Teachers are Disheartened When they Work in Tough Schools or for Bad Principals

Joanne Jacobs just covered Teaching for a Living, a Public Agenda and Learning Point Associates study.

Jacobs wrote

"Most of the disheartened teach in low-income schools. They’re frustrated with unsupportive administrators, disorder in the classroom and testing. Contented teachers typically teach in middle-income or affluent areas where they say their schools are “orderly, safe, and respectful” and their administrators are satisfactory. Idealists are younger and often teach in elementary schools."

We expect miracles in hard to staff schools but don’t make choices that even come close to making miracles a reality. Good teachers won’t work for bad principals and lots of times the bad principals are only bad in high needs schools. They would be fine in a middle income school, just like most teachers. Teachers and principals are being pushed into the same boat more and more by pundits and the press. Maybe this is a good thing. I don’t think these statistics are particularly enlightening. Check out this data from the society for human resource management.

Research indicates that employees who are satisfied
with their jobs are more likely to stay with their employers.
According to this survey, 86% of employees indicated overall satisfaction with their current position, with 41% of employees reporting they were very satisfied. ((((Sounds like the teacher data)))))
What’s more, majority of employees (58%)reported that the current economic climate has not made any difference in their level of satisfaction—and this is good news for employers, especially during the economically challenging time.

Why would we expect teachers to be any more satisfied than any other profession?

Raise the Bar or Build Thier Own Course

A former state superintendent will be coming to my Politics of Education class next week. I feel like I have gotten to know her well enough to know that she will ask more than one tough question. I think I know one she will ask.

Virginia was a leader early in the standards based education reform movement. It's infrastructure for developing and administering effective accountability measures is strong. Currently our third grade reading pass rate is hovering in the 80% range through out the state. The advanced pass rate, students who answered more than 31 out of 35 questions correctly, has been steadily since 2005 from 18.8% to 38.9% in 2008.

I can just hear it now. Dr. Demary will ask us, "So, almost everybody is passing. Isn't it a good time to raise the bar?"

Every fiber of my teacher being wants to say no, but all of my learning in educational leadership says yes. I am torn. I believe in high standards but, I am not convinced that raising the bar is the best way to get teachers, and more importantly kids, to jump higher.

I think the reason for this is internal struggle is that I am not sure that bar jumping is what we should be teaching kids to do. I think we need them to build their own obstacle courses, not just master hoop jumping. As it stands now, on reading tests kids are asked to identify characters, setting, conflict, etc. They are required to read for comprehension, all worthy goals. We are not asking them to write their own stories, to tell the story where they are the main character. It is as if they are the actors in someone else's play.

If we buy into the post-modern perspective, that there is no single over arching story, then the reasons for assessment change a little. Our nation is a teaming tangle of stories. Maybe this is why fame has become such a fascination for our young people. The goal is not to help move the plot of the greater human story along but to be famous enough to be featured in the individual stories of the nation.

So what would I do? If it were my decision I would start evaluating beyond basic skills in areas closer to 21st century skills. Maybe it is a voluntary assessment for an additional ribbon on a degree. Maybe it is the certification movement pushed down into high school. Maybe a kid runs track, is in the debate club and earns a social media certification in order to make himself more competitive in college.

When Dr. Demary, (one of my education heroes) asks what do we do now that most of our students are passing the SOL tests, this is what I will say. "When students in your class pass a test you have prepared them for you don't give them the same test but raise the number of correct answers needed to pass. You teach new content, you expand on their solid foundation evidenced by their test scores. You start teaching them something new, something that might be even more important than what they mastered already, like critical thinking, creativity, and team work. There is only one problem though, it is hard to test those kinds of skills. Maybe the tests have outlived their usefulness? Maybe the kids could help build their own obstacle course to test their learning."


Image: http://www.japanwindow.com/images/20051012002715_051008_undoukai_041.jpg
Image: http://vaperforms.virginia.gov/indicators/education/3rdGradeReading.php

Raise the Bar or Build Thier Own Course

A former state superintendent will be coming to my Politics of Education class next week. I feel like I have gotten to know her well enough to know that she will ask more than one tough question. I think I know one she will ask.

Virginia was a leader early in the standards based education reform movement. It's infrastructure for developing and administering effective accountability measures is strong. Currently our third grade reading pass rate is hovering in the 80% range through out the state. The advanced pass rate, students who answered more than 31 out of 35 questions correctly, has been steadily since 2005 from 18.8% to 38.9% in 2008.

I can just hear it now. Dr. Demary will ask us, "So, almost everybody is passing. Isn't it a good time to raise the bar?"

Every fiber of my teacher being wants to say no, but all of my learning in educational leadership says yes. I am torn. I believe in high standards but, I am not convinced that raising the bar is the best way to get teachers, and more importantly kids, to jump higher.

I think the reason for this is internal struggle is that I am not sure that bar jumping is what we should be teaching kids to do. I think we need them to build their own obstacle courses, not just master hoop jumping. As it stands now, on reading tests kids are asked to identify characters, setting, conflict, etc. They are required to read for comprehension, all worthy goals. We are not asking them to write their own stories, to tell the story where they are the main character. It is as if they are the actors in someone else's play.

If we buy into the post-modern perspective, that there is no single over arching story, then the reasons for assessment change a little. Our nation is a teaming tangle of stories. Maybe this is why fame has become such a fascination for our young people. The goal is not to help move the plot of the greater human story along but to be famous enough to be featured in the individual stories of the nation.

So what would I do? If it were my decision I would start evaluating beyond basic skills in areas closer to 21st century skills. Maybe it is a voluntary assessment for an additional ribbon on a degree. Maybe it is the certification movement pushed down into high school. Maybe a kid runs track, is in the debate club and earns a social media certification in order to make himself more competitive in college.

When Dr. Demary, (one of my education heroes) asks what do we do now that most of our students are passing the SOL tests, this is what I will say. "When students in your class pass a test you have prepared them for you don't give them the same test but raise the number of correct answers needed to pass. You teach new content, you expand on their solid foundation evidenced by their test scores. You start teaching them something new, something that might be even more important than what they mastered already, like critical thinking, creativity, and team work. There is only one problem though, it is hard to test those kinds of skills. Maybe the tests have outlived their usefulness? Maybe the kids could help build their own obstacle course to test their learning."


Image: http://www.japanwindow.com/images/20051012002715_051008_undoukai_041.jpg
Image: http://vaperforms.virginia.gov/indicators/education/3rdGradeReading.php

Much Too Bright: Much Too Bright

In an effort to more fully integrate my personhood I have decided to start posting my art on this blog. I was inspired by my good friend Jose Vilson, an artist, writer, teacher, thinker, poet, and all around brilliant person. Jose has always posted all of his content on one blog. He may have a post about teaching computation of the rise of an inclined plane, a post about teacher leadership, his latest poem, and a post about Tupac Shakur's birthday all within a week.
I decided that I like that because as I arranged all of these magazine clippings in my mind I began to make sense of Jose, teaching, creativity, and life in a new way. I learned, which I love. So here is my first post: Much Too Bright. This is my title image from my art blog. As I post about my art I may try to use Much Too Bright as the title then the post as the subtitle. We will see how this goes.

Now I will be able to talk about art more in education and learning more in my art, hopefully integrating my self more as I do it.

Disrupting Education

I have been reading Clayton Christensen's Disrupting Class.In it he proposes that education, like all industries of a certain vintage, is ripe for disruptive innovation. He proposes that this will come about because technology provides unique opportunities for individualization in untapped markets like early childhood education, boutique classes offered online, and home schooling. I think he misses the mark with his application of his theories about innovation to education.

I agree that education is ripe for disruption but I don't think it will come about because of technology.

I have come to the conclusion that education is an entirely human endeavor and not necessarily adaptable to the laws of commerce that so many business models encourage us to adopt. I think the future disruption that Christensen proposes will come about.... but only from and by the hand of teachers.

Teachers taking more and more leadership in the process of education would constitute a true innovation. Changes to education in the past have come from influences outside of education like technology. As teachers embrace their creative capacity as professionals they will push education past its current state to become another entity and that technology will only be the tool for that disruption.

Teachers are currently creating disruptions in areas like:

• how schools are created, run, and funded with models like Avalon Schools
  
• how curriculum is developed and distributed with services like We Are Teachers
• how instruction is delivered using Web 2.0 tools

Dr. Christensen, you have made some excellent points in your book but I think that perhaps you might have committed the classic academic researcher's mistake by seeing what you were looking for and not necessarily the reality of the situation. Education will change but, it is the people who will change it, not the tools.

Image from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers