Justin Snider2013-05-24T00:46:46-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=justin-sniderCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Justin SniderGood old fashioned elbow grease.Thinking We Know What We Test: Justin Snidertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/thenewswire//2.18245992012-08-23T09:39:53-04:002012-10-23T05:12:11-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/This piece comes to us courtesy of The Hechinger Report.
An op-ed in The New York Times on August 20th, "Testing What We Think We Know," argued that many medical procedures are carried out in the United States despite a very thin evidence-base for their efficacy. It's high time to invest more in research, the author wrote, to figure out first what actually works. The op-ed's author, H. Gilbert Welch, is a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and a co-author of Overdiagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health (2011).
Welch's op-ed about the field of medicine could just as easily have been about the field of education (but then, would The Times have published it?). The problems besetting both are strikingly similar. In that spirit, what follows is a riff on Welch's op-ed, and it'll likely make sense only if you first read "Testing What We Think We Know."
By 2010, many politicians were recommending top-down accountability to healthy schools and rigorous assessments to determine the effectiveness of older teachers. Both interventions had become standard educational practice.
But in 2020, a randomized trial showed that top-down accountability caused more problems (more teaching to the test and cheating) than it solved (fewer bad schools and under-educated students). Then, in 2029, trials showed that top-down accountability led to many unnecessary tests and had a dubious effect on school improvement.
How would you have felt--after over two decades of following your elected official's advice--to learn that high-quality randomized trials of these standard practices had only just been completed? And that they showed that both did more harm than good? Justifiably furious, I'd say. Because these practices affected millions of American schoolchildren, they are locked in a tight competition for the greatest educational error on record.
The problem goes far beyond these two. The truth is that for a large part of pedagogical practice, we don't know what works. But we pay for it anyway. Our annual per capita K-12 educational expenditure is now over $11,000. Many countries pay half that--and enjoy similar, often better, outcomes. Isn't it time to learn which practices, in fact, improve our educational system, and which ones don't?
To find out, we need more education research. But not just any kind of education research. Education research is dominated by research on the new: new tests, new technologies, new disorders and new fads. But above all, it's about new markets.
We don't need to find more things to spend money on; we need to figure out what's being done now that is not working. That's why we have to start directing more money toward evaluating standard practices--all the tests and treatments that policymakers are already pushing.
There are many places to start. Value-added assessments are increasingly finding microscopic abnormalities in the teacher lounge called M.U.T.S., or Maybe Underperforming Teachers. Currently we treat them as if they were invasive cancers, with public shaming, firing and school closures. Some elected officials think this is necessary, others don't. The question is relevant to more than 3.5 million teachers each year. Don't you think we should know the answer?
Or how about this one: How should we screen for underperforming students? The usual approach, standardized testing, is simple and cheap. But more and more students and parents are opting out of public schools--over five million students attend private schools alone. And 1.5 million are home-schooled. Untold thousands go to virtual schools, where they learn at home in front of computers. These options are neither simple nor cheap. Which is better? We don't know.
Let me be clear, answering questions like these is not easy. The Department of Education is in fact preparing to take on the question of whether underperforming youngsters can be made to perform like their peers. The trial, which will involve up to 50 million students, will last a decade and surely cost billions of dollars.
Research like this takes more than grant money. For starters, it takes a research infrastructure that monitors what standard practice is--data on what's actually happening across the country. Because of PISA, we have a clear view for students aged 15, but it's a lot cloudier for those under or over 15. Basic questions like how common illiteracy is and what testing is done to determine rates of illiteracy are unanswerable.
It also takes a research culture that promotes a healthy skepticism toward standard pedagogical practice. That requires teacher-researchers who know what standard practice is, have the imagination to question it and the skills to study it. These teachers need training that's not yet part of any education school curriculum; they need mentoring by senior researchers; and they need some assurance that investigating accepted approaches can be a viable option, instead of career suicide.
We have to move quickly. The administrative demands of teaching, on one side, and the competition for school funding on the other, make it increasingly difficult for teachers to instruct students. They become isolated from standard practice, and their ability to study it diminishes. School leaders who are well positioned to study these issues are increasingly directed toward enhancing productivity--questions about how can we do this better, faster or more consistently--instead of questions about whether the practices are warranted in the first place.
Here's a simple idea to turn this around: devote 1 percent of educational expenditures to evaluating what the other 99 percent is buying. Distribute the research dollars to match the instructional dollars. Figure out what works and what doesn't. The Institute of Education Sciences (created as part of the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002) is supposed to tackle questions of direct relevance to students and teachers and could take on this role, but its budget--less than 0.003 percent of total spending on education--is far from sufficient.
A call for more educational research might sound like pablum. Worse, coming from an educational researcher, it might sound like self-interest (cut me some slack, that's another one of our standard practices). But I don't need the money. The system does. Or if you prefer, we can continue to argue about who pays for what--without knowing what's worth paying for.
Justin Snider is a contributing editor at The Hechinger Report. He is an advising dean at Columbia University, where he also teaches undergraduate writing. Snider's research interests include school reform, press coverage of education, urban politics, mayoral control and transatlantic relations. Previously, he taught high school English and advised student publications in the United States, Austria and Hong Kong. A California native, Snider is a graduate of Amherst College, the University of Chicago, the University of Vienna and Harvard University.]]>Why Mike Daisey's Fabrications Don't Bother Metag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13612702012-03-19T05:25:07-04:002012-05-19T05:12:01-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/
But what if fiction can be truer than truth, more accurate than fact, more revealing than reality? What if the devil's not in the details?
What if Oscar Wilde was right, that the truth is rarely pure and never simple?
I get that Daisey was wrong to present his play as nonfiction, which he clearly did in the playbill for The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. It unapologetically says, in all caps, "THIS IS A WORK OF NONFICTION."
I get that we don't like to learn we've been had.
I get that Dante reserved the eighth circle of hell for frauds.
But in my book Mike Daisey won't be joining the ranks of ruined writers for this. James Frey he is not.
I saw the show on November 13th last year, and I saw it again on March 18th -- the final performance at New York City's Public Theater. I've seen hundreds of shows -- yes, hundreds -- in the past decade, and Mike's stands out as among the most brilliantly conceived and brilliantly executed of all. You cannot not be moved.
And, crucially, this holds true whether the young female factory worker with whom he spoke was 13, as he recalls, or 12, or 14 -- or even 16 or 18. Her precise age is beside the point. She could have said she was 13 even if she wasn't. Maybe she was older, or maybe she was younger. Maybe she didn't say she was 13. We'll never know. The point is this: she was young. Very young. And doing difficult work over long hours for little money -- a situation we would not tolerate in twenty-first century America.
And the point is also this: in a 2010 audit, Apple itself discovered 91 instances of underage workers in 10 of its factories in China -- workers under 16, the minimum age to be employed in the People's Republic. That the occasional worker is underage isn't surprising, and that Daisey would have met at least one such worker isn't implausible. (Remember the scandal with the Chinese women's -- girls' -- gymnastics team at the 2008 Summer Olympics, which won the gold medal? Age-fudging seems to be something of a national sport in China.)
On Sunday, Daisey spoke to the audience briefly before the metaphorical curtain rose. To my eye, he appeared nervous and pained. The words did not quite flow as they would in the show itself.
The telling of the truth, he told us, is an almost impossible thing.
He's right.
He knows what Emily Dickinson knew all too well -- that truth-telling isn't a straightforward act, and that fiction can be truer than fact:
"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind--"
Here's the truth: Daisey's show has been a tremendous success -- and rightly so. Conditions at Foxconn and other Chinese factories are likely to improve because of Daisey's work, not despite it. Were it not for Daisey, we -- the general American public -- wouldn't be talking about Foxconn.
Daisey's show -- like Apple's products -- is art, and magic, and truth.]]>In Global Education Race, U.S. Is Falling Behindtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10120002011-10-17T18:59:12-04:002011-12-17T05:12:01-05:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/fallen behind their international peers?
Indeed, there's lots of evidence that American higher education could be doing significantly better. But how?
It's a question that we at The Hechinger Report set out to answer by visiting countries on three continents and examining their new higher-education agendas.
As President Barack Obama has noted time and again, the U.S. has slipped from first to 16th in the world when it comes to the percentage of our population aged 25-34 with postsecondary credentials. We're at 41 percent, or about two out of every five young adults, according to the latest data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development -- and this despite the huge cost of U.S. higher education to families and taxpayers.
World champion South Korea is at 63 percent. Canada -- with which the United States shares a border, yet which fares far better in this international ranking -- is tied with Japan for second. Fifty-six percent of Canadian and Japanese young people hold degrees. Russia follows, in fourth, at 55 percent. So what's going on?
Yes, the U.S. is home to Ivy League institutions such as Harvard and Yale, along with top-rated M.I.T. and Stanford. And yes, the U.S. boasts 17 of the top 20 universities in the world, according to the most recent Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Yet these institutions enroll a thin slice of America's 20 million college students. Far more attend two- and four-year colleges, both public and private, of often-questionable quality.
And for every U.S. student who graduates, two drop out. Nearly 80 percent of those who enroll in community colleges never finish what they start.
The United States is facing a projected shortfall of 16 million college-educated adults in the American workforce by 2025 if it doesn't change the rate at which it produces college graduates. Young Americans today will make history for being the first generation ever to be less educated, and to earn less and live less comfortably, than their parents.
With the country on the cusp of a double-dip recession, millions remain unemployed and leading thinkers are suggesting that the 21st century belongs to China and India, not America.
Why? We hear again and again that it's because America fell asleep at the wheel.
Our series, "Lessons From Abroad," tells the story of a once-dominant nation in danger of being left behind. We invite you to be a part of the discussion, as it unfolds over the coming months on this site, in The Washington Post and in other national outlets. The Hechinger Report will turn its attention to higher education in China, India, Japan and South Korea, as well as Canada, Great Britain and Ireland. Blaine Harden reports on Japan in Saturday's Washington Post. Our hope is to spark a national conversation about higher education that continues well beyond our coverage.
To prosper, America has to educate its young people up to and beyond the new levels of technology ... we need our education system not only to strengthen everyone's basic -- reading, writing, and arithmetic -- but to teach and inspire all Americans to start something new, to add something extra, or to adapt something old in whatever job they are doing. With the world getting more hyper-connected all the time, maintaining the American dream will require learning, working, producing, relearning, and innovating twice as hard, twice as fast, twice as often, and twice as much. (Emphasis in the original.)
Our series attempts to showcase the vital lessons to be learned about how other countries get more of their students to and through college than the United States does. What works in higher education elsewhere? How are other countries increasing access and success among historically underrepresented groups? How are they maintaining quality without increasing costs, while also focusing on what students actually learn and are able to do?
More specifically, how has China doubled its higher-education participation in just the last decade -- attracting students who once came to the United States for college -- and how does it educate a quarter of the world's students with just two percent of the global education budget? How has Canada increased attainment rates and integrated immigrants and native populations into its higher-education system? How has Ireland created strong linkages between its K-12 and higher-education systems?
And the most important question of all: For America to avert catastrophe and regain both its educational edge and economic dominance, how -- and how urgently -- must must U.S. higher education change?]]>Preparing Teachers for a Lifetime in the Classroomtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8879952011-06-30T14:59:51-04:002011-08-30T05:12:01-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/
Carman, 23, has spent the past two years preparing for a career in the classroom through the University of Chicago's Urban Teacher Education Program (UTEP). The Rochester, N.Y. native will complete the program tomorrow, on July 1st.
Carman could have taken a shorter route to the classroom by doing Teach For America (TFA) or a similar alternative-preparation program, but he wanted more extensive training before embarking on a job he hopes to do for a long time -- if not a lifetime.
Asked how he settled on UTEP for his training, Carman says, "No matter what program you go through, there's probably no way that you're going to be totally and utterly prepared for any kind of experience." But, he says, "I think UTEP has prepared me as well as I could be for anything. ... I feel as supported as possible to make a career out of this and not just be in the classroom for a couple of years."
Luke Carman, right, debriefing a lesson with Bill Kennedy. Photo by Justin Snider
UTEP and similar urban teacher residency programs across the country have received significant financial support from the federal government. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan hopes such programs will be a game-changer for how the nation prepares its teachers. In an October 2009 speech at Teachers College, Columbia University, Duncan minced no words in describing the current state of teacher education: "by almost any standard, many if not most of the nation's 1,450 schools, colleges, and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom. America's university-based teacher preparation programs need revolutionary change -- not evolutionary tinkering."
Duncan and President Barack Obama share a sense of urgency that the United States must do much more to ensure that every student is taught by a highly effective teacher.
"To put a great teacher in every classroom," Duncan says, "we need to dramatically improve preparation programs. We're embracing new models -- including both teacher residencies and alternative-route programs -- and holding them to a clear standard of whether they're preparing teachers who are effective in the classroom."
UTEP began in 2003, first to prepare University of Chicago undergraduates for careers as elementary-school teachers. The program is now open to graduates of other institutions, and it prepares not just elementary teachers but also secondary teachers of mathematics and biology. This past year, there were 38 UTEP students, although the hope is to expand to about 55 slots soon. There's also talk of one day enlarging the secondary program to include other subjects like chemistry, physics, English and history. The competitive admissions process includes a panel interview and a school visit, during which prospective students are asked to observe classes and then reflect on their observations in a group discussion.
The program takes two years to complete, though the first year is billed as part-time. University of Chicago undergraduates can begin the program in their senior year. UTEP graduates receive a Master of Arts in Teaching and state certification in either grades K-9 or grades 6-12.
To make becoming a teacher more financially feasible, UTEP offers its students a $20,000 stipend in their second year, and aspiring secondary teachers qualify for an additional $10,000 through the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, which is run through the National Science Foundation. UTEP students are also eligible for federal Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) grants of up to $4,000 annually.
The first year in UTEP is a mix of academic coursework, guided observations of numerous Chicago Public Schools, twice-weekly tutoring of elementary or middle-school students, and a "soul strand," which promotional materials describe as an opportunity for students "to explore issues of teacher identity and educational equity as well as the ways in which race, class, and culture affect both teachers and students."
In the second year, teacher-interns continue with coursework, while also completing two half-year stints in a neighborhood public school and in one of the four charter schools run by the University of Chicago.
For his first clinical experience, Carman was assigned to a fifth-grade class at Donoghue Charter School on Chicago's South Side last fall. His two mentors at the school regularly observed him and offered feedback on both lesson plans and actual lessons. Carman was also formally observed twice a semester by Bill Kennedy, a former New York City teacher who oversees the work of mentors and who coaches UTEP graduates in their first three years of teaching. Such ongoing professional support -- in the form of teacher leadership training, professional-development workshops and in-classroom coaching -- is a critical component of UTEP and other residency programs.
In his second clinical experience, which ran from January until May 2011, Carman taught math and language arts to seventh-graders at Rachel Carson Elementary School, where more than 90 percent of students are Latino and 99 percent are low-income.
Starting in September, Carman will be teaching sixth grade at Chicago Quest, a new charter school that will open its doors to sixth- and seventh-graders this fall. It will eventually serve students in grades 6-12, just like its sister school in New York City, Quest to Learn, which opened to sixth-graders two years ago. Both schools capitalize on digital media and technology, as well as children's innate interest in games. "Mission critical at Quest is a translation of the underlying form of games into a powerful pedagogical model for its 6-12th graders," the Quest to Learn website reads.
Two other UTEP students, Audrey Edwards and Danielle Haney, interned at the University of Chicago's North Kenwood/Oakland Charter School. Both say the feedback they got from mentors -- and from watching themselves on videotape -- was essential to their preparation, and both believe UTEP's emphasis on self-reflection is important.
Edwards, whose undergraduate major was in comparative human development, advises those thinking about a career in teaching "to go to a place where you're not going to be thrown into a classroom unprepared. ... Go to a place where you are able to watch good teachers."
Haney, a 2004 graduate of the University of Iowa, adds that "observation is really important," and cautions those considering the classroom to "make sure it's really what you want to do -- it's intense."
The federal government's investment has led to the creation of teacher-residency programs around the country. Montclair State University in New Jersey, in partnership with the Newark Public Schools, started two urban-residency programs in 2010. A 12-month program is geared toward those wishing to teach secondary math or science, and it comes with a $26,000 stipend. An 18-month program prepares early-childhood and elementary teachers -- who also earn special-education credentials -- and those who enroll receive a $39,000 stipend. Additionally, in exchange for a three-year commitment to teach in Newark schools after graduation, Montclair State charges no tuition or fees for these programs. Graduates earn a master's degree and state certification.
Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City is home to another new teacher-residency program. A. Lin Goodwin, its director, says programs like hers give aspiring teachers "support and space to be learners of teaching -- to be deeply engaged with students at the same time that they are deeply engaged as students." Such a structure helps ensure that "neophyte teachers are learning from children, not on them," Goodwin says, which is a key difference she sees between teacher-residency programs and alternate pathways like TFA.
Recent graduate Jenny Field, 46, settled on the Teachers College program because it emphasized support, collaboration and a "gradual integration into the classroom," not immediate immersion. The London native -- who has turned to teaching after a career in the art world -- earned her certification in special education, an area that suffers from chronic shortages of qualified teachers.
Of her student-teaching experience, Field said, "When I had a disruptive classroom, my supervisor and my mentor-teacher didn't make me feel intimidated or nervous that it was my failing. It was understood that these are the challenges, and we had a solid support network. Now I feel like I can really handle anything."]]>Of Bosses, Both Good and Badtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8628572011-05-17T14:52:09-04:002011-07-17T05:12:01-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/
Tolstoy this isn't. Nonetheless, it serves reasonably well as a distillation of recent research on leadership. Good bosses tend to do a lot of the same things: trust, respect, protect and empower their underlings; treat people equally (and well); communicate clearly; listen carefully; and provide useful, timely feedback.
Bad bosses, meanwhile, can be bad in countless ways. They might have bad hygiene, or they might intrude on your personal space. They might come late and leave early every day, expecting others to get the real work done -- but also expecting to take credit for others' accomplishments and awards. They likely excel at indecision -- or at deciding, but then changing their minds without rhyme or reason.
More dangerously, they might not have a clue what they're doing (or why), simply because they were promoted to the point of their own incompetence -- à la the Peter Principle.
Bad bosses are sometimes pyromaniacs (literally, figuratively, or both), managers who make "every little problem a three-alarm fire." Patricia Gray detailed a "workplace pyro" she called "Cruella," who reminds me of bosses I've known over the years:
"Her direct reports were young, bright, ambitious, eager to please. But she never trusted them to execute on their own. Every project became a crisis, every meeting a fire drill. She would make assignments at night and on weekends. When she was out visiting clients, she kept the team jumping via e-mails -- each one marked URGENT, including the one about the typo in the footnote of a routine report. 'I drove everyone crazy, and I didn't even realize it half the time,' she says."
This is a key feature of many bad bosses: they don't know they're bad. In fact, they think they're good, and they think their underlings universally adore them. As Stanford professor Bob Sutton has written, in Good Boss, Bad Boss (2010), "People in power tend to become self-centered and oblivious to what their followers need, do, and say."
They have no idea how others view them. It is for this reason that Sutton suggests every boss offer a so-called "bosshole bounty": $20 to any employee willing to tell the boss he's been a "jerk." Most bosses, of course, wouldn't dream of inviting -- let alone paying for! -- such criticism. But that's precisely Sutton's point: bosses who do so will almost certainly gain new respect from underlings. More importantly, they'll gain insight into how others perceive them.
What can you do when your boss is so bad you want to quit? (And remember, "people do not quit organizations, they quit bad bosses," according to Robert Hogan, whom Sutton cites.)
This is a question that Jack Gabarro, an emeritus professor at Harvard Business School, and I recently tackled in an interview on BAM! Radio Network with our host, Holly Elissa Bruno.
Gabarro is well-known for the concept of "managing" one's boss, which he detailed in a 1980 Harvard Business Review piece co-authored with Harvard's John Kotter. "Managing your boss" has since become a classic of management literature, having been reprinted in HBR in 1993, 2005 and 2007.
On our radio show, Gabarro said:
"If you're having a problem with your boss, it is seldom all one-sided. ... Start off with the premise that you are contributing some percentage of the problem, if for no other reason [than] because you don't understand who your boss is, what her strengths and weaknesses are, what his style or preferences [are] for receiving information or discussing either problematic or sensitive issues..."
He also stressed the importance of understanding that bosses are human beings with foibles -- they're not infallible. Also, bosses are dependent on their underlings, regardless of whether they realize it.
Gabarro and I agreed that going over your boss's head to complain about him or her doesn't often end well, though it may sometimes seem like the only option. To deal with a difficult boss, Gabarro recommends first understanding who your boss is -- the context in which he or she lives, and the pressures he or she routinely faces -- and then conducting a self-assessment to determine your own strengths and weaknesses. Only then can you sort out the best course of action to take, and you might just realize in the process that you bear some sliver of responsibility for the issues you're having with your boss.
When it comes to bosses at the school level, we're talking department heads and principals. As I said on the show, I think the best principals have realized that the way they can be most helpful to teachers is to get out of the way -- let teachers teach. Good principals get teachers whatever they need to do their jobs well. If teachers are happy and succeeding -- which is to say, if students are learning -- everything else follows. But this is a very teacher-centric perspective, I acknowledge, and so it's important to remind teachers that they serve different constituencies and face different pressures than principals do.
A principal can see his or her chief role as satisfying parents or the district superintendent, but ultimately I think the smarter route is for a principal to look out for his or her teachers first and foremost. This isn't a popular position these days -- given the frequent claims that teachers are overpaid and under-worked -- but it does reflect this reality: you can't have a good school without good teachers. (By contrast, you can have a bad school with a good principal, or a good school with a bad principal. But never will you find a good school with all bad teachers, or a bad school with all good teachers.)
Good teachers are happy teachers -- teachers whom their principals trust, respect, protect and empower.
You can listen to the entire radio show here.]]>How the U.S. Education System Looks to a Leading Expert Abroadtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8605402011-05-11T12:45:40-04:002011-07-11T05:12:01-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/Andreas Schleicher, an expert on educational systems around the world, what he makes of the current push for reform in American public education.
Q: The PISA results make clear that U.S. students aren't performing particularly well compared to their peers in many other countries. What do you think are the most compelling reasons for this poor performance?
Q: Imagine U.S. President Barack Obama or Education Secretary Arne Duncan asked you for two or three recommendations that would help the U.S. radically transform -- and improve -- its educational system. What recommendations might you give them?
A: Some of the things very high on my list have already been dealt with, such as the establishment of far more rigorous, universal and internationally benchmarked educational standards. The challenge here will be policy implementation, making sure that the common core standards translate into instructional systems, instructional practices and student learning -- intended, implemented and achieved -- and that they begin to count for students, teachers and schools. If you look at the highest-performing systems, you see that everyone knows what is required to get a given qualification, both in terms of the content studied and the level of performance needed to earn it. Students cannot go on to the next stage -- be it in work or in further education -- unless they show that they are qualified to do so. They know what they have to do to realize their dream, and they put in the work that is needed to do it.
In other areas, the U.S. needs, in my view, to make significantly more headway, particularly when it comes to teachers and school principals. Put simply, the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers and principals, and the quality of teachers cannot exceed the quality of teacher selection, teacher development and teacher evaluation. Just like companies, high-quality school systems pay attention to how they select and train their staff. They watch how they improve the performance of those who are struggling; how they structure teachers' pay packets; and how they reward their best teachers. They provide an environment in which teachers work together to frame good practice. That is where teachers conduct field-based research to confirm or disprove the approaches they develop, and they judge their colleagues by the degree to which they use these practices in their classrooms. What the U.S. misses, in my view, is substantial professional autonomy among teachers within a collaborative culture.
An impressive outcome of world-class education systems is perhaps that they deliver high-quality learning consistently across the entire education system so that every student benefits from excellent learning opportunities. To achieve this, they invest educational resources where they can make most of a difference, they attract the most talented teachers into the most challenging classrooms, and they establish effective spending choices that prioritize the quality of teachers. Shanghai in China is a great example of this. The U.S. is one of the few systems where you see just the reverse.
Of course, you can make this list much longer, but I think these are three key areas, and ones in which federal policies can make a huge difference.
Q: What's your take on the American accountability system in public education?
A: In short, in my view the U.S. needs to strike a different balance between vertical and lateral accountability. Let me explain this. When you could still assume that what you learn in school would last for a lifetime, teaching content and routine cognitive skills was at the center of education. Today, where you can access content on Google, where routine cognitive skills are being digitized or outsourced, and where jobs are changing rapidly, education systems need to enable people to become lifelong learners, to manage complex ways of thinking and complex ways of working that computers can't take over easily. That requires a very different caliber of teachers. When teaching was about explaining prefabricated content, you could tolerate low teacher quality. And when teacher quality was low, governments tended to tell their teachers exactly what to do and exactly how they wanted it done, using prescriptive methods of administrative control and vertical systems of accountability.
What you see in the most advanced systems now is that they have made teaching a profession of high-level knowledge workers, and that --not higher salaries -- is what makes teaching so attractive in countries as different as Finland, Japan and Singapore. But the issue is that people who see themselves as candidates for the profession are not attracted by schools organized like an assembly line, with teachers working as interchangeable widgets. You therefore see a very different work organization in high-performing systems, with the status, professional autonomy, and high-quality education that go with professional work, with effective systems of teacher evaluation and with differentiated career paths for teachers. By implication, you see much more investment in helping teachers look outward to the next teacher, the next school, than just looking upwards to the next level in the bureaucracy. But, on the positive side, Race to the Top has introduced a major culture change in this respect, another initiative of the federal government that I think has been very powerful.
Q: Do you think investing heavily in small classes -- as the U.S. has done in the last 15 years -- is a smart move? Why or why not?
A: Everything else equal, smaller classes are obviously better than larger classes. But that is not a meaningful question. You can spend your money only once and that means you need to make trade-offs between better salaries, more professional development, longer student-learning days, more individualized learning opportunities and smaller classes. If you look at it that way, you see that most high-performing education systems have made very different spending choices than the U.S., and they have generally favored better teachers over smaller classes.
Q: You speak five languages: German, English, Italian, French and Spanish. How did that come about? And what's your sense of why so few Americans speak multiple languages? How would you sell the importance of foreign-language learning to a skeptical U.S. audience?
A: Actually, my French and Spanish are still quite limited. I guess selling foreign languages to an English-speaking country is hard. Why would you learn another language when everyone else speaks yours?]]>For This Graduating Senior, Deep Thinking -- and Teaching -- Really Matterstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8554592011-05-05T13:41:58-04:002011-07-05T05:12:01-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/Williams College in Massachusetts. A native of Botswana, Morake has been educated on three continents. He finished high school in 2007 at Li Po Chun United World College in Hong Kong.
Morake spoke with Hechinger Report contributing editor Justin Snider -- his former English teacher in Hong Kong -- about recent claims that U.S. college students don't seem to study or learn much. Morake also reflected on his educational experiences in the U.S. and abroad. Next year he plans to teach history and government -- as well as coach and mentor students -- at a boarding school.
Q: In January 2011, sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa made waves with a book titled Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. They argue that many U.S. college students don't learn the critical thinking, complex reasoning or written communication skills we generally assume are at the heart of a college education. Among their other findings are that college students, on average, spend the majority of their free time socializing or doing extracurricular activities. Only 16 percent of students' time -- or about 27 hours per week -- is devoted to attending class and studying. What do you make of these findings? Does what you've seen and experienced in the U.S. higher-education system comport with these findings?
A: In my experience, it seems pretty easy to take classes that are satisfying, yet not necessarily challenging. You can fulfill your distribution requirements, and then fill the rest of your schedule with classes that play to your strengths, or take several classes with the same professor. When you're in a comfortable, very familiar academic setting, you are probably more likely to relax and do less of the readings since you feel that you have already proven yourself to the professor. With less time spent working, there's more time available to have fun at college. This is why Williams introduced the "Gaudino" system, which encourages students to take courses out of their comfort zones and really challenge themselves intellectually [without having to worry about grades].
It's important to invite students not to coast but to try new things and be uncomfortable in class. It's about realizing that learning isn't about being risk-averse, and taking, in my case, mostly humanities classes. If I had taken more math or science classes, I would have definitely spent more time working. So part of what I think Arum and Roksa are getting at is that students tend to value their GPAs and not take risks in learning. So the question becomes, how might we change a culture where GPA is seen as a make-or-break? That said, the work I am asked to do does require me to think critically and write cogently. I am certainly a much better writer and deeper thinker than I was four years ago. And I'm sure that's the case for most Williams students.
You've lived and been educated on three continents -- Africa, Asia and North America -- which gives you an international perspective on education. What do you see in U.S. education that is praiseworthy, and where does the U.S. system fall short?
I appreciate the ability to explore, take a variety of classes. I like that the value of the education is the process of learning, and not the outcome. Back home, and in a lot of Asia, you are judged primarily on your exam results. In U.S college courses -- particularly at liberal-arts colleges -- only a fraction of your final grade is based on the final exam. It's pretty liberating to come here and find that my future isn't going to be determined by a grade on a few exams.
Where does it fall short? Well, in K-12, educational inequality is a travesty, and [remedying it] should be a national priority. Instead, I hear political leaders debating minutiae, often in an infantile manner. It seems like the country has lost its focus.
What is drawing you to teaching? And what are your thoughts on the state of the profession, especially in the U.S., where many teachers feel unappreciated and under attack by politicians and policymakers?
I love being around kids, and being in a position to mentor them. I value what I've learned inside and outside the classroom from my teachers, and their role in shaping me. I want to "pay it forward."
I think teaching is the second most important job, after parenting. Everyone in America, and in the world, should realize this, and the profession should be treated as such. But if we value teaching so much, and put our money where our mouths are, it follows that not everyone should be teaching. Anyone who teaches should have the skills and knowledge, but should also care. I've heard far too many horror stories from friends who went to public schools around the U.S. about how their teachers "didn't do anything" and simply didn't care. So there should be a selectivity about who gets to be a teacher, and teachers should always be accountable. But those who are doing their jobs well should be treated as such, and that should be reflected in their pay.
What do you see yourself doing 20 years from now? Where will you be living, what kind of work will you be doing, and how might you have changed in the intervening two decades?
Twenty years from now, I hope to be affecting positive change in education and social policy in general. I imagine my professional life will be dedicated to making the world a more equitable and fairer place, since that's what guides my value system now. I'd like my work to directly benefit my native Botswana, so I see myself living and working there. I'd like to be passionate about what I'm doing.
I'd like to see a school system in Botswana that allows every child to be able to thrive. This means offering a choice so that people's skills aren't wasted. In Botswana, every student has the same syllabus and takes the big cumulative exams at ages 13, 16 and 18. For those who do well, great. But what about kids whose potential isn't realized in a system where it's all about the exam? This is where I admire the New York City public school system. I like the idea of publicly funded arts schools, science and technology schools, charter schools, International Baccalaureate schools, etc.
Tell me about one of your most memorable classes or teachers, either at Williams or in your earlier education.
American Art & Architecture, with Professor Michael Lewis. I enrolled in this class despite not having the prerequisite intro-level art history courses and knowing nothing about history. (I designated it a "Gaudino" course.) I had always heard it would be a mistake to leave Williams without taking an art history class, so I went for it in the fall of my senior year. The class was phenomenal. Prof. Lewis is the most polished, eloquent, and engaging lecturer I've ever had. Every lecture was a treat, and his style made it feel a bit like attending a performance. He introduced me to a new way of looking at the world. It was also refreshing to think about beauty in the world, since most of my readings are books on war, injustice, oppression or poverty. It's now the class I recommend to everybody.
As someone who's spent almost his entire life thus far in school, you've no doubt done a lot of reading. What are a few things you've read -- essays, books, blogs, articles -- in recent years that you'd recommend everybody read?
And for fiction, I love The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri.]]>Keys To Finnish Educational Success: Intensive Teacher-Training, Union Collaborationtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8368022011-03-17T21:56:25-04:002011-05-25T18:40:24-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/Henna Virkkunen, for a discussion of the Finnish educational system -- and what lessons it might hold for the U.S. educational system.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Hechinger Report: It's well-known that Finland's teachers are an elite bunch, with only top students offered the chance to become teachers. It's also no secret that they are well-trained. But take us inside that training for a moment -- what does it look like, specifically? How does teacher training in Finland differ from teacher training in other countries?
Virkkunen:It's a difficult question. Our teachers are really good. One of the main reasons they are so good is because the teaching profession is one of the most famous careers in Finland, so young people want to become teachers. In Finland, we think that teachers are key for the future and it's a very important profession -- and that's why all of the young, talented people want to become teachers. All of the teacher-training is run by universities in Finland and all students do a five-year master's degree. Because they are studying at the university, teacher education is research-based. Students have a lot of supervised teacher-training during their studies. We have something called "training schools" -- normally next to universities -- where the student teaches and gets feedback from a trained supervisor.
Teachers in Finland can choose their own teaching methods and materials. They are experts of their own work and they test their own pupils. I think this is also one of the reasons why teaching is such an attractive profession in Finland because teachers are working like academic experts with their own pupils in schools.
The Hechinger Report: How are teachers evaluated in Finland? How are they held accountable for student learning?
Virkkunen: Our educational society is based on trust and cooperation, so when we are doing some testing and evaluations, we don't use it for controlling [teachers] but for development. We trust the teachers. It's true that we are all human beings, and of course there are differences in how teachers test pupils, but if we look at the OECD evaluation -- PISA, for example -- the learning differences among Finnish schools and pupils are the smallest in OECD countries, so it seems that we have a very equal system of good quality.
The Hechinger Report: How does Finland incorporate immigrants and minorities into its educational system?
Virkkunen: We haven't had so many immigrants in Finland, but we are going to have more in the future -- and we need more because we have an aging population. In some schools, in the areas around Helsinki, more than 30 percent of the pupils are immigrants. It seems that we have been doing good work, also with the immigrants, if we look at PISA results. Normally, if children come from a very different schooling system or society, they have one year in a smaller setting where they study Finnish and maybe some other subjects. We try to raise their level before they come to regular classrooms. We think also that learning one's mother tongue is very important, and that's why we try to teach the mother tongue for all immigrants as well. It's very challenging. I think in Helsinki, they are teaching 44 different mother tongues. The government pays for two-hour lessons each week for these pupils. We think it is very important to know your own tongue -- that you can write and read and think in it. Then it's easier also to learn other languages like Finnish or English, or other subjects.
The Hechinger Report: What roles do teacher unions play in Finland? In the U.S. right now, unions are seen as a big problem standing in the way of reform. What's it like in Finland?
Virkkunen: It's a totally different situation in Finland. For me, as Minister of Education, our teachers' union has been one of the main partners because we have the same goal: we all want to ensure that the quality of education is good and we are working very much together with the union. Nearly every week we are in discussions with them. They are very powerful in Finland. Nearly all of the teachers are members. I think we don't have big differences in our thinking. They are very good partners for us.
The Hechinger Report: What do you think the U.S. can and should learn from Finland when it comes to public education?
Virkkunen: It's a very difficult question. An educational system has to serve the local community, and it's very much tied to a country's own history and society, so we can't take one system from another country and put it somewhere else. But I think that teachers are really the key for a better educational system. It's really important to pay attention to teacher training, in-service training and working conditions. Of course, the teachers always say we also have to pay attention to their salaries. But in Finland, it seems that the salaries are not the main reason it's an attractive profession. Teachers aren't very badly paid. They earn the average if you look at other academic professions.
The Hechinger Report: In the U.S., it's estimated that 50 percent of new teachers quit within five years. I suspect it's different in Finland. Is teaching seen as a lifelong career in Finland?
Virkkunen: Teaching is a lifelong career in Finland, but right now we are doing an evaluation of why some teachers leave their jobs. The rate isn't very high. It's often men who leave, as they find jobs with higher salaries. We have to develop some kind of mentoring system because the new, young teachers need support. Often the feedback I hear from young teachers is that it is not easy to cooperate with parents, for example, so that is one of the areas where young teachers need support from their colleagues.
The Hechinger Report: What's something important but not widely known or well understood about public education in Finland?
Virkkunen: We teach all pupils in the same classrooms. We don't have really good, top schools and very poor, bad schools. We are quite good at giving special support to students with learning difficulties. About 25 percent of our pupils receive some kind of special support, but in regular classrooms -- often the teacher has an assistant in the classroom. We also think it is very important that there aren't too many pupils per teacher. We don't have legislation limiting class size, but the average class size for all grades is 21. In first and second grade, it's 19.
We think we can have equality and good quality at the same time -- that they are not opposites.
Our students spend less time in class than students in other OECD countries. We don't think it helps students learn if they spend seven hours per day at school because they also need time for hobbies and of course they also have homework.
Photo courtesy of the Finnish government.]]>The New York Times Needs to Do Its Homework on Teacher Evaluationstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8336862011-03-11T13:49:16-05:002011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/The New York Times, titled "Fairness in Firing Teachers," has me wondering whether the Times editors understand much about how teachers -- in New York City and elsewhere -- are evaluated. The editorial makes some stunning statements that simply don't comport with reality.
First, there's this: "Most reasonable people would agree that, when layoffs become necessary, teachers should be let go through objective evaluations of how well they improve student performance, and not merely on the basis of seniority. The problem throughout most of the country is that evaluation systems are not in place. In New York City, only about 12,000 of 80,000 teachers have been evaluated, based on their students' grades on standardized tests."
This, the opening paragraph of the editorial, is factually incorrect. It is untrue that "throughout most of the country ... evaluation systems are not in place." Just about every school district in the country has a teacher evaluation system.
The problem isn't that evaluation systems don't exist but that most aren't very good. As The New Teacher Project demonstrated with its 2009 report, "The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness," most teacher evaluation systems in the U.S. rate the vast majority of teachers -- upwards of 99 percent -- as effective. So the problem is not that teachers aren't regularly evaluated -- they are -- but rather that the evaluations are mostly meaningless.
Also, it's untrue that "only about 12,000 of 80,000 teachers [in New York City] have been evaluated." New York City teachers are routinely evaluated by their principals, a point made clear in a different New York Times piece on March 7.
What the Times editorial writer probably meant is that only 12,000 out of 80,000 New York City teachers have value-added scores and thus receive Teacher Data Reports. That's because value-added scores currently exist only for those who teach English or math in grades 4-8 -- hence, just 15 percent of the city's teachers receive the data reports. But that's not the same thing as claiming that only 15 percent of the city's teachers are evaluated.
It's interesting to note that this sentence would have been correct if a certain comma had been omitted: "In New York City, only about 12,000 of 80,000 teachers have been evaluated, based on their students' grades on standardized tests." Kill the comma between "evaluated" and "based," and you suddenly have a true statement. Keep the comma and it's inaccurate. Behold the power of punctuation!
The more important point here -- which the editorial writer fails to make -- is that 85 percent of New York City teachers aren't teaching subjects or grades for which value-added scores can currently be calculated. Eighty-five percent!
Another statement worth scrutinizing is this: "teachers should be let go through objective evaluations of how well they improve student performance." There seems to be an implicit assumption in the editorial that a system of "objective evaluations" exists but that some parties -- teachers? their unions? -- oppose it. It doesn't take too much reading between the lines to see that the editorial is suggesting value-added scores of teachers are these "objective evaluations." (Otherwise, why the reference to 12,000 out of 80,000 teachers in New York City having been "evaluated"?)
Actually, no "objective evaluation" system exists. Not even those that rely heavily on value-added scores.
Plenty of evidence -- anecdotal (see Michael Winerip's piece in the Times on March 7) as well as hard research -- indicates that constructing a value-added model requires lots of decisions, the most important of which is the inclusion or exclusion of certain variables. These decisions are, of course, inherently subjective. The New York City model contains 32 variables.
Whether the end product of a subjective process like constructing a value-added model can be called "objective" is doubtful.
What is less doubtful is that value-added models occasionally misidentify high- and low-performing teachers, as those both in favor of and opposed to using student test scores in teacher evaluations agree. How frequently such mistakes happen is a matter of heated debate but that they do isn't really contested. With that in mind, it seems a stretch to call any system of evaluating teachers "objective."
Objectivity in evaluations -- of anything or anybody, not just of teachers -- is a myth, even if the evaluations are rooted in objective-looking numbers. One can certainly make the case that value-added scores are less subjective than administrators' observations, but that's not quite the same thing as saying they are entirely objective.
The Times editorial writer calls for the New York state legislature to "make sure that the scoring system weighs student performance [in teacher evaluations] most heavily." What they seem blind to is the fact that measuring student performance in any kind of meaningful way is an art, not a science, and doing it well means using multiple measures (not just standardized test scores).
We remain far from a system that measures student or teacher performance well. So while it is easy for politicians and pundits -- from Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to Michelle Rhee and The New York Times editorial board -- to call for an end to seniority considerations in layoff decisions, it's not at all clear what should be used instead of seniority (especially in the short-term, with layoffs imminent). The alternatives -- like a robust evaluation system that could accurately and comprehensively capture educator effectiveness -- exist more in theory than in practice.]]>Supply vs. Demand: Rock Star Superintendentstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8312032011-03-06T10:22:12-05:002011-05-25T18:35:25-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/
There are very few of them, for their skill set is rare. They must be savvy politicians and managers. They must be obsessed with constant improvement.
They'll be under the bright lights of the media, so the camera shy need not apply.
No, we're not talking rock stars, pro athletes or even pro coaches.
We're talking school superintendents. Especially those of large urban districts that have struggled from time immemorial. The original rock star superintendent was Rudy Crew, who asked for -- and got -- a contract from the Miami Dade school system in 2004 that paid him upwards of $500,000 a year. He defended his salary by saying, "I think people are really hungry for leadership. We shouldn't underestimate the value of this kind of leadership. This is public servancy with highly developed skills."
The 2010-11 school year is witnessing a larger-than-usual upheaval among the ranks of urban superintendents: Ramon Cortines is retiring in Los Angeles next month, Joel Klein quit mid-year in New York City, Michelle Rhee was done after Adrian Fenty's failed re-election bid in the nation's capital last fall, Clifford Janey is out in Newark after his contract wasn't renewed, Ron Huberman stepped down in Chicago last November, Beverly Hall is leaving amidst a cheating scandal in Atlanta, Paul Vallas is moving on from the Big Easy and Jerry Weast is throwing in the towel in Montgomery County, Md.
And add Seattle to the list, as Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson was fired on March 2 after a state audit found financial mismanagement to the tune of $1.8 million.
Klein, Hall and Weast have all served eight or more years in their most recent posts, which is much longer than the three-year stay of the average urban superintendent. The trouble with filling such vacancies is that the pool from which candidates are drawn isn't deep; everyone's after the same few fish. The predictable result in a free-market economy is that districts must offer lavish compensation packages to woo, and then retain, their preferred leaders.
In the case of Arlene Ackerman, who has run the School District of Philadelphia since June 2008, that has meant offering her not just a base salary of $348,140 but also an annual performance bonus of up to 20 percent her base salary and, this year, a retention bonus of $100,000. According to the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, "The bonuses are in addition to annual raises, [Ackerman's] health plan, and a $65,000-a-year contribution to an annuity. Add to that 34 vacation days, 30 days of paid consulting time (which come out of her vacation or personal days), and perks like a car and premiums toward a $1 million life insurance policy."
Such eye-popping compensation -- which more than one observer has noted exceeds the combined compensation of Philadelphia's mayor and Pennsylvania's governor -- worries some people, especially in the current fiscal crisis. Among those concerned are Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, both of whom have recently pushed for upper limits to superintendent salaries. They argue that, with few exceptions, superintendents shouldn't earn more than $175,000 a year.
But when compared to the salaries of top players in other fields -- from Wall Street to higher education -- most superintendents' salaries look, if anything, rather small. Consider, for example, the case of Cathie Black, newly appointed Chancellor of the New York City Public Schools.
Black earns $250,000 a year to run an institution with a $21-billion annual budget that serves 1.1 million students. That's exactly what Matthew Goldstein, chancellor of the City University of New York, earned a dozen years ago when he assumed his current position. Goldstein's salary has now almost doubled to $490,000, which doesn't include a yearly housing allowance of $90,000. But Goldstein's system -- in terms of annual budget and number of students served -- is just one-fourth the size of Black's. And the stakes are arguably lower at the university than the K-12 level.
The superintendent role is tricky because it generally requires expertise in three distinct arenas: 1) politics; 2) management; and 3) education. Those tapped to lead school districts from other fields -- business, politics, media, the law and the military are popular -- often have little difficulty with the first two of these. But when they're new to the field of education, teachers tend to perceive them as outsiders whose lack of pedagogical knowledge is disturbing, if not downright dangerous. Hence the decision, in New York City and elsewhere, to appoint someone with classroom and curricular expertise to a "Chief Academic Officer" (CAO) post to serve alongside the superintendent or chancellor. In New York City, that person is Shael Polakow-Suransky, a former city math teacher who worked his way up to deputy chancellor of performance and accountability before becoming CAO.
Just how long Cathie Black lasts as New York City Schools Chancellor is anybody's guess. She's indicated an intention to stay through Mayor Bloomberg's third term, which ends in 2013. But at least one pundit, Michael Petrilli of the right-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, D.C., thinks Black will be out by Easter.
If she is, New York City will rejoin the long list of major school systems now searching for the next rock star.]]>Rote Memorization: Overrated or Underrated?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8171702011-02-03T18:53:52-05:002011-05-25T18:30:24-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/
The fear is that we're turning our children into automatons by force-feeding them useless bits of information -- facts that can be found instantly on Wikipedia, like the dates of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) or the equation for calculating the area of a circle (πr2).
But is it possible that memorizing things is actually underrated in modern American society? Could one make a convincing case that it's not just useful but vital for people of all ages to memorize things?
The answer to both of these questions, I believe, is yes. And a recent discussion on the BAM! Radio Network in which I participated focused on this very topic -- the value of rote memorization. The conversation, hosted by Rae Pica, featured Daniel Willingham (a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia), Joan Almon (executive director of the Alliance for Childhood) and me.
Because "rote" learning and "memorization" have negative connotations for most people, it might be better to speak of learning things by heart. And, as Willingham points out in our discussion, learning things by heart is something children automatically do. That is, it comes naturally to them -- whether it's being able to recall all the words to a nursery rhyme or knowing the plot of a story (if not the story itself, word for word) before one is actually able to read. Willingham says that the key is engagement: "If you're really engaged, memory comes pretty automatically."
Learning things by heart can be useful for any number of reasons, some of which we discuss in the radio show. As an English teacher, I've often made my students memorize poetry -- and just as often some have pushed back, accusing me of assigning meaningless "busy work." I love that accusation because it provides me the perfect opportunity to explain why memorizing a poem is, in fact, a worthwhile activity. And here's a little-known secret: learning things by heart isn't as hard as many people imagine.
For inspiration on the memorization front, check out the video below of a three-year-old reciting Billy Collins' poem "Litany." This serves as a lovely reminder of what the human brain is capable of. (Notice what the young child's intonation on certain lines reveals: he hasn't learned this poem "without thought of the meaning; in a mechanical way" -- Random House's definition of "rote" learning. He's wiser and more aware of what he's saying than many of us might initially think.)
Here are some of the reasons I give skeptical students for why learning things by heart is worthwhile:
First, it's a challenge, and one in which those who succeed can take pride.
Second, it's good exercise for your brain. Many people these days seem to believe that our digital devices will remember everything for us -- and they will, but they're not much help when we can't find them, or they're broken, or they've been left at home. How will you call your best friend to reschedule that lunch appointment -- you don't even know her phone number! And she's your best friend?
Third, and most importantly, new insights are gained in the process of memorization. You see things to which you were previously blind; you uncover a play on words, assonance, alliteration, analogies. It is for this reason, I believe, that the great Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov declared that there's actually no such thing as reading -- there's only re-reading. ("Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader," Nabokov wrote in his Lectures on Literature.)
The same holds for T.V. shows and movies: you see so much more on a second, third and fourth viewing. You don't truly see anything the first time you watch it. And this applies no less to music: hearing something for the first time is more akin to hearing it not at all than to truly hearing it. The work is too new, too unknown, to us; we can't make heads or tails of it because we suffer from sensory overload.
It's only with multiple readings, viewings and hearings that we actually begin to understand, see and hear. We're deaf and blind in our first encounters with things.
And this is why practice matters so much as well. It's our chief hope for transcending mediocrity.
We say "practice makes perfect" in English but this, I think, is somewhat misleading because perfection is rarely attainable. There's no such thing as a "perfect" performance of a Beethoven sonata. And while perfection in sports isn't inconceivable -- I suppose a tennis player could win a match in straight sets without dropping a single point -- it's highly unlikely. Thus, I prefer the German version of the saying: "practice makes the master." Those who are the best at things typically become so through nonstop practice. It's not the only factor, of course -- natural ability matters hugely, too -- but it does seem to be a necessary ingredient. As Amy Chua, of "Tiger Mother" fame, says in her new book: "Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America."
Why are rote repetition and memorization underrated in America? As I say on the radio show, they've gotten a bad rap in part because they lend themselves too well to standardized testing. It's much easier -- faster, cheaper -- for me to determine whether you know when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941) than whether you can convincingly explain how and why the Treaty of Versailles set the stage for World War II. Yes, the curriculum has narrowed (even Arne Duncan admits it!), the "what-gets-tested-is-what-gets-taught" phenomenon is very much alive, and there's a lack of critical-thinking skills among today's young people.
These sad facts, however, are more the result of our over-reliance on multiple-choice tests than anything inherently evil about repetition or memorization.]]>A Closer Look at Justice Kern's Ruling in NYC Value-Added Casetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8083762011-01-13T00:53:02-05:002011-05-25T18:25:24-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/ruled that the decision by the NYC Department of Education to publicly release Teacher Data Reports (TDRs) with individual teachers' names attached was not "arbitrary and capricious." That the chips fell this way isn't terribly surprising.
Kern's ruling is interesting more for what it doesn't say than for what it does. And the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) has already appealed, so her ruling almost certainly won't be the final word on this subject. As I wrote last month, "regardless of what Judge Cynthia Kern decides, it's safe to say that the current teacher-evaluation system is broken in most school districts nationwide -- and that value-added analysis is here to stay."
Among the highlights of what Kern did say:
• "This court is not passing judgment on the wisdom of the decision of the DOE, whether from a policy perspective or from any perspective, or whether the DOE had discretion under the law to make a different decision, nor is this court making any determination as to the value, accuracy or reliability of the TDRs."
• "The UFT's argument that the data reflected in the TDRs should not be released because the TDRs are so flawed and unreliable as to be subjective is without merit. The Court of Appeals has clearly held that there is no requirement that data be reliable for it to be disclosed. ... Therefore, the unredacted TDRs may be released regardless of whether and to what extent they may be unreliable or otherwise flawed."
• "Finally, the UFT's argument that the DOE assured teachers that the TDRs were confidential means that they cannot be disclosed under FOIL is without merit. ... regardless of whether Mr. Cerf's letter constituted a binding agreement, 'as a matter of public policy, the Board of Education cannot bargain away the public's right to access to public records.' ... Accordingly, the DOE's assurances that the TDRs would remain confidential cannot shield them from disclosure."
What Kern didn't say is that the court is essentially providing political cover for the NYC Department of Education to make a controversial decision -- the final result of which is that, to many observes at least, the court will end up looking like the bad guy instead of the DOE.
But Kern's ruling isn't an endorsement of the DOE's decision, as she makes clear in the first excerpt above: "This court is not passing judgment on the wisdom of the decision of the DOE." The DOE could have decided otherwise -- not to release the TDRs with teachers' names attached -- and then a very different lawsuit likely would have followed: media outlets, rather than the union, would probably have been the plaintiffs taking the DOE to court.
That lawsuit, however, never happened because the DOE decided -- without being ordered to do so by any court -- that it had no choice but to comply with the Freedom of Information Law request filed by various media organizations. Joel Klein explained the DOE's rationale in a letter to city principals last October: "As it is the City's legal interpretation that we are legally obligated to provide the media this information, it is our intent to provide the data as requested." But it's important to be clear here that this was an internal decision made by the DOE, not an action taken in response to a court order.
It's also worth recalling Cathie Black's position on whether the TDRs should be released with teachers' names attached, which she articulated to the editorial board of the New York Daily News in December: "If it has to be released [under the law], we're going to have to release it. ... [but] Unless we are forced to do it now, we would not be releasing the data. We won't be releasing the data." Daily News reporter Joshua Greenman charitably characterized Black's position on the to-release-or-not-to-release question "not black and white."
All of this to say that the DOE has repeatedly maintained its actions are required by law, even though no court has issued an order to that effect. Whether a court would rule that the TDRs (with teachers' names attached) must be publicly released remains in doubt; it's a question that Justice Kern wasn't considering, as she says in her decision.
For perspective on this case, I spoke with Professor Michael Rebell of Teachers College and Columbia Law School. Rebell -- who was co-counsel for the plaintiffs in Campaign for Fiscal Equity vs. the State of New York (2003), a case that resulted in a planned $5.6-billion infusion of funds into NYC schools -- told me that "the court's ruling was outrageous. ... One could certainly argue that this [ruling itself] was arbitrary and capricious."
Rebell clarified that the "arbitrary and capricious" standard on which Kern was deciding the case gives a lot of discretion to judges. "A different judge might have ruled a different way, and an appeals court might rule another way," Rebell said. If he were the judge, Rebell told me, he "would have gone the other way."
Rebell explained his thinking this way: "The underlying facts are ... that value-added has a lot of promise as an approach, but at this point it is not perfected enough that you can fairly identify teachers and say that this teacher is good or that teacher isn't."
What's next? The UFT has appealed Kern's decision, and the DOE has agreed to await the outcome of the appeal before taking any action. This means, Rebell pointed out, that it's actually in the union's interest for the appeal to take a long time because there's no fear of teachers' individual TDRs being released in the interim -- that is, if the DOE sticks to its word.]]>New Book Takes Aim at Ed Reformers and Status Quo Defenderstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8047732011-01-05T14:00:51-05:002011-05-25T18:25:24-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/Rick Hess has done it again: challenged conventional wisdom and shown how fuzzy much of today's education-reform thinking is. In his latest book, The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers Get Stuck in Yesterday's Ideas (Harvard University Press, 2010), Hess drives home the point that doing the same thing over and over with the expectation of different results is, as Einstein said, the definition of insanity.
A leading thinker on education policy and reform, Hess has no patience for most reforms that leave basic educational structures untouched. And he's hardly shy about expressing his opinions - no one, to my knowledge, has ever accused him of lacking confidence or mincing his words. (Disclosure: Hess sits on the advisory board of The Hechinger Report, for which I write.)
In The Same Thing Over and Over, Hess argues that most of today's reforms thought to be cutting edge -- merit pay, charter schools, extended school days and years, Teach For America -- aren't really cutting edge at all. And in the long haul, most aren't likely to result in significant change. Consider, for instance, the issue of teacher quality. As Hess said at a Nov. 30 event promoting the book, most of our current strategies to get better teachers into classrooms, including alternative certification, are essentially just "throwing thimbles of water into a river" -- which is a slightly more polite way of saying they're totally inconsequential.
Why? Because, Hess says, we aren't willing to start from scratch in our thinking about what it means to be a teacher in the 21st Century: "So long as we retain the shape and scope of the familiar classroom-teaching job, we are not going to recruit or retain our way to a workforce of 3.3 million high-quality teachers. It is not going to happen. Not in 2014, not in 2024, and not in 2124. ... Trying to retrofit a 20th Century teaching profession without revisiting its basic assumptions may well be a futile task" (132). This is a line of argumentation that Hess has pursued before, including in "How to Get the Teachers We Want" (Education Next, Summer 2009), but he makes the case with particular cogency in this latest book.
Our current predicament, Hess says, can best be understood by looking at the past and seeing how times have changed while certain practices and beliefs haven't. The teaching profession itself provides a good example. Hess writes: "Today's teaching profession is the product of a mid-20th Century labor model that relied on a captive pool of female labor, presumed educators to be largely interchangeable, and counted on male principals and superintendents to micromanage a female teaching workforce. Teaching has clung to these industrial rhythms while recruitment, professional norms, and the larger labor market have shifted underfoot" (132).
To make this and many of his other arguments, Hess returns to the roots of American schooling, though he also makes it clear that the reader should look elsewhere for an academic history of U.S. education.
But Hess, who in the early 1990s taught social studies at a magnet high school, is a pretty good historian himself. As such, he revels in highlighting beliefs that have changed, even though we'd prefer to think our now-enlightened beliefs are timeless. An example is the current conviction that all young people can and should learn to high levels; this, Hess reminds us, wasn't shared by those who centuries ago planted the seeds of today's educational system: "American schooling was not borne of the expectation that all children would be educated, much less that all students would be academically proficient, lifelong learners" (77). What our public education system needs, then, is not just an extreme makeover but a total rethinking. Tinkering won't get us to utopia, Hess says.
What I find most refreshing about The Same Thing Over and Over -- in part because I didn't expect it -- is that Hess is almost as skeptical of today's self-labeled "reformers" as he is of status quo defenders. There is no one best way, he says, and we should be especially wary of reformers hoping to usher in new orthodoxies. "[T]he path out of this tangled thicket," Hess writes, "lies in defining an essential minimalist body of skills and knowledge for all students and then taking care to avoid prescriptions about methods or content beyond that floor" (emphasis in the original, 129).
What Hess ultimately calls for is "emancipatory reform," which he says "is not about finding a middle way but about stripping away old routines, rules, and habits of mind to create new room for educators and problem solvers to do profoundly better" (216). He does offer a few examples of how we could do things in radically new ways -- New York City's School of One is among his favorite examples -- but I finished the book with a much clearer sense of what's wrong with American public education today (and why) than with concrete ideas about how we could do things much differently or better. In other words, the book is heavy on diagnosis but somewhat slim on solutions.
I can't help but think that's because solid, scalable solutions are elusive -- and Hess, favoring a let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom approach, likely sees them as nonexistent or so watered-down as to be useless. In fact, he almost says as much: "The frustrating truth is that there are no permanent solutions in schooling, only solutions that make sense in a given place and time" (210). That is, to borrow from Hamlet, context is all.
Hess had this to say about replicating reforms on a large scale in his talk on Nov. 30: "Emulating a successful enterprise is not merely a question of knowing what to do; it's being able to execute it, which is partly a question of organizational culture, it's a question of who you hire, how you bring them into that cultural DNA, what you value, what you reward ... If we want ideas to work at scale [in education], let's do it the way we do it everywhere else in the world, which is when somebody figures out how to do it, we let them keep doing it, and we reward them..." Others, then, will presumably follow.
Overall, there's very little not to like about The Same Thing Over and Over, though I find it necessary to call Hess out on his cherry-picking of quotations by Fred Hechinger, the esteemed New York Times education reporter and editor in whose honor the Hechinger Institute is named. In making the case that teacher tenure has "long been recognized as a significant barrier to boosting teacher quality," Hess writes: "In 1972, education reporter Fred Hechinger explained in the New York Times, 'The perennial problem with teachers' tenure is that it protects the incompetent and freezes them into a system' " (154).
Yes, Hechinger did write that. It is the first sentence of an article entitled "Tenure: The Case For--And Against." The second sentence, though, also deserves to be quoted: "The perennial problem with a lack of tenure is that it exposes teachers to such dangers as dismissal for holding unpopular political views." Hechinger goes on to say that "even when actual dismissal is not involved, the tendency of unprotected teachers, insecure in their jobs, often is to knuckle under and to adjust not only their personal opinions but their teaching to the prevailing political climate." Tenure has a place, or at least it did in the 1970s, in Hechinger's opinion.
The final words -- pay close attention here to his well-chosen adjectives -- belong to Hess: "Rather than seeking ways to nudge this limping jalopy a few feet forward, it may be the better part of wisdom to step back from yesterday's schools and pursue solutions that might live up to our grand new ambitions ... There is a great deal to rethink and a long way to journey. Not because some flavor-of-the-month pop intellectual has announced that our civilization is at stake, but because perhaps our greatest democratic legacy is a confused, anachronistic, and barnacled mess. ...The faster we've sought to run, the harder it's been to recognize the treadmill on which we're running" (211).]]>New York City Teachers, Don't Bank on Privacytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7978642010-12-17T13:35:11-05:002011-05-25T18:20:30-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/
Nor was anyone surprised to learn later that year that David Ortiz -- the Red Sox's "Big Papi" and a six-time All Star -- was on the same list. Except, that is, David Ortiz. For years, his standard line about drug testing was, "All I know is they're going to find a lot of rice and beans." And steroids, he forgot to say.
Both the league and the players had planned on keeping the results private. And so they were -- until 2009.
Promised confidentiality has, of course, a checkered history. Circumstances change, leaders change, norms change. Technology turns science fiction into reality. And what was once never intended for public consumption ends up as front-page news -- or online, for billions of us to download.
The U.S. State Department and Hillary Clinton know this only too well. So do New York City teachers. Under a 2008 agreement between Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, all New York City teachers of math and English in grades 4 to 8 receive an annual "Teacher Data Report" that tells them how their students perform on standardized state tests.
But the data reports do more than that -- they calculate a teacher's individual "value-added" score, which indicates whether his or her students are doing better or worse than statistical models predict they'd do given their background characteristics. The thinking is that teachers whose students make exceptional gains year after year should somehow be rewarded or at least studied so that other teachers can emulate what they're doing. The flip-side of this, naturally, is that teachers whose students routinely learn less than the models predict should be helped -- or forced out.
Reliable value-added models are notoriously tough to build, as they must take into account numerous factors beyond a teacher's control, including class size, students' prior test scores and students' poverty status. New York City's model takes into account about three dozen such factors. Still, experts caution that value-added analysis is far from perfect, not least because its only measure of student learning is standardized test-score results.
The 2008 agreement made clear that the Teacher Data Reports were not to be used in teacher evaluations or tenure decisions. Nor were they intended for the eyes of anyone but the relevant teachers and principals. To this day, the New York City Department of Education website is unambiguous about this: "Teacher Data Reports are designed to be used internally, and should not be shared with parents, students, or the general public" (emphasis in the original).
But original intentions -- as A-Rod, Big Papi and the State Department have learned -- might not matter much. Race to the Top, the Obama administration's signature education-reform initiative to date, urged states to factor student achievement into teacher evaluations. Many states, including Colorado and New York, changed relevant laws in hopes of winning part of Race to the Top's $4.3 billion jackpot.
Last week, the Bloomberg administration squared off against the teachers' union in court, arguing that the names and value-added ratings of roughly 12,000 New York City teachers should be made public. Bloomberg and Klein contend that the public has a right to know how public employees are performing. The union, in a 156-page filing, has countered that the Teacher Data Reports are often incomplete and inaccurate -- and thus not ready for prime-time.
Value-added scores were headline news earlier this year when the Los Angeles Times published a series of articles, "Grading the Teachers," based on district data that the paper acquired through the California Public Records Act. The Times also unveiled a publicly accessible database containing the value-added scores of about 6,000 elementary teachers in L.A. Unified School District. (Disclosure: The Hechinger Report, for which I write, helped fund the work of the economist who crunched the numbers for the Times, but it did not participate in the analysis.)
Other newspapers nationwide soon were clamoring to do the same -- get their hands on value-added data and publish pieces about the high-performers and low-performers. At the same time, a spate of new reports on both the promises and perils of value-added analysis went mainstream. Proponents have tended to speak of value-added as if they've found the Holy Grail -- finally, public education will be fixed! Opponents see instead the demonization of teachers and an obsession with mostly meaningless metrics that don't capture the subtleties of a teacher's work.
A ruling is expected in New York City as early as this week. But regardless of what Judge Cynthia Kern decides, it's safe to say that the current teacher-evaluation system is broken in most school districts nationwide -- and that value-added analysis is here to stay.
The reality is we like numbers and we love accountability, at least when it comes to schools. We are addicted to standardized test scores. We hate failure. And we cannot fathom why our urban public schools have been in such a deep funk for such a long time.
We know teachers are important. But are they, by and large, doing a good job? How can we know? What's the evidence, other than gut feelings?
The answer is we don't really have good ways to measure teacher performance right now. Our system for evaluating teachers wasn't built to take into account their performance, so we're struggling mightily to find ways of doing so.
The uselessness of current teacher-evaluation systems was made apparent in "The Widget Effect," a 2009 report by The New Teacher Project that found more than 99 percent of teachers are rated "satisfactory" each year. The report, subtitled "Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness," also found that teacher performance played no role in districts' decision-making about professional development, compensation, tenure and layoffs.
The Obama administration, as well as many think tanks and education reformers, is determined to change that. And value-added scores will almost certainly play a prominent role.
To many reformers, value-added analysis is sleek and sexy -- it involves lots of numbers and esoteric talk of "controls," "confidence intervals" and "statistical significance." Skeptics say it's all statistical pyrotechnics -- flashy but frivolous. Nonetheless, there's an emerging consensus that a new system will need to take into account multiple measures of a teacher's performance -- value-added scores, but also classroom observations by peers and principals, lesson plans, portfolios and self-evaluations.
A perfect evaluation system is probably a pipedream. Andrew Rotherham, who writes the Eduwonk blog as well as the weekly "School of Thought" column for Time magazine, says that "You can't have a system that makes sure nothing unfair happens to someone. ... People can be let go for the wrong reasons. That can happen. That is life."
The real question, then, is whether value-added analysis is an improvement over tools we've relied on in the past, and for Rotherham and many other experts in the field, the answer is an unambiguous "yes."
Not everyone agrees, including some observers abroad. Pasi Sahlberg, Director General of the Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation in Finland's Ministry of Education and Culture, says: "It's very difficult to use this data to say anything about the effectiveness of teachers. If you tried to do this in my country, Finnish teachers would probably go on strike and wouldn't return until this crazy idea went away. Finns don't believe you can reliably measure the essence of learning."]]>Lessons From Finland's Education Systemtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7946442010-12-13T11:29:26-05:002011-05-25T13:59:02-04:00Justin Sniderhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), an exam given to 15-year-olds around the world. U.S. students were in the middle of the pack for science and literacy but below average in mathematics.
To gain insight into what Finland's doing right, I sat down on December 9 with Dr. Pasi Sahlberg, Director General of the Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation in Finland's Ministry of Education and Culture. Sahlberg, who has trained teachers, coached schools and advised policy makers in more than 40 countries, is also a former Washington-based World Bank education specialist. An edited version of our conversation follows.
The Hechinger Report: Two Million Minutes, a recent documentary by Bob Compton, reveals that American students spend significantly less time learning than their counterparts in India and China. But in your work, you've indicated that increasing instructional time isn't necessarily a good idea. Why?
Sahlberg: There's no evidence globally that doing more of the same [instructionally] will improve results. An equally relevant argument would be, let's try to do less. Increasing time comes from the old industrial mindset. The important thing is ensuring school is a place where students can discover who they are and what they can do. It's not about the amount of teaching and learning.
The Hechinger Report: Given your reservations about things like standardized testing, choice and competition, I'm wondering how you're received in the United States. Are you loved by teachers but loathed by some reformers?
Sahlberg: The reception has been very positive everywhere. The thing is that everyone has exactly the same goal -- good schools for all -- but there are disagreements on how to get there. What I want to do is challenge people to see that things can be done differently. In Finland, we've gone from having a very poor system in the 1970s to what the recent McKinsey report called the only excellent system in the world.
The Hechinger Report: How did Finland do it?
Sahlberg: Most educational ideas that we are employing are initially from the United States. They're American innovations done in a Finnish way. You know, in the United States, there are more than enough ideas, there's superior knowledge about educational change and you speak a language that has global reach. If you want to learn something from Finland, it's the implementation of ideas. It's looking at education as nation-building. We have very carefully kept the business of education in the hands of educators. It's practically impossible to become a superintendent without also being a former teacher. ... If you have people [in leadership positions] with no background in teaching, they'll never have the type of communication they need.
The Hechinger Report: So what do you make of the recent trend in the United States of hiring non-educators to run large urban school systems?
Sahlberg: This is a very alien idea to Finns. ... You know, a former head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks was Finnish, and when he returned to Finland, he was appointed director of one of the largest theaters -- a completely different field. He left after one year. There was no buy-in.
The Hechinger Report: What are your thoughts on the use of value-added data to measure teacher performance, which is quite popular in the United States at the moment?
Sahlberg: It's very difficult to use this data to say anything about the effectiveness of teachers. If you tried to do this in my country, Finnish teachers would probably go on strike and wouldn't return until this crazy idea went away. Finns don't believe you can reliably measure the essence of learning. You know, one big difference in thinking about education and the whole discourse is that in the United States it's based on a belief in competition. In my country, we are in education because we believe in cooperation and sharing. Cooperation is a core starting point for growth.
The Hechinger Report: Waiting for "Superman" put pressure on teachers' unions in the United States and they've also come under criticism from some experts, reformers and the Obama administration. But others, like Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford, have pointed out that top-performing countries such as Finland have strong teachers' unions. So what do you make of teachers' unions in the United States?
Sahlberg: In Finland, unions aren't an obstacle. Ninety-eight percent of teachers are unionized. And this is very important to the success of our system. I wouldn't buy the argument that unions are a problem.]]>
Q: Imagine U.S. President Barack Obama or Education Secretary Arne Duncan asked you for two or three recommendations that would help the U.S. radically transform -- and improve -- its educational system. What recommendations might you give them?
Morake spoke with Hechinger Report contributing editor Justin Snider -- his former English teacher in Hong Kong -- about recent claims that U.S. college students don't seem to study or learn much. Morake also reflected on his educational experiences in the U.S. and abroad. Next year he plans to teach history and government -- as well as coach and mentor students -- at a boarding school.