Going the Wrong Way on Public Education?

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Going the Wrong Way? What the Public Says about Education Reform

Labor Day brings the end of summer, the opening of schools and a swarm of education polls. The number of these tallies has increased as groups from the left and right launch efforts that – not too surprisingly – tend to produce results favoring their perspective. The granddaddy, and most universally respected, of these is the Gallup poll sponsored by Phi Delta Kappa, which just released its 45th annual report.

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Common Core’s Testing Woes

Education Insiders: Common Core’s Testing Woes   

Fawn Johnson, National Journal

The Common Core State Standards for elementary and secondary schools weren't supposed to be controversial. They weren't supposed to incite active protests. They were supposed to be different from the unpopular, exacting tenets of No Child Left Behind. They were deliberately negotiated by consensus and carefully put together to stop the federal government from creeping in to the public school system. They carry with them a worthy goal that everyone can agree with: prepare our kids for real jobs in the real world with real skills.

So what's the problem? And why now? The answer to both questions is testing. Now that it's time for states to actually measure how their students are doing, it's a lot harder to gloss over the problems with feel-good talking points. Some states are going ahead with their first tests assessing how well students are learning under the new curriculum. Other states have dropped out of the testing, citing concerns about cost and effectiveness. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are questioning the Common Core, as this recent take from New Jersey illustrates. The tea party is mobilizing against it. Some parents are even pulling their kids from all standardized testing.

The backlash shouldn't be a surprise if you take a step back and think about it. Coming to agreement on the basic skills kids should learn is hard enough. Measuring the outcome in a meaningful way is even harder. No one wants to be the guinea pig. No one wants to be blamed for poor results.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has been unapologetic about pushing for Common Core. "Yes, it's going to be a hard and sometimes rocky or bumpy transition to higher standards," he said in a recent interview with USA Today's Susan Page on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show. "I think I speak for most parents that, you know, you want more for your children, not less. And I tell you the one thing I absolutely don't want is I don't want to be lied to. I don't want people to tell me my children are ready for success when they're not in the game."

The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute's Richard Rothstein was also a guest on the show that day (as was I and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's Mike Petrilli). Rothstein's criticism of Common Core, as with all student assessments, is that they tend to narrow the teaching. "Teachers have had incentives to narrow the curriculum to the things that are tested. Students have been trained to take tests rather than to learn the underlying curriculum," he said.

Petrilli, a conservative and a staunch advocate of Common Core, noted that the administration's enthusiasm for the standards can dampen conservatives' abilities to promote it on their end. But he also agrees with Duncan. "The goal with this effort is to dramatically raise the bar and say, look, if you really want to be on track for college or career, it's a very high standard. And unfortunately right now, we're giving parents the false impression that everything is fine when it's not."

So what's the final score? Now that most of the country has adopted the standards, is Common Core failing on its second lap around the field? Will we ever be able to test how our kids are doing? Will there be consensus on whether testing is worthwhile at all? How can the tests be crafted such that they are more like Advanced Placement exams rather than fill-in-the-bubble tests? Should parents have the right to yank their kids from these tests? How do we muddle through this mess?

Fawn Johnson is a correspondent for National Journal, covering a range of issues including immigration, transportation and education. Johnson is a long-time student of Washington policymaking, previously reporting for Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal where she covered financial regulation and telecommunications. She is an alumnus of CongressDaily, where she covered health care, labor, and immigration. Johnson first covered Congress at BNA Inc., where she covered labor, welfare, immigration, and asbestos liability. She has an M.A. from the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. from Bates College.

Performance Assessment Network kicks off Pilot, linking schools for smarter accountability

New Mexico Performance Assessment Network Kicks Off Pilot Study

There is no standardized test for music performance, but that doesn’t prevent listeners from knowing a quality performance when they hear one. Music performance is a frequently used analogy among a group of New Mexico educators who are working to find new ways to assess  academic learning.

Their work is part of a growing national movement called “performance-based assessment,” centered on the idea that student learning can be systematically measured on the basis of what students can do, not what they can demonstrate on a standardized written test.The educators from the New Mexico Performance Assessment Network(PAN) say their work is important because so many reforms – teacher evaluations and school grades, for example – rely heavily on standardized tests to measure what students learn.

What it looks like

Principal Gabriella Duran Blakey offered an example of how performance-based assessment will look at Health Leadership High School in Albuquerque, which has a focus on health professions. She said students might do a unit of study on “food deserts,” or areas where healthy, affordable food is difficult to obtain. Based on demographic and other research, students might decide an area needed a new grocery store, and then would have to explain and justify where they would locate it, how they would advertise for it and develop a business plan for how they would operate it. They would simulate its construction plan, decide which products to stock and what to charge. Students would then defend their work to a panel of professionals, which might include store owners, nutritionists and doctors who work with diabetes patients. The panel would then assess the students, deciding the extent to which each student demonstrated mastery of particular skill levels and curriculum standards.

Their aim is to build a better test. Tori Stephens-Shauger, Principal of ACE Leadership High School and Founder and Facilitator  of the PAN, says that the Network is not starting from scratch. Its efforts are based in part on the work of 28 schools called the New York Performance Standards Consortium. These schools only take one (English Language Arts) of New York’s many Regents standardized tests for graduation and have been assessing their students based on performance since 1997. Several dozen schools await membership in the Consortium, which cites lower dropout rates and higher rates of college acceptance than the overall rates for New York City.

Stephens-Shauger adds, “The benefit from having a network that is focused on doing high quality performance assessment is that we can build capacity within our state to do this kind of evaluation of student learning. The PAN is made up of schools with different missions, methods of teaching and basis for curriculum but sharing a core belief that students should be assessed in the way that they learn best. Though there are expectations for network schools around some specific commitments such as the practice of performance assessment and the professional development required to do it well, standardizing the schools is not one of them.  Schools like Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School uses a rhetoric-based program called Paideia to prepare their high school students for college. The Native American Community Academy emphasizes the importance of the community, including Native leaders, to prepare middle and high school students for college. Media Arts Collaborative Charter School uses their emphases on media arts as a tool to not only build skills within the content areas but also prepare middle and high school students for careers in the media arts industry. Mountain Mahogany Community School is an elementary school that focuses on emotional intelligence and infusing learning with movement, art and the natural world. This richness in expertise and perspective enhances the PAN’s opportunity to think critically about what learning looks like through performance assessment at all grade levelsand  in different contexts.”

 “It’s more important that when kids go to college or when they go into the workforce, that they have  skills that go beyond conventional classroom learning,” said Duran Blakey. To ensure this, for example, the “test” at the end of a unit of study might be a group presentation of a research project and model that the students created. Duran Blakey is part of the PAN’s piloting of performance-based assessment in their schools this year. Their students will still be required to take New Mexico’s standardized tests and their schools will still be evaluated in conventional ways by state authorities. But the PAN schools, including Health Leadership and ACE Leadership charters, also will experiment with other ways to assess learning.

Tony Monfiletto, who was involved in founding ACE and Health Leadership High Schools, said he hopes the findings can eventually be incorporated into New Mexico’s current education initiatives.“The long-term idea is that performance assessment [would] be seen as an evaluation process of equal if not greater value than the standardized tests, so that schools can  choose to use performance assessment  as a valid indicator of their quality” he said.

The New Mexico Public Education Department (PED) expressed cautious support for the group’s efforts.“We have had preliminary exposure to their work and it is intriguing, but questions concerning validity are currently unanswered in the state,” PED spokesman Larry Behrens said in an email. “After a fair amount of research and stakeholder input, we will always be open to discussing valid and reliable measures and possibly adding them into our reforms.”

The PAN schools, in partnership with a University of New Mexico (UNM) professor, Vanessa Svihla, will study whether their assessments hold up under scrutiny. Svihla, has a grant to study performance-based assessment at Health Leadership and other charter schools. Her aim is to help the schools develop consistent measures, and to study whether and how they are valid and reliable. In other words, she is studying whether the assessments are viable in determining whether students learned what they were supposed to and whether the scoring system is clear enough that a variety of judges would come to similar conclusions about the same performance.

Svihla used the music analogy to explain assessment reliability.“If eight people look at a musical performance and all agree that it was a really great performance, that’s how we often evaluate music,” she said.

Duran Blakey said the schools will work with UNM to develop guidelines for teachers about what makes a good assessment.“You can’t just have it be that any teacher can make any assessment and that counts,” she said. Svihla said she plans to carefully study and document a few schools that share common leadership, cultures, and philosophies.“We’re taking a very careful look at a few schools,” she said. “These are schools that have experimented with doing this kind of assessment previously. They’re not taking this on as a completely new practice.”

Both Health Leadership and ACE Leadership High Schools are founded largely on partnerships with businesses seeking an educated workforce in particular areas, like health, architecture and construction. Several employers said they are excited about the effort because it will assess the skills they need from workers in ways a standardized test cannot.

Maria Guy, vice president of J.B. Henderson Construction, said test scores don’t show her important skills like teamwork and communication.“It’s not necessarily that we want to eliminate any of the current things, but a student has more to offer than just a test score,” Guy said. “From an employer’s perspective, I have different needs from my employees. From some of them I need someone who can really work with a team … someone who’s a problem solver, a good communicator and just has that ability to bring a lot of folks together on an issue. How could a standardized test ever measure anything like that?”

Guy added that there are multiple ways to measure a student’s skills and knowledge, and standardized tests are just the easiest way.“That would be to say the only way to measure something is to weigh it. But what about the length, the volume?” she said. “We’ve chosen the way that is the easiest for us.”Guy also acknowledged that measuring learning through performance is difficult, calling it “messy,” but said she believes it is worthwhile.“I think it’s worth wrestling with, and I recognize that it’s hard,” she said.

Tools for Teacher Sanity

by Katrina Kennett

Mr. Tolstoy could have written: “Organized teachers are all alike; every unorganized teacher is unorganized in their own way.” For me, organization is the key to preserving my sanity as a classroom teacher. There are a dizzying number of people and tasks to keep tabs on - meetings, absent students, papers in and out, the list could be longer than this article. Technology is supposed to help streamline that chaos, but too often, using the tools takes up just as much time as what they’re supposed to be streamlining.

I have three main platforms to keep myself digitally sane. Best of all? Each of these platforms work across the devices I use them on - my computer, my iPad, and my phone - allowing me to collect, send, jot down, and access whatever I need on the go. These tools address the ongoing work of being a busy teacher, allowing me to devote my attention where it needs to be spent.

“You’re so organized!” All you need: an account, a folder system, and a naming convention

I use Dropbox as a ‘keeping space’ for files, documents, images, handouts, unit plans, etc. Basically, it’s a cloud version of a USB drive (only I don’t constantly lose it). It’s organized in the same way though - a traditional folder system - and I can retrieve documents on an as-needed basis on any computer.

That “just-in-time” access happens effectively when I do two things: create folders and maintain a consistent naming convention. For unit documents, I start with a unit folder, say, “1984”. Then, each document is labeled: Unit - Project/Chapter - Document. Ex. 1984 - Ch 15 - Vocabulary List. Or, 1984 - Propaganda Analysis - Critical Literacy Questions. While it takes an extra step to label the documents when I download them or create them, the payoff happens every time I’m able to easily find what I need.

One other significant feature of Dropbox is how easy it is to share files and folders. Documents and their folders are assigned a unique URL, meaning you can share them as a hyperlink. This means I can take a digital handout, shorten the URL (using bit.ly or goo.gl), direct all of my students to that link, and (within a few taps) everyone in the room has access to the document. This process is significantly easier than photocopying multiple class sets. Professionally, I can share unit folders or documents by email. This is a great solution to the dusty curriculum binder - department or grade-level teachers can share a dynamic, working curriculum binder.

Overall, I use Dropbox to archive and access curricular materials, organize professional documents, and share digital files with students and other teachers. For extensions and other workflow solutions, Dropbox syncs with apps, and with automation platforms like WappWolf or ITTT, etc., but these are more to address particular problems. It’s free to set up an account, up to a certain storage amount, then it’s up to you whether or not you like to lose your USB.

“From meeting notes to that smudge on your hand that used to be a reminder”: Evernote

I write myself notes on any and every surface. Post-its, envelopes, handouts, all get lost in pockets or slipped into my bag, while meeting notes are never where I need them to be. So, my rule of thumb has become: “if I might need to search for it later, it goes into Evernote.” While a clunky mantra, it’s served to store so many notes and notes-to-self that would have otherwise become lost in the shuffle.

It actually took me years to ‘convert’ to Evernote. There were way too many people proselytizing about how it had transformed their lives and how they couldn’t do anything without it. Their enthusiasm was unnerving. However, I have come around to my own particular set of purposes, mainly as an ‘ongoing keeping space.’

Evernote is set up akin to a spiral-bound notebook, only you can keep anything on those ‘pages’ (notes, images, pdfs, audio recordings), and you can have multiple notebooks. A note can also be tagged with different keywords, a helpful feature I use to characterize the notes (e.g. ‘Next year,’ or ‘ask department head’). I usually name the note ‘what it is and when it is’ - “meeting with Mrs. Thompson - 9/5/13” or “ELA Department Meeting - September - 9/18/13.” If you allow it to, Evernote syncs with your calendar and will auto-insert events into the note title.

Keeping and composing notes is nice and all, but Evernote's most salient feature is the searching function. You can search in any text you’ve typed, but the search engine also looks within images. So, if you took a picture of a poster titled ‘Summer Reading Picks’ and then searched for the word ‘Summer’ - Evernote will include that note in its results. If you’ve used the ‘to-do’ buttons, you can search for notes with unchecked boxes. My best advice for Evernote is still what I followed: realize it’s a very robust platform, establish an ‘in’ for your purpose (mine was a place to take department meeting notes), and then figure out how it will help you in all of that ongoing work.

“I need to make a ___________”: Personal, Professional, and Collaborative Uses for Google Drive 

Since Google is such a pervasive platform, I’ve found many useful ways to leverage its tools. Before you set up accounts for personal/professional/student use, it’s important to establish how comfortable you are giving that account email out. Also, if your school has Google Apps for Education, it might be useful to figure out what account permissions they have enabled (sometimes education accounts have limits on who can view the file).

Basically, using Google Drive (formally Google Docs, but Google wanted to emphasize that they do more than word document composing), you can create word documents (Docs), spreadsheets, presentations, images, and surveys (called Forms). These functions parallel Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Paint, and survey creation platforms like Survey Monkey.

I use Docs for in-process writing (because I can access it on any browser) that I want to share for feedback, and for documents I want to embed in my blog (each doc has an embed code). I have spreadsheets that are formatted into rubrics, so I can change the language in the cell and print off customized rubrics for students. I use the collaborative Presentations to synchronously and asynchronously plan conference presentations with colleagues. I’ve set up a survey in Forms and the results file directly into a Spreadsheet for easy reading (for example, if it’s an independent work day, I’ll have my students fill out the form to tell me what they’re doing, then I can see all their tasks at a glance). Each of these functions are more basic than their Microsoft counterparts, but you’ll notice that in each of my examples, the social context is key. I’m able to share or access intellectual work because I’m using Google Drive.

A quick searching note: the naming conventions for Google Drive are as important, if not more important than in either of the other two platforms. It’s easy to search by file name, but if you have 50 ‘Untitled Documents’ it will be impossible for you to find what you need. Name your files correctly, and right away. If students are sharing files with you, establish a naming convention that you’ll all use. Otherwise, this tool for sanity will quickly “Drive you crazy” (hah!).

There are many helpful tutorials on permissions for different files, embedding in a blog, publishing to the web, etc. As you start to get more adventurous, there are also add-ons for taking notes within YouTube videos, and yes, you can real-time collaborate on various devices and apps.

 Summary

Organized teachers are alike in that they have figured out what tools and processes work for them, so they’re never doing work they don’t have to do. Dropbox to keep polished documents and resources, Evernote for ideas and notes, and Google Drive for ongoing and collaborative documents. These categories work, so I’m able to focus on what I need to. As the school year gets up and running, establish what general category will be the most helpful for you to organize first – I’m betting these tools will help keep you a bit saner.

 Katrina Kennett is ERC’s Consulting Practitioner in

digital technology, instructional planning and performance assessment.

Education Resources Consortium: April in New Mexico

Taking a trip to the Southwest in April was not only a change in weather, but in educational climate for ERC co-founder Dr. Larry Myatt and Consulting Practitioner Katrina Kennett. The pair traveled to Albuquerque in April to work with a network of schools as they expanded their work in performance assessment and student resiliency.

Day 1 was spent working with the Health Leadership High School, set to open in Fall 2013. Gabriella Blakey, the principal, opened the day by explaining the tri-fold system of planning in the new school: systems, clients, and determinants. These three lenses will provide students with a fluid understanding of the impact on the health care field while giving them expertise in one of the areas. The school will be partnering with UNM to provide access to clients, resources, professionals, and systems, and has established an ongoing module series to introduce students to core topics such as Nutrition, Behavioral/Mental Health, and Decision- Making. These modules will delve into a focus on the human body in the students’ sophomore year. Ms. Blakey reflected after that the students and community partners “don’t have to be in our school to be a part of our school.” Her focus on having students cultivate as much quality time with professionals as possible will make their acquisition of mastery that much faster and more meaningful.

Dr. Myatt continued the student-focused orientation of the day by demonstrating the importance and design of a 3600 Pillar for Student Resiliency, a framework that outlines the demands of teacher skills, administrative platforms, and student culture building. Ms. Kennett followed by introducing a ‘technology toolbelt’ and how to approach the wealth of tools, apps, platforms, and resources available to educators.

Thursday morning started off with Ms. Kennett consulting with the Architecture, Construction, and Engineering Leadership High School, or ACE Leadership HS, created in 2011, conferencing with teacher teams to incorporate technology and digital platforms into their projects. “Students show high levels of engagement with the ACE projects, so the question posed was how to be more strategic and intentional in leveraging technology to capture and share their work with other students, parents, and the community?” Projects such as considering the effect of trade routes and relocation of businesses, or the natural watersheds of New Mexico, could use platforms like Google Maps, Prezi, and Pearltrees to collect, present, and archive student work.

Thursday afternoon was a highlight of the trip, with the New Mexico Performance Assessment Network convening for their fifth session. With over 30 representatives from local schools such as Amy Biehl HS, Cottonwood Classical, Native American Charter Academy, Albuq. Sign Language Academy, and ACE. Dr. Myatt pulled everyone onto the conversation with a protocol designed to explore the rationale for authentic assessment, and Ms. Kennett then took over to present on ‘Performance Assessment in the Humanities’. Her presentation considered performance assessment in units, across years, incorporating technology, and the curriculum planning frameworks. As a high school English teacher, Ms. Kennett incorporated her own technology classroom practices into the presentation, allowing participants to use live polling, iPad workflow, and on-the-fly blogging to make the afternoon engaging and hands-on.

To round off the trip, Dr. Myatt and Ms. Kennett participated in the brainstorming and planning session for the upcoming Technology Leadership High School. In a day-long event, they aided over 20 participants from across the vibrant technology sectors in and around Albuquerque, in brainstorming the knowledge, skills, and attributes of a successful person in their field of expertise. The ERC duo was joined by Tim Kubik from Kubik Perspectives and Michael Soguero from the Eaglerock Professional Development Center. The participants then worked to construct sample projects that would embed the knowledge, skills, and attributes within their design. On the following day, using the artifacts that participants created, a smaller advisory prototyping team, included Kennett and Myatt, solidified a fundamental technology design workflow into a framework for teaching and learning, resulting in a core educational paradigm for the school that borrows from the fluid nature of technology creation while giving students a supportive model to take risks and succeed within. In mapping out their work, the group constructed a short video that shows the core of the project developing along the design paradigm, followed by the knowledge, skills, and attributes they would develop if they completed the project.

Overall, a busy week-long trip to the Southwest that will reverberate through the three high schools, and the New Mexico Performance Assessment Network.

ERC Part of Pilot Program in Manchester, NH Public Schools

The New Hampshire Department of Education recently funded a pilot instructional improvement that involves the state’s largest school district and the Education Resources Consortium (ERC). This initiative provides school leaders from all of Manchester’s designated School Improvement Grant (SIG) schools with both leadership coaching support and educator evaluation training.

Administrator participants in this endeavor come from four schools within SAU 37 including Parker-Varney and Gossler Park Elementary Schools and Parkside and Southside Middle Schools. Personnel from each of these schools are currently involved with an in-district pilot teacher evaluation process . ERC consultants, G. Paul Dulac and Wayne Ogden have been carrying out this work in Manchester.

ERC Consultant, G. Paul Dulac, at Parkside Middle School in Manchester, NH where he coaches the two Middle School assistant principals.

Dr. Larry Myatt on Panel in Connecticut

ERC Co-Founder Dr. Larry Myatt was an invited panelist at the Tenth Anniversary celebration for the New Haven Academy.  An audience of students, staff, district officials, and regional educators were in attendance as panel members addressed the importance of preparing students for citizenship and the importance of schools reflecting on their practices and culture through networking.  The New Haven Academy is a member of the Coalition of Essential School and the Facing History network, and according to Co-Principal Gregory Baldwin, the ideas and principles of those networks were instrumental in helping to give the school a focus on personalization, intellectual growth and service in its early years. 

Meredith Gavrin, the Academy’s other Co-Principal shared stories of the school’s impact on students and teachers and their commitment to big ideas that challenge their students to think deeply and demonstrate their work to outside observers through portfolios and public exhibitions, an Essential schools practice.  Also invited to be on the panel was Marc Skvirsky of the Facing History and Ourselves Institute in Boston, who lauded the authenticity of the school’s approach to curriculum and willingness to delve deeply into history to learn about the present. New Haven Academy is a district magnet school of the New Haven Public Schools. Dr. Myatt and Principal Baldwin met in the mid-1990’s during Myatt’s Thompson Fellowship at Brown University where Mr. Baldwin was a graduate intern at CES.

Gotham Schools: ‘Roundtable’ discussions put students and teachers on the spot

by Emma Sokoloff-Rubin 

Students discussed foreign policy during roundtable discussions at East Side Community High School.

While students across the city hunkered over bubble sheets and short answer questions during last winter’s Regents Exam period, seniors at East Side Community High School were deep in conversation.

In one corner of Ben Wides’s American Foreign Policy classroom, two students huddled with a university professor talking about the role of altruism in foreign policy. Three desks over, another group discussed the role of public opinion in policy decisions, and across the room, a student told a student teacher why he found the Mexican-American War so interesting.

The conversations were part of “roundtable” discussions that are a crucial early step in East Side’s assessment program. As a member of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, the school exempts students from most of the exams the state requires for high school graduation. The students instead demonstrate competency by completing extensive research projects and presenting their findings to teachers and outside evaluators.

Wides’s students will write and defend original historical research papers at the end of the year in a process that he likened to a graduate thesis defense. Last month’s roundtables gave students an opportunity to practice discussing class material and defending their interpretations, he said, and they also gave him one more way to gauge mid–year what material still hadn’t sunk in.

“The idea is really being able to use information, to dig deep into text and things that you’ve learned, and then being able to use that information to make arguments, to back them up, and to be part of an adult, mature dialogue,” Wides said.

Currently, just 24 city high schools belong to the performance standards consortium, out of more than 500 in total. But performance assessments seem poised to arrive at more schools soon, particularly as pushback against standardized testing mounts and the new Common Core standards require that students be able to stake out positions and support them with evidence.

The city could also use performance assessments in addition to other exams to satisfy the “local assessments” portion of required teacher evaluations. Some policymakers, including City Council Speaker and mayoral candidate Christine Quinn, are pushing for more schools to adopt non-test-based assessment systems.

East Side Principal Mark Federman said he thinks meeting the standards set by Regents exams do not ensure that students will succeed in college and beyond.

“Throughout the semester, [East Side Students] know they’re going to talk in public, they’re going to be accountable to strangers,” he said. Students who start at East Side in sixth grade have presented their work to outsiders more than 50 times by graduation.

In Wides’s classroom, students discussed foreign policy with a CUNY professor, two East Side teachers, three student teachers, a consultant on peer mediation, a graduate student, a paraprofessional, and a teacher from another school whose classes were suspended for Regents week.

Speaking with a classmate and the professor, one student argued that altruism is a nice idea, but it is unrealistic to expect governments to make foreign policy decisions based on anything but their own best interests. Even decisions that look altruistic might not be, she said: The government decides whether to enter a war “based on what they think is best, but they cover it up with a story that would be acceptable to the public.”

The other student pushed back, arguing that altruism should play a role in shaping foreign policy. Wides asked for a hypothetical example of what an altruistic foreign policy decision would look like. “If the U.S. had entered World War II earlier, because so many people were suffering, then that would have been an example of altruism,” the student suggested.

Not every conversation reflected the same level of engagement. In a talk about public opinion on foreign policy, one student struggled to explain the relationship between the two.

“He wasn’t right there saying, what the public thinks matters because they elect the leadership in a democracy. He got there, but he got there through a lot of prompting,” Wides said. “That was a little painful for me, but that was also good feedback. It was valuable for me to hear that a relatively strong student wasn’t making that connection as facilely as I would have liked.”

He said he would revisit the topic in the second semester but would not count the challenge against the student. Unlike regular classwork and end-of-year historical research papers, roundtables are not meant to test students’ knowledge of specific facts.

“This does not substitute to me as an assessment,” he said. “What students are assessed on in the class is the work that’s in their portfolio…I’m not using the roundtable to figure out what kids know.”

Wides said the roundtables also keep teachers on their toes, because in addition to observing his students, “guests are in here observing me.” Teachers acting as guests in each other’s roundtables offer feedback and take notes on what they might do in their own classrooms. They also see how their colleagues are grading student work, preventing teachers from adopting wildly disparate grading scales.

In preparation for the roundtables, each student wrote a cover letter, which guests read alongside student portfolios just before engaging in conversation. In the cover letters, students made historical arguments and drew connections using examples from class material. They also offered personal reflections on their experiences in the class, which became part of their conversations.

“You wrote a lot of criticism, a lot of self criticism, which I thought was really wonderful to be that candid about saying, well, I wasn’t really organized,” Matthew Guilden, a former East Side dean who now consults on discipline and peer mediation with the school, told a student. “How are you going to fix that? Because you’re going to go to college next year.”

East Side senior Gabriella Castillo said after the class that roundtables push her to organize her thoughts and review what she learned during the whole first semester.

“I think if it’s a test, I’ll probably just make flash cards, memorize a few dates, and then it’s over,” she said. “But when you really get to discuss something, discuss all these topics that you’ve learned about and researched and stuff, this knowledge is going to come with you forever. Even right now, I’m still thinking about some questions that they asked me.”

Wides said the roundtable help him explain to students why they are learning certain topics. “In a lot of schools, the answer is you’re learning this because it’s going to be on the Regents,” he said. He described a “Countdown to the Test” poster displayed prominently at Norman Thomas High School, where East Side was relocated for several months this year due to structural issues with the building.

“Here, I can say, you need to learn this because someone’s going to ask you about that at the roundtable,” he said. “But what that really means is that some adult is going to come in and take an interest in your ability to answer a real question, take a moral stand, or have a really thoughtful idea about cause and effect in history.”

Using Professional Judgment with Text Exemplars in the Common Core State Standards

By Sarah Ottow

The Common Core State Standards could potentially give educators unprecedented opportunities for rethinking and redoing the way we do school.  The Standards focus on real world application and evidence-based critique, they raise the level of rigor for all grade levels, and they integrate literacy and oral language skills across the content areas.  The adoption and implementation of the Standards mark a grand movement to provide a consistent framework for forty-five states plus four U.S. territories.

By reading the Introduction to the Standards for English Language Arts and literacy across the content areas, one can glean the intention behind them--to provide an overall vision and set of outcomes for what students should be able to know and demonstrate in their journey to becoming career and college ready in the 21st century.  The overall emphasis is on relevant learning that students can independently transfer in new situations, which requires higher order thinking skills beyond rote memorization and recall.  The Standards themselves are not the curriculum that teachers should follow; instead they are guidelines with which a “great deal is left to the discretion of teachers and curriculum developers.”

If we must use “discretion” in implementing the standards, then the question arises, “How do we know that appropriate and responsible discretion is being acted upon?”  Educators are left on their own to interpret them or, perhaps, misinterpret them.  As Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins warn, “failure to understand the Standards and adjust practices accordingly will likely result in ‘same old, same old’ teaching with only superficial connections to the grade level Standards...[and] their promise to enhance student performance will not be realized” (p. 2).  And “same old” equals past practice, not best practice.  Past practice is not what our students deserve.  Past practice will not prepare them to be self-reliant, thoughtful global citizens.  A newer, better  suggested set of practices demands that we undertake four tasks--1) take the time to deeply understand the big ideas and shifts behind the Standards, 2) consciously plan curriculum and assessments around rich performance tasks, 3) adhere to student-centered, multicultural instructional approaches that focus on real world application, and 4) continuously reflect on our implementation of these tasks.  This newer way of doing school requires us to re-envision ways that schools can look, feel, and function.  It requires us to literally think outside of the box and even consider that perhaps there is no box.  The industrialized model of education can exist no longer in our global society.

With the attitudes and behaviors that the Standards demands of schools, it is imperative that we consider how to proceed responsibly.  Otherwise, opportunities for change may be thwarted.  Take the Standard’s Text Exemplars for example.  As the documents states, “Being able to read complex text independently and proficiently is essential for high achievement in college and the workplace and important in numerous life tasks” (p. 4).  Certainly text complexity does matter for students as they develop and extend their meta-cognitive skills and critical literacy strategies in a fast-paced world of images and sound bytes.  Furthermore, the statistics for high school graduates and adults who are proficient readers in our country are atrocious, and the level of literacy required to succeed in college is daunting for many.  Yes, the goal of increasing text complexity is a worthwhile endeavor for our schools to undertake;  Appendix B gives a set of Exemplar Texts for educators to consider when choosing texts for their particular grade and task.  It states that these texts are to be referred to as “useful guideposts in helping educators select texts of similar complexity, quality, and range for their own classrooms. They expressly do not represent a partial or complete reading list.”

Appendix A explains the three criteria for selecting texts based on their complexity--”quantitative, qualitative, and reader and task consideration” (p.4)--along with the research and rationale of why teaching text complexity matters.  The document goes on to give grade-specific text complexity demands, sample reading tasks, and an overview of the linguistic skills needed for literacy development.  It tells us that the Standards expect “that educators will employ professional judgment” (p. 7) when selecting texts for students.

These appendices are rich and could be starting points for professional development in the often-overlooked but critical theory that every teacher is a literacy teacher.  Yet, are these appendices being digested in the ways they were intended?  Or is the list of Text Exemplars solely being focused in on without careful consideration of the supporting documents explaining how to implement them?  If schools do not take into consideration the ways that text complexity can be taught and the professional judgment necessary to do so, then the list of Text Exemplars is in danger of becoming a list of required texts, not recommended texts.

A simple Google search for “Common Core Text Exemplars” brings up a comprehensive list straight from the list in Appendix B “ready to purchase” through Follet Educational Services.  Is this the intent of the Standards--to purchase a ready-to-teach kit of complex texts?  No, the Standards, say.  The danger of proceeding to implement text complexity without a thorough unpacking of what it means can, in turn, allow us to perpetuate the very practices the Standards may be urging us to change.  If schools skip the work needed to deeply apply professional judgment in selecting texts for their school libraries and classrooms, students may not be reflecting in those very texts.   Critics of the confusion around the usage of the Exemplars share strategies for discerning text selection.  Katie Cunningham asserts that although classics give students the “cultural capital needed to be successful within the educational system,” they can be taught alongside multicultural texts to give multiple perspectives and mirrors for every child.  Debbie Reese shares with us that instead of using a passage from the recommended Little House in the Big Woods that refers to American Indians as “wild men,” we could infuse more contemporary texts that honor Native children.  In order to make these professional judgments, educators need to be diligent in unpacking the privileges inherent in race, class, language, ability and other groups, and they need the collaborative structures and resources in place to try and respond to what works for their particular students.

As written in Appendix A, “A turning away from complex texts is likely to lead to a general impoverishment of knowledge, which, because knowledge is intimately linked with reading comprehension ability, will accelerate the decline in the ability to comprehend complex texts and the decline in the richness of text itself.”  (p. 4).  Could it not also be said that “a turning away from true professional judgment could lead to a general impoverishment of cultural pluralism, which, because cultural pluralism is intimately linked with democracy, could accelerate the decline in democratic practices in schools and the decline in democracy itself?”   Strong instructional leadership that promotes the professional judgment of teacher is essential in order to implement the standards as they were intended or else we are just doing school as usual.

Sarah Ottow  is Director of the Worcester E.L.L. Teacher Residency

has served as a program coordinator, instructional coach, reading specialist and teacher for schools in the Milwaukee area and in Puerto Rico. She has taught on balanced literacy, ESL and bilingual education, instructional mentoring and service learning. 

The Worcester E.L.L. Teacher Residency is a program of the Center for Collaborative Education, Boston.

Fenway HS Featured in New Book on Hopes and Dreams of Latino Students in Boston

Fenway High School, winner of a Blue Ribbon Award, A 21st Century School award and a Break-Through HS award, and founded by Larry Myatt, is the subject of a new book by Steve Marantz of ESPN. Titled  "Next Up at Fenway: A Story of High School, Hope and Lindos Suenos" the book tells the story of a young man’s journey through and beyond a great American high school. As the dust jacket reads, “Marcos Baez had many loves. First was his mother. Next came baseball, Reggaeton, and bachata. A girl stole his heart. Then he realized a love greater still -- learning.” A story of inner city life, dreams and the school that made a difference.

Marantz’ story chronicles the origins of the school in the time of post-busing Boston, its struggles and important decisions and affiliations as it grew and came to excel, and brings the reader up to date with the school right next to  the Red Sox’ Fenway Park, the city and the culture that Marcos finds will change his life.  The book is available through Powell’s Books. (www.powells.com)

Sonia Chang-Diaz, Massachusetts State Senator writes: "Through the story of Marcos Baez and Fenway High School, Steve Marantz shows the humanity and prospects of Latino students in our nation's public schools. "Next Up at Fenway" gives us a window into how social forces and education policy decisions are playing out in real people's lives - for better and worse - within America's fastest growing demographic. This book is the story of how schools make a difference. It's both Americana and a reality check for the 21st century." -

ERC to Co-Sponsor Progressive Education Talk in Boston

ERC will join the Forum for Education and Democracy/CES in hosting “A Conversation With Friends: There is a Stirring” with Deborah Meier and Larry Myatt to be hosted at the Boston Green Academy, Boston’s newest CES high school. The event will take place on Thursday, June 20, 2013 from 5:00PM-6:30PM in the Auditorium at the South Boston Education Campus, 95 G Street, South Boston.

Free parking is available in the school parking lot. For questions and/or to reserve your place, contact Mary Callaghan, Boston Green Academy: mcallaghan@bostongreenacademy.org

Investing in “Opportunity Youth”

by Tony Monfiletto, Executive Director, New Mexico Center for School Leadership

Lately we’ve heard a lot about the economic case for early childhood education.  The return on investment for high quality education for three and four year-olds is pennies on the dollar.  It’s a powerful sentiment that I happen to share.  However, I think there’s an equally compelling argument for investing in adolescents, particularly the disengaged. 

In 2012, Henry Levin and Clive Belfield wrote an article entitled, “The Economics of Investing in Opportunity Youth.”  It’s a thorough analysis of the cost of the 17 percent (1 out of every 6) young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are not in school and do not have a job (sometimes referred to as “opportunity youth”.  It’s a thorough analysis that that examines the fiscal consequences of increased government services and lost income for these young people.  The data is compelling when you consider the impact on any young person.  But, it’s shocking when you think about what it means for an entire community.

The authors estimate that the cost of government services for these young people will be roughly $230,000 over their lifetime and the social cost is just over $700,000 (mostly in lost wages).  These numbers are high but not surprising since we all know that the employment prospects for high school dropouts are dismal.  The real insight comes when they examine the impact on an entire community.  The numbers quickly run into the hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars for some communities.  In Memphis and Washington DC the cost is more than $1.4 billion for a single cohort of young people and $6.7 trillion for the entire country.

The tricky thing about their analysis is that it rests on assumptions about what could be.  They project a cause and effect scenario that cannot be proven.  I follow the logic, but it’s still speculation.  Macro-economic views like theirs are necessarily broad in scope so I decided to take some time to think about their analysis in a local context.   I applied their assumptions to ACE Leadership High School and the network of schools that we intend to create over the next five years.

The Leadership High School Network (LHSN):

Roughly 80 percent of the young people we serve in the LHSN are either off track to graduation or they have dropped out of school and returned to earn their diploma.  We have focused our approach to learning in the context of high growth sectors of our local economy (Architecture, Construction and Engineering , Health Care, and Technology so far).  It is not a narrow vocational style training.  Instead, we provide an education built on developing their adaptability and problem solving skills so that they will be vertically and horizontally mobile in their careers.  We teach school from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm and we serve students from 14-24 years old and our mission is to transition every graduate to college or work.

My colleagues and I examined our student body at ACE Leadership and we found that conservatively one third of our graduates would fit the definition of “Opportunity Youth.”  In other words, if it wasn’t for us they wouldn’t be in school or working in the future.  We then estimated the economic impact of our work and projected the impact of the sister schools that are yet to come (Health Leadership begins operations in August of 2013 and Technology Leadership begins in August 2015).

Ultimately, the LHSN is designed to serve roughly 2,000 a year students and the schools will graduate roughly 500 students per-year when they are fully developed.  The number of “Opportunity Youth” graduating should be about 165 per year.  Below is our estimate of the impact we will have if these young people become gainfully employed: 

Fiscal Impact                                   Impact for

Graduates                                  (social services)                                                  Cohort

165                 X                     $2,300,000 per graduate                   =           $379,500,000

165                 X                     $6,200,000 per graduate                   =           $1,230,000,000

These numbers are jarring, but they become spectacular when we think about them over time.  If we project the 10 year savings in tax dollars it climbs to 600 million and the growth in productivity is more than $10 billion.

It’s strange to think in such a long time frame.  We really don’t know what the future holds but we do know a couple of very important things:

  • The jobs of tomorrow are likely not going to be the jobs we have now and young person’s adaptability is their ticket to their (and our) prosperity.
  • The poor are becoming increasingly immobile.  The chance that young people will make it out of poverty is getting less and less likely and when you’re poor you are likely to stay put.  In other words, people who have skills and knowledge can leave to pursue the best job possible while the poor are here to stay.

These two facts lead me to say that investing in “Opportunity Youth” is our best chance to change their lives and the health of our community.  It’s not a sure bet, but it’s one we can’t afford to pass up.  Just think about what else we could do with that $379 million in tax dollars and what else they could do with the $1.2 billion in income.

Do new exams produce better teachers? Some states act; educators debate

By Jackie Mader

NORTHRIDGE, Calif.— It took less than a minute for Mario Martinez to finish the first six questions of the algebra exam that his professor, Ivan Cheng, had just handed to him. The high school-level test was supposed to be a good example of an exam, so that the graduate students in Cheng’s math methods course at the California State University, Northridge’s school of education would better understand what rigorous high school-level questions look like, and how to write tests for their own lessons.
By the end of the first page, Martinez had already learned an important lesson: “Beware of redundant problems,” he scribbled on the side of his paper before flipping it over to finish the problems on the back.

Mario Martinez, a graduate student in California State University Northridge’s teacher preparation program, examines a high school algebra test he created for a class assignment. (Photo by Jackie Mader)

Martinez has until the fall to hone his skills before he will be sent into a classroom to practice as a student teacher. And he has at least a year before he will have to prove that he can not only teach math, but also create tests and analyze student results. It is a skill that many educators say is a sign of a good teacher, and one so important it was included in a lengthy exit exam that all aspiring teachers must take before they receive a teaching credential from the state.
Aspiring teachers videotape themselves teaching a lesson and write several lengthy reflections. California introduced the performance assessments in 2001 to adhere to a 1998 state law. Teachers must pass them in order to receive certification.

Every teacher preparation program in the state must choose one of three versions for students to take, each of which centers around the teaching and self-reflection activity. The Performance Assessment for California Teachers, or PACT, is the test of choice for Northridge and more than 30 other teacher preparation programs in the state, and many classes, like Cheng’s math methods course, design curriculum around the assessment to ensure students are prepared to pass.

Although it is largely untested and debated among educators, the PACT has served as a model for a national exam, known as the edTPA, that at least 25 states are introducing. Developed by 12 California institutions in 2001, the PACT was put on hold when the state suspended the performance assessment requirement in 2003. Three years later, the requirement was reinstated, and in early 2007 the state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing approved the assessment.
The multi-part test, which often takes a semester to complete and results in dozens of pages of essay reflections, tries to assess whether an aspiring teacher is able to teach multiple learners in real classrooms. It has been tapped as a nationwide model because supporters say it presents a complex picture of a candidate’s strengths, weaknesses, and classroom readiness.

But many educators hesitate to say that the new performance assessments are creating better teachers or that passing them is a sign a teacher will be effective, partly due to the lack of more evidence.

Martinez says that Cheng’s class has spent extra time on designing and grading tests for lessons they have created because it is typically “the part of the PACT that math teachers do the worst on.” While some say this practice of designing teacher preparation curriculum around the PACT bears resemblance to K-12 teachers “teaching to the test,” many educators at Northridge say the PACT is focused on critical areas of good teaching, like planning lessons with strong student assessments, and modifying lessons for English language learners and students with disabilities, and that it therefore only reinforces what candidates should learn anyway.
Some research has found that high scores on performance exams like the PACT may signify that a teacher will be more effective in the classroom. One study out of Stanford University, which helped design the PACT, found that for each additional point an English Language Arts teacher scored on the exam, which is scored on a 44-point scale, students averaged a gain of one percentile point per year on California standardized tests. But the study only looked at 14 teachers and their 259 students.

If passing the PACT means teachers are prepared for the classroom, then by pass rates alone it would indicate that programs using assessment are, for the most part, producing teachers ready for the challenges of the classroom. In the 2009-10 school year, 33 percent of aspiring teachers in the state applying for their credential took the PACT. Ninety-four percent of them passed all sections of the exam on the first try.
But according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the PACT’s pass rates are much higher than those on the California Teaching Performance Assessment (CalTPA), taken by a majority of teacher candidates in the state, and the Fresno Assessment of Student Teachers (FAST), taken only by candidates at California State University Fresno. The CalTPA had the lowest pass rate, with only 77 percent of candidates passing all sections of the exam on the first try. The FAST has a first-time pass rate of 87 percent.

The high pass rates have skeptics wondering if the performance assessments are rigorous enough. All three versions of the assessments are usually scored by the institutions themselves, and students can retake them if they fail the first time.
Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University who helped design the edTPA, the national test, says the high pass rate on the PACT is expected. Teachers in California take up to three standardized tests, including a basic skills assessment and several subject matter tests, even before they take the PACT or one of the other two versions of it. Darling-Hammond says each exam knocks out about 10 percent of the aspiring teacher pool in the state. (In the 2009-10 academic year, 78 percent of candidates passed the state’s basic skills assessment, and 81 percent of applicants passed the reading instruction exam.)

“This [pass rate] is only the people who’ve made it through all those gauntlets, that managed to get into the program, and haven’t caved when they were asked to do the PACT,” said Darling-Hammond.

She added that the preparation programs that use the PACT, including the University of California system, Stanford, and several schools within the California State University system, have the highest selectivity in admissions to their preparation programs. “If this were statewide,” added Darling-Hammond, “the pass rate would certainly be much lower.”

A report from the state’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing cautioned against comparing the pass rates. Unlike the PACT, which is taken at the end of the preparation program, candidates take the four sections of the CalTPA at different times throughout their programs. Some programs counsel students out before they take the performance assessment, meaning only the top students may end up taking the exam.
Opponents of performance assessments say that preparation programs, and the state, are missing the point by relying on an assessment to determine if teachers are prepared for the classroom.
Ann Schulte, associate professor at California State University, Chico, says that preparation programs should be focused on working with and assessing teacher candidates in the field, so they receive frequent observations and feedback during their student teaching experiences from someone with extensive knowledge of their abilities and classrooms.

Schulte cited research that found alignment between the results of those who pass the PACT and the observations of educators supervising those candidates in the field. “It begs the question then, ‘why are we doing it?’” Schulte said.
Elsewhere in the country, some educators and students have asked the same question, and subsequently refused to administer or take the national version of the assessment. In 2012, all but one student in the secondary-teacher training program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst refused to participate in the exam, arguing that mentors who observed them in a student teaching setting for months would be better judges of their teaching ability than Pearson, the education company administering the exams.

More concerning to some schools is the idea that pass rates on performance exams could be used to determine the quality of teacher preparation programs. Since 1998, the federal government has attempted to increase the accountability for preparation programs by requiring states to collect and report information about the programs, including completion rates, average scores on state and national teaching tests, and the number of student teaching hours required.

California includes pass rates from performance assessments in its own annual analysis of this data, and uses that data as one of many measures that determines if a school of education is “low-performing.”

In California, there is general consensus that the performance assessment, which encourages students to focus on how they would teach a variety of students, has at least created more thoughtful teachers, even if the research isn’t clear that the tests are improving the quality of the teaching force.

“Does PACT make a better teacher? No,” said Nancy Prosenjak, a professor at Northridge. “But I think we have a substantial program that’s research based, we have the PACT,” she added. “So with all of those, maybe we have better teachers.”

From The Hechinger Report, Independent Education News, May 2013

Frank McCullough essay

“Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this…” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I reflect back on my twenty years of teaching, I am actually quite amazed at how little time I have spent working with other teachers and administrators with a specific focus on my teaching and student learning.  In large, district secondary schools my colleagues never came to my room and my principal observed me and my class once a year, checking random boxes on a district form that I then was asked to sign.

Moving to a charter school, this situation improved.  The common expectation was to collaborate with other colleagues, plan together and occasionally “team-teach”.  We worked together in “Professional Learning Committees” and “Critical Friends Groups”, sharing dilemmas and looking at student work.  This brand of professional collaboration-with actual conversations about teaching and learning- was rather transformative for me as an educator.  Although it was far better than the isolated and sterile version of the craft practiced in district schools, I still felt we neglected the “in-the-moment” classroom practice -how teachers organized and managed classrooms, and our direct work with students.  After all, this is where the rubber meets the road, right?

As I have transitioned in to an instructional leadership role, I have pondered the relationship between the administrator and teacher, and how this relationship can lead to improved student engagement and achievement.Fortunately, years ago, I was introduced to two foundational concepts that have shifted my thinking:  the fractal theory, and the ‘provoke and support’ model.   To put it simply, my interpretation of the fractal theory in education is, what adults are asked to do shouldn’t look entirely different from what students are asked to do. In short, I have come to believe that modeling is everything.  We, as adults in schools, should always strive to “be” what we expect our students to be.  We should place high expectations on ourselves academically, intellectually and behaviorally; endeavoring to model ethical and empathetic conduct.  And through intellectual provocation and social and emotional support, we can model and teach our students to strive to do likewise.  So, by applying the fractal metaphor to my new role as well as the guiding principle of provoke and support, shouldn’t my work with teachers look similar to how I worked with students?

Pursuantly, I now try to ground my work as an instructional leader in day-to-day classroom presence and observation, with the goal of building relationships and engaging with teachers using the ‘provoke and support’ model.  I utilize different types of observations including the 3-5 minute “pop-in”, the 10-20 minute visit with written feedback, the full- class scripting visit, and class video taping.

The text The Three-Minute Classroom Walk-Through; Changing School Supervisory Practice One Teacher At a Time has helped me to address the issue of limited time for administrators to visit classrooms.  We simply have to contend with this restraint by taking advantage of any time we might grab for quick, 3-5 minute class visits with a specific focus on student safety and engagement and the curricular and instructional decisions that teachers make.  The text also gives the reader strategies to follow-up with teachers and engages in brief yet meaningful discussions regarding teaching and learning.  I have found these visits helpful in maintaining classroom presence, keeping me generally informed regarding classroom practice (a colleague recently paid me a complement by stating, “you know our work”), and providing me with “snapshots” of information that can then inform follow-up discussions about classroom practice as well as individual and whole-group professional development.

The 10-20 minute visit with an accompanying note practice was inspired by Larry Myatt, who also recommended the ‘fractal’ theory and the ‘provoke and support’ model.  As Larry describes it, the practice of initially keeping the notes low-stakes and strengths-based energizes the teacher and builds trust and credibility between the administrator and teacher.  As we move through the school year the written feedback I provide evolves from celebratory and supportive, to more provocative with an effort to provide less experienced teachers with specific strategies and engage more experienced teachers as a reflective partner.  As I have incorporated these visits I have noticed that teachers will even begin to seek more critical feedback.

I have used hour-long classroom scripting activities for both more formal observations focusing on problems of practice as well as yearly teacher evaluations.  Typically for this format I will first meet with the teacher to identify a specific area of focus.  This is the “lens” through which to view the class and the script is an evidence-based, descriptive document that focuses on teacher and student actions and tasks.  I will also embed questions and prompts in the text which we will discuss in a follow-up debrief.

            Video taping can be used in various formats:  I have watched video clips with the presenting teacher as a teaching and learning discussion spring board, shared clips in teams with a specific content-area focus, and shared video with the whole faculty to foster school-wide discussions regarding teaching and learning.  Like student portfolios, I feel there is great potential using video as artifact and a text for documenting and measuring growth in practice.

From the text Instructional Rounds in Education, I have learned to ground feedback for teachers in concrete and specific terms, being mindful of “staying low on the ladder of inference”, avoiding judgmental language and striving to meet the overall goal of being descriptive.  Now I quite frequently use, “I heard”, “I saw” statements when communicating with teachers.  In fact, through classroom observation, I have begun to shift my overall perspective and outlook-making me more sensitive towards descriptive, specific, evidence-based language versus “climbing up the rungs” to evaluative and judgmental statements.  Ironically, in my position, I am responsible for faculty evaluations.  However, I have learned from the text to not classify teaching practice as “good” or “bad”, but instead, to simply pose the question, “What is the next level of work for this classroom?”

Another important learning for me was distinguishing between when teachers have the capacity and energy to fully engage in reflective practice, and when teachers simply need additional support.  Unfortunately, in my experience, teacher observation and evaluation was often an end-of-year activity, a compliance issue of “dotting i’s and crossing t’s”.  Could there be a less optimal time when folks are worn out, managing end-of-year projects and performances, wrapping up finals and grades, and ready for a much needed and well deserved break-to be trying to engage as a reflective partner and foster professional growth?  No, this is best done earlier in the school year, when people are able to hear constructive feedback and have more time and energy to implement change.

In my experience, consistently visiting and observing classrooms breaks down walls and builds relationships with teachers, particularly when one initially takes an assets-based approach.  As a colleague at my school said, consistent presence in teacher’s classrooms “opens the door to conversation” regarding teaching and learning.  She also identified the shift from “once-a-year” evaluative classroom observations to an ongoing presence with grounding in day-to-day instruction and that “teachers know that you have a helpful perspective as to how their class runs.”

Frank McCullough is the Director of Instruction and Assessment at the Amy Biehl High School in Albuquerque, NM. Prior to that, he was Curriculum and Instruction Coordinator at the Native American Charter Academy, and a Humanities teacher at Amy Biehl HS. He is also a musician and outdoor enthusiast.

School–Business Partnerships: Learning New Lessons

by Andrea Gabor

from the WallStreetJournal.com- Autumn 2012/Issue 68

In the midst of a great unemployment crisis, there is also a yawning talent gap. For the marketing function or the factory floor, recruiters seek applicants with the scientific knowledge, communication skills, and technological acumen that many high school graduates (and even some college graduates) lack. That’s why business leaders are pushing for school reform with such urgency; they see public schools as both suppliers of talent and incubators of the future, and they want to help education leaders become more effective.

Unfortunately, most business–education partnerships have been formed around a core set of school reform ideas that can be appealing in theory but don’t seem to work in practice. These include competition-based reforms, including most voucher and charter school systems, incentive pay for teachers, some management training programs for education leaders, and the intensive use of digital educational technology.

One basic attitude underlying these reforms is that schools need to be run more like businesses. In practice, that means adopting a competitive management style that imposes numerical goals, rewards high performers disproportionately, blames labor unions for poor performance, and forces each individual to prove his or her value every day. In other words, school reformers are promoting top-down, carrot-and-stick, compliance-driven management ideas that (as quality-movement leader W. Edwards Deming and others have pointed out) are unreliable and, in many cases, counterproductive — even in business.

Moreover, virtually all the studies on key reform initiatives, including the charter movement and merit pay for teachers, suggest that these measures have failed to improve education outcomes. Two of many examples: A 2009 study by Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that only 17 percent of charter schools earned better test scores than traditional schools, and 37 percent did significantly worse. A major 2010 study by Vanderbilt University found that teachers who were offered a US$15,000 bonus for improving student test scores over a three-year period performed no differently than teachers who weren’t included in the offer.

“[The effort] to improve the quality of education turned into an accounting strategy: Measure, then punish or reward,” writes Diane Ravitch in The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (Basic Books, 2011). “The strategy produced fear and obedience among educators; it often generated higher test scores. But it had nothing to do with education.”

How, then, should businesspeople who are genuinely interested in school reform take on the challenge? Start by recognizing that you have a great deal to offer education — if you can draw on the most collaborative, generative aspects of business thinking and action, following the examples of companies that promote transparency, engagement, shared accountability, continuous improvement, and organizational learning. For example, a recent study by Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, “Collaborating on School Reform,” shows that contrary to popular practice and the dictates of many corporate education reformers, the secret to long-term improvement for teachers, schools, and students is “substantive collaboration” at all levels — the classroom, the school, the district, the community; in short, collaboration among all key stakeholders.

Many educators appreciate the value of participative management and leadership training. “If you are trying to run a system as large as a small city, you need a diverse set of skills,” says Shael Polakow-Suransky, senior deputy chancellor for the New York City Department of Education, noting that when the city’s education system was controlled almost entirely by educators, it was “incredibly poorly run.” When the district began to draw talent from the private sector in the 1990s, he adds, there were some false starts in which businesspeople clashed with educators. “We learned that we need both [forms of expertise],” he says.

On the ground, the most effective business–education partnerships are those that foster innovative education opportunities in which both students and parents can participate, and those that create bridges between schools and the outside world, including potential employers. The following stories demonstrate some of the principles that help these partnerships work. What distinguishes them from many outright failures is the quality of collaboration. In these examples, business leaders did more than donate funds and technology; rather, schools and businesses sought to learn from one another.

 

Fostering Tech Experiments

Many education reformers have applauded the potential of technology: netbooks, video learning, and electronic educational games. But in practice, technology designed for consumers and homeschooling is not well suited to the needs of inner-city kids or to use within the public school classroom. Computer infrastructure hardware company Cisco Systems began to experiment in the mid-2000s, in partnership with schools, to find more effective ways to introduce technology to classrooms. Its experiments demonstrate the promise and value of these projects, and the difficulties involved in maintaining them.

In Louisiana, the challenge came with assessing the value of the partnership. One report, by the Center for Children and Technology, found that Cisco’s partnership with the local school district had helped “launch a dramatic educational transformation.” At the same time, progress has lagged expectations. Although Jefferson Parish ranks sixth out of 60 Louisiana school districts in percentage performance gains between 2008 and 2011, the district still received a “D” on its state evaluation, based on 2011 student test scores. Lessons learned from Cisco’s experience indicate that business–education partnerships should:

• Be set up so that all aspects of the project are transparent to outsiders, even if corporations profit from the R&D

• Foster experimentation, because it is not always clear in advance which ideas and projects will work best

• Establish in-depth training for every new technology, with businesspeople and educators learning from each other

Conclusions

At their best, partnerships like Cisco’s in Jefferson Parish, LA and New York City represent a virtuous circle in which a company helps school districts develop priorities, strategies, and expertise while educators help the business understand how technology is used on the ground, enabling the business to develop more useful products.

The most realistic road to school reform starts with recognition that business has a tremendous — and growing — stake in the success of public schools. That is why business–education partnerships are likely to proliferate, especially as schools and school districts struggle. In the most successful experiments innovation becomes, almost literally, everyone’s job. Just as school administrators, teachers, and students can learn from business executives, companies interested in education reform would do well to learn from the schools they want to help. The challenges they face, as well as the remedies that work best, might surprise them.

WSJ.com- Reprint No. 00126

Taking a Broad Minded Approach To Educator Evaluation

By Wayne Ogden

Salem Community Charter School (SCCS) in Massachusetts is not your typical high school. Its “campus” is several thousand square feet of retail space in a downtown mall. No landscaped grounds or athletic fields surround it and its neighbors are the residences and commercial enterprises of downtown, historic, Salem, Massachusetts. The school’s mission is succinct yet complex, “Salem Community Charter School (SCCS) is a Horace Mann Charter School providing an alternative educational experience for students who have previously struggled in school. SCCS is specifically designed and staffed to serve the needs of students who have dropped out of high school or who are at-risk of dropping out, to engage them in new and exciting ways and inspire them to reach their academic aspirations.”

SCCS Started kicked off its inaugural school year in September 2011 with a new principal, Jessica Yurwitz, and a small staff that the local newspaper described as a “small bunch of 20 and 30-somethings” . Despite the terse journalistic description, the teaching team knew they had to hook their 50 new students immediately, or risk losing them once again, and this time perhaps with finality, from the public school system. The school had begun to take shape many months before when the City’s Mayor and then Superintendent of Schools had a nascent vision of re-engaging some of the many students the traditional system was losing. It was the right vision, but the “how” would be challenging at every step. The role and performance of teachers would, of course, be critical.

May , 2011 Salem Community Charter School is awarded its official school charter. (From left) Paul Reville, State Secretary of Education; William Cameron, Salem Superintendent of Schools; Jessica Yurwitz, Principal of SCCS; Maura Banta, Chair of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education; and Mitchell Chester, Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education in Massachusetts

Now in its second full year of operation Principal Jess Yurwitz and her dedicated staff are buffeted by most, if not all of the same things as high schools twenty times their size and, of course, some much more complicated matters. How does one begin re-engage students who describe their previous experiences in high school as painful, unsuccessful, and frustrating?

Add to that set of dilemmas a new challenge for Principal Yurwitz and her staff this year -how to train for and implement Massachusetts’ new “Educator Evaluation Process”, a statute that promises to include student performance data as a significant part of a teacher’s overall evaluation rating. While this statewide initiative has caused much anxiety in many of the state’s school districts due to the perceived high stakes nature of holding teachers accountable for their students performance, the SCCS professional community is embracing the new evaluation training and implementation in a fashion that makes it a model for schools and district across Massachusetts.

What makes the SCCS approach so unusual in this new evaluation initiative is that the principal and her teachers have chosen to work together as a professional learning community , to be trained in unison in every aspect of the model educator evaluation process. Most Massachusetts’ school districts have elected to pursue a training and implementation model that has teachers segregated from their building-based evaluators in all phases of training for the new, model evaluation process. This alignment follows a traditional pattern seen in most school districts over the past five decades in which teachers and administrators receive their professional development in isolation from one another. And, while that model may work reasonably well when the professional learning is centered around a new curriculum initiative, it can breed differing and sometimes competing perspectives about what constitutes instructional excellence. Common sense would seem to dictate that when teachers and their principals can agree upon what a common set of standards of excellence in teaching are and what those standards look like in the action of a classroom, then performance evaluations have a better chance of bringing about the desired result of instructional improvement.

At SCCS considerable time has been set aside for Yurwitz and her teachers to learn every teaching standard, element, indicator and performance rating that the state has been laid out for them by the new DESE process. They debate about what good practice looks like and how it might be improved upon. They look at instructional videos and analyze and classify the many teaching behaviors they observe into the performance matrix the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education requires (http://www.doe.mass.edu/lawsregs/603cmr35.html) of all principals to use in their evaluation of teachers. The staff at SCCS can view this process as an institution-builder, and a quality mechanism and engage in sophisticated professional conversations about what best teaching practice looks like.

Perhaps, the same out-of-the-box thinking that allows the faculty of SCCS to successfully re-engage disenfranchised students, is what has made them unique in their unified approach to improving teaching performance.