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These days, you either love Teach for America and its teachers, or you hate them. The love, it seems to me, stems from an obvious source. Young, often privileged, kids are choosing the hard, hard work of teaching in some of our most struggling schools. (There are easier resume stuffers out there.)
The hatred is more complex, but I think it's instructive, even if it is unfair. The very existence of TFA shines a spotlight on some of our biggest national shortcomings, but policymakers who support TFA seem oddly oblivious to that fact. Here are a few of those shortcomings as I see them:
We Still See Teaching as Missionary Work, Not as a Profession. We cheer TFA teachers for their missionary zeal. We admire them for working 80 hours a week but understand why they often leave after a couple of years. Regular teachers who work fewer hours, we say, are just "putting in their time." Without that Ivy League degree, we assume, teaching was likely one of their only options anyway. This mindset does little to elevate teaching as a profession. (Nancy Flanagan shares similar thoughts here.)
Teachers Don't Get the Support They Need. When They Do, It Makes Headlines. TFA has learned from the struggles of its new teachers over the years. It gives its teachers intense, individual support, and it strives to strengthen its support systems all the time. You'd think all teachers could expect that kind of ...
If you want to insult people, really cut them down, call them "incrementalists." For those of you who aren't education wonks, an "incrementalist" is someone who is happy to take baby steps towards school reform. It's someone who doesn't lose much sleep over the thousands upon thousands of kids who, in the meantime, are dropping out of school or graduating without the skills they need. Often, the label gets applied to people who are skeptical about charter schools or merit pay.
But even the boldest reformers can sound like "incrementalists" when they see the early results of their reforms. They often find themselves pleading for more time and understanding. That's not an entirely bad thing--as long as we never lose the urgency of our mission to improve schools.
Take, for example, the case of Chicago Public Schools. The Chicago Tribune just ran a piece laying out the tepid results of CPS's "Renaissance 2010" reform plan. The Trib article is important, because Ren2010 has been touted as a model for bold national reforms: Open to doors to more charter schools, rebuild struggling schools from scratch, and close failing schools altogether. Defending reforms ...
"High expectations" has become a tagline in education circles. Repeat it enough times in enough contexts, and watch it lose most of its meaning. That's why I'm grateful for Carol Dweck's new article in Principal Leadership magazine. She reminds us that there is a good deal of science behind the slogan.
Dweck's argument, in a nutshell, is that mind-set matters. If you believe your intelligence is a fixed quantity, then you're not likely to learn very much. If you believe the same of your students, they're not likely to learn very much either. Even if you praise students for their intelligence, you're liable to stifle their motivation, feed their insecurities, and stunt their growth.
If, however, you praise them for their hard work and progress, then they're likely to stretch themselves and improve. They develop what Dweck calls the "growth mind-set." Her claims might just rescue the concept of self-esteem from disrepute.
The research she cites is compelling. Take, for example, the research on students of color:
Teaching a growth mind-set seems to decrease or even close achievement gaps. When Black and Latino students adopt a growth mind-set, their grades and achievement test scores look more similar ...
Amanda Ripley ran a piece in The Atlantic this week praising Teach for America for its work to define what a great teacher looks like. That article had me running all hot and cold. Here I'll focus on what left me cold: The overuse of standardized tests to define greatness.
We're already creating students in the image of these tests. If I'm to believe The Atlantic, we'll be creating teachers in their image, too. Not only will we use test scores to determine which teachers are doing the best teaching. We'll use them to decide what character traits, academic background, hobbies and who knows what else teachers should possess. We could hitch everything, everything to that engine. (See Diana Seneshal's provocative piece on why that should ...
Shocking news! You can turn around a struggling school without firing all or even most staff. You can even keep the principal. All you need is a little--or a lot of--help from your friends.
This is one of the big lessons I draw from a new study (PDF) of work by Strategic Learning Initiatives (SLI) to turn around 10 troubled schools in Chicago. SLI worked with existing school principals and teachers to improve instruction, and student performance gains accelerated by a factor of six. And SLI did this work without resorting to the slash-and-burn turnaround techniques that are all the vogue these days.
Here's an excerpt from Education Week's report on the study:
"The results that SLI has achieved, and that [the American Institutes for Research] has validated, are very impressive and suggest that well before decisions are made to reconstitute schools under the mandates of [the federal No Child Left Behind Act], school districts would be wise to consider far less drastic, but clearly powerful, interventions such as the Focused Instruction Process," write AIR analysts Steven Leinwand and Sarah Edwards in their July evaluation.
The U.S. Department of Education's four models for turning around low-achieving schools using federal stimulus money all require the principal to be fired; one calls for the school to be closed. But [SRI CEO John] Simmons argues that it's less expensive, and often more effective, to invest in the people already working in the schools. With the right tools, he says, school staffers can produce different results....
"That is the heart of our story--the application of research to the work of improving schools. High-performance schools aren't just born, they are trained and coached."
This story flies in the face of many current policy trends. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that great teachers are born, not bred. Why else spend all our ...
Dan Pink has written several bestselling books on the future of work. His most recent book, Drive, is already lighting up the blogosphere a scant week after its release. Drive explores what motivates us to do our best work. These days, carrots and sticks will do more harm than good, Pink argues. The time has come to tap "the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world."
Pink has earned his chops as a business writer. He has become a regular in the pages of magazines like Fast Company, the Harvard Business Review and Wired. But his work is at least as relevant to schools as it is to business.
Pink recently spoke with us about his book and its implications for school reform.
Public School Insights: Given that this is the age of Twitter, can you summarize your book in 140 characters or less?
Pink: I can summarize the book in 140 characters, although it is kind of hard to measure characters in audio….
The 140 character summary of this book Drive goes like this: Carrots and sticks are so last century. Drive says for 21st-century work we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery and purpose.
Public School Insights: Thank you, that does the trick. Let's dig into that and create a few more characters. [Along with] this notion of autonomy, mastery and purpose, you give a bit of a history. We have moved from motivation 1.0 to motivation 2.0, and then to motivation 3.0. What are these stages and why are they important?
Pink: Part of this book has a metaphor at the center of it. It is the metaphor of the computer operating system. All of us use computers. We use a whole variety of ...
The language of economics is quickly replacing the language of schooling, and that might not bode well for our children in the long term.
Two recent studies suggest that all the recent educonomic talk might thwart children's performance in the long run. (I learned about both studies from Newsweek's Nurture Shock blog).
The first found that students who focus more on test scores than on the inherent value of learning don't retain much of what they get by heart for a test. No big surprise there.
The second found that students do worse on tests when they believe they are competing with many people. By contrast, they "work harder, and do better, when they are up against just a few people." The study's authors speculate that students are more motivated to succeed when the competition is personal, when there are "fewer people in the race."
So the common language of school reform might actually take some wind out of students' sails. All that focus on test scores, especially those test-prep classes and rallies, might actually smother the urge to learn. And all that time we spend warning students that they're up against millions of Chinese and Indian geniuses? It may be counterproductive.
Reformers will no doubt heave exasperated sighs if they read this. High-flown ...
Yesterday, we shared our interview with David Cicarella, the union president who helped broker an historic agreement between teachers and the New Haven, Connecticut school distict.
Today, we'll hear from two district officials who were instrumental in the deal. Assistant Superintendent Garth Harries and Chief Operating Officer William Clark describe the groundbreaking collaboration that made the agreement possible.
Public School Insights: There has been a lot of attention given to the new contract in New Haven—a lot of it praise. What you think are some of the most groundbreaking provisions of that agreement?
Clark: I think the first big groundbreaking piece was how we approached it. Historically, due to Connecticut’s Teacher Negotiations Act, you are really forced into a very tight timeline of negotiations that is specifically identified by statute. Certain pieces have to be done by certain dates; otherwise you hurtle towards arbitration. So with the leadership of [Superintendent] Dr. Mayo, [New Haven] Mayor DeStefano and Dave Cicarella from the [New Haven] teachers union, what we really did was try to chart a different way and a different approach.
What we set up was essentially parallel tracks. On one track you had reform discussions and on the other track you had the classic negotiations. The reform discussions were specifically separate so as to not fall prey to the trappings of negotiations. We began by sitting around the table with the best intentions in mind: What could we do—what are the possibilities that could exist—if we look at this as a collaborative approach? That really opened a lot of doors.
We started, under Garth’s leadership within that committee, by coming up with a belief statement that both parties signed on to. So then even when we had some fits and starts and ...
Teachers in New Haven, Connecticut recently ratified a contract that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan praised as an “important progressive labor agreement” for its provisions on teacher evaluation and school reform. David Cicarella, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, recently told us about the agreement.
(Stay tuned tomorrow for an interview with New Haven district officials Garth Harries and Will Clark.)
Public School Insights: There has been a lot of praise given to the new contract in New Haven. What do you think are the most groundbreaking provisions of this agreement?
Cicarella: There are three components that get the most attention. One, our willingness to discuss tenure. Two, our willingness to talk about including test scores as a part of teacher evaluation. And three, the contract’s provisions for the closing and chartering of schools.
Public School Insights: Let’s start with tenure. What do you think the big accomplishment has been on that part of the agreement?
Cicarella: Historically, unions have been completely unwilling to discuss tenure, because it’s the only protection that teachers have against unfair dismissal.
But we’ve got to tighten up the dismissal process. We can’t have folks—and this is a complaint that the public makes and is legitimate—going through two, three, four years of improvement plan after improvement plan, when everyone knows that ...
Dr. Jerry Weast has presided over a decade of strong and steady gains in Montgomery County, Maryland. How did his district do it? Not by using any of the cure-all strategies that have captivated the national media.
Weast recently told us the story of his school district's success. Several big themes stand out:
- Stop the blame game and start collaborating. Big fights between administrators and teachers are catnip to reporters, but they don't do much for children.
- Set common goals and figure out how to reach them. In Montgomery County, everyone could agree that students should leave high school ready for college.
- Create a system that helps everyone be successful. It's not enough to let 1000 flowers bloom.
- There's more to equity than equality. Weast describes a "red zone" where most of the county's low-income children live. It's not enough to treat those children and their wealthier "green zone" peers equally. The children in the "red zone" need much more systemic support.
There's much more to Dr. Weast's vision than I can sum up here. Here's the story as he told it to us in a phone conversation last week:
There are some structural issues in the way that we are thinking about American education. You see little Kindergartners come to school, and they believe that they can learn anything. Their parents do too. And so does everybody else who meets them. But a few years later, because of the sorting process and the type of structure that they are in, a lot of that belief is taken away and there are huge achievement gaps.
Then you see beginning teachers. They come in and they feel like they can take on the world and do anything. But within five years about half of them have left the profession.
There is something structurally wrong with a system where about a third of the children in America ...
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