The Recovering Teacher

Is DC playing fast and loose with numbers?

No, this isn't about the federal government shuffling statistics to make things look better - although that would not be surprising. This is about a report in USAToday about the District of Columbia Public Schools having some very questionable results on standardized tests. Now, if a district can help students improve their scores, that's great. The problem is that some of these "gains" are looking very suspect now.

Maybe one of the first red flags should have been when one school went from 10% of its students scoring at the "proficient" or "advanced" levels in math on standardized tests to 58% in only two years.  It would be nice to think the students could improve this much this fast, but realistically it is unlikely to happen. But then, when district scores dropped by an average of 4% the scores in this one school dropped over 20% in the same period. The school showed what the article calls a "roller coaster" ride from 2006 to 2010.

The biggest red flag, however, is a report from the testing company that many of the DC schools have much higher than expected numbers of erasures on tests - as many as 80% of classrooms. And these were not just erasures, they were what is called "wrong-to-right" erasures where an incorrect answer is changed to correct. It makes you wonder just what might have been going on. And this was not the only district school that showed alarmingly high erasure rates.

To top it all off, the chancellor of the district gave big bonuses to teachers and the principal at the school for their "success." As the article points out, when you tie big bonuses in to test scores, you increase the chances of cheating. And how is the district handling all this controversy? It's DC, so you figure that one out.

Read the entire article at USAToday.

Taking Responsibility - A Recommended Post

I just read an interesting post on another blog, and I wanted to share it with anyone out there. The post is by leadership trainer Kevin Eikenberry and it discusses personal responsibility - a topic I plan to have some things to say on as well.  Take a look and see what you think.

Kevin Eikenberry - Leadership and Learning Blog

Fixing Education - A Suggestion

Previously I compared public education and Communism.  The comparison was not good for either system, but there is good news - at least for public education.  We have seen that in general the only way to "improve" Communism is to get rid of it - or hide the flaws as is sometimes done.  On the other hand, there are ways to improve public education, and they don't require the ridiculous outlay of money for so-called "experts" with their generally tepid results.  The not so good news is that it will require common sense and a backbone - both of which often seem sorely lacking in education.

One of the first steps would be to get rid of the "poor little kids" attitude that seems to pervade much of the system.  In the past students were not coddled and provided with multitudinous excuses for why they didn't succeed.  They were expected to get the job done - plain and simple.  Yes, there are troubled homes, broken families, and other situations now, but these existed in the past.  The problem, as I see it, is that the education system has turned these from challenges kids had to work through to excuses to do nothing.  And the more excuses the system provides, the more kids will grab on to them in order to get by without working.  Yes, there are those self-motivated kids who don't care what the challenges/excuses are, they are going to succeed.  And there are those kids who are going to struggle no matter what, but those are frequently kids who have physical and/or mental challenges to deal with.

The kids I'm talking about are the ones whose parents either have no time to support them (although many kids in those situations still do quite well), or have consciously or unconsciously (subconsciously?) raised them to believe that the world owes them everything and they don't need to work for it.  Believe me when I say that I have had more than enough of these kids in my classrooms in the past.  And before you say it's just because I was not a good teacher, try asking any teacher about these kids.  I can pretty much guarantee you that every public school teacher you talk to has had them.  Some have more in their class, some have fewer, but they all have them.

Okay, so for now I'll let you digest this little diatribe before I toss another plateful your way.  I have a  bit more to say on this subject before I go on to another suggestion.

Communism and Public Education - the Worst of Both Worlds

Last we saw the Recovering Teacher, he had just compared Public Education with Communism.  Since he wasn't sent to Siberia (or East LA), let's see what he has to say this time...

I want to follow up on my Communism comparison with some specifics today.  From what I have seen, both Communism and many of the "theories" in today's public schools are based on faulty assumptions.  And in both cases, it has to do with self-motivation versus taking the "easy way out."

In Communism one underlying belief was that if people were all equal, they would work together for mutual benefit.  The problem is that people will never be "equal" and some will always take advantage of others.  So you end up with a situation where a few "more than equal" leaders make the rules and end up with a majority of benefits  Then you have a group of self-motivated individuals who provide much of the actual work because that's the way they are naturally  Finally there is an often sizable group of self-professed slackers who know the amount of effort they put in has no affect on the returns they receive.  It's the attitude of "If I can get something for nothing, why should I put any effort in?"

Now let's look at how this works with student achievement in public schools - or at least ones I have worked in (we can leave the extrapolation to others).  First of all, kids are smart - just not always the way we want them to be.  In the last district I taught in the policy was that students could be held back in third, seventh, or ninth grades, but only one time.  So how long do you think it took for kids to figure out if they were held back in third grade they didn't have to put in any more effort?  While your self-motivated students are busting their butts to get good grades, the unmotivated kids are goofing off, disrupting class, and basically skating through school.  I even had students admit to just this little "scam."  And just as the lack of motivation to produce affected the economy in Communist countries, the lack of motivation to learn affects the classroom.

So, now that I have tossed this little bomb out, where do I go next?  How about some suggestions to improve education.  And I won't even charge hundreds (thousands?) of dollars for my ideas.

A Bill of Goods - The Problem

Last time I said that I was going to ruffle a few feathers. Well, I’m not sure if I have yet, but I’m going to try again to get things stirred up. After all, isn’t healthy debate what it’s all about? And I think that for far too long we have been without healthy debate on what really works in schools.

I entitled this posting “The Problem,” but actually there are many problems. There is no argument that we have a major problem with student failure (yes, I’m using the “f-word” here). People don’t want to use the word “failure” with children – something about it hurting their precious self-esteem. Well guess what, folks – a lot of these kids have no self-esteem to begin with. They’re smart enough to know that we’re just playing word games. They have already figured out that most adults don’t expect anything out of them. Oh, we say we do, but then what happens? We coddle them, we tell them that it’s not their fault they can’t read – that some other bad teacher or system, or whatever, did it to them. They are victims of their environment, of the system, of “the man” – whoever that is. And then what do we do – we pass them on to the next level where they are even farther behind. “You couldn’t handle seventh grade, so we’re going to promote you to eighth grade where you can really bomb.” I ask you, does that sound like a good program to you?

Let’s put things in perspective. If you had a job and you couldn’t cut it, would your boss promote you? Okay, let’s say you’re not in a government job – would the boss promote you? More than likely, the boss is going to tell you to get up to speed or you’re gone. This is the “real world” that we’re supposed to be preparing kids for. And then we wonder why so many young people seem to have an “entitlement” mentality. Hello! Does anyone see a problem developing here? It’s a similar situation to the problem that communist societies faced – if I can get the same thing doing nothing as I can doing something, why should I do something?

That should make some people happy – I’ve just compared our educational system with communism. But I’m just getting going. Wait until you see where I’m going next.

A Bill of Goods

First, I know I’m going to upset some people with this (if anyone actually reads this, that is), but I’m going to write it anyway. After all, isn’t that part of the reason for a blog – to get your opinions out even if some people don’t want to hear them? And anyway, this is based on my personal experience and reading/study, not anyone else’s – or is that true? Because what I’m about to do is take my own crack at the plethora of “experts” who are creating our educational “systems” – you know, the ones that are supposed to make all students achieve at grade level and beyond? Okay, so off we go.

We’ll start with my background. I was a teacher for 14+ years full time in both public and private schools, plus some time at the community college level. I spent a lot of time going to all the required workshops and in-services, trying my best to implement all the gobbledy-gook and mumbo-jumbo, and never seeing any real improvement. It never seemed to fail that the students who needed the help least were the ones who took full advantage of everything, and vice-versa. It slowly began to dawn on me that we have been taking the wrong approach to helping struggling students to succeed.

This is where the “bill of goods” comes in. There are people out there who are making a ton of money pushing the latest “wonder program” to make all kids successful. So of course, the last thing they want is someone saying their stuff is crap. Well, I’m going to say it – it’s crap! So much of it is just recycled from the past anyway. Ask any teacher with some years of experience, and they will tell you that this stuff just keeps coming back under different names. And so many of these “experts” are long on theory but extremely short on practical experience. I don’t know how many of them I’ve heard talk, but very few of them had ever really spent much time in a real classroom. And when they did their “sample lessons” in a classroom, it was always with a small group of students while another teacher kept control of the rest of the class.

I can see I’m going to be going on with this for a while, so I’m going to stop here and pick up again next time. And I promise, the next time will not be so long a wait. This is only the beginning.