Obama on Education

I thought Obama was going to be an early education president. Turns out he isn't even an education president. I think he is using education to shift some conservative votes to his side of the isle. This cartoon is in a contest for the New Yorker. Please vote. I would love for the political "game" to be more public.

Slamming bad teachers is easy... he should try something harder like improving the process of becoming a teacher.

A Nod to Insanity and National Standards

Jon Becker recently skewered several arguments about the direction education "needs" to go in. He did it so well, I couldn't help but respond in a comment to another false assumption about the direction of schools.

On Educational Insanity Kevin commented,

I think the point Mr. Becker is trying to make is that we need to first decide what we want a graduating senior to know and be able to do, before we can talk about the “how” or “why” of school change. If my analysis of his post is correct then I would agree with him. Too often I find in schools that we try to make decisions in a vacuum without ever deciding what it is we are aiming for. As educational leaders we should be asking ourselves first “Where are we headed?” It is the basic concept of backwards by design. Figure out your endpoint and then decide how to get there.

The idea of backwards design, when it comes to the purposes of education is one of those ideas that sounds good on the surface but, would fly apart upon implementation. Backwards design assumes that we are able to know where we want to go based on the information we have now.

Most of the jobs young students will have in the future haven't been invented yet.

Just watch, as we try to come up with national standards, how narrow we get with the purposes of school. If you try to make everybody (including the USED) happy all the time, it is hard to say anything meaningful beyond common sense ideas like, everybody should be able to read, everybody should have some ideas about probability. These ideas have already been put forward by various national organizations. The national standards will be nothing new, they will only make what we need to teach kids more specific, and less meaningful.

Kevin, I don't think we need to incorporate backwards design at this point. When we throw the purposes of education up for delineation it actually makes the purposes of school less democratic in our current society. There are so many "influencers" out there that do not have students' success and welfare at the center of their arguments that by clarifying the goals of schooling we would defacto narrow those goals. The loudest voices in a backwards design would the ones with the most to gain in the process, industry. At least the way it is now, teachers have the opportunity to squeeze in some Plato, or Joyce, Jack Kerouac, or Abbot and Costello into a discussion on language and meaning. In a backwards designed classroom we will always be chasing the lion's tail, trying to catch up with a changing society. Students will be doing this because of what some policy maker or eduwonk has deemed important instead of what they have decided for themselves. The more specific we make our goals, the less meaningful they will be. The less specific we make our goals, the more opportunities there will be for students to find meaning. Maybe we should start thinking about the shape of the pegs, when we design the holes, instead of the other way around.

Image: http://www.josephnolen.com/images/monk-riding-backwards.jpg

Much Too Bright: Fear and the Unknown

On Friday I posted on my Facebook status, "John is getting up the gumption to paint again. It is scary like 7 year old thunder storm scary." The hardest part is getting started again especially when the painting sitting unfinished on my easel is not working the way I hoped.

When I was a kid my Grandmother (the creative one) had themes that she would repeat to me. Only when I got older did I understand what they met. One theme was: Go West Young Man. When I got in my teenage and college years I understood, she was saying, "follow your dreams." or something close. Another theme was the nursery rhyme, "Little Boy Blue, come blow your horn, the sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn. Where is the boy who looks after the sheep? Under the haystack fast asleep." Was it just a nursery rhyme? Yes but, it was also along the same theme as Go west! Don't let life slip by.

Whenever I face possibility of picking up the brush again I feel a fear that is just enough to push painting out of my mind while school, or grad school, or life is happening, the fear of the un-built canvas. If I don't have any canvases built it is like a paralyzing feeling because I can't reach down, pick up the next painting and rush head long into it without thinking about the unknown. Deciding that I have to build them and committing to doing it is like another of my grandmother's theme's, The Flying Trapeze. She would sing the song and later I would think about how the amazing thing about the trapeze is the letting go of what you have and reaching out and grabbing for what you have to have faith will be there.

Going out to build those canvases is like reaching for that trapeze. I know the bar will be there, I know the paintings will come but I have to let go first and trust in the unknown future.

Burning Down the House

On TLN and on my friend Bill's blog there has been a heated discussion of the role of creativity in schools. In a strange turn of events, I will support the opposite position for a minute. In our discussion of creativity it is important that we acknowledge the normative function of schooling. I am all for starting all over, burning down the house, and starting again by redefining the purpose and hence the accountability necessary for our schools. However, I think that some of the aspects of schooling that we might change might not be the parts that need to change. Creativity needs to be brought into our expectations, not basics pushed out. There have been numerous researchers who have found that the most effective way to teach at risk kids is to teach the basics and higher level thinking at the same time. Otherwise kids will not be ready to use either by the time they are adults.

I am sort of like the hammer that sees nails all over the place. I see creativity in many places where others don't.

Creativity sometimes substitutes for the word expression. I can see how teachers are fed up with the lack of expression of their humanity in their practice. In many cases it is not why we got into this gig. But, creativity and expression are not the same thing. Creativity is figuring how to get that test answer out of that kid as much as it is helping kids see past that test question.

Creativity is a big word with different meanings for a lot of people, sort of like schooling is different from learning. If all kids had to do was learn then they wouldn't need us, it is the schooling that makes teachers necessary. It is also why our creative expression is sometimes compromised for the sake of the an accountability tool that does not measure creativity. If the purpose of schooling moved past (but included) the basics standards we would probably have plenty of time for creativity, in fact we might be required to teach it 3 hours a day. Then what would we have to complain about?

The big issue seems to me to be that there is a conflict between what schools need to be about, and what they are held accountable for creating. These expectations are almost polar opposites now which can cause a great deal of stress for the people responsible for meeting conflicting expectations. We have a hunch about what kids will need in the future but right now, that doesn't matter. Right now what matters is the test. So we have to teach to both sides of the brain at the same time with out compromising either. It can be done, in fact it has been done in poor schools for years.

Image from: http://www.centralfpd.com/Portals/0/Clip%20Art/House%20on%20Fire02.GIF

Supervision vs. Observation

I was asked recently about my experience of supervision in my first year. I am thinking back 12 years now. I was not observed formally more than three times my first year. I was observed informally numerous times. This year however, I have experienced a new type of observation from my supervisor. My current principal stops in almost every morning for about 30 seconds. He doesn't ask questions or interrupt. He just watches, smiles, and leaves.

As I have gained experience my perspective on this has changed. In the beginning I thought I was being "cheated" the necessary guidance I thought I needed. Over time I have discovered that some aspects of my practice are observed informally and frequently (lesson planning, management, and student rapport) while formal observations were almost incidental. I always tell new teachers that they are judged by how they walk their students down the hall and it is true. I have never received more than cursory feedback from formal observation although I have asked and even pressed administrators for feedback.

Recently, after reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" which describes how experts and people in general can "thin slice" experiences and make the same or better qualitative judgments as scientifically based observations I decided that a principal can probably see "what a teacher actually does" as well or better in an informal 30 second observation as in a formal observation.

After having done some observation of student teachers, I have come to see the process of observation as much more fluid. The coaching or formal observation process can be extremely helpful to inexperienced teachers but I am not sure that it is the best use of administrators' expertise. I have always believed what my father said about management, that "It is easy to make someone do their job but hard to make them want to do their job." The observation/accountability process can intrude on this aspect of the administrator/teacher relationship.

I do think that observation is changing in the field but it has not happened in my school system yet. I think that observation for coaching is one area where teacher leadership can make a significant impact if the structure of schools is changed to allow for this type of leadership. Peer coaching may be more effective than supervision in supporting novice and struggling teachers. The evaluative aspect of administrator observations can actually distract from the goal of coaching. When a young teacher is observed for evaluation they are doing "their best" while, when they are observed for coaching it is understood that they are trying to improve and so may may show what is actually closer to their practice. Reflection on video is an excellent tool in this situation.

I have been trained as a coach using the Santa Cruz "New Teacher Center" protocols. They use a criterion referenced observational system that focuses on reflection as the primary tool for improving teaching practice.

If a supervisor is necessary to provoke reflective thought in a teacher maybe that teacher shouldn't be practicing or at least should still be in an apprentice position.

Gerald Bracey Buries The LDH Hatchet

Gerald Bracey wrote an excellent post on the Huffington Post about what the heck happened with the Secretary of Ed nomination. He describes how the "frame game" was played and the people who have the most expereince with actual kids (teachers and teachers unions) got labeled as anti-reform or for those not familiar with right wing edu-speak as not caring about kids and the quality of their education.

The history of the Ed Sec position has seen only two ED Secs with actual experience in education. Only one, Terrel Bell, was a K-12 teacher. What did Terrel Bell do? He changed the future of education in America through bringing together countless stakeholders to create the National Commission on Excellence in Education, and publish a Nation at Risk. And he accomplished this while Ronald Reagan was trying to dissolve the USED and cut funding for all of its programs.

We could only have been so lucky as to have a "non-reformer" like LDH in the position. Teachers don't mess around with reform because it is a code word for privatizing education these days. Why hire somebody to fix education when everyone you need to do it is in a classroom. Hire a teacher for the job and then you have buy-in from the most important group, the people actually doing the teaching. Bracey did an excellent job explaining what happened this fall. The real reformers (people who care about kids) got beat by the fake reformers (arm chair quarterbacks) with no experience actually playing the game on the field. Who do you want to coach your team, someone who has played the game or someone who has watched it from the stands.

image from:http://www.objetsobjects.com/id1.html

Thanks to Thompson @ This Week in Education

If I Were a Muppet

This is going to be a short and sweet post. Sometimes I feel like the male character in this classic bit from Sesame Street. I am really into education, teaching, the power of children, the amazing vision that children have and their ability to make us see the world different than we do. But, I get so into this whole teaching thing sometimes I forget where I am, I start passionately preaching to the choir until they remind me, I am not singing the same song anymore. So for all of you teacher leader freaks out there who absolutely just love education, this one's for you. With out us the profession may never start singing but, lets not get too far ahead of the parade that people don't know you are in it.

Dear Mr. Obama, Re: LDH

Dear Mr. President-Elect Obama,

I wanted to ask you to consider the rare opportunity you have to select Linda Darling-Hammond as Secretary of Education.
You see, the ED Sec position has always been a political decision, based on repaying the service of select individuals who have worked hard for a new president's campaign.

Here is a brief history of Secretaries of Education. It is from wikipedia so possibly incorrect, but it shows who held the position previously.

• Carter: Shirley Hufstedler had a distinguished career at the highest levels of legal and public service.
• Reagan: Terrel Bell, the impetus for a Nation at Risk, had a doctorate in education and had been a high school teacher as well as a superintendent.
• Reagan: William Bennet was an American neoconservative pundit, politician, and political theorist. He went on to become the "drug czar" for Bush 1.
• Reagan/Bush: Lauro Cavazos was the first Hispanic to serve in a cabinet post. He held B.A. and M.A. degrees in zoology from Texas Tech University, and a Ph.D. in physiology from Iowa State University. He was forced to resign as Education Secretary, amid an investigation into improper use of frequent flyer miles.
• Bush: Andrew Lamar Alexander (born July 3, 1940) is the senior United States Senator from Tennessee and Conference Chair of the Republican Party. He was previously the 45th Governor of Tennessee from 1979 to 1987.
• Clinton: Richard Riley Riley was elected governor of South Carolina in 1978. Riley made a huge impact by bringing the voices of teachers into the policy arena through teacher in residence program and supporting the establishment of the the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
• Bush II: Rod Paige began his career in college athletics. Later, as ED Sec Paige criticized the National Education Association (NEA) for obstructing "No Child Left Behind's historic education reforms," calling the NEA a "terrorist organization." He later said it "was an inappropriate choice of words" and apologized later the same day, but maintained that the NEA uses "obstructionist scare tactics" in opposing the law.
• Bush II: Margaret Spellings was the political director for Bush's first gubernatorial campaign in 1994, and later became a senior advisor to Bush during his term as Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000.

The history of the position has seen only two ED Secs with actual experience in education. Only one, Terrel Bell, was a K-12 teacher. What did Terrel Bell do? He changed the future of education in America through bringing together countless stakeholders to create the National Commission on Excellence in Education, and publish a Nation at Risk. And he accomplished this while Ronald Reagan was trying to dissolve the USED and cut funding for all of its programs.

Darling-Hammond is a real threat to efforts to privatize education. She is a friend of unions because she believes in teachers, one the most leftist ideals you can maintain these days. One can hardly imagine what our school systems would be like if teachers were empowered to be the good guys. Mr. President give it a try and watch the inherent heroism of impassioned teachers transform out schools. Let a teacher lead us.

Please.

How Many Presidents Does it Take to Turn-On a Light Bulb?

My buddy Bill "The Tempered Radical" Ferriter posted about the above visual on his blog. He had this to say...

"Because we're working on identifying main idea in our reading classes, I asked my students a simple question: "What point do you think the artist was trying to make with this image?" My students' answer:

"Well, that's pretty obvious, Mr. Ferriter. He's trying to say that the United States has never had a woman president."

Amazing, huh?

That's got me feeling pretty good about the future of our country. Sure, there are people who will always look at other individuals through the lens of skin-color. While racism is abhorrent, it's also a sad truth of the human condition.

But as more and more children grow up in an increasingly tolerant world with successful role models of every shape and color, our country---like my kids---becomes increasingly color-blind...and that' just plan cool."

I found Bill's post interesting but perhaps a little naive. I never thought I would say that about a post that Bill wrote but our cultural circumstances are so entirely different I thought that I should leave a comment. Here it is.

I think that you may be on to something but, I am not sure that racism is a condition of the human race or that being color blind is a good thing.

What does color blindness in ed policy lead to? What does it lead to in our classrooms?

As you may know I am the minority, a white man, in my school. The more I talk about, and joke about race the less of an issue it becomes for my colleagues and myself. I am also taking all these doctoral classes and let me tell you that race blind researchers are the last thing we need. Sometimes researchers forget that race is not the cause of the poor performance it is the name for the poor performance. It is a descriptor for a group of students who historically have been under served by education.

It is in naming the unnamed so that it loses power that we create a color "full" America. Maybe Bill's students were afraid to name the unnamed and address race head on. Maybe it was the safe route to talk about something they were all obviously comfortable with, gender equality.

Some thoughts from an embedded reporter. What are yours?

Image from: Patrick Moberg's Illustration Blog:

Education's 5th Job: Whipping Boy

In the second chapter of Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen he describes the various reason's for schooling that have been present through out the history of organized education in America. Christensen describes the 4 jobs schools have been "hired" for:
Job 1 Preserve/Inculcate Democracy
Job 2 Provide something for every student
Job 3 Keep the U.S. Competitive
Job 4 Eliminate Poverty
I can see his point on most of these issues. Schools have been charged with fulfilling these "needs" for society but, I think he leaves one job out: Whipping Boy.

Historically a whipping boy was a boy brought up together with a young prince and required to take the punishment for the latter's misdeeds. Because this is a blog post and not a thesis I can say this type of thing.

The reason I bring up this "job" of schools is that I have a great deal of trouble squaring Christensen's hypothesis about schools needing to innovate and become student centered learning places because his theory of innovation surpassing "business as usual" relies on the profit motive. In his theory an untapped market is found, a product/service is provided that was not available before, the market expands and overtakes the previous model. This, however, relies on equal players in the market. For example, I can sell apples on the corner, just like anybody, and if there is a market, I can make a living. But, with education there is a different relationship between the "customer" and the established competition. The prince/politicians have always had education to take their beatings for them. If politicians allow for poverty to destroy lives, then education can be expected to clean up the mess, and if it can't well then there is something wrong with education and it needs to be fixed. If politicians can't provide equal opportunities for all of its citizens through the job market then the schools can take a few licks if they can't make everybody above average.

Most of all, the "politics/business as usual" needs the whipping boy to stick around. It is vital that the whipping boy is available to take the punishment and the blame for the princes.

I mean, what would happen if education, despite politics as usual, actually defeated the achievement gap as some 90/90/90 schools have done. Then who could we blame for the lack of real choice provided to all manner of disenfranchised people in our country?

This is why the innovation theory doesn't work. How can the whipping boy innovate when the prince is the one in charge? Maybe the most profound innovation would be to set the whipping boy free. It worked in Finland.

No Child Left Inside

In the maelstrom of our current economic crisis, a radical new education bill has made it out of the House and is headed to the Senate. The bill titled No Child Left Inside is making tiny little waves in the sea of education reform. It is a bill that essentially requires environmental education in schools with the goal of developing citizens' feelings of stewardship.

As a pre-k teacher I am ecstatic to have a federal mandate to take my students outside. It is like your parents telling you that you "Have to have ice cream!" after dinner. If the government wants me take kids outside, I am all for it.
From Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi's website:

On September 18, the House passed the No Child Left Inside Act, H.R. 3036. One of the greatest challenges facing current and future generations is to build a more sustainable, energy-efficient world. By teaching students about the role of the environment as an important
national resource, we can prepare them to take on critical issues – energy conservation, air pollution, climate change, wildlife protection – and become better stewards of the earth.

NCLI gets at what is wrong with education today without pointing fingers or directly challenging that other "No Child Left" bill that has narrowed curriculum to the point that schools had stopped teaching some subjects because they weren't tested. This bill fundementally transforms the role of schools from places to create a viable work force to schools as places to create a viable people.

The No Child Left Inside Act would address this by igniting students’ interest in the outdoors and spurring them to take part in outside activities. And learning to explore the natural world and their personal connection to it inevitably triggers an interest in spending more time in it.

The bill orginated from the work of Richard Louv, who coined the term "Nature Deficit Disorder" in his book, Last Child in the Woods. Louv talks about how a nature deficit has contributed to behavioral disorders in children. His book has sparked a national movement to get kids back outside. In Richmond Virginia this Spring there will be a symposium exploring this important subject at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, in conjuction with its 25th anniversary.

If this bill passes in the Senate, you may hear the joyous cries of wild children and adults who are fed up with days spent inside, thier eyes glazed over with the flickering colors of video games. The sound of America waking from the fitful sleep of SecondLife to realize the potential that living in the presence of nature could have on our collective soul might just change education for the better. I know it will confirm what pre-k teachers all over the country already know: kids need to go outside.

Photo credit: http://playborhood.com/site/article/taking_over_your_front_yard_and_or_sidewalk/

Learning Styles - True or False

I am reading another "business model" educational reform book. Its title, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, suggests that education needs to be shaken up. It is a very dense book that we will use this semester in one of my doctoral classes. It is a more interesting read than some of the texts we have had but it is a pop science book so I have a hard time putting a great deal of faith in it's propositions. What it suggests seems to make "common sense" but this is my first clue that it may not make a real difference in how schools work or be scientifically sound. Some of its endnotes are particularly educational though. In it are references like, a paper about children in Africa who are extremely adept at knowing how to operate in their environment but are not able to do basic "school" type tasks.

Christensen's basic theory is that because all students learn differently we should create a new type of schooling, using 21st century tools, to customize learning for every student. This new way of teaching should use a "modular" logic that provides different learning style options for the same content. It all sounds good from the point of view of a teacher who sees learning styles operating in my classroom every day. I have at least three learning style groups in my preschool class. The groups are the verbal learners, the kinesthetic learners and the visual learners or to put it comically, the can't be quiet group, the can't sit still group, and the don't say anything but can draw well group. The theory of learning styles is a useful tool for teachers who are trying to help every student become proficient in the various disciplines.

However, it is easy poke holes in theories.

Here is someone who would completely disagree with the foundation of Christensen's theory about modular teaching to learning styles. Dan Willingham is a cognitive psychologist from University of Virginia. I learned about him from my good friend Nancy Flanagan who wrote a rebuttal post on her blog in response to the video below only to have him comment and refute her assertions.

Where do I stand? I think that there may not be learning styles as we traditionally relate them to content areas but there are most definitely learning preferences. I would not necessarily organize learning styles the same way that Gardner does although I was an early recruit to Gardner's tribe back in the 90's. His Unschooled Mind was the first education book I ever read for fun. Since then my perceptions about learning and learning styles has changed. A couple years ago I completed a survey and participated in training around a personality theory called Emergenetics that basically grouped learners into social, analytical, conceptual, and structural tendencies for thinking combined with behavioral attributes of expressiveness, assertiveness, and flexibility. The theory emphasized that everyone had some capacity in all the areas but preferred one over another. I was a strongly conceptual processor which helped me to understand why I have always preferred to understand the big picture first and then break it down when I encounter new information. It was a way of thinking about learning styles that did not use Gardner's suggestions that have strong links to content areas.

Chistensen proposes that the reason kids don't take "hard" classes like math and science in prosperous societies is because there is not enough external motivation to make them want to.
I propose that prosperous societies allow students to move towards disciplines that more closely match their learning preferences in how they are taught.

If science were taught the way my art classes were taught, in that you were shown some basic materials, given some basic skills, and told to create/make something, I might have been a scientist. Instead they were taught with the goal of mastering certain scientific truths as the goal and discovery and creativity was not a part of it at all.

What Dan says about learning styles makes sense but I am not sure it gets at the reason why they are useful. I try to teach my pre-k kids in all of the major "learning styles" so that I am sure to meet their needs. Besides, at 4 years old who doesn't like to sing the alphabet, dance the alphabet, and watch the alphabet on the computer?
What do you think? Are learning styles real? Does it matter if they are or are they just a way to talk about something it is difficult to understand, how our students learn what we teach?

image from: http://www.mnispi.org/cartoon/2001/pages/Learning%20Styles_gif.htm
video from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk

Test em' Young and You Might Get It Wrong

Jennifer at Inside Pre-K has written a great diescription of why pre-k people have a hard time with standardized tests as quality indicators.

I believe firmly that assessments of any kind should be used to guide instruction at all grade levels. When teachers feel comfortable with their assessments and they are an accurate measure of students' abilities, they can be an invaluable tool in the classroom. However, when assessment is structured inappropriately or administered in an unfamiliar manner, it can yield inaccurate results.

Often policymakers like to describe teachers who reject tests as running from accountability. Trust me, most teachers hold themselves more responsible than anyone could ever hold them accountable.

She makes a great case for using multiple assessments in early-childhood. Give it a read and comment!

What does the NAEP mean to pre-k?

Who reads the Wall Street Journal? Pretty
much anyone with any amount of political power reads it. So when the WSJ
publishes an Op-Ed you know that it is going to be read by the people who
will decide the future of public education in our country. A
recent piece, titled Protect Our Kids from Preschool, threw the pre-k world for a loop. It made a big enough splash that two of the biggest advocates and researchers of pre-k, David Kirp and Steven Barnett
responded in an Op-Ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. Other interested
parties in the pre-k community also sent replies to the WSJ.
Sadly, as pre-k folks like to practice what we teach in pre-k, they
were polite. The responses
included some pretty heavy hitters, including: Lawrence J. Schweinhart
of High/Scope and James Heckman of University of Chicago (who were
misquoted in the article), as well as Susan Urahn of Pew Charitable Trust, and
Libby Doggett of Pre-K Now who pointed out the misrepresentation of the
facts.

Then Dalmia and Snell fired back. "What!?" you say. Yes, they kept
arguing that they were right because what they wrote, that the National
Assessment of Educational Progress test scores had not increased very much
in Georgia and Oklahoma was true, that their main point is valid.

I feel like I am telling a class of preschoolers it's raining but, your point is not valid.

Why?

One concept I would like to point out in the provocative debate that
Dalmia and Snell have engaged the pre-k community in, is the relevance
of the NAEP. The two researchers suggest, by basing their argument on
the NAEP test results , that the NAEP is a valid indicator of preschool
effectiveness. Although a 2000 RAND corporation study found that pre-k
positively affected NAEP scores, this would not be the reason I would
recommend pre-k to a parent or policymaker. They suggest that one year
in a high quality pre-k should positively impact a test score 5 years
down the road. A test based on everything a student has learned up to
4th grade. I am a believer in the value of pre-k for many reasons but,
passing the NAEP is not one of them.

The NAEP is an important tool for policymakers and leaders to refer to
when making decisions about policy. Especially policy that relates to
the rigor of a states' standards. However, it is a poor indicator of
which "grade level" is not keeping up their part of the proficiency
goal.

Having taught in a public school setting my entire career I am keenly
aware of the importance of standards and accountability. We are told
every year, "The scores in 3rd grade and 5th grade are not the scores
of the 3rd and 5th grade teachers, they are the scores of the entire
school." Even though I teach beginning algebra, statistics, and reading
in my class, I am not the only one responsible if one of my former
students doesn't get the answers right on a test 5 years from now.

A study published by the Hoover Institute,
found that Georgia, Oklahoma, and Tennessee had the lowest correlation
between the number of students achieving proficiency on state tests and
the number achieving proficiency on the NAEP. The study "graded" states
on whether their proficiency scores matched up to the NAEP. Here is an
explanation of the results:

We gauge the differences among states by comparing how students do on state assessments with how they perform on NAEP tests. By comparing the percentage of students deemed proficient on each, it is possible to determine whether states are setting expectations higher, lower, or equal to the NAEP standard. If the percentages are identical (or roughly so), then state proficiency standards can be fairly labeled as “world-class.” If state assessments identify many more students as proficient than the NAEP, then state proficiency figures should be regarded as inflated.

Not surprisingly, when states set low expectations for student proficiency, they did not score well on the NAEP.

Three states—Georgia, Oklahoma, and Tennessee—expected so little of students that they received the grade of F. The state of Georgia, for instance, declared 88 percent of 8th graders proficient in reading, even though just 26 percent scored at or above the proficiency level on the NAEP.

What does this have to do with universal pre-k in these states? It
means that even if pre-k is effective at preparing kids for the NAEP in
these states we could never tell because the standards in K -12 are not
high enough to pass the NAEP anyway.

What has improved as a result of pre-k in Georgia? One indicator is
that exceptional education enrollment has decreased each year since
2006. This improvement not only improves lives but saves the state money.

For more on the long lasting effects of pre-k check out the most recent report from the National Institute for Early Education Research titled: Preschool Education and Its Lasting Effects: Research and Policy Implications.(PDF)

photo credit: courtesy of fragmented and http://www.uppercasegallery.ca/

Men and the Call to Teach

ABC news ran a story on the "Mistrusted Male Teacher" August 28th. It points out the inherent difficulties of being a male teacher in the early grades. As one of the fewest of the few, a male teacher in early childhood, I read the story with my own biases. Bryan Nelson, a 30 year veteran teacher summed up the lack of men in teaching this way,

"People don't think of men as caretaking or nurturing, which many of the young grades require," Nelson said. "And if you're a single man and you're going out to date somebody, when they ask you 'what do you do?' it just doesn't have the same cache as saying I'm an engineer or a scientist."

I haven't had a lot of problems with parents and issues of trust, but I have had my share. I once had a parent who told me to my face, "I wish my daughter had any other teacher than you." Some folks might have asked that the child be taken out of their room. I invited the parent to come in and watch what we do. ... every day. She came in for almost the entire year. I basically took her child from zero reading skills to reading in a year. We got along better and better over the course of the year. When it was all said and done, by the end of the year, she still didn't trust me. There was nothing I could do to change her opinion except continue to be open and honest with her. I have sometimes thought that maybe I was doing my boy students a disservice by being capable of teaching them as active boys only to send them to kindergarten to fail because they "couldn't sit still," or didn't seem to "pay attention." But, I also know that for some I have been their first introduction to what a caring man can be. I have even been able to help some kids with fathers because the fathers are more comfortable volunteering in my classroom. They see how they can care without being weak and nurture without giving up their masculinity.

Another recent article, Herland by L. J. WIlliamson, talks about this same issue. The author took a different point of view, sighting the lack of men in child care and teaching as contributing to keeping women, "in their place." She writes,

Of course, it won't be long before these kids get old enough to start noticing things like the fact that our country has never had a female president, or that male teachers typically don't come into their schooling until the academics get more serious. By that point, many will come away with the impression that caring for small children is women's work, and for the most part, they'll be right.

Also quoted in the article was this quote from William Marsiglio, Professor of Sociology at the University of Florida and author of Men On A Mission: Valuing Youth Work In Our Communities. He says,

"We pay our mechanics more to work on our cars than we pay people to watch our kids, which tells you something about our values. As long as we as society continue to perpetuate the narrative that being nurturing to children is inherently a gendered process, we'll never have gender equity. It will continue to be a society in which women are disadvantaged, and males are given an excuse not to be involved. "

I think the thing that bothered me about that ABC article is that it treated the chance of your child getting a "bad" male teacher or "good" male teacher as 50/50. Its just not like that. Most of the men who teach, especially in the younger grades, are teachers because they felt a call to teach. They aren't closet perverts or weak human beings. My greatest mentor was a male instructional assistant who also happened to be a minister. He felt a calling to teaching as he felt a calling to serve God. Perhaps if people thought of teaching the way that most teachers do there would be less fear. To most teachers, teaching is a calling, it is my calling, and it could be the calling of other young men, if they aren't pushed away from the field by the lack of social standing, pay, and support for being there.

Photo courtesy of: http://www.uppercasegallery.ca

This I Believe MEME...

My friend and mentor Bill Ferriter tagged me a while ago before I moved to Inside Pre-K to participate in a blog MEME. He asked me to write a post based on the National Public Radio series “This I Believe” where individuals share essays they have written that enumerate their philosophies.

This I Believe...

Education is the thread that creates the tapestry of America. Teachers spin the strong yarn of many colors, shades, and tones of America’s people by pulling, stretching, and expanding students’ minds. The lives of America’s people, woven together, are varied and bright, and when seen from afar, create a tapestry that shows the most important philosophy of the American experiment: possibility. The tapestries of countries without a strong educational system are pictures of what has always been. Poor farmers’ children grow up to be poor farmers, factory workers’ children grow up to be factory workers. Because of teachers, these children can grow up to be inventors, scientists, or teachers. But most importantly, no matter where the children come from, they are able to pursue happiness through gainful work that contributes to society.

I have seen the truth of this philosophy in the community where I teach. My former pre-k student Zasheen’s mother came from a family that did not value education. She works in a low wage job that she does not value, because when she was a teenager, she saw a lack of possibility in the pursuit of education. But, Zasheen’s mother chose to emphasize the importance of education as a means to a brighter future by enrolling Zasheen and his brother in pre-k. Now Zasheen’s thread is strong--each new teacher contributing to its strength--but it can be broken by any teacher along the way, especially in the early years. The importance of a high quality education to the thread of Zasheen’s life, as it is passed from teacher to teacher, is part of his mother’s dream.

Because of the American right to education for all, teachers can expand our horizons to the wider world. Pre-k is a part of that right, the right to choose what is best for our children. We are not bound by our personal histories or those of our families and our communities. Because of education, we are able to see past what we have always known. The tapestry of education shows us what can be. In every child, America’s teachers spin as strong a yarn as they know how. Each teacher in a child’s educational career adds their personal strength to the yarn that will become a child’s future. It is up to the child to determine where he or she will fit in the tapestry of America, but it is teachers who make it possible to have a choice.

This I Believe

Uh, What's A Meme?

Here is a brief description of what a MEME is.

http://www.webraw.com/quixtar/archives/2006/01/blogging_101_the_blog_meme.php

Some of you out there don't know a meme from a hole in the ground but that's ok. I'll bring you up to speed.

The short definition is "a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another."

However, that definition is incomplete as it relates to an Internet meme which "occurs when something relatively unknown becomes increasingly popular, often quite suddenly, through the mass propagation of media content made feasible by the Internet" technology.

Here is the challenge: A Pre-K Now Mini-MEME. Please leave a one sentence comment about what you believe over at the INSIDE PRE-K blog and join in the fun. It could be about Pre-K, teaching, learning, family, children, or life. It can be a long sentence or a short sentence. You could even make it really hard and write just six words like the members of the Teacher Leaders Network did for Teacher Magazine recently.

Will Michelle Rhee become the next education heroine?

I read this morning about Michelle Rhee's reform efforts in D.C. and couldn't help but be reminded of my experience in a school that has been turned-around by a "Turn-around" specialist in the past three years. The process was painful, exciting and scary. I also have the same thoughts about what will happen next as I do about Rhee being successful. What will happen to school systems that are failing. Will "turn-around" specialists be hired to transform school systems? What if they don't have as much authority as Rhee has been given? Read about it here: In Second Year, Rhee Is Facing Major Tests

She seems poised to become the first modern day education heroine to really change a failing system. I wonder if the slash & burn tactics are necessary or just her style. Will the tactics work or will the same old habits grow back like weeds eventually choking the system as it has for the past 30 years. I also hope that her reforms stick when someone makes her queen of all education.

Picking a pre-K Curriculum

Over at Inside Pre-K Jennifer has posted a response to me response to Sarah Mead.
Read and comment.

Creativity: Lightning or Pearl?

After returning from a week of painting in the mountains of Virginia I have been slowly re-revving my engine for the education world. While fishing for a topic for this weeks blog I found something to bridge the gap between my worlds.

I found an article from the New York Times on the reality of creativity. I am especially interested in creativity these days as it relates to education. Not only in what teachers do but what kids are taught to do. The article described the falsehood of the Eureka Moment. It described the Eureka moment as really a long fought process of small insight, small fact, small step in a process similar to creating a pearl. “The aha moments grow out of hours of thought and study,” said Jim Marggraff inventor of the Leap Pad Fly pen.

I have found this especially true in the classroom. I have no idea how many times I have told my instructional assistant, "I'm going to figure this one out by tomorrow." By putting down a problem and continuing to turn it over like a rock tumbler I have been able to find a solution. But this has happened easier and more frequently as I have gained experience. When I was faced with a student this year who continued to bother other students during our rest time, I came up with an idea at 4:00 a.m. I told E.the next morning "I am going to call your mother after rest time, what I say to her is up to you." This took the choice of the consequence away from him and myself and focused us on the content of our interactions. It really helped but this is just one decision in the hundreds I a make every day as a teacher. The process is also similar to making art. I have been able to make progress each year on my painting retreat because I continue to think about my painting even while I don't have much time to paint.

I especially find this accretion metaphor valuable in thinking about my education writing. I usually start a paper for my doctoral classes and then think about for 2-3 days, generating and revising ideas, talking to others in the field, and trying to communicate it to my wife. This last one is the real turning point. I know that when I can communicate what I am thinking to someone outside of education I am on the right track. But, all of this takes time just as over time, the process has become easier.

This leaves me with some questions:
How does creativity operate in schools? Is it with a Lightning or a Pearl metaphor that we are using? How can schools become a place where creativity is considered a practice as a opposed to a talent?

Image credits:
painting: "Sunday Morning" sold to to fellow Nimrod artist
lightning: http://nobullets.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/lightning.jpg
pearl: http://www.blackpearls.com.au/images/black-pearl-anatomy.jpg

it doesn't matter how rich your kid is

Kids who go to preschool make gains, no matter their SES. You gotta love it if you are a preschool teacher.
Another, (yes another) preschool study covered in USA Today found that preschool benefits all students.
This is another log on the fire for expanding preschool services to all students.
Steve Barnett, the godfather or preschool research and the head honcho at NIEER said,

"It's the whole city, it's all of the kids, it's done through the public schools and it seems to produce pretty big effects for all of the kids,"

Now when we combine this with economic research on the costs and benefits of preschool we find we got good deal on our hands.
According to Dr. Timothy Bartik of the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research (2006), while investments in luring businesses can create large financial gains for a state in the short term these benefits are likely to plateau after several years. However, after an initial short-term increase in jobs by creating preschool classrooms, a time release earnings boom begins to tick when a state invests in universal preschool. Bartik also suggested that the return to the state may be less than the return to the nation because 2/3 of state program participants are likely to leave the state in the 12 years that it would take to realize the return on investment. But this benefit to the nation, in terms of higher income and less stress on social services also suggests a stronger federal role in funding preschool initiatives.

How about a preschool Title in NCLB?

When will it happen? Watch me turn blue while I hold my breath ...............................

photo credit: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=981