teaching

Further Proof that Teachers Matter

John Merrow Michelle Rhee, teachers unions, teaching

Last week I endorsed the use of data to identify ineffective teachers and—THIS IS IMPORTANT—the administrators who have known the identity of the underperforming teachers and have not acted.  That set off a firestorm, which I take to be indicative of the issue’s importance.

Credit: Sally Ryan / The Chicago News Cooperative

The LA teachers union is outraged, but according to reports it is also now being pressured by the school district and by AFT president Randi Weingarten (!) to reconsider. Here’s part of what the Los Angeles Times reported:

The Los Angeles Unified School District will ask labor unions to adopt a new approach to teacher evaluations that would judge instructors partly by their ability to raise students’ test scores — a sudden and fundamental change in how the nation’s second-largest district assesses its educators.

The teachers union has for years staunchly resisted using student test data in instructors’ reviews.

The Times also reports that LAUSD has had this information for years but has not acted because of inertia and fear of the union. I disagree: I think it goes back to the system’s willingness to tolerate mediocrity.

A number of respondents to last week’s post attacked my reasoning. Knowing that I am an opponent of simple bubble tests and have spoken out on the importance of multiple measures, they wondered how I could get behind a system that was using so-called ‘value added’ data and nothing else.

I cop to the charge of inconsistency and defend myself thusly: nothing else was happening! Continue reading →

Proof that teachers matter

John Merrow teachers unions, teaching

On Sunday the Los Angeles Times published a story that has created a small firestorm in education circles. Three reporters documented the effects that teachers have on their students’ test results.  And they named names, so that now the world knows that students in John Smith’s fifth grade class start out ahead but lose ground as the year goes on, while Miguel Aguilar’s fifth graders follow the opposite trajectory: they do poorly at the start but outscore Mr. Smith’s students by year’s end.

Over seven years, John Smith's fifth-graders have started out slightly ahead of those just down the hall but by year's end have been far behind. (Irfan Khan, Los Angeles Times)
(Irfan Khan, Los Angeles Times)

Those are just two of the names the Times printed, and the union is furious, calling for a boycott of the paper.

But is it wrong to speak the truth?  Is it wrong to call out ineffective teachers?  Continue reading →

Schools and Cyberbullying

John Merrow Below C Level, bullying, parenting, teaching

In late June Jan Hoffman of the New York Times explored the tough issue of cyberbullying and the schools. She led her provocative piece with an anecdote about parents asking their 6th grade daughter’s principal to intervene in a particularly difficult situation involving abusive and sexually suggestive email from a boy. They didn’t want to involve the police, and they knew the boy’s parents socially. The principal’s response was cut and dried: “This occurred out of school, on a weekend. We can’t discipline him.”

CyberbullingAt first I thought that was a legalistic, hair-splitting response—until I read about a principal who did get involved, was subsequently sued by the angry parent of the offending child, and lost. That’s horrifying, but it’s the reality.

My takeaway, however, is not that schools are right to split hairs and decline to get involved. Instead, I think we need some redefinition, some fresh thinking.

Continue reading →

Thinking out loud about remedial education

John Merrow innovation, teaching, technology

I’m in Seattle, where about 250 people, mostly grantees of the Gates Foundation, have gathered to talk about increasing the rate of success in higher education, especially among low-income students. My role is to lead a conversation with three individuals who represent three different slices of the industry: public community colleges, for-profit institutions, and on-line universities.

The Foundation was kind enough to suggest some opening questions, such as “How can we serve more low-income students better, faster and cheaper?” and “What do each of your institutions have to offer?” and “What will higher education look like 5-10 years from now?”

Maybe it’s because I am still medicated after my recent knee replacement surgery, but I find my mind wandering to other, perhaps more provocative questions. Continue reading →

Remembering a Bold School Leader

John Merrow Michelle Rhee, teaching

It feels like a death in the family. A charismatic middle school principal in Washington, DC, was murdered in his home last week, and we are mourning his loss. Brian Betts was one of a kind, an educator who gave up a comfortable job in a suburban district to ‘answer the call’ when Michelle Rhee became Chancellor in Washington. He wanted a challenge, and Rhee, recognizing his skills and devotion, assigned him to one of her tougher schools, a middle school with a history of low performance that was also merging with another low performing school.Brian Betts

Brian jumped in with both feet. He eagerly turned the page on the past and created a new identity for the school. With extra money from Rhee, he hired coaches for his teachers, coaches who taught the teachers to start their planning by writing the final exam and then working backward from there. With carte blanche on hiring, he brought in virtually an entirely new staff, and he made it clear to them that he expected results–or they would not be around long.

Kids loved him. That was apparent to anyone who spent time in the building or outside it before the first bell. He would greet children by name and with a hug, dozens and dozens of them. For someone like me–I sometimes struggle to remember my own name–this was an awesome display. Continue reading →

Time to Stand and Deliver

John Merrow bullying, Op-ed, teaching , , ,

Two recent events put the best and worst of public education in sharp relief. The first was the death of America’s best known schoolteacher, Jaime Escalante, made famous in the 1988 film, “Stand and Deliver.” Jaime EscalanteIn that movie, Edward James Olmos brought to life Escalante’s inspiring story of his firm belief in the abilities of his inner city students at Garfield High School. He did what our best teachers do–he stood up for students, challenging them to strive. Escalante, 79, had bladder cancer.

The second event is a figurative cancer, the inexplicable and disgraceful inaction of an unknown number of teachers and administrators at a public high school in South Hadley, Massachusetts, who were—according to the district attorney–aware of the harsh bullying of a 15-year-old girl by a handful of students and yet did nothing. Multiple felony indictments of nine teenagers were announced last week, all classmates of Phoebe Prince, who hung herself in January. No adults were charged.

Jaime Escalante gained national prominence in the aftermath of a 1982 scandal surrounding 14 of his Garfield High School students who, after they passed the Advanced Placement calculus exam, were accused of cheating. As Elaine Woo wrote in the LA Times, “The story of their eventual triumph — and of Escalante’s battle to raise standards at a struggling campus of working-class, largely Mexican American students — became the subject of the movie, which turned the balding, middle-aged Bolivian immigrant into the most famous teacher in America.” Mr. Olmos, who helped raise money to defray the teacher’s medical costs, said, “Jaime didn’t just teach math. Like all great teachers, he changed lives’.

The teachers and administrators in South Hadley also changed lives, one permanently. Continue reading →

Teacher Seniority – Excerpt from Below C Level

John Merrow Below C Level, Op-ed, teaching

This is an excerpt from Chapter 22 of my forthcoming book, Below C Level. For this post I have removed the footnotes.

Chapter 22 Excerpt

Where seniority rules, new teachers are likely to suffer. They are often assigned to the least desirable schools, given the “worst” classes, the most preparations and the additional assignments nobody else wants. But here’s a radical thought: Seniority, at least in its most rigid forms, hurts veteran teachers, too.

SeniorityIt’s not difficult to find administrators who dislike the rigidities of seniority. When I asked an assistant principal how his elementary school went about hiring teachers, he answered wryly: “You want to know how we fill vacancies? We don’t. A day or two before school opens, someone shows up with some paperwork and says, ‘I’m your new fourth-grade teacher. Where’s my classroom?’ And we take the paperwork and point to the empty room.”

His distaste was palpable. Continue reading →

Unlearning Bad Science

John Merrow Op-ed, school reform, teaching

The annual reports of the so-so performance in science by American students on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) cause hand wringing, but I worry that the news will lead to more testing. I believe that would make matters worse, because more testing would inevitably lead to more rote teaching of the material that lends itself to multiple-choice questions. It could lead to dumbing down the science curriculum, which will drive competent teachers either to distraction or to other occupations. Junk Science by Bill Keaggy

The big picture isn’t much brighter, what with some school districts embracing “creation science” as deserving of equal billing with evolution.

All of this is obscuring what may be a greater challenge – unlearning bad science.

A few years ago I watched a teacher at Cary Academy in North Carolina ask his science students which organism had the most chromosomes per cell: mosquitoes, corn, broad beans, cats or humans? The kids picked humans, which is correct, because we have 46 chromosomes, while cats have 38 and mosquitoes only 6. Then the teacher expanded the list to include horses, chickens, goldfish and potatoes. Once again, his students confidently chose their own species. At that point he told them that even potatoes, with 48 chromosomes, beat us humans, and goldfish had 104 chromosomes, more than twice as many as humans.

The students were stunned (as they are every year). How could they be less evolved than a potato? Or a horse? Continue reading →

The Super Bowl, A Sea of Media and Control

John Merrow Op-ed, parents, teaching , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Several seemingly unrelated subjects have been floating around in my head lately.  The first involves New Orleans, a city that’s gone crazy about its football team’s first appearance in the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 7th.

Saints

Some school districts and private and parochial schools around New Orleans have canceled school for the Monday after the game, reasoning that most students would be partying hard all weekend and wouldn’t show up anyway.

Call me an old fogey, but I find closing schools to be irresponsible behavior on the part of the adults. Are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders going to be worn out from partying? What are working parents supposed to do, or are they also exempt from going to work?

Worse, however, the educators are bypassing a remarkable teachable moment, a chance to connect learning with the city’s obsession with the Saints. Continue reading →

Teaching for America or Learning on the Job?

John Merrow Op-ed, teaching, TFA , , , , , ,

To what extent is classroom teaching a skill?  How long does it take to learn those skills, and is there a best way to learn them?

Teaching for AmericaThese are important questions at any time, but I submit they are of particular importance today, with Teach for America (and other alternative routes into the classroom) growing in popularity.

No doubt about Teach for America’s ascendancy.  During the presidential campaign both candidates spoke favorably about the program, and President Obama often speaks highly of it.  Continue reading →