Month: June 2013

The Quality of Teacher Training is Not…

John Merrow 2013 Blogs

Picture this: You are heading to the doctor’s office for your annual physical. As you approach her office, your doctor calls out the window, “You don’t need to come in. Just walk back and forth a few times while I watch. That should be sufficient.”

Crazy, right? You wouldn’t trust that diagnosis and might find yourself a new doctor.

That analogy is a pretty fair description of the survey and analysis released by the National Council on Teacher Quality, “Teacher Prep Review,” last week. The NCTQ report covers 608 schools and colleges of education, about half of the American programs, awards stars, issues warnings, and generally lambastes the field.

But, like your doctor looking out the window and making a diagnosis, NCTQ did not visit campuses or sit in on classes. The authors read course catalogues and syllabi and from that very limited view drew conclusions. Flawed, right?

Now go back to your doctor. Suppose she sees that you are walking with a pronounced limp and hears your rasping cough. She can be pretty confident about concluding that you are not in good health. She might not know exactly what is wrong with you, but she knows you have health problems.

That’s the weird thing about the NCTQ study: it’s a deeply flawed report that is fundamentally correct. Teacher education is just not very good, which is what the report says, even as it gets a lot of important details wrong. For example, it mislabels a lot of specific college and university programs.

Of the 608 institutions studied, only four received the top rating, four stars. Roughly 160 programs received zero stars, and another 301 just one star. Of the 608 programs, only 100 received three or more stars. Pretty grim.{{1}}

Why no campus and classroom visits for NCTQ? The answer can be found in a footnote on page 78: only 1% of institutions agreed to participate. When the study was originally announced, I was in the room when the leader of one very prestigious school of education explained that her institution would not be participating because she–and most leaders–believed that the study would be biased and unfair. NCTQ’s leader, Kate Walsh, had a long history, she said, of being anti-schools of education, and she and her peers believed that Walsh was beginning from her conclusions and would be working backward to find evidence to support them.

Walsh strongly defends the study and its methods, citing a dozen pilot studies prior to beginning the survey work and the thoroughness of their analysis and review. But her own views are both strong and well-known. Not one to mince words, she said to me last year that she could not stand Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford’s teacher education program because “she’s an out-and-out liar. She gets up on stage and tells lie after lie.” (Stanford’s highly regarded programs received 1 ½ stars and 2 ½ stars, on a scale of 0-4.) {{2}}

For more, listen to Jane Williams’ interview with Kate Walsh (.mp3). Walsh tells Williams that teacher education is ‘wholesale mediocrity.’ She says that she began her research with what she calls a common assumption–teacher education was a problem–but says she conducted the study without bias. And Williams, a real pro, pushes Walsh hard on her support for Teach for America.

How can a shallow study get the big picture right? For one thing, the admissions policies are public record: only 25% of schools of education require that candidates come from the top half of their academic class. The other 75% apparently can accept anyone. (In Finland, all prospective teachers must be in the top third!)

The NCTQ study asserts that three-quarters of schools of education do not instruct prospective teachers about effective ways of teaching reading, certainly the essential foundational skill. From reading syllabi and course catalogues and not finding references to established research findings, NCTQ’s President Walsh asserts that instruction is “loosey-goosey,” with professors urging their students to “find their own ways” of teaching reading, instead of making sure they understand the importance of phonemic awareness, phonics and comprehension.

I have only anecdotal evidence in this particular area, but my experience supports Walsh.

Why does this matter? Well, our teacher training institutions graduate about 200,000 teachers every year. Those who get jobs end up teaching about 1.5 million kids in their first year. If the rookies are not well prepared, then those children are the losers. And since first year teachers are often given the worst assignments–struggling kids, perhaps children living in disadvantaged circumstances–that’s a double whammy.

In a conference call with reporters the day the report was released, Walsh said that most schools of education look down on the idea of ‘training’ for teachers. Many professors believe that ‘training creates automatons,’ she said. That makes no sense, she said, because, if teaching is a true profession like medicine and law, then teachers require training, just as doctors and lawyers do. As far as I can see, the report does not provide evidence for that assertion, so that may be just Walsh’s opinion.

Walsh believes in a market solution. People thinking about teaching will read this report and choose institutions that earned three or more stars, she said. This pool of educated consumers will force the zero-star and one-star places to shape up. Apparently she’s assuming that her study will be revised and updated every year, much like the US News & World Report rankings of colleges. And perhaps she believes that the 99% of schools of education that boycotted this time around will be shamed into participating.

I don’t think the market will solve the problem, and I don’t expect schools of education to overcome their aversion to Walsh.

It might help if schools of education were forced by their universities to raise their admission standards. Then matters would have to improve, because ed schools would have to sell themselves. Better qualified candidates would expect more from their professors.

If more of education’s heroic leaders like Larry Rosenstock of High Tech High decide to train teachers, the system will have to improve because it will have real competition.

But in addition to raising the bar for prospective teachers, we need to make it easier to be a teacher. Right now systems throw rookies into the deep end of the pool, telling them to ‘sink or swim.’ That has never made any sense, and it makes even less sense now in a time of widespread teacher bashing. Programs that provide one-year teaching internships make sense. School districts that arrange for rookies to spend their first year watching and learning make sense. Schools that make time for teachers to watch each other teach are doing the right thing. Changing how schools operate will keep good people in the system longer, and that should be our goal.

Here’s my bumper sticker: “Harder to become, easier to be”

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[[1]]1. Arthur Levine, the former President of Teachers College, Columbia, did his own study in 2006 and concluded that 10% of programs were strong, 20% were poor, and the rest–70%–mediocre. That’s slightly more optimistic than the NCTQ study. Dr. Levine, however, visited campuses and classes.[[1]]
[[2]]2. That debate continues. Here’s one link. [[2]]

Is Michelle Rhee a Fraud?

John Merrow 2013 Blogs, Michelle Rhee

“Thank you for showing the world that Michelle Rhee is a fraud.” The woman who said that to me at a banquet at the Harvard Club last week is known to serious education wonks. “I have been sending your exposé to governors and legislators all over the country,” she added. “In fact, Governor (name withheld by me) told me he was grateful for your one-man crusade against Rhee because she is hurting the teaching profession.”

This was a crowded and noisy social event, and so I could correct only one part of her statement, the ‘one-man crusade’ mistake. I reminded her that the critical piece of reporting, “Michelle Rhee’s Reign of Error,” is the work of FIVE veteran journalists with more than 175 years of reporting experience.

Linda Mathews is a Harvard-trained lawyer who led the investigative team at USA Today that uncovered the erasure scandal in 2010.
Jack Gillum, one of three reporters on that remarkable USA Today story, is now an investigative reporter for the Associated Press.
Jay Mathews is the distinguished reporter and columnist for the Washington Post whose “Class Struggle” column is must reading for those interested in education.
Michael Joseloff, a producer for ABC, CBS, PBS and the NewsHour, has received four Emmy Awards for his work.

The five of us have written eight books and have received two George Foster Peabody Awards, four Emmy Awards, the George Polk Award, the Grantham Prize, two Benjamin Fine Awards, five Ciné Golden Eagles, an American Bar Association Silver Gavel and the McGraw Prize.

Had we not been in a crowd, I would also have said that fraud was her word, not ours. We documented how Michelle Rhee looked the other way when presented with pretty strong evidence that adults, not students, were responsible for the suspicious erasures. We don’t know why she failed that leadership test, only that she clearly did. Perhaps, as Jack Nicholson thundered in “A Few Good Men,” she couldn’t “handle the truth.” Perhaps she was putting her own career ahead of the interests of children. Does that make her a fraud? That’s your call, not ours.

In a less crowded and rushed atmosphere, I would also have disputed the use of the word ‘crusade.’ Linda, Jack, Jay, Michael and I are interested in the truth, but that doesn’t make us ‘crusaders.’

Finally, I would have told her that the full story still has not been told. For months now the DC schools have been dragging their feet on my Freedom of Information request for email correspondence related to Sandy Sanford, the author of that secret memo. “Soon,” they keep saying. What are they hiding?

Meanwhile, down in Atlanta, the criminal justice system is preparing to try Beverly Hall and others for their alleged roles in the cheating scandal in that city.

The Common Core and the End of the World

John Merrow 2013 Blogs, Common Core

In case you haven’t been paying attention, the arrival of the Common Core apparently means the end of the world as we know it. Below are some of recent apocalyptic warnings from people on the left and the right (with other earlier doomsday predictions interspersed).

My own thoughts are in the final paragraphs.

From Senator Rand Paul (R, KY):
“There are few things more dangerous to our liberty and prosperity than allowing federal bureaucrats and politicians to control our children.   Their newest plot is called Common Core – a dangerous new curriculum that will only make public education worse and waste more of our money. … If we want America to once again lead the world in education standards, we need to get rid of top-down federal schemes that put every child into the same box. The first step toward regaining parental control of education is stopping Common Core.”

(“The world will end in 1284” Pope Innocent III, writing in 1213)

From Anthony Cody, a left-leaning blogger and former teacher:
“The tests associated with Common Core are likely to renew the false indictment of our public schools. Proficiency rates are predicted to drop by at least 30%. There will be a significant expansion in the number and frequency of tests, and the technology needed to fully implement to Common Core will divert billions of scarce education dollars.”

(“An epic flood beginning on February 20, 1524 will drown the world’s population and end civilization” Johannes Stoffler, a German scholar)

From Stanley Kurtz in The National Review:
“A thinly veiled attempt to circumvent the legally and constitutionally enshrined principle of state-level control over education.”

(“Yea verily, the world will end in 1697” Cotton Mather, the Puritan preacher. When the earth continued into 1698, he predicted that it would end in 1716.  When the world survived again, Dr. Mather made a final doomsday prediction: it would end in 1736.  Wrong again.)

From Mr. Cody:
“And what about a democratic process? We are apparently about to be handed a set of standards that will dictate what is taught in millions of classrooms across this nation. How will these have been arrived at? Who, besides the Gates Foundation millionaire’s club and the standardized test companies and the publishing companies will have been engaged in this profoundly civic process?”

(“The seven tails of Halley’s Comet will impregnate the earth’s atmosphere, setting it and the entire world ablaze, destroying the planet” French astronomer Camille Flammarion, writing in 1910.)

From the “The Common Core: Education without Representation” website:
“(Linda Darling-Hammond’s) ideas are being absolutely shoved down the throats of state school boards and legislators nationally.  And she is dead set on Common Core being the means to these ends. … To translate:  Linda Darling-Hammond pushes for communism in the name of social justice, for a prison-like view of schooling in the name of extended opportunity, and for an increased federal role in education in the name of fairness.”

(“The world will come to an end in 1999” This grim fate was predicted by Nostradamus, language teacher Charles Berlitz, a number of religious cult figures, and Yale President (1795-1817) Timothy Dwight IV.  All were mistaken.)

From Diane Ravitch:
“The Common Core standards have been adopted in 46 states and the District of Columbia without any field test. They are being imposed on the children of this nation despite the fact that no one has any idea how they will affect students, teachers, or schools. We are a nation of guinea pigs, almost all trying an unknown new program at the same time.”

Finally, a doomsday prediction from Sheldon Harnick in 1958 (Older readers, please feel free to sing along)

They’re rioting in Africa
They’re starving in Spain
There’s hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don’t like anybody very much.
But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For man’s been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud
And we know for certain that some lucky day
Someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away. {{1}}

Folks, the world as we know it is not coming to an end.  In fact, the Common Core–done right–could make schools a lot more interesting and rewarding for both students and teachers.

The Common Core has four distinct aspects: 1) The State Standards, 2) Curricula, 3) Teacher Retraining (called ‘Professional Development’), and 4) Assessments.  Hysteria from right and left, and misinformation of the sort propagated by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus {{2}} in the New York Times ‘Review’ on June 8th don’t help.  Calming down will.

The Standards themselves could get us out of the box we’re now in– a narrow curriculum–because they call for critical thinking, speaking persuasively, listening, teamwork and some other skills that make sense, in addition to math and English.  They raise the academic bar in most places (although Massachusetts believes its current standards are more demanding).  Although they were developed by governors and others in the states, the Common Core State Standards do have a Washington connection: the Obama Administration has used Race to the Top grants to get states to sign on. All but 5 states have, although some are now wavering.

States and districts are free to choose whatever Curricula they wish, because this is not a national curriculum created by ‘pointy-headed bureaucrats at the U.S. Department of Education.’  Instead, the curriculum part of the Common Core is likely to be a free-for-all, with publishers and hucksters alike stamping all their materials “Aligned with the Common Core.”  Buyer beware!  On the plus side, classroom teachers are developing units and sharing them when they proved to be effective. New York State and New York City are encouraging teachers to share, and I hope there will be a lot of that going on.

Many teachers will need retraining, because the Common Core requires new ways of teaching.  Because the Common Core assumes that students will have a lot more responsibility, many teachers will have to learn to give up control.  So far I haven’t heard of any states or districts ponying up the dollars that the retraining will cost, and that could be a problem.

The Assessments, however, are a bigger problem and may turn out to be the soft underbelly of the whole enterprise.  The Feds are paying two consortia to develop the tests, and the government contracts specify that the tests must produce data that can be used to evaluate teachers and principals!

Moreover, the test developers envision computer-based tests, where kids wearing headphones are sitting in front of desktop computers, clicking and writing short responses (which may be graded by machines).  They’re thinking this way, one consortium representative told me, because “We don’t trust teachers.”

Here’s what I believe: The Common Core will fail miserably unless we trust teachers. Computers cannot assess speaking and listening skills, nor teamwork, nor about half of the skill set the Common Core values.  That requires well-trained professionals.

So we have a choice: Rely upon computers to test that narrow band (of same-old, same-old stuff). If we do that, many teachers will teach to that test because they know they’re being evaluated on those scores, and that in turn means that nothing important will change. Say goodbye to the spirit and essence of Common Core.

Or we can learn to trust teachers, teachers who will be better trained because we will, of course, get smart and invest in Professional Development.

So the advent of the Common Core is not the end of the world, dire predictions to the contrary notwithstanding. It’s an incredible opportunity for teachers to reclaim their profession.

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[[1]]1. The Kingston Trio made that song very popular in the mid-1960’s.[[1]]

[[2]]2. For openers, “Who’s Minding the Schools?” manages to conflate the Common Core State Standards and curriculum. The Standards are NOT curriculum; what is taught and how it’s taught are left to states and districts, but the authors call it ‘a radical curriculum.’[[2]]

Making Demands

John Merrow 2013 Blogs, Michelle Rhee, Standardized tests

If you were regional sales manager for, say, washing machines, auto parts or lawn fertilizer, you might insist on performance guarantees from your sales reps, perhaps with the promise of bonuses for superior performance.  But suppose you were a school superintendent?  What guarantees would be appropriate to demand from your principals?

I pose the question because some former principals in Washington, DC, recently shared their correspondence with former Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee.  Here are two examples, one of which uses ‘safe harbor’–a gain of at least ten percentile points–as the target.

On September 27, 2007, Chancellor Rhee wrote Carol Barbour, principal of Rudolph Elementary School, “You are guaranteeing me that you will see a bump in test scores from 29.2% in English and 26.9% in math (proficient and advanced) to ‘safe harbor’ in the coming year. I plan to hold you accountable to these goals.”{{1}}

One day later the Chancellor wrote Lucia Vega, principal of Powell Elementary School, “You are guaranteeing me that you will see a bump in test scores from 22.7% to 27.7% in English and 22.0% to 37.0% in math of students who are proficient and advanced. This is a substantial amount of progress to make in one year, and I plan to hold you accountable to meeting this goal.” {{2}}

Those one-on-one meetings were tense affairs, according to former Associate Superintendent Francisco Millet, who sat in on many of them.{{3}} “In that 15-minute period she would ask each one of the principals, ‘When it comes to your test scores, what can you guarantee me?’ And she would write it down. And you could cut through the air with a knife, there was so much tension.”

As I read those emails, I found myself wondering what I would want school principals to guarantee in writing if I were their superintendent.  Here’s my thinking: Because what we choose to measure reveals what we value, I would use performance guarantees to send a clear message to my principals about what matters:

Dear Principal Smith,

In our meeting we established the following eight goals for your school.  Please understand that I am going to hold you accountable for achieving them, just as I expect you to hold me accountable for providing you with the resources you need to achieve them.

1. Daily recess of at least 30 minutes for every child;

2. Art and/or music at least three times a week for every student;

3. Detailed records of pupil and teacher absenteeism, including patterns and your strategies for dealing with problems;

4. At least one opportunity per week for every teacher to observe a colleague’s teaching;

5. At least four evening events involving parents and interested community members, such as a student talent show;

6. A maximum of one week of ‘test prep’ activities;

7. Evidence of ‘project-based learning’ and other group projects using technology to involve others schools, either in-district or out;

8. Reliable evidence of academic improvement, including student performance on our district’s standardized test.

Respectfully,

John Merrow, Superintendent

Every one of these goals is measurable.  Perhaps some should be more specific. Perhaps I have omitted goals that you would insist upon. Feel free to edit them.

I leave you with two big questions: “Is it reasonable for superintendents to enter into this bargain with their principals?”  And “Could setting multiple and varied goals, such as the ones I chose, be a healthy giant step away from our current obsession with test scores?”

Your thoughts?

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[[1]]1. Principal Barbour ‘resigned under duress,’ according to a grievance she filed in August, 2008. Rudolph did not achieve the ‘safe harbor’ gains. It improved from 29.23% to 36.45% in reading but declined in math from 26.92% proficient to 16.82%.[[1]]

[[2]]2. Principal Vega made both goals. Her students went  from 21.97% to 48.94% in math and from 22.7% to 34.04% in reading. However, she resigned under pressure in the spring of 2008–before the test results were announced.  According to sources, about two dozen principals, including Ms. Vega, were offered a choice between resigning or being fired. Ms. Vega wrote in her undated letter to the Chancellor, “It is with great sorrow that I am hereby tendering my resignation to you effective July 15, 2008. Although there is much to say, I believe the reasons leading to this decision are known by you, and I will therefore leave them unsaid at this time.” [[2]]

[[3]]3. For more, see “Michelle Rhee’s Reign of Error”[[3]]