoning and use of controversial research.

And thanks to some Internet sleuthing on Twitter, it also demonstrates an apparent flaw in how the OpEd page of the New York Times operates today.  Mr. Bruni may not come to the issue of teacher tenure entirely out of natural interest:

According to this People Magazine article located by teachers and posted to Twitter, Mr. Bruni is a personal friend of Campbell Brown, the former NBC and CNN news personality who has dedicated herself to suing teacher tenure out of existence first in New York and then elsewhere.

Mr. Bruni is, of course, entitled to the friends he wishes, but the operation of the flagship newspaper of the world’s oldest continuous democracy ought to be better than this.  Given the thoroughly one-sided and completely unresearched positions staked out by David Brooks, Joe Nocera, Bill Keller and Frank Bruni, it is easy to postulate how Mr. Bruni’s wading into the Tenure Wars took place.  A personal phone call from a personal friend is made.  It is suggested that he ought to turn his talents upon this very important issue that is “for the kids”.  He is even given the name of an impressive person to contact and an offer of an introduction.  Voila.  “Partnership For Educational Justice” gets free replication of their talking points against teacher tenure on the OpEd page of the New York Times.

The position of opinion writer on the New York Times is a highly privileged one.  I suspect that those who hold that position are frequently contacted by the influential in society with suggestions towards what they should aim their pens.  It should come, therefore, with great sense of responsibility for recognizing when there are areas in our society with dynamic and complex debates, and, when taking a position, demonstrating an understanding of those complexities.

Mr. Bruni and his esteemed colleagues at the Times have repeatedly demonstrated no such understanding.  It is well past time for the editorial board to either seek out additional voices on these issues or to provide their opinion writers with remedial instruction on how to acknowledge and engage arguments without simply bypassing them in favor of one-sided talking points.

Alternately, Mr. Bruni and his colleagues could meet more people.  I know quite a few who would be happy to provide more information.

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August 13, 2014 · 6:59 am

Interview on NJ Public Television 8/12/2014

I was part of a story on New Jersey Public TV’s News with Mary Alice Williams last night.  The feature report was on the issue of teacher retention and the future of the profession:

The full story with text and user comments can be found here.

From the interview with me:

One longtime South Jersey teacher says we’re losing the art of teaching and putting too much emphasis on the science of teaching. And here at Seton Hall University, Dr. Katz says that’s a result of the push and the urge to reform.

“We are looking for teacher effectiveness in a lot of the wrong places. It’s not that teachers shouldn’t be held accountable for teaching students. Obviously, they should be. But, the impact that a teacher has on a young person goes well beyond what can be measured on standardized tests — academically, socially, emotionally. How do you measure inspiration? And that’s a reallyimportant part of what our best teachers do,” Katz said.

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August 12, 2014 · 1:55 pm

Messages From the Tenure War – “Teachers Aren’t Special”

When Campbell Brown goes on air to discuss the lawsuits against teacher tenure protections, she knows how to comport herself.  First, it is very important to profess her respect for teachers and the teaching profession and to make it clear she just wants teaching to be a well-compensated and treated profession.  Then she has to express a completely sincere desire that the profession improve for the sake itself and the children. At this point, she has to point out that the laws she is suing to overturn stand in the way of that improvement and that it is simply ridiculous to oppose that effort.  When on The Colbert Report, she conveyed this message by leaning forward and pitching her voice for maximum earnestness as she stated that everybody agrees that the due process and “last in first out” provisions are “just anachronistic.”  A media representative has to make the pitch appealing to the broadest possible demographic.

Her general audience supporters are under no such restraints.

I’ve been reading #WithoutTenure on Twitter and made the very poor choice to read comments on some news articles about the lawsuit.  Obviously, some people support Ms. Brown’s efforts, and that  is expected in a democratic society.  What I did not expect was the periodic denigration of teachers as a whole and fairly serious hostility to the concept that teachers have job protections  granted through tenure that the respondents do not believe other professions have.  A refrain that sums up the attitude is “Teachers aren’t special.”

Teachers aren’t special.

Hostility towards teachers’ due process protections is necessarily a complex phenomenon.  President Ronald Reagan made contempt for unionized workers fashionable in his first administration, and since the late 1970s, public approval for organized labor has ticked down from 59% to 52% with some fluctuations along the way.  Public disapproval, however, has steadily gained from 31% to 42%, meaning that there is decreasing middle ground in public opinion on unions at a time when less than 11% of the total workforce is unionized.  Some of the contemptuous remarks certainly stem from the growth in hostility to unions.

Some who expressed that opinion based it on their belief that teachers are given undue job protections via tenure that other professional workers in the economy do not have.  Part of this is stems from the popular misconception, encouraged by Ms. Brown, that a teacher with tenure has “permanent lifetime employment” and is shielded from removal even in the face of serious incompetence or misconduct.  Another part stems from a belief that the critics do not possess any particular protections in their employment, even in highly skilled fields, and a demand to know what about teachers makes them deserve what the others do not have.  This is a particularly odd and perhaps uniquely American aspect of class relationships.  Instead of asking why their employer or profession does not do more to protect and compensate them fairly, many Americans demand to know why others are better protected and/or compensated.  We tend to fight our class wars against each other in the United States.

I cannot solve that tangled mess in this essay, but I do want to examine one of its consequences: Teachers aren’t special.  It sits me back on my chair a bit, to be honest.  Wrapping my head around it is nearly impossible as I have spent every working day of my life since 1993 around teachers, either as a high school English teacher or as a graduate researcher or as a college professor.  I have met, worked with and taught some incredibly special teachers over the years, and I am continuously impressed by the caliber of young person who shows up at our teacher education program each Fall looking to start her or his professional career.  These are people who could have sought more lucrative careers , and having worked with them I do not doubt that most could have been successful in those careers.  However, something draws them to teaching: a passion for learning, for a subject matter and for the transformational power that it holds, for children and their growth.

Gary Fenstermacher, Richard Osguthorpe and Matthew Sanger, writing in the Summer, 2009 issue of Teacher Education Quarterly, discussed how teaching not only involves  content related to morality but also demands moral characteristics of teachers:

Just how teachers attended to moral matters became more apparent as we examined the connections between moral manner and moral content more closely.  We sought to “see” the ways they imparted moral ideas and ideals to their students.  We encountered six methods used by most or all of the teachers as they went about the work of teaching their students.  They are: 1) the construction of the classroom community, 2) showcasing specific students, 3) design and execution of academic task structures, 4) calling out for conduct of a particular kind, 5) private conversations, and 6) didactic instruction (Fenstermacher, 2001).  These six methods suggest how moral traits and dispositions of teachers might be reflected in their practice.  They also suggest an important interplay between moral content and moral manner. (p. 12)

The authors go on to ask their central question, “how do we seek ensure that those who teach possess a moral manner that is proper and appropriate for the tasks of teaching, and that they learn to employ this manner properly and appropriately in the course of instruction?” (p. 16)  This is something much deeper than professional ethics, although those matter for teachers as well, because we entrust that teachers will be involved in the implicit of explicit instruction of moral conduct for their students through both the curriculum and the environment in which it is taught.

It is very clear to me what it is that makes teachers “special,” and it is the sense that they are as much in a vocation that is of service to others as they are in a profession in service of themselves.  When people dismiss the due process rights in tenure by saying “teachers are not special” they are simply dead wrong.  It is true, however, that teachers are not unique in this central premise of vocationalism.  Many, in a wide range of professions, are driven by the call to serve purposes greater than themselves.  There are doctors who seek to aid those in lands afflicted by disease and warfare, and there are medical practitioners who eschew more lucrative practices in the effort to provide needed general and family practice.  There are lawyers who dedicate themselves to low cost or pro bono services for the indigent , and there are attorneys who seek to use their talents to right great wrongs.  Fields like nursing and social work are full of people who are on the front line of patient and client care and who are primarily motivated by their desire to help those in great need and with little voice.

Teachers are special.  They are not unique in how special they are.

Which still leaves an open question:  If teachers are special in a way that is shared across other professions what is it about tenure and its due process protections that matter for teachers?  There is no single answer to this.  However,  not only do teachers need strong due process, but also good teachers need it even more.  Reflecting back upon what Fenstermacher, Osguthorpe and Sanger wrote, it is clear that good teachers must be motivated to rock the boat on behalf of their students.  Having a “moral manner” is not simply about appropriate behavior, it is about appropriate advocacy that will sometimes run afoul of administration and community expectations.

A good teacher will question curriculum priorities and instructional materials on behalf of students and their needs.  A good teacher will question spending priorities within a school a district if classroom needs are neglected.  A good teacher will advocate that students receive special education, ESL and enrichment materials that will enhance their experience and provide them with opportunities to learn.  A good teacher will help unpopular viewpoints gain a voice within the class regardless of the teacher’s or the community’s views.  A good teacher insists on the integrity of instruction and assessment even if it means a popular student athlete is made ineligible to compete or if it means the child of a local politician does not pass a class.  A good teacher collaborates with peers and experiments with new teaching strategies and constantly questions whether or not what is happening in the classroom, the school and the community is what is best for students.  A good teacher will make people uncomfortable at least some of the time.

A good teacher must do all of these things even as he or she is an employee of a system controlled and administered via local politics.  Teachers, of all of the moral vocations, are the most public and the most in need of the ability to openly question and confront on behalf of students and learning.  Taking away the due process rights of tenure diminishes the ability of teachers to buck the system and to make necessary waves for the good of their students.

Reference:

Fenstermacher, G.D., Osguthorpe, R.D., Sanger, M. (2009). “Teaching Morally and Teaching Morality.” Teacher Education Quarterly, 36 (3), 7-19.

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August 5, 2014 · 1:32 pm

Whoopi Goldberg Gets Taken to School on Tenure

This came across my Twitter feed this morning.

Keith Reeves is a teacher, and he decided to help Whoopi Goldberg better understand tenure.  Ms. Goldberg needed the lesson because in the wake of Campbell Brown’s publicity tour for her lawsuit against New York State’s tenure laws, The View did a brief segment on the suit, and, charitably, the segment could have been written by Michelle Rhee’s publicity agent.  One host repeated the boilerplate claim that teachers have a union but nobody is watching out for the kids (as if teachers, on the whole, did not do that).  Another host said, with emphasis, that a HARVARD ECONOMIST had estimated that a good teacher makes a difference of a quarter million dollars per child in the classroom — despite the fact that said economist, Raj Chetty, is hardly beyond professional criticism of his research techniques.

Then it was Ms. Goldberg’s turn who professed herself a “thinker” and then more or less demanded that all teachers go after the “bad teachers” and even suggested that “maybe some of those folks should go” from the Democratic party.  Presumably, she meant people who think that going after teacher tenure is not a good policy and who oppose changing it via lawsuits funded by — well, we don’t know by who.  Nobody is telling us.

The segment was brief and extremely low information.  Nobody disputes that there are bad teachers in classrooms, but nothing has been presented that demonstrates that tenure rules specifically are the main reason that they are there.  Nor has anything been presented that demonstrates that removal of tenure for ALL teachers is an effective policy for addressing that portion of the teacher corps that should be removed from teaching.  No amount of sincere shouting for the cameras is going to make that evidence appear.

Teachers and supporters took to Twitter to explain some of Ms. Goldberg and her compatriots’ misconceptions:

That’s obviously a small sample.  Well, Ms. Goldberg heard the words, but not the message and offered what can only be described as a trite and trivial self defense:

In steps Mr. Reeves with an eloquent and high information response for Ms. Goldberg:

His complete reply can be found at his blog, here.

As Dr. Alyssa Hadley Dunn of Michigan State University made clear in the Washington Post, the standard arguments against teacher tenure lack evidence and they are often thin on logic as well.  If teachers having tenure protections were highly correlated to ineffective teachers being in the classroom, then our wealthy suburbs that have the most experienced teachers with the lowest rates of teacher attrition (and thus the highest proportion of teachers with tenure) would have ineffective classroom after ineffective classroom.  Stripping all the teachers of a state of the due process rights they are afforded by tenure because it “makes sense” to people who have either not examined the research or who are falling for blatant distortions of the truth is not the best way to serve students.

I would like to think that with enough exposure to this argument, that it will begin to make sense to Ms. Goldberg, and that it will be taken into account the next time this topic is discussed in front of millions of viewers.

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July 1, 2014 · 1:39 pm

Ms. Tullo — Portrait of a Great Teacher

Recently, I contemplated what it would take to really evaluate a teacher preparation program in contrast with the methods employed by the National Council of Teacher Quality.  My thoughts rested  with actual measurements of program effectiveness and quality, but they also rested with the graduates of the program and the education narratives they compose with their actual students in actual schools.  In an age when we valorize data from test scores far beyond their designed capacities, it is important to pause and see how lives are impacted by teachers in ways that affirm the aesthetic in teaching.

A number of my former students came to mind as I considered that question, and, among them, is Ms. Shaina Tullo, a member of Seton Hall’s Class of 2010 and an English teacher in the northern New Jersey area.  I taught Shaina in a number of classes from our introductory history of education and foundations course, to a course on the role of diversity in the classroom and her secondary English methods course.  From the beginning of her teacher education, it was obvious that she was sincerely dedicated both to reading and writing and to helping new generations of children learn to love them both.  Shaina always demonstrated a passion for the English language, a deep appreciation of the power that is embodied in language and genuine excitement at the thought of working with her future students born of her own discovery of what language’s power can do.  What was perhaps most impressive about Shaina as a teacher candidate was how consistently she reminded me of why I had originally become an English teacher.

Naturally, I was delighted when she agreed to let me write about her and her work in this blog, and she was very informative when answering my questions.  I will let her words speak on her behalf from this point forward:

How did you decide to become a teacher?  Which people and which experiences were most influential for that decision?

Ironically enough, I decided to be a teacher when I was in kindergarten. I actually have a photo of my kindergarten graduation with my “When I Grow Up”project which stated that I wanted to be a teacher and teach children how to read books.  Seems like quite a bit of foreshadowing, huh?  This was definitely drawn from my experiences in and outside of school.  To say I grew up from modest means would be an understatement.  School, and moreover, books became a method of escapism and wonderment that would carry me through the hardships of growing up in poverty.

Additionally, the unwavering support of my educators throughout my school years drove me to education. I have been blessed with some of the most diligent and beautiful educators throughout my school life.  Mrs. Goldenbaum, my first and third grade teacher, condoned my book habit at a young age.  Once, when crying because the librarian would not let a seven year-old me check out Joan of Arc, she marched me to the library and took it herself.  We had to renew the book about five times, but I finished it.  My eighth grade English teacher, Mr. Weissman, was an invaluable member of my life and continued to push me towards more complex texts while nurturing my love of poetry and creative writing.  He would read my stories religiously—even the horrifically bad ones—and provide meaningful feedback.  In high school, Mademoiselle Cermak and Mr. Bischoff became surrogate parents, offering life lessons and advice on everything from prom dresses to boyfriends to the philosophical ramifications of existentialism. All of these people were monumental in helping me towards teaching.  They awakened in me the need to give of myself, to strive for excellence, and to love unconditionally. So, in a sense, the decision to become an educator was never something I pondered over. It seemed to be what I was always meant to do.

What is most important to you about teaching English?  Why is this subject important?

Teaching English, to me, is more than just analyzing symbolism or parsing poetry for deeper meaning.  To teach English is to study the human condition, to examine life as it should be lived and as it has been lived across cultures and time.  There is something so remarkable about finding truth, didacticism, advice, hope, despair, and fear within the written word.  My subject is important because it teaches students how to live life well, and is an essential component in understanding our humanity.  Other subjects, mathematics, science, foreign languages, are pursuits that will undoubtedly aid those in my classroom in being intelligible, functioning members of society.  But few subjects get to help formulate identity, as is the case in an English classroom.

What do you think draws most people to become English teachers?

I truly believe that English teachers are a special breed of people. We are, for starters, a very bookish bunch, but a reader does not necessarily make an English teacher. Those of us who are driven to teach English are profoundly inspired by text, by literary culture, and by words. We seek to guide others on this path because we believe it will profoundly alter their lives for the better. And those of us who are truly devoted to the study of literature, will continue with this pursuit in the face of resistance. It is too important a task and, thus, we are not easily shaken.

Explain your education as a teacher –from being a student, to being a student of teaching to being a teacher.  What was influential and helpful at all three phases of your education?

The progression from student to teacher is a very gradual one and, perhaps, the minutia of it may be lost on the outside world.  I would say the most easily traceable difference is the progression from philosophy to practicality.  As a student in high school, most lessons are very philosophical and idea heavy.  We discuss motivation, draw inferences, and express feelings.  As I moved into being a student of education, particularly as I moved through the teacher education program at Seton Hall, more and more practical aspects are integrated into education.  No longer was I dealing with the abstract, I was creating lesson plans, units, assessments with purpose.  This is practical.  And, of course, being a teacher, comes the most practical of all the stages in which most of which I produce is utilized.

I will say that Seton Hall was a remarkable institution for guiding me through all the phases of this process.  That my field placements started much earlier than other teacher education programs was invaluable.  I was able to have tangible and meaningful experiences in classrooms, such that I never experienced the “first year jitters”when I finally had my own classroom.  At that point, it seemed as though the classroom was a natural extension of myself. To this end, the various lesson planning and assessments done throughout my program at Seton Hall were so helpful.  Not only do I frequently use many of the artifacts I produced during my undergraduate years in my own classroom, but I also have the skills required to create high quality items for my class.  Throughout my four years as a teacher, I have consistently been complimented on the quality and caliber of the artifacts I generate for class.

What are some of the most important things a future teacher should learn before entering the classroom?

First and foremost, a future teacher should master his or her content. I cannot explain how invaluable this is in preparing yourself for a classroom, for without a deep knowledge of content, real learning cannot happen.

To this end, practical components of teaching should be mastered before entering the classroom. Understanding the basic tenants of teaching pedagogy and lesson planning, methods for employing differentiated instruction, and the philosophy and justification for differing types of assessment should not necessarily be mastered, as mastery will take the sum total of many years of teaching, but any future teacher should have a good working knowledge of these concepts.

I would also say that a lot of the important things a teacher will learn (classroom management, quick-thinking, the ability to balance work and social life) can only truly be learned in a classroom. In your first year, in your first classroom, you will fail.  Lessons you thought would profoundly change the lives of your students will be met with glazed eyes and snores.  This is natural, and will help shape you into the educator you want to be.  So, in a sense, the most important thing a future teacher can learn is the ability to forgive oneself, embrace failure, and learn from mistakes.

Can you describe a “typical”day teaching?  What is most memorable to you day by day?

A typical teaching day starts with arriving early and basking in the quiet of the halls for an hour or so before the students arrive.  This gives ample time to ready myself (literally and mentally) for the day.  The actual teaching component of the day flies by. This year I taught six classes and I always felt like the most enjoyable part of the day was the actual class time I spent with my student.  Almost all of my free time (lunch, prep periods, after school) is devoted to talking with or helping the students in some capacity.  This is the blessing (though some may call it a curse) of being a popular teacher in school.  The students often want to spend time with you.  I would recommend taking this time with the students as much as possible and within reason.  It is these quiet moments outside of class where students need you most.  They come under the guise of “hanging out”at lunch, but the amount that is shared in this time period is paramount.  Consequently, it is these moments that endear the students to you and you to them.  This allows for an environment of mutual respect and understanding.  It creates a mentor/mentee relationship in which you can become a positive adult role model for the students.  For a lot of students, particularly where I work in an inner city, having a grounded adult is very important as this may be the most stable time period in their whole day. These are always my favorite moments when teaching.

One of my favorite anecdotes surrounding teaching was this year during the spring musical.  I directed our production of Little Shop of Horrors which was an amazing experience but also a very stressful one as our theater program was very new.  As a former performer myself, I really did work the students very hard throughout preparation for the play (the theater kids started the rumor that I was tougher than the basketball coach). But, on opening night, when I was backstage with the kids who were all very nervous, I told them that the most important part of the play was to have fun. This alleviated so much tension and prompted what became a traditional backstage dance party.  It was so wonderful seeing the kids loosen up and enjoy themselves at what would have otherwise been a very stressful moment.  And, as it turned out, our production was nearly flawless.

Another one of my favorite times of year involved my work at my former school where I was the yearbook adviser. Our club sponsored all the social clubs, and we would frequently put on dances as a fundraiser. Being after school with an army of children, having about two hours to transform the gym into something other than a gym was always very stressful but also the most fun we had all year. The gym was always beautifully decorated and we always had successful dances, but seeing the kids pull together to create massive pieces of decoration was always tremendously rewarding. Our post-decorating dinner of pizza always impressed upon me a feeling of family, as we would laugh about whose tape ran out or who had paint on their faces.

One of my other favorite accomplishments that actually deals with the classroom involves my juniors from this year. When I first started teaching them, I realized the students in my class had never written academic analytical papers or conducted research of any kind. To be blunt, on average, their writing skills had been far below grade level.  I spent an extraordinary amount of time after their first papers were due teaching academic writing, research, and analysis. Finally, in March, I sat down to grade a stack of Othello papers and was absolutely impressed with the body of work I had received. Not only were my students writing academically, but they were uncovering nuance of text that I myself had not considered. I actually almost cried over how far they had grown and how much they had developed. It was definitely a gradual development throughout the year, but those papers really did move me.

How important are your fellow teachers to your daily work?

My fellow teachers are very important to my daily work. I have been blessed in both schools where I have worked, in that my fellow staff members were always extremely helpful and outgoing. There has always been a support network available to share materials, collaborate with projects, or share snacks on a particularly bad day.

Cross-curricular planning is also a very vital method for improving student achievement, as it ensures students’abilities to make connections and draw upon multiple intelligences. Having a teacher to work with is very helpful in this regard. Most recent, I taught The Things They Carried as a cross-curricular component to my juniors’unit on Vietnam in US History II. A lot of students said this was their favorite unit all year, as it provided faces and emotion to what would otherwise seem like a very rigid history unit. In turn, my students brought with them a breadth of knowledge as to the context of the events in the novel.

Also, given the demographics of where I teach, I often rely heavily on the foreign language department of school to provide translations and assistance when interacting with the parents of students who are non-English speaking families. Having the interpersonal relationships with these staff members help create a classroom culture that is both accommodating and welcoming.

What is your teaching “philosophy”?  What beliefs and commitments guide your teaching?

I am actually going to copy the first paragraph of my philosophy of education as it appears in my teacher portfolio:

First and foremost, each class has a different culture and personality dependent upon their past educational experiences. This is equally true of teachers. To teach is to find a marriage of class culture and teacher philosophy. As a teacher, I find myself consistently engrossed in developing my craft of teaching, especially when done in order to better meet the needs of my classes’cultures. Thus, the philosophies represented are a testament to my current beliefs and practices. They are in no way finite. I am committed to constantly adapting and changing my beliefs and practices in light of new data or new student needs. When it pertains to the teaching reading and writing, I find that five major beliefs shape my philosophy: (1) I believe that there is an inherent and necessary need for the study of reading and writing (2) I believe in the power of reading as a method of attaining lifelong thinking skills (3) I believe in the wide-reaching and pervasive importance of writing (4) I believe that assessment of reading and writing needs to reflect true learning by emphasizing process over product (5) I believe technology and the teaching of reading and writing is not exclusive.

Is there anything you would say to one of your students who wants to teach?

I would tell one of my students who wanted to teach that this career is about sacrifice. We give of ourselves so much, and, sometimes, we do so without thanks. But, if you can endure the long hours and can commit yourself to a life where your accomplishments are often immeasurable or unknown, then you will be rewarded in profound and extraordinary ways. You will see students grow to unbelievable heights and you will shape them in ways that they themselves may never notice. It is a beautiful life with so, so many rewards, and I fully recommend it.

I have been a part of conversations between other faculty members and students who have advised students not to become teachers, “Be anything but a teacher. Be something better,” they said. I even had a professor say the same thing to me in college when she found out my major. It is a hard job, yes, and it pervades your identity. But there are few careers that offer such tremendous rewards as teaching. It may take the right type of person, but when the person is right amazing things can happen.

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June 27, 2014 · 2:23 pm

Jamming Square Pegs into Round Holes: Arne Duncan Sets Sights on Special Education

United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced a new focus on special education on Tuesday of this week.  The federal government will shift its resources for monitoring state compliance with the Individual’s with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) from examining procedural compliance and begin looking at “outcomes” for students with disabilities using a new framework called “Results-Driven Accountability (RDA).  This new framework will include participation in state curriculum assessments and data on reading and mathematics achievement for disabled students using the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) the examination sponsored by the DOE every two years to gather a snapshot of national trends in education.  According to the Washington Post:

To calculate how states stack up under the new criteria, the department is using a complex matrix that weighs several factors, including how well students with disabilities perform on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, a test the federal government gives to a sampling of students in every state every two years.

NAEP is designed to offer a snapshot of academic performance. This marks the first time the government has tied NAEP scores to consequences.

Duncan brushed aside the suggestion that the new approach adds to a climate of high-stakes standardized testing. “I wouldn’t call it high-stakes,” he said.

Given that the federal government allocates 11.5 billion dollars a year to the states to assist with special education, that assurance is likely to ring hollow to state and local officials charged with compliance.

I will give Secretary Duncan credit for one factual observation in his conference call with reporters;  most students who qualify for an individualized education plan (IEP) do not have cognitive disabilities that severely limit their ability to engage with a challenging curriculum.  But pretty much every other underlying assumption of this shift to an RDA compliance system is problematic.

Let’s start with the existing compliance of states under previous federal guidelines.  The DOE notes that under previous compliance guidelines, 38 states were in compliance with IDEA and under the new guidelines that number will drop to 15. I would suggest that if previous compliance standards which focused upon procedural compliance told the federal DOE that 38 states were in compliance with no need of assistance or intervention then those procedural guidelines were hideously flawed.  The Bay Area NBC station found over 10,000 families in California went to court over disputes with districts over special education services, and that number represents only the fraction of families that had the resources to pursue their dispute to that level.  Even Massachusetts, a state that pioneered services for disabled students and which meets the new requirements, is not precisely immune from being sued for noncompliance.  While states are rated on their compliance, it is up to actual districts and schools to implement the provisions of special education law, and many districts, suffering from budget restraints and state aid cuts, have to be sued in order to even begin an evaluation process for a potential special needs learner. Secretary Duncan made some deal about the DOE’s 11.5 billion dollar commitment to special education in the country, but with 6.5 million students eligible for services, that amounts to an underwhelming $1,769.23 per student nationwide, and the Council of Exceptional Children (CEC) notes that in 40 years, the federal government has NEVER fulfilled its promise to fully fund IDEA.

If Secretary Duncan wants to improve services for special education students, he could start by endorsing full funding of IDEA and actually determine if states are even in procedural compliance with far better measures than currently employed.

Another flaw of this plan resides directly in the use of state assessments and the NAEP for purposes of assessing state compliance and, eventually, adding punitive measures for states whose disabled students do not make regular improvement on those exams.  Placing this requirement on the NAEP would be tremendous mistake for several reasons.  NAEP is designed to provide a snapshot of the educational landscape in the United States, and part of its usefulness is tied the lack of any significant stakes attached to it.  By potentially tying special education compliance to the NAEP, the incentive will exist for states and districts to make special education students’ education consist of test preparation.  Mr. Duncan can breezily dismiss that concern all he wants, but the best way to assure that special education students across the students find themselves in self contained classrooms aimed at test preparation is to measure compliance this way.  We have some idea about how this unfolds from NCLB already.

Secretary Duncan also made major mistakes in his assessment of special education students’ “rising to the challenge.”  I must emphasize again that he is partially correct:  classified students CAN and, in fact, DO achieve within materials similar to or identical to their general education peers.  Very few of the students who qualify for IEPs under federal law are significantly cognitively disabled, and it is an article of faith among professional teachers that “all children can learn”.

BUT — that article of faith comes with an important caveat: All children can learn to the degree of their ability when provided with appropriate accommodations and when measured in a manner that allows them to demonstrate their understanding.  In a way, this corollary applies to all children, but general education students are more likely to cluster around a set of skills and capacities that distribute normally on a standardized examination.  By definition, many students with disabilities do not, and this does not mean that they are incapable of learning.

It means we are often incapable of measuring their learning in a fair and accurate way via a paper and pencil standardized test.

This does not require a lot of imagination.  Picture a child with severe dyslexia or ADHD.  This is certainly a child who is capable of learning, and a skilled general education teacher working with a child study team and following a well designed IEP can create assessments of learning and supplemental experiences in the classroom where that child demonstrates substantial learning.  That same learning may not be on display during a paper and pencil standardized examination that requires hours of time in a seat.  This can apply to a child with sensory issues or a behavioral disorder.  It is not that schools should or do abandon such a child to not learn within the goals of a general education curriculum: it is that the entire process of special education is meant to serve accommodations that allow the child to engage the material and demonstrate learning in appropriate ways with input from experts on learning.

Mr. Duncan, do you have a standardized exam that does this?

But this is the problem with the federal DOE under Secretary Duncan.  Having committed to big data sets as the be all and end all of understanding what is going on in education and having determined that standardized test scores are the most important measure of educational accomplishment, we now have a special education compliance policy that is going to try to force the most square of pegs into Secretary Duncan’s round hole of test based accountability.

Image from Toothpaste for Dinner: http://toothpastefordinner.com/archives/2011/Jun/

Image from Toothpaste for Dinner: http://toothpastefordinner.com/archives/2011/Jun/

Before ramming 6.5 million special education students into test based accountability, I would suggest several alternative approaches:

1) Vigorously advocate for the CEC’s proposal to FULLY fund the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act.

2) Monitor GENUINE procedural compliance with the provisions of IDEA.

3) Add new compliance measures such as parental satisfaction surveys with special education services provided.

4) Assist states with creation of qualitative measures of special education students’ progress.

5) Add federal assistance to community agencies that help connect families in poverty to special education services

NAEP data can remain what it ought to be: a snapshot of student skills that can inform the creation of further policy, but not be linked to consequences.

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June 26, 2014 · 6:42 am

Eva Moskowitz’s “Success”

The founding class of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy chain of “no excuses” charter schools graduated from eighth grade last week.  Of the original class of 73 students who enrolled in 2006, 32 made it to last week, and, according to Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News, despite 27 of those students sitting for the entrance exams to New York City’s highly selective public high schools, no Success Academy graduate qualified for admission.  Moskowitz has widely touted her schools’ closing of the achievement gap between racial demographics on state issued standardized tests, and while the city’s elite high schools are rightly criticized for their low enrollment of black and Latino children, Gonzalez notes that the overall 12% acceptance rate for black and Latino students taking the test should have given as many as 3 acceptances from Moskowitz’s school.

This is not news that should produce any satisfaction even among Ms. Moskowitz’s most fierce critics, nor should any criticism be aimed at the young children involved.  Despite my serious reservations about the atmosphere and techniques employed by Ms. Moskowitz’s charter chain, I have no doubt that the young people who have been at Success Academy 1 since 2006 are admirable and hard working young people, and it is my sincerest hope that they have bright futures ahead of them.  Nor do I want my criticism of Moskowitz’s methods and self promotion to second guess the parents who have sought out and appreciated her schools’ focus on discipline and raising test scores.  However, Ms. Moskowitz has applied to the state for another 14 Success Academies and under the current state budget deal approved in Albany, New York City will have no say in granting these charters and will have to provide space for the schools or pay Moskowitz’s rent in another facility.  The sharp decline in the enrollment of her first graduating class and her curriculum’s inability to place graduates in the city’s most selective high schools (despite her claims of closing the achievement gap) requires the asking of some sharp questions.

And it is well beyond time that Ms. Moskowitz answer questions of the public that is required by law to pay for her schools.

Ms. Moskowitz is not controversial merely for her confrontational manner nor for her refusal to let the state examine how her chain uses the substantial sums it gets from taxpayers.  Success Academy is part of the “no excuses” camp of education reform that insists if you fire the right teachers, insist upon extreme personal rigor and focus upon the “basics” that you can close the historic achievement gap between white and Asian students and their black and Latino peers. The school of thought has powerful advocates among the likes of Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein and demonstrably has the ear of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the rest of the Obama administration.  It has a certain appeal if you do not think about it too hard.  These critics decry those who focus on anti-poverty and anti-racism efforts as “excusing” bad teaching and claim that if people just work hard enough, historic gaps in academic progress, and presumably economic progress, would close.  In doing so, however, they take up two exceptionally pernicious implied arguments.  The first is that the well-demonstrated deprivations of poverty do not matter so long as the school demands enough out of its students.  The second is that the existence of children who demonstrate the desired perseverance proves that others are just slacking and could overcome if only they just worked hard enough.  Both of these beliefs diminish genuinely complex issues to slogans and side step societal responsibility to address poverty.

Moskowitz’s schools take this to extremes.  The New York Times reported in 2011, when the Success chain had only 7 schools, how children who do not fit into its very narrow mode find themselves subjected to excessive punishments and ongoing suggestions that they should leave.  In less than a month of Kindergarten at Success Academy 3, Matthew Sprowal was subjected to so much pressure and punishment (he has ADD) that he was throwing up most mornings, and his mother received direct communication from Moskowitz herself strongly implying her son should be at another school.  This is not an isolated case.  In 2010-2011, Success 1 suspended a fifth of its students at least once.  Public schools in the same neighborhood suspend 3% of students in a typical year.  Further, evidence exists that the schools place special pressures on the parents of disabled students to seek different schools.  A parent at Upper West Success taped school officials saying they could not properly accommodate her Kindergarten student’s IEP and offering to find him a public school placement.

Charter schools like Success Academy take students from a lottery, and in theory, that lottery ensures that they are not selective like exclusive private schools, but practices like those reported by former Success Academy families demonstrate that the schools do not abide by a spirit of inclusiveness (and may actually violate state and federal law).  Moskowitz repeatedly tells the media that she is succeeding with the city’s neediest children, but her schools clearly enroll far fewer children on free and reduced lunch, fewer children with disabilities and fewer children who are second language learners than her neighboring district schools, and the pattern of those students who leave the schools in the early grades is not random.

It is true that Success Academy students get higher than average scores on state tests, but this is coming from a population of students who have already had those most likely to struggle on the tests weeded out — and it comes with the cost of extreme test preparation rolled in the curriculum.  A Success Academy teacher, writing on terms of anonymity, gave the following account to NYU’s Dr. Diane Ravitch:

“Custom Test Prep Materials: I think many schools use practice workbooks from publishers like Kaplan, etc. We have people whose job it is to put together custom test prep packets based on state guidance. Much more aligned to common core and closer to the test than the published books I’ve seen. Also, teachers are putting together additional worksheets and practice based on what we see in the classroom. Huge volume of practice materials for every possible need (and we use it all, too). Also many practice tests and quizzes that copy format of the test.

“Intensive organization-wide focus on test prep: For the last months and weeks before the test, everyone from Eva on down is completely focused on test prep. Just a few examples….

“We have to give kids 1/2/3/4 scores daily. Kids are broken up into small groups based on the data and get differentiated instruction. If they get a 1, they stay back from recess or after school for extra practice.

“Thousands of dollars spent on prizes to incentivize the kids to work hard. Some teachers have expressed concern about bribing them with basketballs and other toys instead of learning for the sake of learning. The response is “prizes aren’t optional.”

“We get daily inspirational emails from principals with a countdown, anecdotes about the importance of state tests, and ever-multiplying plans for “getting kids over the finish line” (these get old fast).

Excessive test preparation is a concern for all New York City schools, and the teacher evaluation incentives implemented as part of Race to the Top have not helped.  The New York legislature passed a law this Spring mandating that test preparation can take up no more than 2% of instructional time in public schools.  Charter schools were exempt, which is a relief for Ms. Moskowitz’s schools who would apparently lose months of their planned curricula.

In a follow up message, the same teacher forwarded a message to Success Academy teachers from a senior administrator giving his ideas on why they have been “attacked” in the media.  The message contrasts their work to the work of “failure factories”, claims to have found the “solution” to urban education, claims that people are jealous of their schools and frames Success Academy, which can raise over 7 million dollars in a one night fundraiser, as victims of teacher unions.

Missing in the self congratulatory rhetoric and the extreme test preparation?  The children pressured and forced out of the network’s schools for reasons no public school could ever employ.  There is no “solution” for urban education that involves losing over half a graduating class of students between first grade and eighth.  There is no “solution” for the challenges of educating students with learning disabilities, behavioral disabilities or who are learning English that includes pushing them off on to other schools.

Which brings me back to the first graduating class of eighth graders at Success Academy 1.  I genuinely wish them well, and I certainly admire the qualities they must possess to thrive in an environment like the one described above.  But the children Ms. Moskowitz failed to mention in her address to her first class of “scholars” are the ones she failed to get to that day.  Those are the children she refused to accommodate and whose education she washed her hands of.

And she should be made to account for every single one of them before New York grants her a single new classroom.

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June 24, 2014 · 12:01 pm

Welcoming a New Cohort of Future Teachers

Yesterday, my program got an early chance to meet members of our incoming Class of 2018.  I had a series of hand outs with critical planning information for their next four years, but more important than reading to them action items that they can read for themselves, I and my colleagues wanted them to get to know each other and begin to see each other as people who can be relied upon.  This is not only good for them as they enter a four year program together, but also it is good for their future practice in schools.  Teachers who collaborate and seek out ideas from a variety of trusted people are more able to seek solutions to questions about teaching than teachers who close the door of their classrooms and try to not be seen.  It also helps our incoming students start to see how people with different backgrounds and reasons for being in a school can quickly come together to collaborate and learn about each other.

These new future teachers are entering their university preparation for teaching at a difficult time.  The Common Core State Standards movement was sweeping along as fait accompli until questions about its quality, purposes and the speed of implementation have hit mainstream.  New mass high stakes testing is still scheduled to roll out over the next few school years, but it is meeting with increasing teacher and parental resistance.  Communities across the country will soon see their students, teachers and school assessed by those exams, and teachers will face potential career consequences based on value added modeling of their teaching using test data.  These policies are not being tested carefully in small settings; they are being rolled out simultaneously in classrooms affecting 10s of millions of students.  Mass disruption is the order of the day.

Teaching as a profession is under higher scrutiny.  “Reformers” such as Michelle Rhee have advocated for years that the solution to nearly every problem facing education is to fire “ineffective” teachers and to use test scores to determine teacher effectiveness.  To accomplish this, they not only needed mass testing, they also needed to diminish teachers’ workplace protections and that has meant stripping away traditional union rights.  Court cases like the recently (and controversially) decided Vergara case are likely to increase in number. At the same time, traditional teacher education is coming under attack via the partisan think tank National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ) which has taken it upon itself to “rank” all teacher preparation programs in the country.

The contradictions of the self-styled education reformers are evident and troubling.  They have pushed for complicated standards and testing regimens at a time when states and school districts around the country are cutting budgets and personnel.  They have demanded that teachers be held to higher standards of performance using measures of their performance that experts in statistics say are poorly designed for that purpose.  They have demanded that teachers work with fewer protections for their employment while dramatically raising their stakes of their work.  The same “reformers” who bemoan the quality of university based teacher education are enthusiastic backers of Teach for America’s five week training model and of charter schools which are contemplating setting up their own teacher training “graduate schools” that resemble computer delivered workplace training rather than a serious professional education.

And yet, we still are able to welcome a group of young people enthusiastic about becoming teachers and eager to take up the challenges of learning to teach.

Young people have historically been attracted to teaching as a profession for various reasons.  In the early decades of the Common School movement, teaching was seen as an appropriate occupation for young, educated women until they found husbands and had children of their own.  For some portions of the teacher population, teaching was a way for a first college educated generation to take a place in a middle class profession with a reasonable salary and benefits.  As more white, middle and upper middle class women have sought careers in previously restricted fields like law and medicine, more minorities have taken up teaching (although proportions still lag behind the percentage of students who are minorities).

There are, however, reasons that teachers teach which go well beyond labor economics.  Decade after decade, talented young people seek out careers as teachers for reasons that are best labeled as affective, meaning they speak not to rational calculations of risk and reward, but that they speak to rewards that defy measurement.  Since 1975, researchers have repeated affirmed Dan Lortie’s observation that teachers rely upon “psychic rewards” rather than extrinsic compensation for affirmation of their purposes in school.   Ask a teacher about the greatest satisfactions of teaching, and you will almost certainly hear about how making a difference in child’s life matters or a specific instance of reaching a particular student with a lesson that made difficult content interesting and exciting.  Teachers consistently report that they revel in the ability to connect with students academically and personally and that a “good class” provides personal and professional satisfaction (just as a “bad class” provides personal and professional angst).  There is no external measurement of this, but it is a major part of the difference between a teacher who is happy on the job and one who is not.

Similarly, teachers tend to be people who found at least some enjoyment from school and wish to impart some of that experience to their own students.  Lortie referred to this characteristic as “continuity” meaning that teachers generally wish to continue experiencing that which was pleasant in their own education.  This can take many forms, and it should not be construed to mean that all teachers wish to be uncritical of schools and schooling.  In my years as a teacher educator, every student I have taught can point to an example of someone that he or she does NOT want to be, but the powerful visions of teaching come from those teachers they wish to emulate.  It takes time to dig down into what it actually was that made those great teachers exceptional (most of my students rely initially upon affect), but once understood, that former teacher is an even more powerful role model.

The reality is that the new class of future teachers I greeted yesterday began their teacher education many years ago when the narrative of their own education began.  That narrative is wrapped up in a 15,000 hours of time spent in classrooms from Kindergarten to 12th grade and involves all of the work done as students and impressions of work done by teachers.  Much of what they learn from this “apprenticeship of observation” is facile, and it takes a lot of hard work being introduced to the teacher’s side of the desk to understand what it means to academically and socially manage the workings of a classroom.  However, this narrative is still very precious because it contains the initial commitment a future teacher makes to her or his future students.  Without that narrative, they would not want to teach in the first place.  It is here that words like “vocation” become equally if not more important than words like “profession” when discussing how teachers learn to teach.

It is, therefore, vitally important that we keep our eyes not merely on what schools and classrooms achieve on standardized tests, but also we keep our eyes focused squarely on what kinds of places schools and classrooms are and what kinds of experiences teachers can craft for the children entrusted to them.  I know of no truly dedicated teacher who is afraid of using some data as a tool to both analyze and communicate about her or his work.  But I know many people who are rightly concerned that we have spent far too much time in the past ten year using data from high stakes standardized tests in ways that reach far beyond their utility.  I know people who are concerned that we have incentivized administrators and teachers to value test performance over genuine learning.  I know people who are concerned that the risk taking and uncertainty that accompanies real teaching is becoming too risky for teachers who are evaluated as if they are producing manufactured goods tested within tight tolerances.  I share those concerns.

We do not need to simply demand more of our teachers; we need to demand more of ourselves and of our vision for a public education.  Schools need to be places where uncertainty, risk taking and messing around with ideas is both encouraged and instructive.  Teachers need to be able to inspire their students to create meaning rather than merely fill in bubble sheets because the narrative of schooling and learning that we create for those students today does not just impact how they learn, it impacts how those among them who wish to teach will envision the role of a teacher.  How many powerful examples of passionate commitment to students, content and learning will those students encounter and incorporate into their constructs of the work and craft of teaching?  How many of them will see intangible rewards for teaching that offset the difficulty of the job and inspire them to share their love of learning with the generations that follow them?

The next generation of teachers is in our public schools right now.  We owe it to them and to the 100s of millions of students they will teach to envision schools as places of joy and passion.

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June 18, 2014 · 1:37 pm

What Does It Really Take To Evaluate a Teacher Preparation Program?

The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) is back in the news having released their second report on the quality of teacher preparation in America.  To the surprise of nobody, they found that university based teacher preparation remains dismal.  Just last year, NCTQ described teacher education as “an industry of mediocrity” in a report so riddled with errors, it would have been reasonable to assume that they would fade away – if not permanently, then at least for a few years.  My favorite of their many mistakes was how they gave credit to Teachers College for having “highly selective” standards for admission to their undergraduate teacher preparation programs.  Friends and colleagues affirmed how selective these programs are — they have never admitted a single student because they do not exist.  Alas, the fade away did not happen, and they are back this year.

In order to understand how NCTQ could purport to make a serious contribution to teacher education while making such glaring errors and then putting them in view of the public, it is necessary to understands that the organization’s flaws are both methodological and philosophical.  NCTQ is an organization that was established by the Thomas Fordham Institute and has an expressed purpose to “shake up” traditional teacher preparation.  Given that they are generously funded by a laundry list of corporate reform advocates (The Gates Foundation, Edythe and Eli Broad, Carnegie Corporation, etc.) and given the presence of people like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein on their advisory board, it stands to reason that they are looking for faults.  But more important is the preposterous methodology employed by NCTQ to “evaluate” programs for evidence of “quality”.  Even before schools of education, looking at their bias and their proposed methods, declined to actively cooperate with them, NCTQ proposed that they would evaluate all teacher preparation programs in the country by not visiting a single program and by not speaking to or surveying a single graduate.  Instead, they examine web sites and publically available documents such as course catalogs and syllabi for “evidence” of the programs covering topics that they consider essential.  When programs decline to turn over internal documents for their examination, NCTQ is not above using deception to acquire them.

Such “methodology” has been aptly compared to writing a review of a restaurant by reading an online menu and making conclusions about the quality of the food preparation.  NCTQ misses how instruction is delivered and evaluated in every meaningful way, but they do not seem especially concerned about that given that a number of programs have tried to correct NCTQ’s errors only to see them published anyway.  This would be comical if the organization was not given uncritical coverage in influential publications.  Last Fall, both Joe Nocera and Bill Keller took to the opinion pages of the New York Times and cited NCTQ’s ratings without any indication that the group is both politically biased and rife with errors.  This year’s report is not being met with quite so much attention, but NPR did a very friendly interview with NCTQ President Kate Walsh with little focus on the organization’s methodology.  NPR did ask one pertinent question and it was why, if teacher preparation is so dismal, don’t principals and superintendents sound the alarm that new teachers are not able to teach?  Walsh replied:

“There’s a great hesitancy of public school educators to stand up to higher ed,” Walsh explains. “They’ve almost been bullied by them, and one of the things (NCTQ) is trying to work on with districts is to get them to be more assertive about their needs and to say ‘I’m not going to hire from you until you teach effective ways of reading instruction.’ “

I would like to challenge Ms. Walsh to come to New Jersey and try to find a single high school principal who is willing to admit, even off record, that he or she is intimidated by me.  Go on.  I’ll wait.

More seriously, that claim is bizarre because while a handful of institutions may offer grants and opportunities that are attractive to school districts, the reality is that for quality teacher preparation, I need schools more than they need me.  I need partners who are willing to open up their experienced teachers’ classrooms for student teachers and for clinical internships and who are willing to mentor teacher candidates in ways that make a strong connection between their studies and their developing practice.  To suggest that relationship is so lopsided as to see school districts as cowed beneath the Teacher Preparation Industrial Complex is simply strange.

I would never state that teacher preparation does not need improvement.  There is always something new to learn, and there will always be an effort to make meaningful connections between theory and practice and to situate prospective teachers in classrooms where they learn from skilled mentors able to discuss practice meaningfully.  But I would like to offer what it looks like to really examine and evaluate your work and to subject it to meaningful outside examination and rating.  My teacher preparation program is accredited by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP), formerly the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. Such bodies are recognized by state departments of education as having high standards for the review of teacher preparation programs and for having rigorous methods of evaluation.  In preparation for their review, I have to prepare a report about our secondary students studying to become high school English teachers and submit it for review to the National Council of Teachers of English to determine how well we prepare students who are specifically seeking to be English teachers (other content areas submit similar reports to other content specialty associations).  In this report, I provided complete data portraits of three cohorts of graduating candidates that showed that they knew English content, that they knew pedagogy for teaching English and that they knew how to assess students’ needs, design instruction to meet those needs and evaluate the effectiveness of their instruction.  The report drew data from their coursework, lesson planning in courses, evaluations from field internships prior to student teaching from university supervisors and cooperating teachers, evaluations from their semester long student teaching experience and a Teacher Work Sample capstone project in their student teaching seminar.

The report was submitted directly to the National Council of Teaches of English where multiple reviewers read it and granted our program National Recognition as meeting high quality standards for the preparation of English teachers.  This is only one of many reports written by my colleagues and represents only our preparation for an eventual site visit by CAEP where the entire unit will be evaluated.  Such work is time consuming, but I have to admit that to a degree, I actually enjoy it because it helps, indeed it requires, that I take a step back from my own practice and examine artifacts that are indicative of its success or failures.  The process means that I have to propose ways to use what I have learned from the evaluation process to make improvements for following cohorts, and it pushes all of us to not merely rely upon impressions of success and failure but to have substantive reasons for those assessments.

When I began teaching in 1993, I said to myself that the day I figure that I have nothing left to learn is the day that I should quit teaching.  Substantive internal and external evaluation helps assure that I keep looking for things to learn.

Of course, even this is not the be all and end all of effective teacher preparation.  Data driven assessment is very useful, but it also contains the danger of becoming reliant on data to the point that teaching is treated as merely a technical performance that is neatly mapable onto standards, which is untrue.  There are qualities to teaching and to learning to teach that are aesthetic and which require a qualitative approach.  Most teachers have a narrative of their reality in mind when they commit to becoming teachers, and they need to constantly revisit and revise that narrative in ways that allow them to understand others’ purposes and to challenge themselves and their sense of purpose.  These qualities, championed by Maxine Greene, are critical for prospective teachers AND the teachers of prospective teachers, so we should embrace the role of data in our work as a tool of continuous improvement.  But we should not raise it so far above all other matters that we ignore their importance as well.

Which is why in addition to the substantial work I have put in to demonstrating my program’s quality to actually qualified experts, there is another testimony that is not being currently examined by any agency in a way that captures their real importance.  I know a large group of early career teachers who are simply outstanding young educators and who are doing fantastic work, both quantitatively and qualitatively, with 1000s of students across the country.  They came to my classes from diverse backgrounds and with varying ideas about the critical importance of public education, but they all left having had shared experiences in university courses and in lengthy field assignments that taught them what it really means to move from being a student to being a teacher.  They are remarkably interesting and talented, and they balance deep understanding of how to transform content into pedagogically powerful experiences with their students with the aesthetics of classroom community and student motivation.  I am lucky to have worked with them and to continue to know of them and their teaching.

If you want to evaluate the quality of a teacher preparation program, you need to speak with and observe the teachers they graduate.

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