More Mythical Myths

Another article was published in the Washington Post taking aim at the myths education reformers are using to dupe the American people, or the media, or something.  It wasn’t so long ago that I used another article using the same myth gimmick as a launching point to talk about some of the major education reform issues that are out there.  These myth articles don’t really do it for me if only because they do not accurately represent the positions they are attempting to debunk.  Thus they are of minimal use.  This one in particular seems to be arguing against…nobody at all.

We’ll do this quickly myth by myth:

Myth 1: Our schools are failing

It isn’t just the education reformers who think a lot of schools are failing.  It is pretty much everyone who has a child in an urban school district.  It is most people paying attention to the educational outcomes of minorities.  Yes, things seem to be trending in the right direction.  But citing rising high school graduation rates that are derived from different methodologies and are often pulled from historically questionable data is not going to change the fact that way too many of our schools don’t educate students.  

Of course not all schools are failing.  There are good ones and bad ones.  Enough are failing and enough are failing in a systemic way that it feels quite cold to argue that there isn’t a problem.  For a little more oomph on this topic, responding to the same article, check out eduwonk who beat me to the punch with his pitch perfect response.

Myth 2: Unions defend bad teachers

Unions do defend bad teachers.  That is part of their job description.  And due-process can easily be code for really long, arduous, complicated process that is easy to file a grievance against.  That being said, unions are not universally bad, nor do they have bad intentions, nor are they unwilling to engage in productive reform.  A lot of the conflict between the reform movement and the unions comes down to negotiating.  There are of course high profile disagreements but on the ground and behind the scenes the relationships are not as antagonistic as they appear in the papers.

The real argument here is about reform minded administrators wanting more power over who their employees are.  This is really a myth about teacher evaluation, tenure and last in, first out policies.  Montgomery County is an interesting example.  I don’t know much about the program but according to the article it did result in 245 teachers exiting the schools over a five year period.  This is an interesting example and an interesting number to cite because 245 teachers over a five year period in a school system with 11,000 teachers seems shockingly low.  That comes out to less than half a percent of teachers per year.  I’ve never seen an organization whose human capital was so good that less than half a percent of its employees were better than replacement level.

Of course, there has been progress and unions have been a part of that progress.  More powerful and fairer evaluations are being developed.  They are still young, they are expensive but they are also essential.

Myth 3: Billionaires know best

There are some notable billionaires putting their money where their mouths are and forking over the dollars to some of the most difficult school districts in the country.  They are attaching those dollars to some pretty specific reform oriented programs that would not be possible without private dollars.  I didn’t realize this was a bad thing.  I’d rather risk Bill Gates’ money on new merit pay programs than tax payer dollars.  He was wrong about small schools, admitted his mistake and has moved on to a new idea that will hopefully be a part of a longer term solution to some of our country’s education woes.

This myth is really an attack on merit pay which I’ve already weighed in on.  But the final sentence really kills me:  “There’s no doubt that these schools can use every dime that rich guys give.  But attaching strings for pet projects is elitist and wasteful.” 

First of all I wouldn’t call merit pay for teachers the pet project of billionaires.  Secondly, wasteful would be pouring a billion dollars into a failing school district with no clear idea of what the money would be used for.  Failing school districts aren’t known for fiscal responsibility or effectively leveraging resources to create systemic success.  That is why they are failing. 

Online Poker Issues...With a Little Education

For those of you who are interested in what I've been up to the last couple weeks, a lot of it has been working on this [PDF]. Beware, it is twenty dense pages about the ins and outs of online poker issues, with a heavy emphasis on legal interpretation.

I have questioned why I have jumped onto the online poker issue so intensely. The obvious answer is I'm incredibly biased because I was playing a lot and winning enough. But even beyond that it began to serve as an interesting gateway into a better understanding of the way our legal system actually works, the ways in which political arguments are made and the powers and limits of activism.

Essentially it has served as a microcosm of a lot of things I was seeing in other arenas, especially politics and education. My stance here, to sum up my research and opinions, are:

• the Department of Justice violated both legal precedent and legislative intent through their interpretation and enforcement of US gambling law.
• the DoJ's actions are essentially without checks.
• the political climate surrounding online poker tends to be one based on dishonest assessments of issues and shameless pandering to people's fears.
• the intentions of the DoJ remain unclear but they failed to solve any of the problems mentioned as reasons to ban online poker
• the online poker mess has cost the US government billions of dollars over the past five years in lost tax revenue, licensing fees and trade concessions

The part of this that really speaks to me beyond the legal questions is the way political debates are conducted. The online poker debate is similar to conversations in education, and really most debates. It is easy to be sidetracked by worries that sound real and solutions that sound obvious. But if people take their time and think about the underlying reasons for taking a particular course of action the logic frequently breaks down.

An example from my paper is that outlawing online poker to protect gambling addicts, which sounds logical, doesn't stop addicts from gambling, it only stops non addicts from playing. Addicts will stop gambling when they learn to manage their addiction. Until then they will find new venues and new games. Therefore, using gambling addiction as a reason to outlaw online poker is faulty logic.

Anyone who can think of similar examples from education please pass them along. I think one possibility is teacher tenure rules are intended to protect good teachers from unfair or discriminatory termination and ensure intellectual freedom. But in many ways good teachers, who are the least likely to be terminated, are the ones punished because teacher tenure rules tend to prevent differentiation among teachers based on anything except seniority. Resulting in a situation where the least deserving of protection gain the most from the protection that is offered while the most deserving lose the most value from investing so much in protection and not enough in merit based raises and bonuses.

Distracting Everyone With Myths That Distract Policymakers: Part V

Another favorite myth from the myths that distract policy makers is that “teacher tenure rules make it impossible to get rid of poor teachers”. According to the refutation the real problems is “ill-trained and supported administrators.” Another point of research indicates it is actually “poor evaluation procedures.” I, personally, feel it is definitely both.

That’s right, I agree that poor evaluation procedures and under supported administrators make it hard for evaluations to work properly and thus make it difficult to get rid of poor teachers. Which is why we should end tenure…period.

Urban school leaders face a million crises every day, and unfortunately I’m only engaging in a little bit of hyperbole. They are CEOs, education leaders, middle managers, politicians with warring constituencies and human. Yes, you have to be crazy to want to be a principal and you have to be crazy to be a good principal. By definition they are under supported, just like the teachers and pretty much everyone involved in urban education. By definition they are ill-trained if only because of the sheer number of things they need to be trained on. So complicated, cumbersome evaluation tools are going to be problematic no matter what, even if their focus is on evaluating their employees rather than ensuring the proper running of their school. Just like in the real world, I think a boss should be allowed to choose their own team. And they will sink or swim with that team. By effectively holding principals accountable, there are fewer incentives for them to play favorites with their employees at the expense of running a successful school. This doesn’t make principals dictators, it gives them the autonomy (a key motivator for successful people) to build a successful environment according to their vision. They still aren’t allowed to abuse employees, discriminate against employees or violate labor laws. The unions exist to protect teachers from abuse, not to protect their jobs. So let everyone do their job.

And yes, sometimes a teacher will get a crazy boss, just like in any profession, who doesn’t value their contributions appropriately. That is the loss of the principal in question. The teacher should be able to find employment at another school if they are an effective, professional teacher. Evaluation, tenure or anything else is not going to protect a teacher from a boss they don’t get along with, it will more likely exacerbate the situation.

Poor evaluations and evaluation procedures are more difficult questions. Nobody can seem to agree on what good teaching looks like. That makes creating good evaluations difficult. Nobody can seem to agree on who should do the evaluating either. DC employed an interesting compromise that included both third-party content experts and principals. This was in response to teacher feedback that wanted to avoid the personal biases of the principal but also include the understanding of context of the principal. DC also employed both announced and unannounced evaluations, allowing for multiple observations, thus avoiding the “30 minutes that mean everything” effect to a great extent. These seem like appropriate compromises but they do require enormous investment. Teacher evaluation is an area where the teachers and teacher unions need to put a flag in the ground and stand by…anything. At least anything other than no meaningful evaluations. Nobody wants to be told they aren’t doing a good job. But ultimately if nobody is telling you where you can be doing better how can you improve? There is no question that administrators and districts must do a better job of creating buy-in for new evaluation systems and show a little empathy and understanding for people who have spent the last twenty years receiving excellent evaluations. But teachers need to be prepared to give a little too and acknowledge that criticism doesn’t have to be a negative experience. Without both sides coming to the table with realistic expectations there are only two outcomes: teachers feeling like they are being attacked and having something done to them or no meaningful evaluations taking place at all.

Lastly, in a world where teachers are the valued, successful professionals, whose great benefit comes from their ability to educate children both as part of a team and individually, tenure isn’t necessary. In the end, effective teachers should always be employable individuals even if they run into a school or school leader that wasn’t the right fit. So if we are to really treat teachers as high-status grown-ups with professional skills and individual talent and not replaceable cogs then abolishing tenure is the way to go. Or at the very least make it an honor won after years of successful service.

Distracting Everyone With Myths That Distract Policymakers: Part III

We’re back, taking on the next myth that is distracting policymakers. Myth number two states that “teaching experience matters little for student achievement.” The refutation in the blog post says it does, even once you get past the first three years, but it has the important conditional: “when teachers teach the same subjects and grade levels consistently, especially during the first five years of teaching.” This is great news but the conclusion I draw from it may not be the one intended by the author.

What the author appears to be trying to accomplish here is to attack ed reformers who are anti veteran teachers. I would argue that the idea that ed reformers are anti veteran teachers is unfounded. Using DC and the controversial IMPACT evaluation system as the example, the score breakdown of all teachers by experience backs up the idea that experience is good.

Regardless, the conditional above is incredibly important for a variety of reasons. One, is simply that in an urban district, where the challenges faced by teachers are so much greater than those elsewhere, it is incredibly difficult to accomplish that type of stability. Of course, if we return to myth one, maybe an answer is making those first couple years more of a residency program that guarantees stability. However, in the reality of urban districts, there is huge teacher turnover, fluctuating enrollment and constantly changing priorities due to constant political turnover. Improving longitudinal tracking of teachers might actually help mitigate some of these realities. And the investment wouldn’t necessarily have to be all that large. Districts already invest heavily in tracking “highly qualified” (a misnomer we can discuss another day) teacher status for NCLB. Leveraging the data behind “high qualified” teacher status and introducing some incentives to encourage teacher assignment consistency, which “highly qualified” does to some extent, could go a long way towards making sure teachers aren’t bounced around too much during their first years.

Of course, once again, really attacking this issue would require rethinking the way teacher assignments and movement are conducted. One of the ways I read the refutation of myth number two is that stability is a huge part of gaining the experience needed to improve as a teacher and it is more important for young teachers than veteran teachers. Veteran teachers already have the experience to handle the many difficult situations faced regularly by urban teachers. So it would seem that the common practice of Last In First Out is the opposite of good policy. Young teachers are more likely to be the ones bounced from school to school through excessing, more likely to be slotted into vacant position where they lack familiarity with the grade level and subject and more likely to be pushed towards the most difficult schools. This is a function of the way teacher tenure and most union contracts are constructed.

We are setting up our most vulnerable teachers for failure before they achieve the experience needed to succeed. Anyone who believes that experience matters, and that it matters a lot longer than many thought if there is stability during the first five years, should be absolutely against Last In First Out. We can help create even stronger veteran teachers if we allow our current crop of new teachers to gain experience in a more stable, managed and supported way. If we really care about the mental health of our teachrs, about supporting their professional development and maximizing their ability to teach our children, then all parties need to wake up and make it happen because for once we could make some real progress without a lot of pain.