Education. Fixed. No wait. Now it's fixed. Now. Seriously this time.

Teachers are frustrated. Reformers are disgruntled. Parents are at their wits end. No one can find the elusive magic bullet that will solve all of our education problems. In our quest for that solution, society seems to be grasping at a number of different solutions. While I take issue with many of the proposed solutions, I think that the process of proposing, seriously, many dichotomous solutions is part of that problem.

Often in education, teachers will tell you that the left hand doesn't even know that the right hand exists, let alone what the right hand is doing. I could provide literally dozens of examples of this from my experience. 

Some of them are hilarious (a school firing it's literacy coaches before the meeting in which it declares its intention to participate in a "year of literacy"), some of them are sad (schools blocking websites that let kids learn by playing educational games simply because they are "games") and some of them make you shake your head (schools blocking programs they paid to buy).

I would attempt to blame the schools themselves, but that isn't fair. You see, they are simply reflecting the larger educational climate in America. That climate is, to put it kindly, scattered and divided. 

Most people in education agree that No Child Left Behind was a terrible law. Naturally, most states and the feds are still designing tests that are in line with the basic philosophy of NCLB. The vast majority of teachers will tell you that a larger class is harder to teach and that kids in larger classes tend to learn less. Nevertheless, class sizes continue to rise. 

Today, we revisit a topic near and dear to the BlazeBlog - teacher training. This topic is generally ignored by educational commentators, but recently there were two stories which both illustrated the basic differences in philosophy between educators and outsiders and were diametrically opposed to each other, which nicely illustrates how divided the nation is on questions of education.

In the last two days (editor's note: this was up to date in December of 2012, but we take a laizze faire kind of approach to deadlines here at the BlazeBlog, so the stories are more like "in the last two months" now), two different stories have come across my desk. They are both about what you have to do to become a teacher in this country. You almost certainly saw the first story.

In that story, the American Federation of Teachers calls for a more stringent national test for prospective teachers to take to determine their fitness for service as teachers.  They refer to it (in order to get more headlines) as a "bar exam" for teachers. This is hardly new. This very blog has called for an even more stringent system of teacher training (I thought about a link here, but I linked to it two paragraphs ago, so I'm not really interested in linking to it again).
If you're too lazy to read that post, the basic gist of it is that I don't think that teacher education is very good, and I want it to become not more like lawyering, but more like doctoring. While a stringent exam is a good idea, most states already have those. They go by names like the PRAXIS, PRAXIS II, and CBEST. The problem with those tests isn't that they aren't very good tests (they aren't), but rather that a multiple choice test is a pretty poor indicator of how a teacher will work in a classroom full of young people. In short, there is no " option C " to choose in front of a room of maniacal 12 year olds. That's why I have advocated, and will advocate again, a system much more like the internships of teaching hospitals, where student teachers will be given semi-autonomy but be under closer supervision than standard first-year teachers. 
 
So, that's hand number 1: make it harder to become a teacher


Hand number 2, naturally, calls for the exact opposite.

The day after that article was published, a story popped up in my facepagespace news feed about my home state of Indiana. Indiana, facing unemployment of recent college grads and a wave of teacher retirements, is looking to make it easier to become a teacher. Don't believe me? Fine, read it for yourself. I'm going to let you read that. Now, let's ask a compare and contrast question (studies show that C&C questions lead to a 22% increase in retention over straight rote memorization): What is different between the two articles?

Obviously Indiana has a problem, and they've proposed an innovative insulting solution. The basic outline makes the outrageous claim that a person who has a bachelor's degree and spends three years (probably getting observed 2 times a year) in a school with decent reviews can become a professionally licensed teacher. That's like telling me I can go practice law as long as I have 6 good evaluations from a lawyer who watches less than 1% of my time in trial. I'll just watch enough Law and Order and I'll be good to go. 

This basic idea is hardly new. Hell, it's the basis of Teach For America, a program I'm hardly in love with. (This is a subject for another day, so here's my argument in brief: TFA basically says that all of the pedagogy and content I spent 4 years learning can be mastered in a summer retreat. It also places teachers in intentionally temporary placements, which leads to higher teacher turn-over. If learning is all about relationships, which I think it is, then this undermines those relationships, especially at the high school level, where kids are savvy enough  to see that the young person they idolized (we hope) is now leaving for a higher paying gig. That sends a message to those students who we most need to reach that they aren't important enough to stick around for. Again, there is a full-length rant on TFA in my brain, I just haven't spewed it onto paper the Interwebs yet)

So you're going to take someone off the (college educated) street and put them in a classroom with minimal training. This proposal must have been made by someone who hasn't actually worked in a classroom. Obviously these people will have the content (actually, based on the writing of some college grads I know, I'm not even sure about that) knowledge to teach middle and high school. The problem with this is that only about 10% of a teacher's job involves content. The vast majority of this job is about managing kids. Convincing them that this material is important. Helping them grow. Fostering their maturation. 

These are not skills that are inherent. Ask anybody who works with kids. They'll tell you that it takes concerted effort to really work with kids. I suspect that these BA to 1st hour teachers will struggle and leave the profession quickly. High teacher turn-over doesn't solve any problems. 

So, to summarize: AFT thinks we need to make it much harder to become a teacher. States like Indiana want to make it much easier. Obviously they're both right. Or wrong. No, right. Wrong. Whatever they are, they send a confusing message. Do teachers need more training or less? 

I suppose we could look at these two stories as being isolated ideas on the fringes. However, both of them are serious proposals from people in education today. It really is the perfect picture of why we're struggling as a system. We can't agree on the most basic things, like how to put the best people in front of a class; let alone the complicated things, like how to teach that class effectively. 

In the end, I suppose it doesn't matter, because at the end of the day, no one is ever happy with the solution, so we shouldn't even attempt to make anybody happy.   

On school safety

I think it's safe to say that I haven't written here on the Blaze of Competence nearly recently enough. I would make excuses (job, baby, sleep) but if I won't take excuses from students for late work, I won't offer them to you. (feel free to enjoy this at 70% of your normal enjoyment, since I did turn it in late, and that's the penalty for complete late work that I impose)

It isn't that I haven't had anything to say. In fact, looking in the "drafts" folder, I have plenty of started posts, talking about NCLB, Race to the Top (RTTT), principals, testing, and the glory of AP classes. All of them get to about this point (the end of a moderately related and entertaining introduction) , and then they turn into an outline of other things I'd like to talk about. I just can't seem to get focused.

However, I'm on Christmahanakwanzaka break, so I thought I'd grab some time while the baby naps to hop onto the BlazeBlog and knock out some content. This is hardly unprecedented. Two years ago I squandered my October Break writing a list of 12 things that were wrong with schools. (It's still an entertaining read, if I do say so myself.) This year I'm not going to be nearly as ambitious. Instead, it'll be catch as catch can, but anticipate me posting more often than I have (which is to say, more than once every two months.)

Obviously, the major reporting on schools as we left for break was the Sandy Hook massacre. There were facebook and twitter comments by the millions. There were teachers who were heroes, giving themselves up to the gunman to save the lives of their students. We swore we would, in the cliched words of our generation, "never forget". Memorial stickers were applied to sports uniforms to show support, whatever that meant.

Yet here we are, not even a month later, and we basically have forgotten. My timeline and twitter feed show no mentions of the shooting, and calls for gun control have been surpassed by the need to pose and posture over the fiscal cliff. The timing of the shooting, combined with our increasingly short attention spans have moved it out of the consciousness of the nation. Really, why shouldn't it? School massacres are a terrifyingly common part of our existence.

However, this time, our good friends at the National Rifle Association took the opportunity to say that this wasn't about guns (a position I find somewhat laughable, since guns (yes, yes, yes operated by people) have been at the center of the vast majority of those shootings), but rather this was about school security. The NRA wants to implement something it calls the "school shield" program, where retired military and police would serve as armed guards at schools.

Never mind that proposal (actually, parenthetically, mind it. It won't work. For about eleventy-million reasons, but most of all because even in schools with active law enforcement (see High School, Columbine) on duty in the school, shooters will still have free reign, if only because they intend to kill, and a guard must hesitate before shooting, and therefore will be the first to die. Also, because the last thing we want to do is to make school feel MORE like a prison, which is precisely what having an armed guard or two on campus will do) because it will never happen, but let's talk about how we can make schools safer.

(Just so we're clear on this, I don't pretend to be a school safety expert. However, I've been in classrooms for a decade, in 6 different schools, 2 of which were in Colorado and built post-Columbine, and the current one in which a student was found in possession of a weapon during school hours during finals, and no one was hurt; so I probably have as much experience as an expert, but I don't call myself an expert.)

I think there are two ways you can make schools safer. One of them people will latch onto because it's easy to implement and track, one of them would be much more effective, but people won't latch onto it, because like good teaching techniques the world over, it's hard to measure.

1. Secure Campuses

Schools have been designed to be easy to get into and out of. This is for a very practical reason: the kids all come and go at the same time. Therefore, schools have lots of doors. In fact, in California, schools are mostly sprawling outdoor campuses, where every single classroom has at least one door that opens to the out doors, if not more.  Campuses need to be secured. In my last Colorado school, visitors could only enter through one door after the tardy bell rang. Inside that door they were in a "fish-bowl" of glass, and had to move through a second door to enter the school proper. That's good security (although if you have a really determined shooter it won't matter), but that's the most recent school design you can imagine. Most schools in this country are much older than that. Retrofitting them with one-in systems could require significant redesigns of the very architecture of the school. This could cost literally billions of dollars nation-wide. I'm not saying it wouldn't be worth it, but that money could really do more good paying for more teachers and smaller classes.

2. Build a culture of trust

The day before Christmas Break, a knucklehead at my school brought a gun to school. It was a handgun, and (evidently) 50 rounds for said weapon. He was found not because he brandished the weapon, or because he was searched by an armed guard, but because his peers reported him to a district program which students can use to report dangerous situations. Students are only willing to report things like this, and avert crisis, when they feel that they are important, valued, and that their tips will be acted upon.

Further, many dangerous situations have indicators that the people who should see them miss, and yet we seem to often see interviews where peers of a shooter say that they had concerns. With the pervasiveness of social media, often many people can see these warnings. If we build a culture of trust with students, they will be willing to share their concerns about things they see and hear, and schools and authorities can act to get those who are disturbed the help they so desperately need.

This culture represents a shift. For a long time, schools have dictated to students and students were expected to act as sponges for those dictations. However, as we move into a new world of constant change, students need to become partners in learning. We as teachers need to move away from the model where we were all knowing (although we still need to be the smartest person in the room) and shift to a model where we are partners with students, teaching them not just content, but also evaluate the information they are receiving and to create new ways of looking at that information.

If students are partners in learning, then there is a relationship, not of friendship, per se, but a relationship of learning. That involves trust, and if it is done right, students will confide in teachers, and share threats, and those can be dealt with in a calm and deliberate manner. 

I, for one, would prefer calmness to crisis any day.       

Wisdom and Rules

I don't know about you, but I enjoy a good lecture once in a while. In fact, I've even lectured on lecturing. (I don't want to give too much away, but there was a powerpoint featuring a photo of Bill Gates with horns, because he is, you know, the devil) I've gone so far as to write posts on this very blog about my love of lecture. However, to be fair, that post was mostly an excuse to link to a clip of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

In recent years, lecture has become relatively fashionable again, at least outside of the classroom, through the explosion in popularity of the TED talks. I found the one below particularly enlightening. 

Several things jumped off the screen to me the first time I watched this lecture. The first was how stereotypically academic Barry Schwartz is. Seriously. The only thing he's missing is patches on the elbows of his jacket, and he may have those. For Pete's sake, he gave the whole lecture looking over his glasses like I look at a kid who won't stop muttering during class.

More importantly though was his insistence, somewhere around the 9:30 mark, that rules and incentives are ruining our wisdom. As he puts it, "rules are destroying our moral wisdom". This is especially true in education, not just for students, but also for teachers. 

Students who are constrained by too many over-specific rules are never given the opportunity to figure out their own moral compass. Instead, they are always governed by adults. Then, when they graduate, we fling them out into the world and expect them to not be miscreants. That's unreasonable. Just as schools are a place (we hope) for them to learn social and work skills (in addition to all of the REALLY IMPORTANT ACADEMIC INFORMATION) they should be a place for kids to figure out right from wrong. Teachers certainly play a huge role in that, but not by coming up with more and more rules. I think the best teachers offer very few specific rules, instead relying on a broad set of respect-based expectations. If you get to specific, kids will spend more effort looking for loopholes than they will becoming better people. There's a really great argument to be made in support of the idea that binge drinking is essentially a response to finally being given some freedom in the world. I'm not going to make it here, but I think I could.

However, I will make this argument. That since teachers are facing more and more rules and regulations for how to run their classrooms, classroom teaching is being ruined. In just my classroom I have the following things which I am required to have on the walls; Williams Act Compliance forms in English and Spanish, district mission and vision, Expected School-Wide Learning Results, the "Grizzly 5" school-wide behavior expectations, a poster about the school district, and emergency procedures. I also have a BTEOTLIWBAT sign and every day have to write a lesson objective on the board in a proscribed manner. At a higher level, I have district pacing guides, district benchmark tests, and a curriculum that I am expected to follow. It's almost as bad as the CPS example in the video! It gets worse when it comes to the Internet. Heaven should forbid that I try to show a video on youtube or a clip from the Daily Show! I get the access denied screen more quickly than a kid gets thrown out of class for spitting on the floor.

So what is the result on teachers? Well, teachers act like kids. We spend more time in inservices complaining about the rules and looking for ways around them than we do talking about learning. Further, the strict schedules and heavy emphasis on testing makes teachers less willing to experiment and try creative teaching techniques. It becomes so hard to bring in interesting and fun activities that many teachers just give up. It is just as Mr. Schwartz points out: mediocre. Sure, no one does anything really reprehensible, but no one does anything really great either. In a nation where we're grinding our teeth about being mediocre, imposing more rules on teachers doesn't seem like the way to get to greatness.

Barry says that he understands why there have to be rules, they are there to prevent disasters. I get that. I'm sure if we could show youtube, some knucklehead would show a video with a swear word in it. When you operate without curriculum guides, some people decide that playing Finding Nemo is a great lesson plan for when they're talking about oceans in Earth Science.

The way to fix that isn't to simply put more rules in place. The way you fix it is by hiring better people. Or, if you're stuck with a staff you can't trust, you get into classrooms more often. No self-respecting teacher is going to do something inappropriate if they believe their boss or a co-worker might walk through the door. People will make bad decisions. Giving them a larger set of rules to follow isn't going to stop that. However, when you give them so many rules that it feels like they don't have choices, then they won't think about the decisions they're making, because they won't feel either empowered to make good decisions or feel trusted to make good decisions (in most cases, it's both of those things). 

But I think that the imposition of rules in education goes beyond worries about misconduct and bad teaching. I think that many of the rule imposers genuinely believe that by forcing teachers to do things a certain way, test scores will go up. There is an entire industry dedicated to testing and test prep. The data crunchers who work in education (but not in classrooms) are constantly telling admin teams that there are certain things that will absolutely improve test scores. My BTEOTLIWBAT sign is one of these magic bullets. Studies show that if students know what they have to do by the end of the hour, they will have better scores. 

That's great, but it ignores a larger fact. If that student has an "effective teacher", their scores will improve as well (and by a larger factor). The problem is that we have a hard time defining "effective". You see, different teachers are effective in different ways. I work in a department with 7 other professionals. I know that none of them would teach their class the way I teach mine, and I wouldn't teach the way they teach. I also know that most of them are really effective, and that they get the most out of the kids they teach. (lest you think I'm just blowing smoke here, one of them had 73% pass rate in AP World and another did better than a 50% pass rate on the APUSH exam. They don't suck). 

But since it's hard to put "effective" in a nice neat box, we impose more and more rules on teachers. Because that's easy, and easy is easier than hard. Unfortunately, our educational leaders won't watch Barry Schwartz, because if they did, they would have to examine their own moral wisdom, and I suspect that they would find it was below our expectations for them. 

And now, because this post was far too serious, I give you one of my favorite youtube videos. Ever.

And a picture of a clown with bagpipes. Admittedly, it's no Velociraptor on a bicycle, but it's close. 

What a difference a year makes

Hey there, loyal readers of the BlazeBlog! Long time, no see. I suppose I should apologize for that, because when we aren't seeing enough of each other, it isn't you; it's me. I got busy, and I stopped writing. I don't think that you really care, but this is all my fault. 

Those of you who have been around the Blaze of Competence for a while might remember what happened to me in the last year or so. The Mrs. and I relocated to California and I got a new job. In fact, if you missed it, you can find my angst-ridden posts about that here and here. Really if you check out this blog from about May-September of 2011 you'll see a veritable ton of sadness, angst and melancholy spread around. It reads like a high schooler's myfacepagespacemblr. All things considered, it was an ignominious beginning to my third major teaching stint.

So here we are, 368 days after that "first days of school" post. The new year began today, and I have to say that things are much better. I have my own classroom, the C.H.I.L.D. sign and Courtney Love are hanging in their places of honor again, and I even have a desk that I don't have to share with a fridge or microwave. To top it off, I have two windows and a board that I don't have to erase when class is over. These things assure that I'm in a better mood tonight than I was a year ago.

Lo those many months ago, I was in a pretty bad place. In fact, in reading through my plan book as I planned for this week, I saw a notation that showed just how distraught I was. This was written on the first Saturday of the school year:  

That's right, I planned to spend that Saturday "Mostly crying". Did I? Of course not. I retreaded up the mountain to surround myself with comfort and people I knew. Today, I spent my day passing out schedules, sending kids in the right direction and feeling like I kind of knew what I was doing. I even got recognized by teachers in other departments.  On Friday, I'm still going to retreat up the mountain, but for a distinctly different reason. (oh, also because it's going to be 104 actual degrees in the Valley)

Two questions present themselves at this point; first, "what changed that made you happy?" and second, "does this mean you're satisfied and won't be bringing me sadly infrequent rants on the BlazeBlog anymore?". 

To the first question that you I asked myself, I think a couple of things changed. I accepted where I was and made the best of it. This allowed me to focus on teaching, which is really what I love to do. The second thing was that I made friends with my co-workers. The older I get, the harder this seems to be, but it ended up working out, and now I feel like I belong when I walk into a department meeting. It's easier to be happy when you belong.

To the second question, I raise my eyebrows, shrug my shoulders and present this short anecdote:

My campus is currently undergoing a massive renovation. It's also roughly eleventy-billion degrees here in Fres-yes. And our cafeteria is un-air-conditioned. As a result, our administration decided that the cafeteria was a good place for 5 hours of meetings yesterday. I was so dehydrated when I got home that I just laid on the couch and groaned. Do you want to know what the meetings were about? Well, there was a terribly executed Olympics theme, wherein we were all supposed to think about being "gold-medal teachers". (but which was mostly a new format for re-indoctrinating us the usual jargon that our central office loves to send our way).  Then, we talked about the subject which spawned the Dr. Dick Johncock phenomenon. We witnessed a PowerPoint slide so powerful that it (and several adult beverages) started this blog. A slide with an acronym-shape combination so powerful that it has led to literally tens of people reading the rambling thoughts of a thoroughly average history teacher on the Internet.

That's right, we got to see the slide with the PBiS intervention pyramid on it. 

Oh, I'm not out of rants. Not by a long shot. O.O.P.

May the odds be ever in your favor

This week marks the beginning of my personal favorite time of the year; testing. I, like some the vast majority of teachers, am going through two weeks of special schedules and reading instructions out of books. This week also marks the end of The Hunger Games' four week run as the most popular movie in America. You're hopefully wondering what these two things have in common. Well, dear readers, wonder no longer, because I'm about to draw a long and convoluted analogy between the imagined dystopia of Panem and the very real dystopia of testing in America.

(editor's note: This is probably a good time to mention that if you haven't read all three books in the Hunger Games trilogy, this post will have some significant spoilers. Also, get off the internet and start reading those books. They aren't like Twilight. They're actually engaging and good.)

Imagine, if you will, the scene unfolding as the Tributes are selected for the Hunger Games. Effie s standing on the stage, in front of the assembled people of District 12. However, instead of simply drawing one boy and one girl's names from the many names, she keeps drawing names. In fact, she keeps drawing names out the globe until she has drawn the name of every single child. That is testing today in American schools. The only people not available to be tributes are those whose parents keep them home or opt them out of testing. The stakes aren't quite as high (instead of fighting to the death in a custom world they are fighting boredom in a sterile classroom), but I think that, in this case, popular young adult fiction can help us to illuminate the very real world of high-stakes testing. 

The Hunger Games are State Tests

Let's start at the top, shall we? For what reasons do the Hunger Games exist in Suzanne Collins' uber-successful novels? They exist to remind the people of Panem that they are still under the rule of the Capitol, and that they must sacrifice themselves for greater good. In our elaborate and all-too-long analogy, the tests that students are subjected to are the Hunger Games. Schools that do well are rewarded with awards and assemblies. Plus, as an added bonus, they get to keep their meager allotment of government funds (just as the victors in the arena received accolades, and their districts some extra food).

The tests serve to remind those average people, teachers, (and their unions, which I've attacked before) who is really in charge - the state. Just as the poor districts must be reminded that the Capitol is still in charge, teachers must be reminded that the state is still in charge (and by extension, the voters. Or corporations that use organizations like ALEC to write legislation. You know, whichever you choose). Schools are forced into giving tests because they rely on the state for funding, and the state threatens to remove that funding if the schools don't give the tests. 

But the Capitol doesn't roll out the same Game every year; if they did, tributes would know exactly how to prepare, and that would mean that they would improve. So the Capitol pays a man known as the Gamemaker to create new and exciting ways to challenge the tributes as they fight to the death. In The Hunger Games, this is a man named Seneca Crane. Crane is a true believer in the Game. He wants to put on the best show possible. Seneca Crane in real life is a bevy of reformers led by Michelle Rhee. The BlazeBlog has profiled Ms. Rhee before, and it wasn't exactly glowing. She is the front for testing and "accountability." She wants to move toward more charter and private schools. You might be wondering why I made her The Gamemaker and not the much-more-insidious President Snow. I made that decision because just like Seneca, Ms. Rhee isn't in charge. She's working for someone. 

In the novels, the Gamemaker's boss is the much-maligned and previously mentioned President Snow. He pulls the strings and manipulates the people of Panem. He works behind the scenes to make sure that he will be able to stay in power. In U.S. education today, there is a force just as underhanded and unlikeable as President Snow, albeit much less visible; the major testing corporations. The four major corporations, Pearson, Harcourt, Riverside, and CTB (who also happen to be major players in textbook publication), are estimated to make between $400 million and $700 million annually from administering tests to help the states comply with No Child Left Behind. They have a vested interest in making sure more and more students take more and more tests. So, you can believe that they have heavy interests in lobbying. Yeah, you read that link right; Pearson alone spent more than a million dollars lobbying last year. It really is as clever as wearing a rose to disguise the scent of death on your breath; they take money from the states, then use some of that money to bribe lobby the politicians who then mandate more testing. Genius; really, really evil genius. Was that link gratuitous? Yup, just like most testing. (Zing!)   

But what represents the evil that President Snow serves to lead, the wealth and privilege of the Capitol? Why, dear readers, that's clear to me. No Child Left Behind is the driving force behind this, just as the Capitol is the driving force behind the Hunger Games. And just as the Capitol isn't forced to send any tributes to the arena, the writers of NCLB were never subjected to its onerous mandates for testing.

This whole terrible show (killing children for amusement, not testing) has to be sold to the people of Panem. How can it be done? With a slick talk show host, of course. In the books he is Caesar Flickerman; charming, debonaire, and witty- he is the perfect foil for the inherent evil in making young people commit murder. Who fulfills that role here in America? Why, the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. He sells America on these ideas, even on talk shows. Coincidence? Probably, if I'm being honest.

OK, so we've got the broad analogy out of the way. Shall we delve further into this admittedly stretched comparison? Why not, lets go all English major and see if we can't really get to comparing!

The Participants in the Hunger Games are Students

There are two types of tributes in the Hunger Games; tributes and "careers". The tributes are selected at random to be sent to the arena, without special training or other advantages. The careers, on the other hand, come from districts with more resources and have spent their entire adolescence training to complete in the arena. Obviously, the careers win the vast majority of the annual contests. It is rare and noteworthy when someone from outside the career clique wins.

And so it is with testing. Some schools have enormous advantages. They are in wealthy areas, perhaps. They have large percentages of parents who have college degrees. Their schools are in communities that traditionally value education. In short, their students have great advantages. On the other hand, the majority of schools in America don't have those vast advantages. They are trying to educate students. But they're also dealing with larger problems. Slashed funding. Increasing class size. Kids who come from broken homes. Kids who come to them homeless. And yet, just like in the arena, all of these kids compete directly against one another.

In the Hunger Games, the tributes have people to help them prepare. They have mentors and stylists. In the case of District 12, it is a drunk named Haymitch serving as mentor and Cinna as the stylist. These two men do the best they can to help their charges survive, but they are working with limited advantages, namely the natural abilities of Katniss and Peeta. In our world, the stylists and mentors are the most important people in the room not taking the test; the teachers. Just like Haymitch and Cinna, teachers are making the best product they can with the resources and tools they have. And just as Katniss, especially, resists any change, many students resist change. And just like Haymitch and Cinna, teachers in the end send their charges out as prepared as they can be, but it is up to those children to perform.

(This is admittedly where the comparison starts to fall apart. You see, in the books, Haymitch and Cinna aren't punished (or haven't been punished in the past) when their tributes fail to be victorious. In education, teacher of students who don't comport themselves well are ostracized, criticized, and in extreme cases terminated. However, just like a good English major, I'm going to ignore this small detail and keep on trucking!) 

If you've read all three books, you know that rebellion is coming, aided by former insiders turned rebels.  "How will they fit into this comparison?" you're asking. Well, I'm glad you asked, because here it is:

Bad test questions are Mutts and will cause the rebellion which dismantles NCLB

In The Hunger Games there are creatures designed by the Capitol to help them keep track of their "citizens" and to attack the participants in the arena. They have been intentionally mutated from their original forms, and the outlying citizens call them "mutts". When we look at testing, all we see are mutts, because the tests are made up of them. That's right, the thing that started out natural and good, which is now used to keep the people in check: the questions.

Sure, questions are a natural part of the testing process, but teachers and students have become slaves to the questions. We spend an inordinate amount of time teaching not the material that will be covered, but test taking strategies. We talk about how to eliminate wrong answers. We look at every available released question. On top of that, with the massive boom in the number of tests, the publishing companies have taken to writing questions best described as "mutated". If you haven't clicked that link, it's important that you do so. For my argument and for a good laugh.

And just as the Mockingjay was a mutt that became a symbol for the revolution, so the pineapple may become a symbol of a growing rebellion against testing. You see, as more and more of these epically ridiculous questions become public knowledge, more and more parents will see that these tests aren't actually testing the things they claim to be testing. They might not take up arms against the Department of Education, but they will opt their students out of the tests, which is a small act of rebellion that could have lasting impacts, just like Katniss showing up as the Mockingjay.

In the novels, the rebellion is aided by a Gamemaker who has seen the error of the Capitol and works to fight to bring it down. Thankfully we have a Plutarch Heavenbee in America, a person who helped to create the hated game NCLB who now spends a life trying to undo it's damage. Our hero (or heroine) is Dianne Ravitch. Ms. Ravitch helped to write No Child Left Behind, but has now emerged as a leading critic of the law. 

That, friends (and enemies who read my blog out of spite), is the good news. Just as the rebellion rose up, crushed the Capitol and ended the Hunger Games, American education is poised to do the same. Certainly, there will be lasting damage from our ongoing experiment with testing, but in the end we will probably see the error of our ways and fix the system. 

However, until we do, I'd like to propose a change to those standardized directions I've spent the last week reading. Instead of "you may begin" I think I'd rather use "may the odds be ever in your favor". Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

The Administration Problem

I recently hosted a former co-worker and current friend who was visiting me here in the Central Valley of California. We took a day to visit Yosemite National Park, played an unbelievable amount of Settlers of Catan, and talked (probably more than rationale humans ever should) about what was wrong in education today. 

This should hardly come as a surprise if you've ever read this blog. This blog has, from the very beginning, complained about education. (On occasion it even offered a solution or two!)

So, as my former co-worker and current friend and I drove down the 405 in Los Angeles today, we were talking about the bane of most educators' lives: the administration. We work in different schools. They could not be more different in culture, location, demographics, or mission. They have basically two things in common: students and administrators. 

As I said at the very beginning of this blog, the students are never the problem, because educators know from the beginning that students are dumb. However, most educators don't realize when they leave the credential programs and student teaching what a massive problem they are about to encounter. 


Job search? Nope, that's something that they'll figure out.


Discipline? They'll figure out what works for them.


Making friends? If they're willing to open their doors, they'll make some. 


The thing that will be the biggest problem for them is the first person they probably met in their interview. Their administrator. 

(please don't think that this is an attack on all administration. I have several dear friends who are administrators. They are great people, and the vast majority of them work VERY hard. I have former co-workers who are now sitting on that side of the desk. It is a thankless job. They are hated by students, parents, and teachers.)

That administrative team isn't going to be a big problem until it comes time for them to perform the task which I think is most important, but which generally gets shuffled to the back burner: the evaluation process.

Let me explain: all of the evidence shows that the best way to improve student learning is to put an effective teacher in a classroom. The best way to make sure that teachers are effective is to evaluate them. However, since administrators have this evaluative role in the vast majority of schools, it generally is problematic. Why?

Well, because administrators tend to have roughly 1000 other duties to take care of. They oversee planning the schedule for next year, meet with parents, schedule and re-schedule sporting events, roam the halls, meet with different, angrier parents, go to LOTS of meetings, supervise lunch, take care of referrals, suspend kids, go to truancy court, meet with community members, and ohbytheway that trash can is on fire..... In short, they have lots of much more pressing things to deal with, and so evaluations get put on the back burner. In my experience, this leads to three things:

First, the evaluations generally aren't very good. I don't mean that they aren't accurate (although I did once get an evaluation supposedly for a class that wasn't even offered at the school), but rather that they don't actually help the teacher get better. In general, the form which is used has a lot of bureaucratic language and some check boxes, and then a space at the bottom where some canned comments relating to whatever emphasis is going on in the classroom can be plopped. These forms are great when someone needs to get fired, or when you have to prove to your supervisors that you have indeed been evaluated, but they aren't very good at actually making a teacher better. My experience has generally been that I look at the form to make sure I'm getting rehired, and then I try to end the meeting on a positive note. There's generally not very much that comes out of an eval that helps me be a better teacher. (Generally. I've had a couple of evals that were really helpful, especially early in my career)


Second, the evaluations don't happen often enough, and become dog-and-pony shows. I'm in my first year at a new school, and received a grand total of two formal evaluations. That's right, they made the decision to re-employ me based on watching me teach twice. (I'm not complaining, or really worrying since I think that I'm pretty awesome, but still). Because I know that my job depends on those two looks at my classroom, I really roll out the dandy show, every single thing I do is something that I know they're looking for. This a function of having the evaluation done by people who have many more pressing duties and of a person who wants to keep their job. If we had more evaluations they would be more accurate looks at what goes on in a classroom on a day when there isn't a scheduled high-stakes inspection.     


Third, since administrators no longer teach (and even when they did teach, they only taught one subject, generally), they generally can't give very good feedback about the class that they observed. Teaching is constantly changing, and people who have stepped away from daily teaching tend to forget that. They often offer suggestions that you think you've already done, or question why you're teaching what you're teaching when you're just following the curriculum that is dictated by the state. 


So, administrators doing evaluations is a problem. How do we solve it? I'm glad you asked, because I happen to have a plan. 


I think that there are two reasonable solutions here. For either of them to work, unions are going to have to move away from their current employment-protection mindset and into a school-improvement mindset and districts are going to have to find a way to employ a couple of extra people per school. Since neither of those things are ever going to happen, let's just sit back and enjoy this as a thought exercise, shall we?


Solution the First - Specialist Evaluators

Take the evaluative power away from school administrators. When they have to do it, they put it on the back-burner and having them as evaluators makes it difficult for teachers to confide about mistakes and to collaborate. (it's a culture of fear problem) In this plan, I would hire two people who's only job would be to observe and evaluate teachers. I would want at least ten observations per year. (If you want to get union-y, let's say 3 announced and 7 drop-ins. Don't like those numbers? Comment with what you want. Or get your own blog.)

One of these evaluators would specialize in sciences, maths, practical arts and phys. ed. The other could do the arts, languages, English, and Social Studies. They would be in enough classrooms, and often enough, that they would still be able to identify with the classroom environment and its challenges. By having ten observations, they could build a dossier on every teacher, so that at the end of the year, I could get a really good evaluation, where they could actually speak to strengths and weaknesses. 


Districts might balk at paying "front-office" money to people who were just doing evals, but in reality, if you made the positions Teacher On Special Assignment positions, you could pay teacher wages, and it would work since they wouldn't need to observe over the summer. Everyone wins!


Solution the Second - Peer Observation Cadres

This solution is much less likely to happen, because it gives teachers power over their peers, and in many cases would lead to them having retention or dismissal discussions with their peers. There's so much privacy at issue here that simply writing that first sentence caused two HR directors to have coronary episodes. But, if we could find a way around the employment and privacy issues, think about how peer observations could work: Take a group of 9 master teachers (or 9 really good teachers, you know what I'm looking for here). Divide them into 3 three-person teams. Give each of them an extra planning hour to fulfill their observation duties in. Let them work as a team to make suggestions and provide feed-back. 

I like this solution less than the first one because it is rife with privacy and scheduling problems, but imagine how powerful it could be if teachers were observing and helping each other to become better teachers. There is no more powerful motivator than peer pressure, and if you knew that 7 times during the year a peer was going to just drop in unannounced and evaluate you, you would up your game. Add in the benefits to the observers of getting to see so many other teachers doing their thing, and I think it's a big winner. 

If I'm honest, I know that these solutions are probably too radical for the powerful forces of culture in education. To really fix this problem, and many of the other problems in education, we have to be willing to thing outside the box. Unions and districts have to give up things they're clinging to in the name of pride and work together to make schools better. It's going to take work, and outside pressure. Perhaps the pressure of school choice and charters (which you may have heard I oppose) will force traditional public schools to reform. 

I'm not holding my breath, but I will keep saying things like this here, and in conversations with my co-workers and friends. Someday, maybe we can create some small change for the better. 

I'm baaaaaaaaaack

There has been a lot of chatter online and in what conservatives call the mainstream media (which the rest of us simply call "the media") about a study released when I should have written this post at the beginning of March that puts teacher job satisfaction at it's lowest point since I was 9.

Obviously there's been a lot of gnashing of teeth, and plenty of people on both sides of the aisle trying to score political points from this. Normally I would get in line to both gnash my teeth and try to score some political points from this kind of story (seriously, read the first parenthetical aside in this post), but I just can't bring myself to do it. Why? Because I think this deserves a serious look at why teachers I work with (and have worked with) are not happy with their jobs.

Also I think that this will be pretty easy to write, what with my history of job satisfaction.

And my wife is watching Dance Moms and I can't stomach Abby Lee Whatshername so I've sent myself to the office to write, and this is what came to mind.

So, with the worst intro in the history of this blog, and perhaps writing in general, here we go:

The study shows that teachers aren't happy because they don't feel like they have the same job security that they once did. They're also feeling attacked, because so much of the reporting is about bad teaching, and so all teachers begin to question their own teaching abilities. Add in the increasing focus on test scores (which, for the vast majority of students don't indicate much in the way of learning), more and more intrusive parents, and all of the usual pressures that go along with changing lives for the better or worse every day and it's no small surprise that teachers aren't very happy with their jobs.

I can't speak for every teacher out there, nor would I try to (at least until I get invited onto some talk show where I can be an educational pundit), but I can tell you why I'm not very satisfied in my job.

1. We hear a lot about good teaching and not-as-good teaching, but I'm not observed enough or given enough feedback to know which category my teaching falls into. I'm in my first year of teaching at a new school for me in a new state. I'm going to get two formal observations. I will also get some much less formal "drop in" observations. That's not enough. If society and school boards of education are going to put more pressure on teachers with more tests, then I want more and better feedback about the work that I'm doing.

1a. The observations I do get are bureaucratic crap. There are forms to fill out and jargon to check off. (Good lord is there jargon. When I first made a joke about the "random catchphrase generator" I was taking a cheap shot at education experts. Now? I'm trying to figure out how to put one on the side bar of this website. Might as well have it out there) The evaluation won't provide very much in the way of good suggestions, mainly because there isn't another classroom teacher involved. Listen, there are plenty of good administrators who were good classroom teachers, but they generally haven't been in the classroom recently enough to understand the new era pressures teachers are facing.

I would love an evaluation format that did two things that very few evaluations do today. I want it to happen far more often (but each one would carry less weight) and I want my peers in on the process. I want other teachers to see my class, see what I'm doing, and offer suggestions. You know what I don't want? A form that has been checked off by my evaluator and comments like "You know what you're doing!"

2. Teachers are disgruntled because there is a culture war in the profession. There are plenty of union-loving, worksheet-giving, book-reading, jean-wearing, 2:25-leaving lazy jerks in this job. They will do everything they can to prevent having to work hard. They are doing the job, but they aren't doing it well. Far too often, because they don't get upset about actual education, these people stay in education for a long time. Since education tends to reward seniority, these people then have more sway over the way a department or school is run.

The opposite of this are the teachers who never teach the exact same lesson twice, who bust their collective asses grading, planning and teaching. Even in systems with good merit pay systems (yes such things exist) there isn't really enough money to really differentiate between the lazy turds and the life-changers.

Worse yet, the passionate young teachers burn out fighting against the status quo maintainers, and end up leaving the job. The end result is that nobody is happy. The bad teachers are unhappy because they feel threatened by the ideas and work ethic of the good teachers, and the good teachers want to punch someone because nothing is changing.

3. I for one am tired of the public discussion of schools always being about what's wrong. You know what, cable news talking heads? There are tons of GREAT tings happening in schools. Sure there are problems, but every segment of society has problems. People who see doctors die. People who go to the dentist get cavities. People who use lawyers go to jail. Yet teachers feel singled out for criticism when their students fail high stakes tests.

4. It's the money, stupid. There isn't enough money in schools. For a change, I'm not talking about the money that goes into teachers' pockets, either. No, there simply aren't adequate funds for facilities, books, technology, or training. School districts have become bloated at the administrative level (a function of the increased emphasis on testing and data) and as a result less money is getting to the student level. I realize that what we're asking for is a monumental amount of money, nation-wide. However, I think that it's worth the cost of a fighter jet that probably won't ever shoot down another plane to help do things like have enough classrooms and books for kids.

5. We're tired. Really really really tired. In the past ten years, I haven't gotten any additional time to plan and grade. However, the amount of paperwork, calls to return, and meetings to attend has increased by a huge amount, as have the number of kids in each of my classes. I started with classes of 16-20. Now, I have classes of 38 across the board. More kids come with paperwork (IEPs, 504s, BIPs, and contracts) and that paperwork often has legal ramifications if you don't follow the accommodations laid out within it. Parents want to know what and why you're doing. The stress level is astronomical.

There was always stress, but the job used to be fun. You got to teach something you loved. Now, with high-stakes testing, you don't ever feel like you can do that. I spend my days trying to fill every minute with educational activities. I don't want to have a 3 hour long party while watching Dirty Dancing, but I also don't want to feel guilty when we watch Elvis and the Beatles in class instead of filling out review sheets, outlines, and guided readings.

That, boys and girls is the big lesson. Teaching isn't as fun as it used to be. And that's why teachers aren't as happy as they used to be. Low pay, long hours, dealing with idiots; all of that was ok as long as the job was fun. When the job got serious SERIOUS the rest of it started to suck a lot more.

But hey, that's not a good talking point, so none of those talking heads will be talking about it on the news. Instead, 90 seconds will be spent glossing over the idea that 7.2 million people in this country are less happy than they have been since the Soviet Union was still a viable entity, and then we'll be onto talking about more important things; like who's in a feud with Kim Kardashian. 

With that sarcastic closing, the BlazeBlog is back, babay!