Category Archives: Prose

Prisoners of Bureaucracy

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I started graduate school this week so the posts may get thin over the next several weeks. The advantage is that I’ve found a lot of inspiration from my reading so I’ll have ideas built up when I have time to write.

This week I ran across a quote about being an educational leader today is akin to waking up in a maximum security prison and saying, “What am I going to do today?” The comparison is simple, if you are a prisoner you have two choices: follow the rules or be punished. Similarly it seems that school leaders – teachers, principals, superintendents – have them same choices: follow the mandates or be punished. On a larger scale, schools and entire districts are also prisoners of the test-well system.

I’ve written about it before and I will probably write about it again. In a system where the only thing that matters is how you score on one standardized test is the standard that determines excellence, educators must decide whether they will teach to the test or whether they will choose to expand the knowledge of their students by instilling the desire to learn. These are not the same thing. I’ve told teachers for several years that I could guarantee we could be 100% proficient in two years. I know how to do that. We have all the tools: great teachers, great kids, supportive parents, better than average socioeconomic standing, etc. The trade off that we would have to make is whether we want to solely “teach to the test” or do we want to continue to do the things that have brought us to the level of success that we have already achieved? Our school believes it has the ability to transform from a good school to a great school but we also believe that the measuring stick of greatness is not a percentage of proficiency determined by someone other that us.

One of my large projects for my graduate class is to come up with a plan to address improving student achievement using the Getting Results Template. The Getting Results Template is what schools in school improvement are required to complete as part of their school improvement plan. I think I may blow someone away. I can right an excellent plan for improving but I think at the end I will tell them how I really feel. Like a prisoner of bureaucracy.

Pork Chops, Electric Shock and PSSA

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Let’s just say that I am developing a simple experiment. I want to find out which one of my kids that my dog likes best. Here’s the experiment: both of my girls stand 20 feet away from the Fletcher, the dog. They aren’t aloud to call him, they are just aloud to stand there and see which one he comes first. Pretty simple and probably unscientific but it will work to prove my point. Would anyone out there say that my experiment was flawed if I put a pork chop in one of the girl’s pocket? Adding an unrelated incentive would make my entire experiment invalid. Is that what your saying?

OK, then, let me change my experiment. This time, both girls standing 20 feet away only in front of one of the girls is standing outside of my invisible fence – you know, the kind that shocks the dog when he tries to run through it. What? You don’t think I’m validly determining which girl the dog likes best. I can’t believe that!

They do it on the PSSA! Rewarding schools for improving performance as well as punishing school districts who aren’t successful is the same experiment. If the test is to determine what students know and are able to do, don’t positive and negative incentives based on scores invalidate the results? If I’m handing out five dollar bills to every student who scores proficient or if I ‘m closing schools that don’t meet minimum standards am I not putting pork chops in some pockets and using electric shock on the others?

What happens is that the most important thing becomes the test. It doesn’t matter how we got there as long as the scores are there. All actions then are determined and justified by the test. The ends justify the means. And the means usually include cutting time on other academic subjects and can extend all the way to removing administrators.

Not much of a valid test environment.

Keep Your Art Out of My Science

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A couple of decades ago while earning my bachelor’s degree in education I recall a professor asking whether we thought that teaching was an art or a science. At that time it was a pretty good debate for a bunch of 19 and 20 year-olds.

Whether we like it or not, there really no longer is a debate about how teachers are expected to teach. Art is no longer appreciated or rewarded. Science – data, pre-made assessments, canned lessons and are I say teaching to the test – is the expectation. There really is no time or necessity to be creative when there a finite number of objectives to accomplish. Sure, you can feel free to address those standards in any way you like! Or can you?The list of expectations for teaching behavior from lesson planning to classroom management to instructional delivery to professional behavior have been spelled out in detail. This is what great teaching looks like!

You understand in order to make the expense of public education justifiable, it has to be boiled down to a number. A number that Joe Average Citizen can comprehend. In order to get to a number you have to have a measurable product. In order to have a measurable product you have to have a concrete tool with which to measure. You can;t have a lot of loose ends that aren’t part of the accepted equation. Too messy.

Teachers in turn feel the pressure to reach some agreed upon number from the ivory tower and do exactly that. Believe me, it is hard to distinguish the standardized testing scores of students taught by teachers who teach straight out of the book and teachers who spend hundreds of hours planning and tweaking lessons. It’s crap.

It’s crap because the test doesn’t measure heart, caring, passion. It doesn’t measure wiped noses and concerned phone calls. There isn’t a tool that can tell Joe Average how many tears are shed over the frustration of language poor and money poor families or the miles of exercise that it takes to relieve the stress of unsupportive parents and less supportive agencies.

That my friends is science. Specific, Measurable, Trackable. Rows of students who might as well be bolting together widgets and sending them down the line.

The problem is that because we don’t reward artistry in our education system, our teachers don’t know how to encourage artistry in their classrooms. When we tell teachers that their jobs depend on making the score, the consciously or subconsciously project those fears onto their students. “No, I can;t let you explore how we came to use standard units instead of metric units, that will take too much time and we have to get to fractions before the PSSA. You just need to know that they are different.”

This is in my estimation the core of the problem in education. The rule followers prevail and the rule challengers fail. From kindergarten through to college, the students who can regurgitate some information in paper and pencil are bound for greatness. The artists will struggle because we can;t quantify what they are capable of. There are many examples of creators who were “poor” students in the eyes of their teachers but went on to do great things. These are the resilient artists. Those that rose above the square peg problem to find a square hole.

Our concern needs to be with the artists who aren’t resilient. The square pegs who, if they are lucky enough, will be able to balance themselves on top of the round hole – stuck in far enough to stay – and hide their artiness in the name of societal norms. And for those who aren’t crafty enough to fake it or resilient enough to overcome, what will become of them? 

Quantifying Quality

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One of the things that I very often do to find inspiration is to read. I’m kind of a nerd when it comes to reading because about 99% of what I read is non-fiction. I take some grief about this from the few people who know this about me. It is deeply imbedded in my personality.

My most recent inspiration came from reading The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. Silver’s expertise is in the area of prognostication. More so in using Bayesian statistics to draw conclusions about probabilities of future events. For example, he correctly predicted 49 of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election and all 50 states in 2012.

Bayesian statistics utilize a sometimes subjective prior probability to make a prediction about the probability of a future event. For example, the number and strength of past earthquakes increase the probability of future, stronger earthquakes.

The reason for my post, as I normally right about education, is whether we can use Bayesian statistics to determine whether the new Framework for Teaching, developed by Charlotte Danielson and adopted by Pennsylvania as it’s new evaluation tool, can predict the number of ineffective teachers in a school.

The Danielson model, by her own admission was developed to provide teachers a framework through which to improve their teaching. Therefore, what we probably want to predict is how likely are teachers to improve by utilizing the Framework.

Another question to answer, and Silver has eluded to his desire to attempt it, is whether any subjective measure can really quantitatively measure the effectiveness of a teacher. In a reddit IAmA, he stated, “There are certainly cases where objective measures applied badly is worse than not applying them at all, and education may well be one of them.” He said this in regard to a question about using test scores to rate teacher effectiveness.

In Pennsylvania, teachers and administrators will be rated on a combination of both: standardized test scores and the Danielson Framework for Teaching. One concrete measure that historically has been shown to be determined more by location than by quality teaching and one qualitative, formative measure that will be applied quantitatively.

I know it’s like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic but the argument continually needs to be made that education is more qualitative; more art and less quantitative; less science.

Plungers and Tequila

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This past Saturday I did my first ever Polar Plunge.  I actually helped organize it so i kind of felt like I needed to participate.  It wasn’t the worst experience I ever had.  Colder in some ways but not as cold as expected in others.

The point of this entry isn’t to brag about immersing myself in near freezing water on purpose.  The impetus of this post was a comment I made to a fellow blogger, Twitter follower, and Plunger after the Plunge:

Some things you do because others think its crazy – like drink tequila.

It’s something that I have used as an analogy before.  I used to teach emotionally disturbed high school students.  The mad, the sad, and the glad.  I used to say that teaching emotional support was like drinking tequila; no one really likes it but only some people can do it and so they do.  Probably a bit to oversimplified.  I did actually enjoy teaching ES especially when I was young.  It was an active job for a teacher and it really was rewarding on a lot of occasions.  I also came to realize as I got older and could afford it that good tequila could be extremely tasty.

My point is I guess that I’m that kind of guy.  I like to do the things that most people think are a little nuts.  It’s hard to believe the number of people who wouldn’t even consider stripping down and getting into a frigid river.  Probably considerably equal to the number of people who threw up on their first drink of tequila and never touched it again.  More than a little correlation to the number of people who would have substitute taught for 20 years before taking a job teaching ES.  I actually left a job teaching learning support in a local high school to travel an hour each way to teaching my first emotional support placement.  The people who worked there looked at me like I had three heads.

Those two paragraphs probably say more about me than most people know.  I’m just a normal guy.  Married , two kids, good, solid job as an elementary school principal.  But I’m not afraid to be a little crazy now and then.  I’m not afraid to call a play that’s not “supposed” to be in my playbook.

I guess my quandary is whether I do that enough.  Should I be increasing the number of crazy moments in my life?  Do I call the plays on my wristband too often?  Probably.

As my fellow blogger, Twitter follower and Plunger rogueanthro says in her blog, Resolutions disappear after January.  Challenges last all year long.  (I paraphrased)

So this year my challenge is to be challenge myself.  Looking at one per month but I don’t really have a list yet.  I know I would like to solo backpack overnight.  Never soloed and have only backpacked on one other occasion.  I think writing something of significance will be in there somewhere too.  Maybe a triathlon?  Don’t know but I’ll keep you posted.  I am going back to grad school so that may make the list.  OK stop me now, I’m rambling….

Of Earthquakes and Mass Murderers

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I haven’t blogged since a couple days after the tragedy in Sandy Hook. Unlike many writers I needed the whole thing to sink in and try to make sense of it. Others ran to their pens to begin the finger pointing and protecting their political agendas. I do have some pretty strong beliefs but I didn’t know if they were legitimate in this case.

I read the following quote while I was contemplating the whole situation:

“When catastrophe strikes, we look for a signal in the noise—anything that might explain the chaos that we see all around us and bring order to the world again.”

Excerpt From: Silver, Nate. “The Signal and the Noise.” Penguin Group, USA, 2012-09-05. iBooks.

The signal, according to Silver, is the data that creates a true prediction. The noise is the data that while seemingly important to the discussion only leads us away from a solid prediction. The book is fascinating in pointing out the noise in many relevant predictions.

Anyway, back to our point which is the noise surrounding the Sandy Hook school shooting. We all know what the noise was: principals carrying guns, armed security guards, eliminating assault rifles, banning large ammunition clips, bringing religion back into schools,etc. What is the answer? Without your political agenda, what do you really think would prevent the next mass shooting in the United States?

It’s just as easy to say that eliminating guns would prevent mass murders as it is to say that arming more people would. Those are just easy, politically charged responses. Easy to create your latest meme around but are either correct? It’s easy to surmise that “kicking God out of schools” is the problem.  Do any of those solutions drive out the signal that truly will be able to prevent future catastrophes?

1.  Principals with guns:  Anyone who thinks this is a good idea doesn’t know the job of a principal in the 21st Century.  We interact with kids on a daily basis.  We are an integral part of our students’ days.  We no longer sit in offices and react to problems.

2.  Armed security guards:  Schools are safe places for the majority of students.  The signal of a man with a gun at the door everyday doesn’t convey safety; it conveys fear.  Do we really want our children to group up in a culture of fear?

3.  Assault weapons ban:  This from Wikipedia; The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied the “assault weapon” ban and other gun control attempts, and found “insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence,” noting “that insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness.”[7] A 2004 critical review of research on firearms by a National Research Council panel also noted that academic studies of the assault weapon ban “did not reveal any clear impacts on gun violence” and noted “due to the fact that the relative rarity with which the banned guns were used in crime before the ban … the maximum potential effect of the ban on gun violence outcomes would be very small….”[8]

4.  Banning large ammo clips:  Probably the most realistic option for eliminating mass produced mayhem but again if you look at the information from the Wikipedia article above, ARs are not used in that many incidences of gun violence so these two categories are interrelated.

5.  Put God back in schools:  Probably my favorite from the point of view that it is so shortsighted and exhibits a great lack of faith from the proclaimed faithful.  First, a faithful Christian believes that God is everywhere.  Second, we should not consider the imperfections of humans to reflect the imperfections of God.  Third, there have been just as many or more court cases that allow prayer in schools than ones that do not.  The only prayer not allowed in schools is prayer that is state-sanctioned.

All of it so far seems like noise.  One interesting story in Nate Silver’s book is about predicting earthquakes.  A much harder task than predicting hurricanes.  Predicting test score = hurricanes.  Predicting mass muderers shooting through your door for no apparent reason = earthquakes.

The reality is that no catastrophe is 100% preventable.  The best we can do is to be prepared.  The best we can do is to let our children know that we will do whatever we can to keep them safe.  The best we can do is all we can do.

A Principal’s Take on Tragedy

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I’m not really sure that I have a post but I know I need to write.

Every principal’s greatest fear occurred on December 14th, 2012 in a small town in Connecticut.  Principal’s don’t think about this everyday or we would drive ourselves crazy.  It is never far from our mind.  Every time you get a call from an irate parent or an unfamiliar person rings the door bell, there’s that slight chill of what this person is capable of.  The quick run through your head about what you will do if this moment goes completely out of control.

I haven’t yet heard what the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary did to protect her students except to hear that she died trying to protect her students.  I think we all can relate to that. I don’t think there is an elementary principal in the country who wouldn’t die to protect his or her students.

It doesn’t make me fell any better to say that I know that I would do anything in my power to protect my students.  In fact it scares the hell out of me. I’m not saying it because I want people to see me as a hero.  I’m saying those are the facts and whether we ever say it out loud. which we don’t, or we keep it inside, in the backs of our collective minds, we know that it is a reality of out position.

I guess the point of writing today is to let people know that even the best laid plans don’t prevent senseless acts of violence.  If we could prevent them all we would.  There is no compromise on that point. There never has been.  

The latest shooting undoubtedly will revive the discussion on school safety and rightly so.  No matter your political bent, classrooms full of kindergarten students should not go to school and never come home.  Nobody goes to work in a school expecting that they will never see their families again.  And no amount of finger pointing is ever going to change those facts.  

Choice

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Not my normal scope but felt the need to briefly post.

Dan Savage had a one on one interview with Chris Hayes this morning on Up. Great interview about being gay in today’s society and the war to end marriage inequality. If you still have stereotypical thoughts about gay people this is an eye opener. One of the most interesting things that Mr. Savage said, and the impetus for this post, was that the more children that a couple had, the more likely they were to have a child who is LGBT.

Of course people who believe that being gay is a choice, would find that statement to be a fallacy. I personally don’t believe it’s a choice.

I found it especially interesting because some religions encourage couples to have many children. Whether through their words or their tenets. Many of those same religions also don’t believe overtly that LGBT people are entitled to the equality of heterosexual couples. How doubly unfortunate for a LGBT child to be born into a society that discriminates against them and a family that will find it difficult to accept them.

I can’t imagine why anyone would make that choice.

Anchored to the Core

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The Common Core Standards, as I have said before, whether here or elsewhere, most definitely will increase the rigor of education throughout the United States.  I have no doubt about that.  They will push academic expectations possibly passed what is developmentally appropriate.

But that standard of achievement has been broken for decades.  When I was in kindergarten 40 years ago I recall only a handful of students who could read by the end of the year.  Now the expectation is that students will be reading at least a few words when they enter K.  If they can’t they are already behind.  Who determined the developmental appropriateness of that giant leap?  I don’t know but kindergarten parents have risen to that challenge.

Or have they?  In 1972 and for at least a couple decades after that, the starting age for beginners was five by the end of January.  Wow!  You could still be four in many places until after Christmas and still be in school.  Now the standard in most states is September 1 or the first day of school. That’s up to five months difference.  In addition, and possibly thanks to Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, parents of means very well may keep there children out of school for a year if they are born in the spring or summer months.  Read Gladwell for an explanation.  I reiterate, people of means.  People on the other end of the spectrum of affluence may not have the luxury of keeping there children at home for another year.  Child care is expensive.  That puts our poor students that I spoke of last week at an even bigger disadvantage of possibly 16 months.

Now back to the point.  When the common core is fully in place the expectations of proficiency in kindergarten will be heightened once again.  Without regards to where you came from, what you already know, how many words you have heard in your short life, what experiences you carry into the classroom, or the education level of your mother. And every year we will be pushing further and further past the current expectations.   Again without regard to any of the above plus identified learning disabilities, capacity for learning, or mental health issues.

If all of that isn’t enough.  We are going to do it all SIMULTANEOUSLY! By that I mean it won’t be scaffolded through the grades from K-6 with a possibility of seven years to advance through the levels. Every grade will be responsible for meeting proficiency on grade level Common Core standards in 2014.

Its hard for me to give an example based on the standards because you would have to be familiar with both the Common Core Standards and the Pennsylvania Academics Standards to know exactly where the gaps are.  I can give you an analogy though:

Your school district is required to write a novel by the end of the year.  Your school district will be evaluated on the quality of the writing in your district’s novel.  Every grade level starting in kindergarten will be responsible for one chapter.  Every school district in the state will have a thirteen chapter book.  Sounds like an awesome project!  Problem is, everyone has to write at the same time.  Oh, yeah, we’ll give you some context.  Let’s say the story is about Little Red Riding Hood.  That’s fair.  Now write.  No, sixth grade, you can’t know where fifth grade left off!  Fifth grade didn’t know the content that fourth grade produced.  And only the student and teacher’s in the kindergarten classes know where the story began.

But the Core has become the Anchor

Epilogue: Rockin’ the Suburbs

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Last week I blogged a little about PSSA scores and the false impression that we are testing children when a great deal of what is attributed to “good teaching” can be equally attributed to demographics.  Remember that the rich, suburban schools near large cities in Pennsylvania do very well on the PSSA and the poor, urban schools do extremely poor.  These results are independent of any connection to the percentage of minorities in the school district.  School districts with a relatively high percentage of minorities do just as well as school districts with a minimal percentage of minorities.

So why do suburban school districts do so well?

My theory:  When school districts began to be rated as poor or low achieving, people of means left the city in droves to schools that were already doing well.  The schools in the suburbs.  The shift in affluence from the cities to the suburbs meant that the city school went from below average to dismal and the schools in the suburbs went from above average to pretty near phenomenal.  The highly educated who worked in the cities felt it oput their children at a disadvantage to have them schooled there.

But why does richer equal smarter?

I don’t necessarily think that it does.  What affluence does provide though is experiences.  Experiences at a young age put beginners at a great advantage over students whose experiences are limited.  Students who have been to the zoo, the museum, even a ball game have more experiences than students that never get off their street. That early advantage builds through the primary grades as students of means continue to have experience rich lives. That’s not even mentioning the next level of students who have been to Disney World, Yellowstone or even Mexico.  Think of the experiences that those students take for granted that a student who lives in a 500 square foot apartment never has.

Another factor, and I think the biggest implement to achievement in the early years, is language poor homes.  Vocabulary is the key to all learning.  People of means go to college.  People of tremendous means go to college even if they aren’t smart enough. Whether you earned it or not you were exposed to an enormous new vocabulary and you use that vocabulary in the home.  Even though developmentally children may not know what those words mean, they have been exposed to them.  Exposure puts them one step in front of the child with uneducated or undereducated parents.

One more because I like things in threes:  If you are affluent and have gone to college chances are you work a 9 to 5 job.  Nine to 5 parents are home.  Parents who are home have the opportunity to spend more time with their children. Exposing them to more experiences, more language and reading.  Reading to your children is important but you have to be home to read.

In this whole post, I’m not saying it’s impossible to be a high achiever if you come from a poor, language poor, experientially vapid home.  What I am saying is that it takes work.  Keep in mind that if you are 6 months behind your peers in kindergarten you will have to make 10 months worth of growth in 9 months every year until the end of fifth grade to catch up.  That is unlikely but not impossible.  Students rise above their circumstances all the time.  Those are the students who should be applauded at graduation.  The students who made a 2.0 under the toughest of conditions not the one’s who made a 4.2 with a silver spoon hanging out of their mouths. (Sorry, lost my focus there)

My point is, it’s a snowball effect.  Your school is deemed low-achieving by a single test, if your school is low achieving the people who can move out will, the people who move out will take with them strong experiences and rich vocabulary, with the loss of your high achieving and average students your schools scores will continue to decline.