Today is "back to school" day for teachers, but the subject of this post stems from the fact that my daughter is freaking out about Hillary Duff being pregnant, because "Hillary Duff can't be pregnant. She's Lizzy McGuire." (I started this post a LONG time ago, and never finished it. Here it is.)
So I started thinking about the things that served as a "yes, you're really that old" slap in my face over the years. Here's the list as I can think of it now; I might edit it as I think of other things. Feel free to chime in.
Watching a baseball game and realizing the starting pitcher was younger than I was.
Learning that someone I knew pretty well at P&G was now CMO of the company. (And a handful of others I knew at P&G being CEOs of fairly significant enterprises.)
My daughter going to college.
My daughter getting married.
1/20/2009, when, for the first time, the President of the United States was younger than me.
My son starting to drive. (For some reason, my older daughters starting to drive didn't hit me the same way. Maybe it's related to my concern about the driving skills of teenage boys versus teenage girls...)
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Saturday, August 27, 2011
New School
So the first week is done, and I feel much as I did at the end of the first week last year - we're five days in and I'm five weeks behind already. I haven't put attendance into the electronic grade book. I haven't set up the electronic grade book to accept scores for the homework assignments I've given, or for the quiz on Monday (which I haven't written yet). I indicated to students I'd get their homework back to them within 24 hours and I'm already 2 days behind on the promise. Et cetera, et cetera.
On the other hand, I was standing in the hallway at the end of the day on Thursday, and one of the other math teachers said I seemed remarkably calm and relaxed. She assumed it was a facade. In truth, it was liberation from the battlefield that is the school from whence I came. I've assigned homework every day and not only has no one complained, virtually everyone has turned it in. I got no pushback from any student about my cell phone policy (the first time I see it, I take it and keep it until I speak with the parents), and I have yet to see a cell phone in my class. The problem child in my Algebra I / Intensive Math class, with whom I've had two stern discussions, seems to believe she actually needs to do the work, rather than fight with me all year.
Also, it's hard to describe the difference in attitude with respect to the administration. They seem clearly on the side of trying to make teachers' jobs easier, not harder, where possible. They seem clearly to believe that the teachers here at NHS are really good at what they do, and the kids are lucky to have them. As one example, according to other teachers, the administration backs up teachers who flunk students. Importantly, the students know that, too. I had one student say he was going to flunk math, and when I asked him why he believed that, he noted he'd gotten grade recovery 4 times in middle school, but "now that I'm in high school, that's not going to happen anymore."
One more similarity to last year - I spent the entire week saying "If I can just make it to the weekend, I'll be able to catch up on this," and now I'm realizing I have 6 or 8 days worth of things to catch up on. I'll be lucky if I have the homework checked by Monday. But hey, why should that be any different this year?
On the other hand, I was standing in the hallway at the end of the day on Thursday, and one of the other math teachers said I seemed remarkably calm and relaxed. She assumed it was a facade. In truth, it was liberation from the battlefield that is the school from whence I came. I've assigned homework every day and not only has no one complained, virtually everyone has turned it in. I got no pushback from any student about my cell phone policy (the first time I see it, I take it and keep it until I speak with the parents), and I have yet to see a cell phone in my class. The problem child in my Algebra I / Intensive Math class, with whom I've had two stern discussions, seems to believe she actually needs to do the work, rather than fight with me all year.
Also, it's hard to describe the difference in attitude with respect to the administration. They seem clearly on the side of trying to make teachers' jobs easier, not harder, where possible. They seem clearly to believe that the teachers here at NHS are really good at what they do, and the kids are lucky to have them. As one example, according to other teachers, the administration backs up teachers who flunk students. Importantly, the students know that, too. I had one student say he was going to flunk math, and when I asked him why he believed that, he noted he'd gotten grade recovery 4 times in middle school, but "now that I'm in high school, that's not going to happen anymore."
One more similarity to last year - I spent the entire week saying "If I can just make it to the weekend, I'll be able to catch up on this," and now I'm realizing I have 6 or 8 days worth of things to catch up on. I'll be lucky if I have the homework checked by Monday. But hey, why should that be any different this year?
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Happy New Year!
A couple of new things...
I have a new gig, teaching in the district immediately south of the one I was in previously. My old district was one of the worst in the state, which is one of the worst states in the nation relative to SAT and ACT scores. The 17 high schools in Old District can be grouped into 4 categories, with about 4 schools in each. My old high school was in the middle of the 3rd best group.
My new district has been the best in the state for each of the past 3 years, based on scores on the state-mandated tests. My new high school is essentially tied for worst in the district, although there are only six. For perspective, Old District has 4 magnet high schools. Three of the 4 magnets, plus one "standard" school, are the upper echelon of Old District. My new school, worst in New District, would be in the upper echelon in math and just outside it in English in Old District. (New District has no magnets, but does have one technical high school.)
New District is very rich and very white. New High School (hereinafter referred to as NHS) is much, much poorer than the rest of the district and also less white, although whites still comprise roughly 80% of the student body. The area is very rural, whereas the rest of the county is very suburban. So I'm still teaching a somewhat disadvantaged group of kids, although without the oppressive environmental issues associated with urban poverty (e.g., single family households, students having significant out-of-school family responsibilities, relatively low value placed on education). We'll see how big a difference that makes.
The other interesting thing about this year is I'll be teaching Algebra I + Intensive Math, the lowest of the low in terms of math skill. It's a challenge I'm actually looking forward to, although I fear I may change my tune in a month or two. In the meantime, however, I can't wait to get to work.
I have a new gig, teaching in the district immediately south of the one I was in previously. My old district was one of the worst in the state, which is one of the worst states in the nation relative to SAT and ACT scores. The 17 high schools in Old District can be grouped into 4 categories, with about 4 schools in each. My old high school was in the middle of the 3rd best group.
My new district has been the best in the state for each of the past 3 years, based on scores on the state-mandated tests. My new high school is essentially tied for worst in the district, although there are only six. For perspective, Old District has 4 magnet high schools. Three of the 4 magnets, plus one "standard" school, are the upper echelon of Old District. My new school, worst in New District, would be in the upper echelon in math and just outside it in English in Old District. (New District has no magnets, but does have one technical high school.)
New District is very rich and very white. New High School (hereinafter referred to as NHS) is much, much poorer than the rest of the district and also less white, although whites still comprise roughly 80% of the student body. The area is very rural, whereas the rest of the county is very suburban. So I'm still teaching a somewhat disadvantaged group of kids, although without the oppressive environmental issues associated with urban poverty (e.g., single family households, students having significant out-of-school family responsibilities, relatively low value placed on education). We'll see how big a difference that makes.
The other interesting thing about this year is I'll be teaching Algebra I + Intensive Math, the lowest of the low in terms of math skill. It's a challenge I'm actually looking forward to, although I fear I may change my tune in a month or two. In the meantime, however, I can't wait to get to work.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
So if you quadruple the number of exams taken, the number passed will... ?
I was browsing a few old files in preparing to clean up my hard drive, and noticed this one...
In 2006-2007, a huge push was made to get more students to take AP courses, because (I love this) students who take AP courses are more likely to graduate than those who don't. So being in AP courses obviously motivates kids to stay in school. Move along, logicians -nothin' to see here. Principals were given incentives to increase AP enrollment as much as possible.
What harm could it do? Even if a bunch of kids who didn't really belong in the course were in it, the ones who did belong would still get what they needed, right? And the kids who didn't belong would realize that and either drop out or struggle through.
But wait, there's more. If a senior is taking a core course - say, in math, English or science - that is also an AP course, they generally must pass that class to graduate. Principals are also highly incentivized to increase the graduation rate. So flunking, say, 8 or 10 seniors who don't belong in your AP course is (a) a great way to never teach another AP course, and (b) futile, since the administration will find a way to pass them in the final 3 weeks of school anyway.
Given that, if you teach an AP course at my school, you have two options: (1) teach the course as a regular AP course, lose 1/3 to 1/2 of the class within 8 weeks, resign yourself to having those students stay lost for the next 30 weeks and thus learn absolutely nothing in your course, but give them a C anyway, or (2) water down the content to the point that everybody learns a little something but only the most diligent have any hope of passing the exam, and then only by doing a lot of independent study. For the past 7 years, AP Statistics was taught using option 2, and no one has passed the exam. I chose option 1. We'll find out in mid-July if I did any better.
But meanwhile, it seems clear that a lot of teachers choose option 2. (After all, who wants to teach a class every day in which half of the students have given up weeks ago, but know they're going to pass anyway?) Here's what that does to the number of students passing the AP exam:
In the first year (2007), exams passed increased by 9% while exams taken increased by 350%. After that, exams passed declined significantly, and is now at 60% of the number it was at prior to flooding the classes with unprepared students.
Addendum: I did have a student pass, which I'm told is the first time in 7 years anyone from MHS has done so. However, I only had one other student get a 2, with the other 18 in the class getting a 1. I was somewhat disappointed with this result, and would have loved to take another shot at it in 2011-12. Nonetheless, I did prove that Option 1 at least provides a few students the chance to pass the course. I'm convinced that if all AP classes were run that way, fewer unprepared students would take the course, but a much higher percentage would pass.
Another in a long, long line of excellent examples of unintended consequences. Although in this case, it should not have been (and wasn't, by some) unanticipated consequences.
Wired Loops
Wired is an awesome magazine (thanks, Abe!). This month, the cover story is about how our brains and behavior are driven by feedback loops. According to the story, in the 1960's, Albert Bandura "observed that giving individuals a clear goal and a means to evaluate their progress toward that goal (in real time) greatly increased the likelihood they would achieve it." (I added the parenthetical "in real time," because elsewhere in the article that element is shown to be critically important.)
We provide lots of feedback to students, but a lot of it is time-delayed, and very little of it is directly applicable to evaluating their progress (or the extent of their progress) toward the goal (which is often poorly defined anyway.)
So I've been thinking about (1) how to very clearly define the goal in a course, (2) what role interim goals should play, (3) how to measure progress toward the goal or interim goal, (4) how to give immediate feedback about that progress, and (5) how to publicly track my students' progress while keeping each individual's information private.
Here's where I am so far... (more as I think more about it)
Create a pre-test for each 3-week block of work.
Lay out the calendar for the next 3 weeks, showing what's going to be covered each day and which questions on the pre-test could then be answered based on what's been covered through that day.
Give exercises (via class work) on whatever got covered that day.
Have students self-grade that work, and turn in a slip of paper with their name and score so I can track and publish it (with the names stripped out).
Give homework based on their scores (higher score = less homework). Caveat: if their quiz grade is significantly lower than their self-reported class work grades, they automatically end up in the "most homework" category.
Give quizzes I can grade within 10 minutes (10 questions, answers are right or wrong, worksheet pre-configured to spit out grade after answers are typed in). Give an in-class assignment on quiz days so that the class looks like: 5 minute warm-up, 15 minute quiz, 15 minute in-class exercise (while I grade the quizzes), 10 minute quiz return and wrap-up.
Give tests I can grade during my planning period (45 minutes) so I can return them the next day.
We provide lots of feedback to students, but a lot of it is time-delayed, and very little of it is directly applicable to evaluating their progress (or the extent of their progress) toward the goal (which is often poorly defined anyway.)
So I've been thinking about (1) how to very clearly define the goal in a course, (2) what role interim goals should play, (3) how to measure progress toward the goal or interim goal, (4) how to give immediate feedback about that progress, and (5) how to publicly track my students' progress while keeping each individual's information private.
Here's where I am so far... (more as I think more about it)
Create a pre-test for each 3-week block of work.
Lay out the calendar for the next 3 weeks, showing what's going to be covered each day and which questions on the pre-test could then be answered based on what's been covered through that day.
Give exercises (via class work) on whatever got covered that day.
Have students self-grade that work, and turn in a slip of paper with their name and score so I can track and publish it (with the names stripped out).
Give homework based on their scores (higher score = less homework). Caveat: if their quiz grade is significantly lower than their self-reported class work grades, they automatically end up in the "most homework" category.
Give quizzes I can grade within 10 minutes (10 questions, answers are right or wrong, worksheet pre-configured to spit out grade after answers are typed in). Give an in-class assignment on quiz days so that the class looks like: 5 minute warm-up, 15 minute quiz, 15 minute in-class exercise (while I grade the quizzes), 10 minute quiz return and wrap-up.
Give tests I can grade during my planning period (45 minutes) so I can return them the next day.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
The Incredible Shrinking Man
My principal doesn't want me back next year... OK, I can live with that. Thus, he'd rather not praise me at today's end-of-year luncheon... makes sense to me. Unfortunately for him, my kids did really well on the state-mandated exam, and he likes to use the luncheon to hand out awards to teachers for various accomplishments during the school year. So to avoid handing me a lovely inkjet-printed certificate, he made up a category for which I didn't qualify, available only to teachers of "standard" courses (since I taught only Honors). But he neglected to notice the person he gave it to instead of me also didn't teach any standard courses. Sad, really. If he'd just come to me before-hand, I'd have told him to make the category "Most gains by a teacher who isn't me," and we could have all enjoyed the award.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
The Sociological Value of Understanding the Concept of a Local Maximum
To improve the quality of education in America, the graduation rate and the number of students passing the state-mandated tests must fall dramatically.
We've done an enormous disservice to our children by relaxing graduation standards, badgering teachers into passing students who shouldn't, enrolling students in classes they shouldn't be in (thus watering down the content for everyone in the course), focusing exclusively on the lowest-performing students' results on the state-mandated tests, and redirecting blame for failure from students to teachers.
The three step, no additional cost, plan for success:
1. Hold all students to much, much higher standards for passing classes in the core curriculum and for graduating from a "traditional" high school.
2. Provide alternative track educational opportunities for children who do not wish to or are not capable of completing a traditional high school education.
3. Get out of the way.
(Aside: I distinctly recall coming home from school with a bad grade on an English test and complaining that the teacher didn't explain the material. I suppose it's possible my parents called the school to complain and demand she be replaced with someone I could better relate to, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't their first response.)
We've done an enormous disservice to our children by relaxing graduation standards, badgering teachers into passing students who shouldn't, enrolling students in classes they shouldn't be in (thus watering down the content for everyone in the course), focusing exclusively on the lowest-performing students' results on the state-mandated tests, and redirecting blame for failure from students to teachers.
The three step, no additional cost, plan for success:
1. Hold all students to much, much higher standards for passing classes in the core curriculum and for graduating from a "traditional" high school.
2. Provide alternative track educational opportunities for children who do not wish to or are not capable of completing a traditional high school education.
3. Get out of the way.
(Aside: I distinctly recall coming home from school with a bad grade on an English test and complaining that the teacher didn't explain the material. I suppose it's possible my parents called the school to complain and demand she be replaced with someone I could better relate to, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't their first response.)
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Books I Want Next Year's AP Stats Class to Read
These are some books I've read that would be valuable for people who are going to deal with statistics. Please tell me about others in the comments section, or comment on the ones I've listed.
(other books and info to come as addenda to this note)
The Black Swan / Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Taleb
The Science of Fear / Risk - Dan Gardner
The Tipping Point / Blink / Outliers / What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
Inevitable Illusions - Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
The Rational Optimist* - Matt Ridley
On Being Certain** - Robert Burton, M.D.
*Haven't read this one, but have read others by the same author and based on the book's blurb, think it would be the best option.
(other books and info to come as addenda to this note)
The Black Swan / Fooled by Randomness - Nassim Taleb
The Science of Fear / Risk - Dan Gardner
The Tipping Point / Blink / Outliers / What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell
Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
Inevitable Illusions - Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
The Rational Optimist* - Matt Ridley
On Being Certain** - Robert Burton, M.D.
*Haven't read this one, but have read others by the same author and based on the book's blurb, think it would be the best option.
**Reading this one now; may or may not come off the list
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Decaf nofat no whip latte.
Our principal today announced he would be holding an assembly for all 9th and 10th graders on Friday, effectively eliminating the last opportunity I would have to teach mathematics to my 10th graders prior to the hugely important state-mandated test. The subject of the assembly: "Do well on the hugely important state-mandated test."
So, in order to ensure our students do well on this hugely important state-mandated test, we've spent 3 days doing "benchmark" testing, to see where the students were at the beginning of the year, in the middle of the year and one month later. We've already held at least one other assembly to pump up the kids for the upcoming benchmark test, which of course doesn't count at all, except that good scores on the benchmark test make the principal look good in the eyes of his district bosses.
We've also held (and funded) a middle-of-the-school day "dance" for students whose scores improved on the 2nd benchmark test, and promised a similar event for students whose scores improved on the 3rd benchmark test. The principal attempted, in the faculty meeting today, to set the 2nd dance for tomorrow. He may have been persuaded to wait... until Friday.
We've also had to take most of a class period for each of our classes in order to take our kids to the computer rooms to practice taking the test on the computer.
On the plus side, we haven't conducted a fire drill all year, so we've saved all that time in favor of classwork. Of course, monthly fire drills are mandated by our state, but hey, what's child safety when the school's hugely important state-mandated test score is on the line?
Of course, I've also lost class time to pep rallies, donut sales, and all the other detria associated with high school life -- for example, none of the senior girls will be in my class on Friday because they will be getting their hair done for the prom. This is not just hyperbole to have an excuse to skip my class... first of all, my seniors don't need an excuse to skip my class, and second, I've actually asked several of the girls who have weaves (and a significant majority do, despite (or possibly because) of the fact I'm at a Title I school) and they've all told me it's a 4- to 6-hour process, at a minimum.
The principal justified his "test-prep" rally by saying that if they don't have it now, they're not going to get it in the last day prior to the exam. So why, last week, were we required to prepare a "3 day plan" to prepare them for the test in the week and one day we had remaining (meaning 3 per class, since I only see each class every other day)? If we only needed 2 days, why didn't we have a 2 day plan? If the kids who're being taken out of my class to go to the assembly don't need my class, can I just give the rest of my classes a free day, since they must not need it either?
Enough.
So, in order to ensure our students do well on this hugely important state-mandated test, we've spent 3 days doing "benchmark" testing, to see where the students were at the beginning of the year, in the middle of the year and one month later. We've already held at least one other assembly to pump up the kids for the upcoming benchmark test, which of course doesn't count at all, except that good scores on the benchmark test make the principal look good in the eyes of his district bosses.
We've also held (and funded) a middle-of-the-school day "dance" for students whose scores improved on the 2nd benchmark test, and promised a similar event for students whose scores improved on the 3rd benchmark test. The principal attempted, in the faculty meeting today, to set the 2nd dance for tomorrow. He may have been persuaded to wait... until Friday.
We've also had to take most of a class period for each of our classes in order to take our kids to the computer rooms to practice taking the test on the computer.
On the plus side, we haven't conducted a fire drill all year, so we've saved all that time in favor of classwork. Of course, monthly fire drills are mandated by our state, but hey, what's child safety when the school's hugely important state-mandated test score is on the line?
Of course, I've also lost class time to pep rallies, donut sales, and all the other detria associated with high school life -- for example, none of the senior girls will be in my class on Friday because they will be getting their hair done for the prom. This is not just hyperbole to have an excuse to skip my class... first of all, my seniors don't need an excuse to skip my class, and second, I've actually asked several of the girls who have weaves (and a significant majority do, despite (or possibly because) of the fact I'm at a Title I school) and they've all told me it's a 4- to 6-hour process, at a minimum.
The principal justified his "test-prep" rally by saying that if they don't have it now, they're not going to get it in the last day prior to the exam. So why, last week, were we required to prepare a "3 day plan" to prepare them for the test in the week and one day we had remaining (meaning 3 per class, since I only see each class every other day)? If we only needed 2 days, why didn't we have a 2 day plan? If the kids who're being taken out of my class to go to the assembly don't need my class, can I just give the rest of my classes a free day, since they must not need it either?
Enough.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
California Dreamin'
The title of this post has nothing to do with the post itself, except that I'm visiting a friend in California as I write this.
Wednesday's USA Today (3-30-11) had a front page story on the investigation of several of DC's public schools for "irregularities" in their standardized tests. Apparently, USA Today previously published a report that more than half of DC schools were cited in the past 3 years for having unusually high "erasure rates."
First, the quote from the acting chancellor of the public school system, Kaya Henderson: "The integrity of test scores is perhaps more important to us than any other district because we use the test scores in important ways - evaluation, compensation."
Hmmm... let's see if we can find anything not to like about that sentence. It will be hard, but I'll give it a shot:
1. She's claiming that, in other districts, integrity is (perhaps) less important. Go ahead, kids (and teachers) -- if you're not in the DC public school system, cheat all you want, it's not that important.
2. The reason scores matter more in DC is that they use those test scores in important ways, which pretty clearly implies that the ways they're used in other school systems aren't that important. If the way we're using test scores doesn't matter, can we PLEASE stop using them?
3. The important ways the test scores are being used are "evaluation" and "compensation." I believe it's fair to assume she's not speaking of evaluating the students, because all tests in all districts are evaluating the students, and she's distinguishing DC's use from other districts. So the evaluation and compensation she's speaking about is of teachers and administrators. Therefore, I'm shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- to discover some teachers and administrators, believing their compensation and in all likelihood, their jobs were on the line, cheated to obtain higher scores.
We now have at least two examples (Atlanta being the other one) of the following scenario:
1. New head of the district's public school system arrives and promises to dramatically increase standardized test scores in the district.
2. New head of the district's public school system makes it clear to every teacher and administrator in the district that scores on the standardized test will be used to evaluate and compensate them. Moreover, to the extent possible, job retention decisions will also be based on these scores.
3. Test scores rise dramatically, immediately.
4. Someone investigates the scores, and finds that there is very widespread evidence of activity that is statistically improbable to the point of inconceivable, unless that activity is intentional (i.e., cheating).
5. "Deeper" investigation finds conclusive evidence of cheating at a very small number of schools, exonerating the rest of them.
6. Deeper deeper investigation finds that perhaps the first deeper investigation wasn't entirely uninfluenced by the school district's desire to depict the problem as a few rogue administrators and teachers, rather than a system-wide response to the school district's leadership.
For those of you keeping score at home, here's what we have:
Validity of standardized testing in assessing student progress: very suspect (e.g., this article, along with hundreds of others)
Validity of using standardized testing to assess teacher competence: even more suspect (this paper and others)
Likelihood of cheating by school administrators if standardized test scores are the primary measure of competence: very hard to say, but a study from the 90's showed 4% - 5% of teachers cheated to improve student scores when stakes were relatively low, and cheating doubled when stakes got higher for the students. When stakes get higher for the teachers and administrators, the number is likely to be much, much higher. The New York Times recently reported on investigations in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Virginia and Texas. There are undoubtedly many more cases that have not been uncovered.
Solution? Not "No Child Left Behind," obviously. Unfortunately, President Obama's Race to the Top program, while acknowledging the failure of the current standardized tests, essentially just asks for new ones.
Perhaps we should be looking for ways to assess teachers and administrators based on the kinds of things assessments in the private sector are based -- peer review, on-going evaluation and guidance by an immediate supervisor, multiple evaluations from multiple sources (to reduce the likelihood of individual bias in evaluations) and student learning gains, properly placed in context with all the other assessment information.
I guess I'm California dreamin' after all...
Wednesday's USA Today (3-30-11) had a front page story on the investigation of several of DC's public schools for "irregularities" in their standardized tests. Apparently, USA Today previously published a report that more than half of DC schools were cited in the past 3 years for having unusually high "erasure rates."
First, the quote from the acting chancellor of the public school system, Kaya Henderson: "The integrity of test scores is perhaps more important to us than any other district because we use the test scores in important ways - evaluation, compensation."
Hmmm... let's see if we can find anything not to like about that sentence. It will be hard, but I'll give it a shot:
1. She's claiming that, in other districts, integrity is (perhaps) less important. Go ahead, kids (and teachers) -- if you're not in the DC public school system, cheat all you want, it's not that important.
2. The reason scores matter more in DC is that they use those test scores in important ways, which pretty clearly implies that the ways they're used in other school systems aren't that important. If the way we're using test scores doesn't matter, can we PLEASE stop using them?
3. The important ways the test scores are being used are "evaluation" and "compensation." I believe it's fair to assume she's not speaking of evaluating the students, because all tests in all districts are evaluating the students, and she's distinguishing DC's use from other districts. So the evaluation and compensation she's speaking about is of teachers and administrators. Therefore, I'm shocked -- shocked, I tell you -- to discover some teachers and administrators, believing their compensation and in all likelihood, their jobs were on the line, cheated to obtain higher scores.
We now have at least two examples (Atlanta being the other one) of the following scenario:
1. New head of the district's public school system arrives and promises to dramatically increase standardized test scores in the district.
2. New head of the district's public school system makes it clear to every teacher and administrator in the district that scores on the standardized test will be used to evaluate and compensate them. Moreover, to the extent possible, job retention decisions will also be based on these scores.
3. Test scores rise dramatically, immediately.
4. Someone investigates the scores, and finds that there is very widespread evidence of activity that is statistically improbable to the point of inconceivable, unless that activity is intentional (i.e., cheating).
5. "Deeper" investigation finds conclusive evidence of cheating at a very small number of schools, exonerating the rest of them.
6. Deeper deeper investigation finds that perhaps the first deeper investigation wasn't entirely uninfluenced by the school district's desire to depict the problem as a few rogue administrators and teachers, rather than a system-wide response to the school district's leadership.
For those of you keeping score at home, here's what we have:
Validity of standardized testing in assessing student progress: very suspect (e.g., this article, along with hundreds of others)
Validity of using standardized testing to assess teacher competence: even more suspect (this paper and others)
Likelihood of cheating by school administrators if standardized test scores are the primary measure of competence: very hard to say, but a study from the 90's showed 4% - 5% of teachers cheated to improve student scores when stakes were relatively low, and cheating doubled when stakes got higher for the students. When stakes get higher for the teachers and administrators, the number is likely to be much, much higher. The New York Times recently reported on investigations in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Virginia and Texas. There are undoubtedly many more cases that have not been uncovered.
Solution? Not "No Child Left Behind," obviously. Unfortunately, President Obama's Race to the Top program, while acknowledging the failure of the current standardized tests, essentially just asks for new ones.
Perhaps we should be looking for ways to assess teachers and administrators based on the kinds of things assessments in the private sector are based -- peer review, on-going evaluation and guidance by an immediate supervisor, multiple evaluations from multiple sources (to reduce the likelihood of individual bias in evaluations) and student learning gains, properly placed in context with all the other assessment information.
I guess I'm California dreamin' after all...
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Good Grief
I proselytize regularly about the professionalism of most teachers, the fact that the vast majority care a lot more about having the freedom to teach the kids in their charge than about the salary they get to do it, and the high standards most uphold, despite often being treated like children or worse. Then one of them posts this as her facebook status:
"I voted for the people who supports the police and fire did you?"
My head hurts.
"I voted for the people who supports the police and fire did you?"
My head hurts.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Why CEO's Should Care About Public Schools, Even If No One They Know Has Ever Been In One
There is a cost associated with the deterioration of public schools, and it is borne by the entire community, not just the poor. CEO's in particular bear a significant portion of the burden, which makes the current assault on public schools by Republican governors and state assemblies (who are presumably pro-business) all the more frustrating, if not particularly surprising.
Here is an incomplete list of ways businesses lose when the quality of the public school system declines.
1. It becomes harder to recruit executive talent, as potential new hires consider where their children will attend school. If finding talent becomes 5% harder, total incremental cost to a company to hire one executive with a salary of $100,000 is approximately $17,000.[1] A company with 10% turnover in its executive ranks and 50 such employees would incur about $85,000 incremental annual cost due to poor schools.
2. It becomes harder to recruit entry-level and mid-level talent from the local job applicant pool, as top students become a scarcer resource. Reducing the costs above by 2/3's results in an estimated incremental cost per entry- or mid-level job of more than $5,000; assuming the company experiences 20% turnover among its 200 entry- and mid-level employees, this amounts to $200,000 annually.
3. Training costs increase, as new employees enter the workforce more poorly prepared to start, and less competent at learning the necessary skills for the job. Assuming the 40 new entry- and mid-level employees take 2 weeks longer to learn, and use the resources of their peers and/or supervisor for 2 additional weeks, the incremental training cost is approximately $150,000 in lost work time, assuming an average total compensation (salary + benefits) of $50,000 for trainers and trainees.
4. Turnover increases, as employees who have become dependent on safety nets -- grade recovery, differentiated instruction, "response to intervention," 70% - 80% group work in classes, unlimited retakes on failed quizzes and tests, plus dozens of other safety nets mandated by district school boards as band-aids for students in failing schools -- discover the "real world" has many fewer safety nets and much harder landing areas for those who fail. If turnover increases from 20% to 25% in our hypothetical company with 200 non-executive employees, filling the additional 10 slots each year will cost approximately $200,000 in lost work time, recruitment costs and paid non-productive time for trainer and trainee.
5. The tax base declines, requiring higher taxes or poorer public services such as road maintenance, water, sewer and electric utilities, as less-prepared graduates' salaries start lower and take longer to increase. Quality of life in the area impacts each of the factors above; I'll leave the dollar estimate on that as an exercise for the reader. However, if the property tax were raised 5% to cover the public services needed, the 250 employees of our hypothetical company would pay an extra $45,000 in taxes.[2]
6. The cost/value relationship of a private school education increases, and more people will decide this option is affordable, given their alternatives. This means more of the company's executives must pay for private schooling, which will put upward pressure on salaries. It also means that private schools will have increased demand, which leads, of course, to higher prices. So even the CEO's whose children are already in private schools will see increased direct costs. Assuming 1 out of every 3 of the executives of the company have children in private school (with an average of 1.5 students per executive) and private school costs go up $5,000, the cost to the executive team is $125,000.
Consider the impact of poorer public schools on unemployment. Students who might have stayed in school because they could play in the band or take art classes or play one of the "minor" sports will drop out. Students who might have been able to pass Chemistry if free tutoring had still been available will flunk it and give up. The students who do graduate will be largely unprepared for college. (Even today, 70% of my county's graduates must take remedial courses in their first year of college). Unprepared students entering college become significant drop-out risks at that level. High school and college drop-outs are at much higher risk of unemployment throughout their careers than their peers with degrees.[3] Therefore, higher unemployment will inevitably result from a reduction in the quality of public education.
As a result of higher unemployment,
7. Businesses will pay higher unemployment taxes. States are reducing unemployment benefits as those costs soar in the face of the recession, but that is a strategy that decreases "visible" costs at the expense of creating much higher secondary costs. This year, the unemployment tax is expected to nearly triple, to as much as $72 per employee versus the current $25 maximum. If higher unemployment in the future causes an additional $25 per employee rise, the cost to our hypothetical 250-person business is $6,250.
8. The non-violent crime rate will go up, costing businesses in ways such as higher premiums for property insurance, increased security costs and employees' decreased sense of well-being and safety. Again, the true cost of this issue is the reduced desirability of the city as a place to work, impacting all the factors above.
9. Health insurance premiums will go up even faster, as unemployed and minimum-wage earners are much more likely to use emergency room services and very unlikely to be able to pay for them. Hospitals must provide the care, and must therefore pass along their costs to those who pay -- namely those with health insurance. Companies will undoubtedly pass most of this cost through to its employees, but even a $100 per year increase would cost a 250-person company an incremental $25,000 each year.
10. Social services such as prisons, alcohol treatment centers, homeless shelters, etc. will either reduce services or require more resources. It is significantly cheaper to provide the services than pay for the unintended consequences of not providing them, but in either case, costs to all taxpayers increase. As with the crime rate and reduced public services, reduced social services make the city less livable, which impacts all aspects of the cost of doing business within it.
In summary, as public schools decline enough to make it 5% harder to recruit and hire a high-quality workforce, even a small company of 250 people would experience a nearly $850,000 increased annual cost of doing business in the city. The same analysis would show that if public schools improve by that same amount, that company could save $850,000 annually. Imagine if CEO's of the 400 or so companies of that size or larger in my city each decided to kick in $250,000 to public education, and the roughly 700 companies with 100 - 250 employees added $100,000 each. That's an additional $170,000,000 invested in our schools each year, paid for by companies who recognize that it's an investment on which they'll earn at least double their money annually.
Most of these costs are also borne by all taxpayers, so all of us should be insisting our federal, state and local governments make high-quality public education a major priority, instead of allowing our legislators to cut public school funding year after year, reduce teachers' real wages even in good years, and discuss options like school vouchers to take even more money out of the public school system.
If our public schools were doing a better job educating the American populace, the American populace would understand why we must do a better job educating the American populace.
Notes
[1] Incremental salary cost: $5,000. Incremental benefits cost: $3,000 (60% of salary). Incremental search cost: $1,000 plus $1,000 (20% of salary plus estimated expenses incurred by additional interviewees). Incremental cost of current employees' extra time spent involved in the job search (e.g., interviews, paperwork, etc.): $2,000 (estimated 4 executive-days per interviewee). Opportunity cost of unfilled position for additional 2 weeks: $5,000 (assumes the lost opportunity cost of the unfilled position is no less than the cost of filling it; otherwise the company would leave it empty).
[2] According to CLRSearch.com, there are more than 325,000 households in my city. Nationally, census data shows that about 2/3's of households own their own home; that statistic is very close to being correct in my city, meaning approximately 210,000 households own a home. Property tax collections in 2010 were just over $1,000,000,000 according to the County Property Appraiser, so a 5% (2 mill) increase in property taxes would result in an average $250 increase per household among home owners.
[3] According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment among college graduates aged 25 and up was 4.4% in March 2011, compared to 9.5% for high school graduates with no college. For people under age 25, these numbers double - college graduates: 8.5%, high school grads with no college: 20%.
Here is an incomplete list of ways businesses lose when the quality of the public school system declines.
1. It becomes harder to recruit executive talent, as potential new hires consider where their children will attend school. If finding talent becomes 5% harder, total incremental cost to a company to hire one executive with a salary of $100,000 is approximately $17,000.[1] A company with 10% turnover in its executive ranks and 50 such employees would incur about $85,000 incremental annual cost due to poor schools.
2. It becomes harder to recruit entry-level and mid-level talent from the local job applicant pool, as top students become a scarcer resource. Reducing the costs above by 2/3's results in an estimated incremental cost per entry- or mid-level job of more than $5,000; assuming the company experiences 20% turnover among its 200 entry- and mid-level employees, this amounts to $200,000 annually.
3. Training costs increase, as new employees enter the workforce more poorly prepared to start, and less competent at learning the necessary skills for the job. Assuming the 40 new entry- and mid-level employees take 2 weeks longer to learn, and use the resources of their peers and/or supervisor for 2 additional weeks, the incremental training cost is approximately $150,000 in lost work time, assuming an average total compensation (salary + benefits) of $50,000 for trainers and trainees.
4. Turnover increases, as employees who have become dependent on safety nets -- grade recovery, differentiated instruction, "response to intervention," 70% - 80% group work in classes, unlimited retakes on failed quizzes and tests, plus dozens of other safety nets mandated by district school boards as band-aids for students in failing schools -- discover the "real world" has many fewer safety nets and much harder landing areas for those who fail. If turnover increases from 20% to 25% in our hypothetical company with 200 non-executive employees, filling the additional 10 slots each year will cost approximately $200,000 in lost work time, recruitment costs and paid non-productive time for trainer and trainee.
5. The tax base declines, requiring higher taxes or poorer public services such as road maintenance, water, sewer and electric utilities, as less-prepared graduates' salaries start lower and take longer to increase. Quality of life in the area impacts each of the factors above; I'll leave the dollar estimate on that as an exercise for the reader. However, if the property tax were raised 5% to cover the public services needed, the 250 employees of our hypothetical company would pay an extra $45,000 in taxes.[2]
6. The cost/value relationship of a private school education increases, and more people will decide this option is affordable, given their alternatives. This means more of the company's executives must pay for private schooling, which will put upward pressure on salaries. It also means that private schools will have increased demand, which leads, of course, to higher prices. So even the CEO's whose children are already in private schools will see increased direct costs. Assuming 1 out of every 3 of the executives of the company have children in private school (with an average of 1.5 students per executive) and private school costs go up $5,000, the cost to the executive team is $125,000.
Consider the impact of poorer public schools on unemployment. Students who might have stayed in school because they could play in the band or take art classes or play one of the "minor" sports will drop out. Students who might have been able to pass Chemistry if free tutoring had still been available will flunk it and give up. The students who do graduate will be largely unprepared for college. (Even today, 70% of my county's graduates must take remedial courses in their first year of college). Unprepared students entering college become significant drop-out risks at that level. High school and college drop-outs are at much higher risk of unemployment throughout their careers than their peers with degrees.[3] Therefore, higher unemployment will inevitably result from a reduction in the quality of public education.
As a result of higher unemployment,
7. Businesses will pay higher unemployment taxes. States are reducing unemployment benefits as those costs soar in the face of the recession, but that is a strategy that decreases "visible" costs at the expense of creating much higher secondary costs. This year, the unemployment tax is expected to nearly triple, to as much as $72 per employee versus the current $25 maximum. If higher unemployment in the future causes an additional $25 per employee rise, the cost to our hypothetical 250-person business is $6,250.
8. The non-violent crime rate will go up, costing businesses in ways such as higher premiums for property insurance, increased security costs and employees' decreased sense of well-being and safety. Again, the true cost of this issue is the reduced desirability of the city as a place to work, impacting all the factors above.
9. Health insurance premiums will go up even faster, as unemployed and minimum-wage earners are much more likely to use emergency room services and very unlikely to be able to pay for them. Hospitals must provide the care, and must therefore pass along their costs to those who pay -- namely those with health insurance. Companies will undoubtedly pass most of this cost through to its employees, but even a $100 per year increase would cost a 250-person company an incremental $25,000 each year.
10. Social services such as prisons, alcohol treatment centers, homeless shelters, etc. will either reduce services or require more resources. It is significantly cheaper to provide the services than pay for the unintended consequences of not providing them, but in either case, costs to all taxpayers increase. As with the crime rate and reduced public services, reduced social services make the city less livable, which impacts all aspects of the cost of doing business within it.
In summary, as public schools decline enough to make it 5% harder to recruit and hire a high-quality workforce, even a small company of 250 people would experience a nearly $850,000 increased annual cost of doing business in the city. The same analysis would show that if public schools improve by that same amount, that company could save $850,000 annually. Imagine if CEO's of the 400 or so companies of that size or larger in my city each decided to kick in $250,000 to public education, and the roughly 700 companies with 100 - 250 employees added $100,000 each. That's an additional $170,000,000 invested in our schools each year, paid for by companies who recognize that it's an investment on which they'll earn at least double their money annually.
Most of these costs are also borne by all taxpayers, so all of us should be insisting our federal, state and local governments make high-quality public education a major priority, instead of allowing our legislators to cut public school funding year after year, reduce teachers' real wages even in good years, and discuss options like school vouchers to take even more money out of the public school system.
If our public schools were doing a better job educating the American populace, the American populace would understand why we must do a better job educating the American populace.
Notes
[1] Incremental salary cost: $5,000. Incremental benefits cost: $3,000 (60% of salary). Incremental search cost: $1,000 plus $1,000 (20% of salary plus estimated expenses incurred by additional interviewees). Incremental cost of current employees' extra time spent involved in the job search (e.g., interviews, paperwork, etc.): $2,000 (estimated 4 executive-days per interviewee). Opportunity cost of unfilled position for additional 2 weeks: $5,000 (assumes the lost opportunity cost of the unfilled position is no less than the cost of filling it; otherwise the company would leave it empty).
[2] According to CLRSearch.com, there are more than 325,000 households in my city. Nationally, census data shows that about 2/3's of households own their own home; that statistic is very close to being correct in my city, meaning approximately 210,000 households own a home. Property tax collections in 2010 were just over $1,000,000,000 according to the County Property Appraiser, so a 5% (2 mill) increase in property taxes would result in an average $250 increase per household among home owners.
[3] According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment among college graduates aged 25 and up was 4.4% in March 2011, compared to 9.5% for high school graduates with no college. For people under age 25, these numbers double - college graduates: 8.5%, high school grads with no college: 20%.
Monday, February 21, 2011
21st Century Robin Hoods
The newly-elected Republican governors of several states are attacking public education on several fronts. Making national headlines, of course, is Scott Walker in Wisconsin, who is attempting to strip public sector unions' ability to collectively bargain. A bill being considered in the Ohio legislature does the same thing, in addition to eliminating guaranteed sick days and pay increases for experience. Chris Christie in New Jersey is considered by many the leading Republican presidential hopeful (despite his continued denials he will run) because of his aggressive "standing up to" unions in his effort to slash public employees' pensions. Rick Scott in Florida is advocating a voucher system for all of the state's school-age children, reducing per-student spending from $7,000 to $6,000, thereby saving $2.6 billion annually. Maybe I'll tackle collective bargaining and unilateral benefit-slashing in another post. I'm interested in vouchers today.
First, let's examine who Governor Scott's proposed system would benefit. Florida taxpayers, of course, would get $2.6 billion in savings - that's $140.54 per year for each of Florida's 18.5 million residents. Although if he doesn't simultaneously give each individual a $140.54 tax credit, any tax savings will disproportionately benefit those who pay more taxes - i.e., the working upper class. Nationally, the top 1% of taxpayers (people earning more than $364,000), pay 21% of income taxes (earning 39% of gross income), so they'd each get over $2,900 per person of tax savings benefit. The next 9% would get $511 each. For the bottom 50%, this $2.6 billion windfall results in $36 in reduced taxes. [1]
Of course, the biggest economic benefit would accrue to those who are already sending their children to private school. They receive an immediate $6,000 bonus. And don't forget - that $6,000 is completely untaxed. No federal income tax, no payroll tax, no unemployment insurance, etc. So it's more like $10,000 pre-tax. In summary, Floridians earning $365,000+ and sending two children to private school receive approximately $23,000 in benefit from this tax savings, whereas the 75% of Floridians earning less than $62,000 receive less than $110 in benefit. But wait, there's more.
Kids who now go to magnet schools outside their "home area" generally take a bus to their home school, then another one to the magnet school, if a parent or nanny doesn't drive them. Total commute time can be as much as 2 hours each way in some cases, and is more than 1 hour in virtually every case.
Suppose you are the single parent of a 16-year-old child. Because you dropped out of high school, you work for near-minimum wage -- say $22,500 a year. You want something better for your daughter. Of course you can't give her a car, so she's in for a 2-hour round-trip commute if you use your voucher to send her to a better school. Unfortunately, she also has after-school obligations that you can't relieve her of -- either baby-sitting younger siblings while you work at your second job, or working at a part-time job of her own. (The part-time job isn't for hair weaves and high heels -- it's so she can buy the clothes she wears to school, and that her younger sister will be wearing two years from now.) Let's say that job is a 4 hour shift at McDonald's. Unfortunately, your work schedule means she has to walk to the job and wait for you to pick her up after her shift... call it another hour. If she gets 8 hours of sleep (one less than is recommended for teens), that leaves two hours for everything else, including homework.
Given that, how will your child be able to keep up with a rigorous academic curriculum in a class full of kids whose parents or housekeepers drive them to and from school, hire private tutors for when they're falling behind, and insist that they forgo jobs in favor of study? Moreover, those kids' applications for college will be filled with extracurricular activities, volunteering in the community, interesting (and expensive) hobbies like photography or astronomy, and all the other items college admissions boards love to see. Your daughter's will have 3 years' work experience at McDonald's. So your best option is probably to keep her at her "home" school.
That school is already performing poorly because of underfunding, outdated infrastructure, inability to attract and retain the best teachers, and lack of community support (in large part because most people in the community, including you, cannot afford to spend the time to become deeply involved in the school [2]). Now, some higher income families who previously couldn't economically justify private school or a public magnet school will flee the poorer school for a different one. The school they're leaving just got worse.
Meanwhile, consider the other end of the spectrum. Suppose you run "Blue Blood Academy of the Arts and Sciences," which charges $17,000 tuition annually in order to fund state-of-the-art science labs, notebook computers for every incoming 9th grader with wireless access throughout the campus, smart boards in every class room, a guest lecture series featuring well-known artists, scientists and politicians, and a 2,000 seat theater on par with the best venues in the city. You already turn away applicants. Now, every parent just got a $6,000 per child voucher that can only be used to pay for schooling. How much do you raise tuition? And what will you spend that money on?
Let's assume the following things:
(1) America needs an educated workforce to compete in the global economy
(2) America's students are, on average, slipping further behind each year in every objective measure of academic preparedness
(3) Students in America's top secondary schools are currently competitive with students from other countries (at least, less uncompetitive than the bulk of our students). I make this claim based on the fact that America's top universities are recognized as the best in the world, and the American students those universities admit -- the vast majority of whom are from very competitive high schools -- do about as well as foreign students.
Given that, look again at the voucher program. It quite clearly provides an enormous economic and educational benefit to the wealthiest families (who don't really need it) at the educational expense of the poorest (who desperately do). And by "poorest," I don't mean the 2% or 5% or even 10% of families at the far edge of the economic spectrum -- I mean the 50% of families below the median income. How can that possibly improve our strength as a nation?
Vouchers are the political equivalent of a magic trick -- watch as I fold a $10 bill in half, turning it into a $20. The "bottom line," which ex-businessmen turned politicians love to invoke, is that spending $2.6 billion less on education in Florida will result in a Florida educational system that is $2.6 billion less effective than it is now. If funding goes away, the programs supported by that funding would go away. The benefit students receive from those programs would go away. No amount of hand-waving and shell-shifting can change those facts. Budget shortfalls over the past several years have already caused administrators to trim budgets and eliminate wasteful spending, so the $2.6 billion that vanishes will not be $2.6 billion in wasted or unnecessary or duplicative programs. It will be $2.6 billion in programs that are vitally important to maintaining a system at its current level of proficiency. At a time when the need to improve American education has never been clearer, vouchers are a major restructuring which will obviously and inevitably take education in the opposite direction.
Supporters of a voucher system would have you believe vouchers will make public education a competitive marketplace, and the competition thus engendered will magically improve all surviving competitors (weeding out the ones that can't compete). But education isn't laundry detergent. People "choosing" cheaper, less effective education don't just have slightly less sparkling clothes, they impose a cost on society in the form of reduced earning (and tax-paying) power, higher incidence of criminal behavior, higher incarceration rate, and poorer productivity, affecting America's global competitiveness. Unlike laundry detergent, people are not free to choose any one they desire -- education is rationed both economically, in the case of private schools, and geographically in the case of public schools which must admit local students prior to non-local ones. The "best" schools are filled to capacity now, and there's no factory to churn out more. Moreover, businesses whose revenues drop do not, in the short term, focus on product improvement -- they focus on cost-cutting. School administrators would be under greater pressure than ever to cut costs, resulting in fewer training days for teachers [3], fewer resources such as paper [4], books for students [5], and classroom technology, fewer electives such as art and music, and fewer after-school activities such as clubs and athletics. Teachers with lower salaries would be favored over those with more experience. Staff reductions would mean teachers would shoulder even more of the administrative burden than they currently do, further reducing the amount of time they can spend tutoring students and planning and preparing high-quality lessons.
Vouchers won't cause the public education system to suddenly become a competitive marketplace, feeding dollars to the best schools as smart consumers vote with their children's feet. Some schools might get slightly better. A very small percentage might get dramatically better. But the vast majority of schools would get somewhat worse, and some would get dramatically worse. Overall, it is impossible to conclude that any objective measure of student performance would increase, on average, under a voucher system. Don't get me wrong - public education desperately needs dramatic restructuring, possibly even restructuring that makes it look more like private enterprise. But don't let the rhetoric fool you. Vouchers are nothing more than (yet another) way to steal from the "poor," (the 75% of people making less than $62,000) and give to the rich (the 1% making more than $364,000). The exploits of the merry band of Rick Scott, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, et al., make Robin Hood's aspirations seem both puny and pathetic. These men have turned their considerable rhetorical skill and the marketing muscle purchased by donations from the very rich to objectives such as stealing $2.6 billion from middle and lower class Florida taxpayers in one fell swoop. It is impressive, even as it is tragic.
[1] Florida figures estimated based on national data - http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/22652.html.
[2] At the middle school my son attended in an affluent part of a large city, the president of the PTA was the nanny of one of the children. The PTA was extremely active, with most members able to devote several hours a week to it.
[3] At the school where I teach, paid training days have been eliminated for the remainder of the year.
[4] Since mid-January, we have been placed on a "700 page" monthly paper quota. That may not sound restrictive, but trust me, it's about 1/3 what I need.
[5] We have only classroom set of Algebra II and Geometry textbooks, so students cannot take them home to study. The workbooks available to each student provide practice problems but no instruction, so if they're lost and their parents can't help, their resources are limited.
First, let's examine who Governor Scott's proposed system would benefit. Florida taxpayers, of course, would get $2.6 billion in savings - that's $140.54 per year for each of Florida's 18.5 million residents. Although if he doesn't simultaneously give each individual a $140.54 tax credit, any tax savings will disproportionately benefit those who pay more taxes - i.e., the working upper class. Nationally, the top 1% of taxpayers (people earning more than $364,000), pay 21% of income taxes (earning 39% of gross income), so they'd each get over $2,900 per person of tax savings benefit. The next 9% would get $511 each. For the bottom 50%, this $2.6 billion windfall results in $36 in reduced taxes. [1]
Of course, the biggest economic benefit would accrue to those who are already sending their children to private school. They receive an immediate $6,000 bonus. And don't forget - that $6,000 is completely untaxed. No federal income tax, no payroll tax, no unemployment insurance, etc. So it's more like $10,000 pre-tax. In summary, Floridians earning $365,000+ and sending two children to private school receive approximately $23,000 in benefit from this tax savings, whereas the 75% of Floridians earning less than $62,000 receive less than $110 in benefit. But wait, there's more.
Kids who now go to magnet schools outside their "home area" generally take a bus to their home school, then another one to the magnet school, if a parent or nanny doesn't drive them. Total commute time can be as much as 2 hours each way in some cases, and is more than 1 hour in virtually every case.
Suppose you are the single parent of a 16-year-old child. Because you dropped out of high school, you work for near-minimum wage -- say $22,500 a year. You want something better for your daughter. Of course you can't give her a car, so she's in for a 2-hour round-trip commute if you use your voucher to send her to a better school. Unfortunately, she also has after-school obligations that you can't relieve her of -- either baby-sitting younger siblings while you work at your second job, or working at a part-time job of her own. (The part-time job isn't for hair weaves and high heels -- it's so she can buy the clothes she wears to school, and that her younger sister will be wearing two years from now.) Let's say that job is a 4 hour shift at McDonald's. Unfortunately, your work schedule means she has to walk to the job and wait for you to pick her up after her shift... call it another hour. If she gets 8 hours of sleep (one less than is recommended for teens), that leaves two hours for everything else, including homework.
Given that, how will your child be able to keep up with a rigorous academic curriculum in a class full of kids whose parents or housekeepers drive them to and from school, hire private tutors for when they're falling behind, and insist that they forgo jobs in favor of study? Moreover, those kids' applications for college will be filled with extracurricular activities, volunteering in the community, interesting (and expensive) hobbies like photography or astronomy, and all the other items college admissions boards love to see. Your daughter's will have 3 years' work experience at McDonald's. So your best option is probably to keep her at her "home" school.
That school is already performing poorly because of underfunding, outdated infrastructure, inability to attract and retain the best teachers, and lack of community support (in large part because most people in the community, including you, cannot afford to spend the time to become deeply involved in the school [2]). Now, some higher income families who previously couldn't economically justify private school or a public magnet school will flee the poorer school for a different one. The school they're leaving just got worse.
Meanwhile, consider the other end of the spectrum. Suppose you run "Blue Blood Academy of the Arts and Sciences," which charges $17,000 tuition annually in order to fund state-of-the-art science labs, notebook computers for every incoming 9th grader with wireless access throughout the campus, smart boards in every class room, a guest lecture series featuring well-known artists, scientists and politicians, and a 2,000 seat theater on par with the best venues in the city. You already turn away applicants. Now, every parent just got a $6,000 per child voucher that can only be used to pay for schooling. How much do you raise tuition? And what will you spend that money on?
Let's assume the following things:
(1) America needs an educated workforce to compete in the global economy
(2) America's students are, on average, slipping further behind each year in every objective measure of academic preparedness
(3) Students in America's top secondary schools are currently competitive with students from other countries (at least, less uncompetitive than the bulk of our students). I make this claim based on the fact that America's top universities are recognized as the best in the world, and the American students those universities admit -- the vast majority of whom are from very competitive high schools -- do about as well as foreign students.
Given that, look again at the voucher program. It quite clearly provides an enormous economic and educational benefit to the wealthiest families (who don't really need it) at the educational expense of the poorest (who desperately do). And by "poorest," I don't mean the 2% or 5% or even 10% of families at the far edge of the economic spectrum -- I mean the 50% of families below the median income. How can that possibly improve our strength as a nation?
Vouchers are the political equivalent of a magic trick -- watch as I fold a $10 bill in half, turning it into a $20. The "bottom line," which ex-businessmen turned politicians love to invoke, is that spending $2.6 billion less on education in Florida will result in a Florida educational system that is $2.6 billion less effective than it is now. If funding goes away, the programs supported by that funding would go away. The benefit students receive from those programs would go away. No amount of hand-waving and shell-shifting can change those facts. Budget shortfalls over the past several years have already caused administrators to trim budgets and eliminate wasteful spending, so the $2.6 billion that vanishes will not be $2.6 billion in wasted or unnecessary or duplicative programs. It will be $2.6 billion in programs that are vitally important to maintaining a system at its current level of proficiency. At a time when the need to improve American education has never been clearer, vouchers are a major restructuring which will obviously and inevitably take education in the opposite direction.
Supporters of a voucher system would have you believe vouchers will make public education a competitive marketplace, and the competition thus engendered will magically improve all surviving competitors (weeding out the ones that can't compete). But education isn't laundry detergent. People "choosing" cheaper, less effective education don't just have slightly less sparkling clothes, they impose a cost on society in the form of reduced earning (and tax-paying) power, higher incidence of criminal behavior, higher incarceration rate, and poorer productivity, affecting America's global competitiveness. Unlike laundry detergent, people are not free to choose any one they desire -- education is rationed both economically, in the case of private schools, and geographically in the case of public schools which must admit local students prior to non-local ones. The "best" schools are filled to capacity now, and there's no factory to churn out more. Moreover, businesses whose revenues drop do not, in the short term, focus on product improvement -- they focus on cost-cutting. School administrators would be under greater pressure than ever to cut costs, resulting in fewer training days for teachers [3], fewer resources such as paper [4], books for students [5], and classroom technology, fewer electives such as art and music, and fewer after-school activities such as clubs and athletics. Teachers with lower salaries would be favored over those with more experience. Staff reductions would mean teachers would shoulder even more of the administrative burden than they currently do, further reducing the amount of time they can spend tutoring students and planning and preparing high-quality lessons.
Vouchers won't cause the public education system to suddenly become a competitive marketplace, feeding dollars to the best schools as smart consumers vote with their children's feet. Some schools might get slightly better. A very small percentage might get dramatically better. But the vast majority of schools would get somewhat worse, and some would get dramatically worse. Overall, it is impossible to conclude that any objective measure of student performance would increase, on average, under a voucher system. Don't get me wrong - public education desperately needs dramatic restructuring, possibly even restructuring that makes it look more like private enterprise. But don't let the rhetoric fool you. Vouchers are nothing more than (yet another) way to steal from the "poor," (the 75% of people making less than $62,000) and give to the rich (the 1% making more than $364,000). The exploits of the merry band of Rick Scott, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, et al., make Robin Hood's aspirations seem both puny and pathetic. These men have turned their considerable rhetorical skill and the marketing muscle purchased by donations from the very rich to objectives such as stealing $2.6 billion from middle and lower class Florida taxpayers in one fell swoop. It is impressive, even as it is tragic.
[1] Florida figures estimated based on national data - http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/22652.html.
[2] At the middle school my son attended in an affluent part of a large city, the president of the PTA was the nanny of one of the children. The PTA was extremely active, with most members able to devote several hours a week to it.
[3] At the school where I teach, paid training days have been eliminated for the remainder of the year.
[4] Since mid-January, we have been placed on a "700 page" monthly paper quota. That may not sound restrictive, but trust me, it's about 1/3 what I need.
[5] We have only classroom set of Algebra II and Geometry textbooks, so students cannot take them home to study. The workbooks available to each student provide practice problems but no instruction, so if they're lost and their parents can't help, their resources are limited.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Judge Not, Lest Ye Become One
So I'm sitting in court yesterday waiting for my 15 seconds of infamy... "Guilty, Your Honor"... (and the opportunity to pay $300 in court costs) because I had been driving with a suspended license. I had been driving with a suspended license (unknowingly) for nearly a year, because I had been driving without insurance (unknowingly) for over a year, because (I'm guessing) as I was moving from one state to another, back to the first state and then two more moves before finally settling in where I am now, I missed several notices from my insurance company. I apparently also missed a notice from the state, telling me they'd suspended my license, but all of this is not why I write. (Aside: the cop who ticketed me for driving with a suspended license was incredulous that I could have gone a year without paying my car insurance, and not noticed that fact. Clearly, he doesn't know me very well.)
Before he started hearing cases, the judge took about 15 minutes to explain the rules of the court and the process that would occur depending on the outcome of the hearing. After the first 4 people came before him and answered "No" to the question of whether they'd obtained a valid driver's license, he sighed and began a 5 minute lecture on the importance of taking care of the problem now, before it becomes a bigger one (with a 5 year prison sentence possibility), just for driving without a license.
While edifying, the thing that really struck me was how much he sounded exactly like me in the classroom, admonishing my students that they needed to do the class work and homework... not for my benefit, but their own. The more he spoke -- with that exasperated tone that said clearly he knew his words were falling on deaf ears, but he felt the need to say them anyway -- the more he seemed to be in exactly the same role as I am in every day. He's talking to a lot of people who don't want to be there. He has information they need. Information they are fighting to avoid learning, and that he's fighting to make them learn, despite the fact that he receives no benefit from their learning it, and they receive enormous benefit. It's like force-feeding wounded birds to keep them alive. It pisses them off, it does you no good while saving their lives, and they're not only not grateful, they're actively hostile.
As Buckaroo Bonzai said many years ago, no matter where you go, there you are.
Before he started hearing cases, the judge took about 15 minutes to explain the rules of the court and the process that would occur depending on the outcome of the hearing. After the first 4 people came before him and answered "No" to the question of whether they'd obtained a valid driver's license, he sighed and began a 5 minute lecture on the importance of taking care of the problem now, before it becomes a bigger one (with a 5 year prison sentence possibility), just for driving without a license.
While edifying, the thing that really struck me was how much he sounded exactly like me in the classroom, admonishing my students that they needed to do the class work and homework... not for my benefit, but their own. The more he spoke -- with that exasperated tone that said clearly he knew his words were falling on deaf ears, but he felt the need to say them anyway -- the more he seemed to be in exactly the same role as I am in every day. He's talking to a lot of people who don't want to be there. He has information they need. Information they are fighting to avoid learning, and that he's fighting to make them learn, despite the fact that he receives no benefit from their learning it, and they receive enormous benefit. It's like force-feeding wounded birds to keep them alive. It pisses them off, it does you no good while saving their lives, and they're not only not grateful, they're actively hostile.
As Buckaroo Bonzai said many years ago, no matter where you go, there you are.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
It Takes a Village Idiot
My tenure as a Pre-IB teacher ended today, not with a bang but a whimper. The story I've been told (and I believe, for the most part) is that my "demotion" from pre-IB has to do with student and parent complaints about my teaching rather than my outburst in the faculty meeting a few weeks ago. I can live with that.
My teaching philosophy tends to be "If you're willing to work at it, I can not only teach you a considerable amount of valuable mathematics, I can also show you some of the beauty of the subject along the way." It isn't "I consider it my responsibility to find a way to teach you the bare minimum of mathematics you must know to pass the state-mandated tests, whether or not you're willing to cooperate in that attempt." That second philosophy is a great one to have -- possibly even the only appropriate one to have -- when teaching a standard course at a school such as the one at which I find myself. The low-level kids who need to pass the state-mandated test to get their high school diploma are not now, nor ever will be, interested in the beauty of mathematics. The ship upon which travels their capacity to absorb any but the most rudimentary mathematical concept has long since sailed. They need a teacher who cares about them, individually, and wants to help by making the math they must learn as digestible as possible. It is a noble calling, and I admire the teachers who heed that call. But it is a cold and barren field in which to toil for someone who loves mathematics as I do.
I was enormously excited when I learned I'd be teaching all honors courses, including an AP class and two Pre-IB classes. Here, I believed -- particularly in the Pre-IB courses -- I could loose these students on the subject while acting as tour guide, pointing out surprising depths lurking just beneath the simplest concepts, taking short excursions onto strange and esoteric landscapes (Mandelbrot sets! Riemann manifolds! Mobius bands and Klein bottles!), mapping out tougher but more beautiful trails for the strongest of the group to explore on their own, and generally stoking the fire of their natural curiosity in the hope that mathematics would captivate them as it has me.
In the real world, my expectation that they would take responsibility for their learning -- seeking tutoring when they were confused about something, getting together with other Pre-IB students to help each other struggle through difficult concepts, and going back to the textbook to teach themselves the material they hadn't understood in class -- was met with the reality that their standard reaction to adversity is to find someone to blame, then complain about that person to everyone they can, in the hope (justified, as it turns out) that their complaints will eliminate their adversity by removing the person responsible for it from their path.
It shouldn't be surprising that students complain about the difficulty of their path. It is, I believe, our job as educators to look for the greater good -- funnel the students who can't or won't make the required effort into other, less challenging courses; inform, as often as necessary, the students who remain (and their parents) that success in the program will require dedicated effort; insist that the resources the kids need (supplies, tutoring help, places for small student groups to meet) be made available; and most importantly, hold teachers, students, parents and administrators to a higher standard of education for these kids, which will necessitate a more difficult path. In this way, we could be providing our best students (most of whom do not have the option to attend a magnet or private school) the opportunity to truly excel both in high school and beyond. Why shouldn't our students go on to study engineering at MIT, or music at Indiana, or marine biology at UC San Diego, or economics at Carnegie Mellon?
Instead, parents, school administrators and, I am given to believe, the district honchos in charge of IB, don't want a tough program for elite students. They want an elite (i.e., high prestige) program that affords its enrollees wonderful benefits without requiring any payment of dues. Unfortunately, I believe all of those constituencies will discover relatively quickly that this is one more arena in which the aphorism "No pain, no gain" is apropos.
It is the students who could have scaled mountains but were directed only to molehills who will suffer.
My teaching philosophy tends to be "If you're willing to work at it, I can not only teach you a considerable amount of valuable mathematics, I can also show you some of the beauty of the subject along the way." It isn't "I consider it my responsibility to find a way to teach you the bare minimum of mathematics you must know to pass the state-mandated tests, whether or not you're willing to cooperate in that attempt." That second philosophy is a great one to have -- possibly even the only appropriate one to have -- when teaching a standard course at a school such as the one at which I find myself. The low-level kids who need to pass the state-mandated test to get their high school diploma are not now, nor ever will be, interested in the beauty of mathematics. The ship upon which travels their capacity to absorb any but the most rudimentary mathematical concept has long since sailed. They need a teacher who cares about them, individually, and wants to help by making the math they must learn as digestible as possible. It is a noble calling, and I admire the teachers who heed that call. But it is a cold and barren field in which to toil for someone who loves mathematics as I do.
I was enormously excited when I learned I'd be teaching all honors courses, including an AP class and two Pre-IB classes. Here, I believed -- particularly in the Pre-IB courses -- I could loose these students on the subject while acting as tour guide, pointing out surprising depths lurking just beneath the simplest concepts, taking short excursions onto strange and esoteric landscapes (Mandelbrot sets! Riemann manifolds! Mobius bands and Klein bottles!), mapping out tougher but more beautiful trails for the strongest of the group to explore on their own, and generally stoking the fire of their natural curiosity in the hope that mathematics would captivate them as it has me.
In the real world, my expectation that they would take responsibility for their learning -- seeking tutoring when they were confused about something, getting together with other Pre-IB students to help each other struggle through difficult concepts, and going back to the textbook to teach themselves the material they hadn't understood in class -- was met with the reality that their standard reaction to adversity is to find someone to blame, then complain about that person to everyone they can, in the hope (justified, as it turns out) that their complaints will eliminate their adversity by removing the person responsible for it from their path.
It shouldn't be surprising that students complain about the difficulty of their path. It is, I believe, our job as educators to look for the greater good -- funnel the students who can't or won't make the required effort into other, less challenging courses; inform, as often as necessary, the students who remain (and their parents) that success in the program will require dedicated effort; insist that the resources the kids need (supplies, tutoring help, places for small student groups to meet) be made available; and most importantly, hold teachers, students, parents and administrators to a higher standard of education for these kids, which will necessitate a more difficult path. In this way, we could be providing our best students (most of whom do not have the option to attend a magnet or private school) the opportunity to truly excel both in high school and beyond. Why shouldn't our students go on to study engineering at MIT, or music at Indiana, or marine biology at UC San Diego, or economics at Carnegie Mellon?
Instead, parents, school administrators and, I am given to believe, the district honchos in charge of IB, don't want a tough program for elite students. They want an elite (i.e., high prestige) program that affords its enrollees wonderful benefits without requiring any payment of dues. Unfortunately, I believe all of those constituencies will discover relatively quickly that this is one more arena in which the aphorism "No pain, no gain" is apropos.
It is the students who could have scaled mountains but were directed only to molehills who will suffer.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Weather Man
Many years ago, I had a fascinating conversation with Walt, a friend who worked in marketing for a cigarette company. (This was back when working for a company providing legal, but politically incorrect, products was a matter of personal conscience, rather than an invitation to be the target of hate mail, death threats, physical harassment and occasionally even violence.) He told me a story about the company's research department presenting an advertising research study and concluding Ad A was better than Ad B because of its higher recall scores, higher favorable ratings, etc. Walt stopped them, and said he wanted to see the scores of the "Marlboro Man" ads using the same methodology. (Marlboro wasn't a brand owned by Walt's company, but it went from an also-ran in the category to a dominant number 1 when Philip Morris introduced the now iconic rugged cowboy image.) Turns out, Marlboro's ad scored lower than either A or B, which was what Walt expected. He told the research people that, until they began basing their conclusions on the results of studies in which Marlboro was the clear winner, those conclusions could not possibly be considered reliable.
The point here is this: so far this year, I've given my kids 11 state-, district- or school-mandated tests (2 more scheduled next week) so that we have pre- and interim-assessments on our kids, in order to better guide our instruction so that they will perform better on the one that actually counts (sort of), at the end of the year. But no one is able to determine whether the assessments actually measure anything of value, and even if they do, whether the results can be effectively used to improve the kids' test grades on the end of year assessment, and even if it does, whether that translates to improved quality of education. Of course, on a macro level, only one thing is absolutely crystal clear: whatever we've been doing hasn't been working.
Everyone, it seems, understands public education is in deep trouble. From teachers in classrooms to principals in schools to Superintendents of county school systems to the President of the United States, each individual in that chain cares about, and is actively working on, improving education. This has probably been true since 1647 (the year Massachusetts began requiring towns of at least 50 families to hire school teachers to educate their children), but has certainly been true for the past 30 years. For the most part, these people are well-intentioned and reasonably bright. Sure, there are snakes in the woodpile, but no more, and no more venomous, than the snakes in woodpiles elsewhere in America. So why has American public education been declining rapidly, by all accounts, and reached a point where America's students are near the bottom of virtually every list of industrialized countries in terms of math and science skills, reading comprehension, and probably several other measures I haven't stumbled across in my quest to find data on the subject?
The issue cannot be money. According to TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study), the US is educating its students in mathematics on a par with the Russian Federation, Slovenia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. And while our spending on public education as a percent of GDP is a "middle of the pack" 5.85%, it is roughly equal to Slovenia's 6.02% and well ahead of Lithuania's 5.18%, the Czech Republic's 4.55% and Russia's 3.67%. Japan, which kills the US (and everyone else) on all these lists of best educated students, spends less than Russia on a GDP basis.
Here's one possibility. I work in District A. District A is one of (if not the) worst districts in the state, as measured by drop-out rates and state-mandated standardized test scores. An adjoining district, cleverly named District B, is the best district in the state on these measures. Now, admittedly, District B is much richer than District A, and that's always the rationale one hears when people discuss the stark difference between the districts. But I'm not buying it. Yes, I think parental involvement is hugely important, and without question, parents in poorer districts are less involved (mostly because they're running as fast as they can just to keep food on the table, or the kid is living with his older sister and her boyfriend, or a dozen other reasons that are money-driven, not concern-driven). But I teach honors classes this year, and the parents are very involved, for the most part, but their kids are still not doing as well as anyone would like.
However, there's another phenomenon that is very different between the districts that I believe has been completely overlooked, but may be enormously important. District A has 17 high schools, of which 3 are academic magnet programs. Those 3 academic magnets are very successful - on a grading scale, they're all A's - whereas of the remaining 14 high schools, 9 are D's and F's, and the other 5 are C's. District B has 6 high schools, none of which are academic magnets, but one of which is a "technical" high school, where kids who are not academically inclined go to learn the standard subjects, but also to be trained in culinary arts, automobile repair, HVAC maintenance, etc. Essentially, it's a trade school. Of the 6 high schools in District B, 5 are A's and 1 is an F. Even the F school - the trade school, of course - is comfortable with its place in the hierarchy. They understand that their students will not perform well on the standardized tests, but they make an effort to prepare the kids to do well enough, and to give them skills they can use when they finish high school. So about 85% of the kids in District B get a very solid high school education in a traditional academic setting, and the other 15% get a decent education and some skills. Whereas in District A, about 15% of kids get a top quality high school education and 85% get at best a mediocre education and no particular skills.
The 5 "A" schools in District B have very high academic expectations - higher than I can even dream about in District A. I think it's worth looking at the "technical" vs. "academic magnet" high school model to see if one of them is better for the overall educational level in the district. My money's on "technical."
The point here is this: so far this year, I've given my kids 11 state-, district- or school-mandated tests (2 more scheduled next week) so that we have pre- and interim-assessments on our kids, in order to better guide our instruction so that they will perform better on the one that actually counts (sort of), at the end of the year. But no one is able to determine whether the assessments actually measure anything of value, and even if they do, whether the results can be effectively used to improve the kids' test grades on the end of year assessment, and even if it does, whether that translates to improved quality of education. Of course, on a macro level, only one thing is absolutely crystal clear: whatever we've been doing hasn't been working.
Everyone, it seems, understands public education is in deep trouble. From teachers in classrooms to principals in schools to Superintendents of county school systems to the President of the United States, each individual in that chain cares about, and is actively working on, improving education. This has probably been true since 1647 (the year Massachusetts began requiring towns of at least 50 families to hire school teachers to educate their children), but has certainly been true for the past 30 years. For the most part, these people are well-intentioned and reasonably bright. Sure, there are snakes in the woodpile, but no more, and no more venomous, than the snakes in woodpiles elsewhere in America. So why has American public education been declining rapidly, by all accounts, and reached a point where America's students are near the bottom of virtually every list of industrialized countries in terms of math and science skills, reading comprehension, and probably several other measures I haven't stumbled across in my quest to find data on the subject?
The issue cannot be money. According to TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study), the US is educating its students in mathematics on a par with the Russian Federation, Slovenia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. And while our spending on public education as a percent of GDP is a "middle of the pack" 5.85%, it is roughly equal to Slovenia's 6.02% and well ahead of Lithuania's 5.18%, the Czech Republic's 4.55% and Russia's 3.67%. Japan, which kills the US (and everyone else) on all these lists of best educated students, spends less than Russia on a GDP basis.
Here's one possibility. I work in District A. District A is one of (if not the) worst districts in the state, as measured by drop-out rates and state-mandated standardized test scores. An adjoining district, cleverly named District B, is the best district in the state on these measures. Now, admittedly, District B is much richer than District A, and that's always the rationale one hears when people discuss the stark difference between the districts. But I'm not buying it. Yes, I think parental involvement is hugely important, and without question, parents in poorer districts are less involved (mostly because they're running as fast as they can just to keep food on the table, or the kid is living with his older sister and her boyfriend, or a dozen other reasons that are money-driven, not concern-driven). But I teach honors classes this year, and the parents are very involved, for the most part, but their kids are still not doing as well as anyone would like.
However, there's another phenomenon that is very different between the districts that I believe has been completely overlooked, but may be enormously important. District A has 17 high schools, of which 3 are academic magnet programs. Those 3 academic magnets are very successful - on a grading scale, they're all A's - whereas of the remaining 14 high schools, 9 are D's and F's, and the other 5 are C's. District B has 6 high schools, none of which are academic magnets, but one of which is a "technical" high school, where kids who are not academically inclined go to learn the standard subjects, but also to be trained in culinary arts, automobile repair, HVAC maintenance, etc. Essentially, it's a trade school. Of the 6 high schools in District B, 5 are A's and 1 is an F. Even the F school - the trade school, of course - is comfortable with its place in the hierarchy. They understand that their students will not perform well on the standardized tests, but they make an effort to prepare the kids to do well enough, and to give them skills they can use when they finish high school. So about 85% of the kids in District B get a very solid high school education in a traditional academic setting, and the other 15% get a decent education and some skills. Whereas in District A, about 15% of kids get a top quality high school education and 85% get at best a mediocre education and no particular skills.
The 5 "A" schools in District B have very high academic expectations - higher than I can even dream about in District A. I think it's worth looking at the "technical" vs. "academic magnet" high school model to see if one of them is better for the overall educational level in the district. My money's on "technical."
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Turns out, sleep IS important.
I lost my cool on Wednesday, and yelled at the principal. In a faculty meeting. And used the f-bomb. Truth is, it had virtually nothing to do with the subject we were, um, discussing, as I suppose these things usually don't... I was frustrated with my classes, hadn't slept more than about 3 hours a night since Sunday, and troubled by a number of other things that aren't going the way I want them to. Nothing big, just a bunch of minor annoyances.
One of my minor annoyances is that I don't feel we (the teachers) get very much support from our administration. For example, this happened a couple of weeks ago:
I had a student transfer into my class about 2 or 3 weeks into the quarter, a few days before the first test. He had (he claims) a 93 in the class he left, but I knew he hadn't taken any tests, so his 93 was in homework and classwork, which counts for only 20% of the grade. Skipping to the end of the story, he failed my class miserably, by virtue of not doing any work and not passing any of several tests and retests. When I told him he was going to fail, he said his 93 should be averaged in, to give him a good grade. I explained that it didn't count for much, because the tests were weighted at 80%. So he went first to the counselor to complain. He then told his father I wasn't counting his transfer grade, and his father called the counselor. After I explained to the counselor what was going on, she (I assume) told him he was out of luck. So he went to the principal. Now, at this point, if I'm the principal, my response to the kid is to say "I'll look into it," then actually have somebody look into it and get back to the kid with the answer. But my principal walks out of his office with the kid in tow, tracks me down (on my planning period), and confronts me about it. I was taken aback, but explained that when he transfered into my class, he hadn't taken any assessments, so his grade was just classwork and homework. The principal then starts probing... "What about pre-assessments? What did he get on the pre-assessments?" I responded that I had no idea, but that he hadn't passed any of my actual assessments. He left me with, "Well, you need to count pre-assessments if they help."
I later looked up the actual grade he had in his previous class (I'd assumed he was telling the truth and gave him a 100 homework grade rather than deal with further complaints, and because it didn't matter - he still flunked). Turns out, his grade in the previous class was (wait for it...) "0." He'd done nothing.
So a few days later I ran into the principal and told him I was a little upset with him confronting me with the kid at his side, and he said "Hey, I'm here for the kids. It's all about the kids." He then went on to claim that once he heard my side of the story, he immediately turned to the kid and sided with me, which isn't the way I recall it happening.
This was, as lack of support goes, pretty minor, but indicative of the larger issue -- it feels to me that if there is a choice between the student's word and the teacher's, they go with the student's. Moreover, all issues seem to me have the same solution:
Kids aren't paying attention? The teacher isn't engaging the students well enough. The teacher needs to work harder.
Kids are talking or texting in class? The teacher hasn't made the policies and procedures clear enough. The teacher needs to work harder.
Kids aren't doing the work? The teacher hasn't made the content relevant enough. The teacher needs to work harder.
Kids don't understand the material? The teacher hasn't unpacked the content and chunked the learning effectively enough. The teacher needs to work harder.
I believe it was once the case that if a kid flunked a class, it was an indication the kid wasn't working hard enough. Now, it's the teacher who isn't working hard enough. The principal visited my room during my planning period about a week ago, and questioned me about the 14 kids in the pre-IB program I'd flunked.
Which is why I had been getting about 3 hours of sleep a night, and was cranky when my students didn't even make an effort to do the classwork I'd given them. Which is why I should have stayed in my room, as I seriously considered doing, when the faculty meeting started.
Within 10 minutes, the principal was talking about teachers giving out too many hall passes, so I piped up with a "But Mr. Teacher, it's an emergency." He responded "You'll just have to wait." I piped up again with "But it's an emergency." This continued for several iterations (with both of us getting more upset) until finally we're yelling at each other, and he yells (something to the effect of) "I can't do your job for you. You have to have control of your classroom," while stabbing his finger my direction. To which I responded (loudly) "So I'm begging you for help, and you're saying 'Fuck you, you're on your own.'"
At that point, he kicked me out of the room. It remains to be seen what the fallout from this will be. He can't fire me, but he can make life miserable.
One of my minor annoyances is that I don't feel we (the teachers) get very much support from our administration. For example, this happened a couple of weeks ago:
I had a student transfer into my class about 2 or 3 weeks into the quarter, a few days before the first test. He had (he claims) a 93 in the class he left, but I knew he hadn't taken any tests, so his 93 was in homework and classwork, which counts for only 20% of the grade. Skipping to the end of the story, he failed my class miserably, by virtue of not doing any work and not passing any of several tests and retests. When I told him he was going to fail, he said his 93 should be averaged in, to give him a good grade. I explained that it didn't count for much, because the tests were weighted at 80%. So he went first to the counselor to complain. He then told his father I wasn't counting his transfer grade, and his father called the counselor. After I explained to the counselor what was going on, she (I assume) told him he was out of luck. So he went to the principal. Now, at this point, if I'm the principal, my response to the kid is to say "I'll look into it," then actually have somebody look into it and get back to the kid with the answer. But my principal walks out of his office with the kid in tow, tracks me down (on my planning period), and confronts me about it. I was taken aback, but explained that when he transfered into my class, he hadn't taken any assessments, so his grade was just classwork and homework. The principal then starts probing... "What about pre-assessments? What did he get on the pre-assessments?" I responded that I had no idea, but that he hadn't passed any of my actual assessments. He left me with, "Well, you need to count pre-assessments if they help."
I later looked up the actual grade he had in his previous class (I'd assumed he was telling the truth and gave him a 100 homework grade rather than deal with further complaints, and because it didn't matter - he still flunked). Turns out, his grade in the previous class was (wait for it...) "0." He'd done nothing.
So a few days later I ran into the principal and told him I was a little upset with him confronting me with the kid at his side, and he said "Hey, I'm here for the kids. It's all about the kids." He then went on to claim that once he heard my side of the story, he immediately turned to the kid and sided with me, which isn't the way I recall it happening.
This was, as lack of support goes, pretty minor, but indicative of the larger issue -- it feels to me that if there is a choice between the student's word and the teacher's, they go with the student's. Moreover, all issues seem to me have the same solution:
Kids aren't paying attention? The teacher isn't engaging the students well enough. The teacher needs to work harder.
Kids are talking or texting in class? The teacher hasn't made the policies and procedures clear enough. The teacher needs to work harder.
Kids aren't doing the work? The teacher hasn't made the content relevant enough. The teacher needs to work harder.
Kids don't understand the material? The teacher hasn't unpacked the content and chunked the learning effectively enough. The teacher needs to work harder.
I believe it was once the case that if a kid flunked a class, it was an indication the kid wasn't working hard enough. Now, it's the teacher who isn't working hard enough. The principal visited my room during my planning period about a week ago, and questioned me about the 14 kids in the pre-IB program I'd flunked.
Which is why I had been getting about 3 hours of sleep a night, and was cranky when my students didn't even make an effort to do the classwork I'd given them. Which is why I should have stayed in my room, as I seriously considered doing, when the faculty meeting started.
Within 10 minutes, the principal was talking about teachers giving out too many hall passes, so I piped up with a "But Mr. Teacher, it's an emergency." He responded "You'll just have to wait." I piped up again with "But it's an emergency." This continued for several iterations (with both of us getting more upset) until finally we're yelling at each other, and he yells (something to the effect of) "I can't do your job for you. You have to have control of your classroom," while stabbing his finger my direction. To which I responded (loudly) "So I'm begging you for help, and you're saying 'Fuck you, you're on your own.'"
At that point, he kicked me out of the room. It remains to be seen what the fallout from this will be. He can't fire me, but he can make life miserable.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Turns out, math isn't important.
An editorial, written by a professor emeritus of mathematics, statistics and computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago is running in McClatchy-owned newspapers today, and states that math's importance to the daily lives of Americans is overrated. In fact, he claims, the attempt to make math seem essential is a marketing ploy by colleges to create and sell mathematics education programs.
He asks exactly the question my students ask, namely "How much math do you really need in everyday life?" and goes on to say you should not only ask yourself that question, but "the next 10 people you meet, say, your plumber, your lawyer, your grocer, your mechanic, your physician or even a math teacher."
I'll leave the "math teacher" issue aside, and address physicians for a moment. Consider the following scenario, a standard of every intro probability and statistics course:
You suspect you may have a brain cloud, for which there is only one cure - jumping into a live volcano. If you do in fact have a brain cloud, you will survive the jump, become perfectly healthy and live happily ever after with someone who looks remarkably like Meg Ryan. If you do not, you will die a gruesome death. However, if you have a brain cloud but do not leap into the volcano, you will die an equally gruesome death within days. So it is imperative you make the right decision, which means you need to know, as surely as possible, whether you have the brain cloud or not.
Fortunately, brain clouds are very rare - affecting only 1 in 1,000,000 people worldwide. Moreover, there is a test for tomhanksiplexy (the technical name for brain cloud) which is accurate 99.9% of the time. There are no other symptoms or indications of any kind (up until the moment of gruesome death, of course).
You go to a physician and take the test. He comes back from the lab, sadly shaking his head, and tells you that you have a 99.9% chance of having a brain cloud, and should go jump in a volcano immediately. Your response is to...
a) jump in a volcano.
b) decry the state of mathematics education in America, and wonder how anyone could imagine it's unimportant.
If you chose (a), you're not alone, but you are, in all likelihood, gruesomely dead. In fact, you're in a mathematical hell crowded not only with high school dropouts, but the vast majority of physicians as well.
Since the test is 99.9% accurate, if 999,999,000 healthy people take it, 999,999 will have false positive results. (one tenth of one percent of 999,999,000 is 999,999). If 1,000 people who have brain clouds take the test, 999 will have correct positive results. So if 1,000,000,000 random people take the test (and 1 of every 1,000,000 has a brain cloud), there will be 1,000,998 positive results, of which 999 will be correct. That's approximately a 0.000998 chance of having a brain cloud, given you have a positive result. Said another way, that means there's a 99.9002% chance you DO NOT have a brain cloud, even if you have a positive test, which is accurate 99.9% of the time.
Nobody expects "the average" person to get that problem right. But people have a right to expect that their physician, when reporting on the results of their most recent battery of tests, will understand what those tests do or do not "prove." Most physicians cannot do that, because math education in America doesn't do a good enough job equipping our future physicians and lawyers and plumbers and grocers with the math and cognition skills to think through a problem like that.
Okay, maybe doctors need math, but surely not lawyers, right? Here's the same problem in a courtroom: In a town with two taxi companies, a woman saw a man rob a liquor store and jump into a cab at 8:07 PM on Tuesday night. The witness testifies that the robber got into a Yellow Cab, which has 10% of the cabs in town; the Ocher Cab company has the rest. You've checked her ability to recognize the difference between the two cabs, and concluded she's accurate 80% of the time. Based on this information, and assuming the witness is telling the truth as she knows it, what are the odds that the perpetrator got into a Yellow Cab?
At this point, my students tell me that if they are confronted with situations like these, they'll just hire someone who's good at math to give them the answer (which, as it turns out, is 50/50). The problem is, they're confronted with these questions every day without ever knowing it. The paper tells us that the number of dropouts in Home County has doubled every year since the consolidation in 1990. No one bats an eye. Store A provides a coupon good for an additional 25% off on pants already on sale for 30% off, whereas Store B has the same pants on sale for 50% off. People who buy at Store A think they've saved money. A group in art class makes a scale model of a building using the same materials they'll use for the one 10 times as tall, note that the model weighs 3 pounds, then are befuddled when 4 of them together can't lift the final project.
In early Mesopotamia, unscrupulous individuals would offer parcels of land for trade that had the same perimeter as the land they wanted, but much smaller area. A knowledge of geometry was vital if you wanted to avoid being swindled. Anyone who plays poker without knowing how to calculate rudimentary odds is giving away his money to those of us who believe math IS important in everyday life. Buying a house or renting an apartment, buying or leasing a car, investing in stocks or savings bonds, choosing a line at the supermarket and a thousand other daily chores are easier and more likely to lead to the outcome you want if you are comfortable with and know how to use some relatively simple mathematics.
We're not teaching kids the Pythagorean Theorem because we believe they'll be in a situation someday where they will need to know the straight line distance between Juan's house and Julie's, which is 4 blocks east and 9 blocks north of Juan's. We're teaching them those things because in their job as District Sales Rep for BigCo., Inc., they'll be much better salespeople if they have been trained to examine problems analytically, and look for solutions using the tools they have in their arsenal. High school isn't a trade school. They may never again, after high school, ponder the morality of Jean Valjean or the empathy of Atticus Finch. They'll certainly never be quizzed on them. But they WILL be better equipped to make judgments about criminal punishment and racial inequities – things they will certainly face in the real world. A similar reality exists for mathematics education, even if some math professors haven't figured it out.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
The Law is an Ass
In researching the title phrase to ensure I remembered it correctly, I discovered things about it I didn't know. In fact, nearly everything I discovered was stuff I didn't know, so rather than write about the things that put me in mind of the phrase, I'm going to write about the phrase I was put in mind of.
For example, I thought it had been uttered by a lawyer. And I thought it was in reference to some bitter result having turned on the unintended consequences of an ill-considered law. In fact, it's much more interesting than that. It's from Oliver Twist, and is said in response to the statement "the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction." The person to whom this statement is directed is unmercifully browbeaten by his domineering wife, and rejoins "If the law supposes that... the law is an ass - an idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor."
I find that verbal exchange absurdly amusing. I'm not sure why, but there it is.
For example, I thought it had been uttered by a lawyer. And I thought it was in reference to some bitter result having turned on the unintended consequences of an ill-considered law. In fact, it's much more interesting than that. It's from Oliver Twist, and is said in response to the statement "the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction." The person to whom this statement is directed is unmercifully browbeaten by his domineering wife, and rejoins "If the law supposes that... the law is an ass - an idiot. If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor."
I find that verbal exchange absurdly amusing. I'm not sure why, but there it is.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Time is the fire in which we burn
I find myself, on an almost daily basis, choosing to take the time I have available to prepare what is required in order to satisfy administrative edicts, rather than prepare a better, more interesting, more involving lesson for my students.
This pisses me off.
First, let me be clear -- it isn't that I'm attempting to determine how to spend the 7.33 hours a day for which I am paid; that time and more is spent (a) teaching - 4.5 hours, (b) in mandatory meetings - 0.6 hours, (c) standing at my door between classes and walking my students to and from the lunchroom (both mandatory) - 0.25 hours, (d) maintaining the classroom (e.g., posting the mandatory agenda board, erasing the white boards in preparation for the next class, straightening desks) - 0.5 hours, (e) recording attendance and grades - 0.25 hours, (f) typing the three mandatory lesson plans per day (note: this isn't "preparing the lesson"... it's "typing the lesson plan") - 0.5 hours, (g) grading papers - 0.75 hours (note: I spend considerably more than 45 minutes grading papers; this is just my "planning period" time).
The time I'm talking about having to allocate to administrative edicts is (all or part of) the extra 3 to 4 hours a day I spend on school work during the week, or the 6 to 10 hours I spend each Saturday and Sunday on the weekends I'm not traveling to see my children. I'm paid a little over $20 an hour for the time delineated in the previous paragraph; I'm unpaid for the time described in this one.
Don't get me wrong -- this isn't a request for pity. I chose to take this job, knowing what it paid, and I choose to work the extra hours, knowing they're unpaid. But I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning with 8 items on my agenda, in order of my estimate of their value to the education of the students in my class:
(1) designing an interesting, challenging, interactive game for my students to play in small groups that involves going to different stations in the room and solving problems like the ones they did so poorly on when taking their recent test. (I have the general concept, but I need to flesh it out.)
(2) using the "Jeopardy" PowerPoint shell to create an in-class review activity for the current module.
(3) planning the next two weeks of classes for each section, so that the students have an idea of what they'll be doing between now and the end of the quarter, and they'll be able to plan how they will bring their grades up prior to the first report card.
(4) writing and printing "scholarship warnings" for all of my students who currently have a D or F in my class. This is somewhere between 50 and 70 students, because the most of them were taken by surprise by their first high school math test. I guess middle school tests were absurdly easy.
(5) grading 5 classes' tests and putting them in the grade system.
(6) printing progress reports for all students so they know what grade they have and what they need to do to improve it. Note: they could go online for this information, but we're required to print the reports anyway.
(7) creating a "standards-based bulletin board" that shows students (who never look at it) how the project displayed on the board is graded, and what a good project would look like.
(8) creating "student-generated" charts. There doesn't seem to be any other requirement for these charts, other than being student-generated. I may have three students in first block tomorrow write "This is a chart generated by a student" on chart paper and hang those up. But probably not.
Of course, it's extremely unlikely I'll get to all 8 things. If I just got to the first 3, I'd feel pretty good. Unfortunately, those 3 items are the three that my administration places no value on. The other 5 are all items that will be checked on by my administration, and for which I will receive a poor evaluation should they be missing or incomplete.
I'm already tired, and it's only 10 AM.
This pisses me off.
First, let me be clear -- it isn't that I'm attempting to determine how to spend the 7.33 hours a day for which I am paid; that time and more is spent (a) teaching - 4.5 hours, (b) in mandatory meetings - 0.6 hours, (c) standing at my door between classes and walking my students to and from the lunchroom (both mandatory) - 0.25 hours, (d) maintaining the classroom (e.g., posting the mandatory agenda board, erasing the white boards in preparation for the next class, straightening desks) - 0.5 hours, (e) recording attendance and grades - 0.25 hours, (f) typing the three mandatory lesson plans per day (note: this isn't "preparing the lesson"... it's "typing the lesson plan") - 0.5 hours, (g) grading papers - 0.75 hours (note: I spend considerably more than 45 minutes grading papers; this is just my "planning period" time).
The time I'm talking about having to allocate to administrative edicts is (all or part of) the extra 3 to 4 hours a day I spend on school work during the week, or the 6 to 10 hours I spend each Saturday and Sunday on the weekends I'm not traveling to see my children. I'm paid a little over $20 an hour for the time delineated in the previous paragraph; I'm unpaid for the time described in this one.
Don't get me wrong -- this isn't a request for pity. I chose to take this job, knowing what it paid, and I choose to work the extra hours, knowing they're unpaid. But I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning with 8 items on my agenda, in order of my estimate of their value to the education of the students in my class:
(1) designing an interesting, challenging, interactive game for my students to play in small groups that involves going to different stations in the room and solving problems like the ones they did so poorly on when taking their recent test. (I have the general concept, but I need to flesh it out.)
(2) using the "Jeopardy" PowerPoint shell to create an in-class review activity for the current module.
(3) planning the next two weeks of classes for each section, so that the students have an idea of what they'll be doing between now and the end of the quarter, and they'll be able to plan how they will bring their grades up prior to the first report card.
(4) writing and printing "scholarship warnings" for all of my students who currently have a D or F in my class. This is somewhere between 50 and 70 students, because the most of them were taken by surprise by their first high school math test. I guess middle school tests were absurdly easy.
(5) grading 5 classes' tests and putting them in the grade system.
(6) printing progress reports for all students so they know what grade they have and what they need to do to improve it. Note: they could go online for this information, but we're required to print the reports anyway.
(7) creating a "standards-based bulletin board" that shows students (who never look at it) how the project displayed on the board is graded, and what a good project would look like.
(8) creating "student-generated" charts. There doesn't seem to be any other requirement for these charts, other than being student-generated. I may have three students in first block tomorrow write "This is a chart generated by a student" on chart paper and hang those up. But probably not.
Of course, it's extremely unlikely I'll get to all 8 things. If I just got to the first 3, I'd feel pretty good. Unfortunately, those 3 items are the three that my administration places no value on. The other 5 are all items that will be checked on by my administration, and for which I will receive a poor evaluation should they be missing or incomplete.
I'm already tired, and it's only 10 AM.
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