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 →

Solving a man-made problem

John Merrow reading, summer

One of education’s dirty little secrets is that schools give what they call their ‘end of the year’ tests about six weeks before the end of school. The school year is only 5/6th of the way done, but it’s testing time, and everything stops.

School's outThink about that for a moment, maybe put yourself in the shoes of a teacher or a student. If you’re a kid, the message is clear: the year is over! Time to kick back and relax. However, if you happen to be a conscientious teacher, you have to climb a big hill every morning and afternoon for the next five or six weeks, because you have to try to interest your students in what they know doesn’t matter.

Left unexplored is what’s being tested. Do these tests cover everything that the students are supposed to have learned, or merely 5/6ths of the material? If they cover everything, isn’t that unfair to those who are being judged by the results (students and, increasingly, their teachers)? If they cover just 5/6th of the course content, will that mean that many students will never get past, say, World War II in history?

Why this happens is no mystery: it’s done for administrative convenience, to give the test companies time to run the test papers through their machines, process the scores, and get them back to the school districts as early as possible in the summer. With so many tests and so few companies, the bottleneck is frightening, worse than the lines at the toll booths on a summer evening when everyone is driving back from the beach.

What makes this bottleneck worse are the mistakes that occur. Imagine if the toll collectors randomly collected different amounts from some drivers! That’s what happens when the machines begin their mass processing: they make mistakes! Continue reading →

One Good Turn…

John Merrow Testing

If you’re a reporter or any sort of education wonk, then you’ve been aware of FairTest, the shorthand name for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. The folks at FairTest have been superb advocates, warning us of the dangers of mindless embraces of bubble tests and cheap standardized, machine-scored exams.

Fair Test

I believe we need FairTest more than ever. No Child Left Behind is still the law of the land and is likely to remain so for many months. As we move toward common standards, we need voices calling for multiple ways of evaluating schools, teachers and students. Those who believe that one score tells it all are sadly wrong, but they are also very powerful.

Sophie Sa, a friend of many years who is now FairTest’s Board Chair, reminded me that FairTest was created in 1985 “to fight against the misuses and abuses of high-stakes standardized norm-referenced tests … while promoting the use of multiple forms of authentic alternate assessments.”

I agree with Sophie that FairTest has been “the leader, the organizational glue, and the legs for individuals and groups concerned with the deleterious effects of standardized testing on students, particularly students in need; on schools and their curriculum; and on the kind of learning that emphasizes critical thinking and deep knowledge.”

Sophie and I go way back, to my own professional crisis back in 1994. 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 →

Changes in Detroit, DC and Beyond

John Merrow Michelle Rhee, robert c. bobb, school reform , , , , ,

These are amazing times in public education. For openers, there’s the huge competition for $4.35 billion in federal money. Of the 41 competitors in the Race to the Top, only two were chosen in the first round. The message seems clear: go home and clean up your act.

Michelle RheeNow, I don’t know how many of you out there looked at any of the original proposals. I read into four of them and can tell you that the writers (using that term loosely) have invented a wonderful substitute for Ambien, a perfect cure for insomnia. I think the average proposal came in at somewhere between 800-900 pages—of turgid prose. Had I been sentenced to read all of that stuff, I think I would have thrown up my hands, torn out my hair, screamed, and then given the money to the states with the shortest proposals.

I hope this time the Duncan team will tell the competitors in the second round: “30 pages max! If you can’t say it in 30 pages or less, don’t bother. Put all the rest in appendices, thank you.” (I recall the wisdom of “If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter,” attributed to Mark Twain and others.)

A second remarkable event is the new contract between the Washington Teachers Union and Michelle Rhee. It took 2+ years, but it may have been worth the wait. 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 →

We Have a Winner!

John Merrow Below C Level , ,

With 174 votes counted, the Below C Level book cover contest results are in and I’m happy to share with you the cover that so many of you helped me select.

Below C Level book coverThe design is by Caitlin Colvin, a sophomore at Castilleja, the girls school in Palo Alto, California. Caitlin modified the design, per suggestions from me and many of you. Notice the subtle handwriting on the slightly crumpled essay as well as the warmer font.

I am still wrestling with the subtitle and invite you to weigh in if you have an opinion. My own three finalists are:
1, the current one: “Why it pays to be average in public education–and what we can do about it.”

2:  “How public education encourages mediocrity–and what we can do about it”
3: “How public education rewards mediocrity–and what we can do about it”

The last phrase is essential, because the book includes solutions, suggestions and portraits of success.

I would have been more than happy to have either of the other two cover designs on Below C Level. #1 is the work of Lillian Xie, who is a junior at Palo Alto High School. She’s an accomplished pianist, a reporter for the high school newspaper (one of the best in the nation), and a superb artist. #2, the clever play on ‘sea’ and ‘C’, was created by a design team of two Castilleja students, Emily Hayflick, ’11 and Camille Stroe, ’12.

I am making a few final edits on the book itself, all 38 chapters, and expect to send it off to Amazon’s publishing division later this week. It should be available for pre-ordering in just a couple of weeks and in your hands not long after that.

Again, thanks for your participation and guidance in helping me choose a cover. It was interesting and fun to read all of your comments and suggestions!

Below C Level – An Excerpt

John Merrow Op-ed

Some of you have asked me for information about Below C Level, my new book. Here’s a sample from one chapter, the one about what I call the ‘convenient lies’ we tell ourselves about public education. (I have removed the footnotes from this excerpt, but they’re in the book.)

At least three forces washed away the hard-won gains that “A Nation at Risk” produced, and they have created the perilous situation we now find ourselves in:

• An ambitious but misguided federal law.
• An MBA-like “bottom-line” mentality.
• Parsimonious behavior.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 began with bipartisan optimism. In language that resonates today, the new president from Texas decried “the soft bigotry of low expectations” and declared that unless all groups of students at a school made progress, the entire school would be found deficient.

Unfortunately, for the most part NCLB has not worked. I have spent hundreds of days in schools since the law’s passage and have witnessed principals and teachers focusing on getting as many students as possible over the NCLB “basic” bar: a laughably low standard in most states. The kids “on the bubble” get the attention, while brighter ones must fend for themselves.

Did NCLB produce genuinely high standards? Continue reading →

We Have a Winner!

John Merrow Op-ed

With 174 votes counted, the Below C Level book cover contest results are in and I’m happy to share with you the cover that so many of you helped me select.

Below C Level book coverThe design is by Caitlin Colvin, a sophomore at Castilleja, the girls school in Palo Alto, California. Caitlin modified the design, per suggestions from me and many of you. Notice the subtle handwriting on the slightly crumpled essay as well as the warmer font.

I am still wrestling with the subtitle and invite you to weigh in if you have an opinion. My own three finalists are:
1, the current one: “Why it pays to be average in public education–and what we can do about it.”

2:  “How public education encourages mediocrity–and what we can do about it”
3: “How public education rewards mediocrity–and what we can do about it”

The last phrase is essential, because the book includes solutions, suggestions and portraits of success.

I would have been more than happy to have either of the other two cover designs on Below C Level. #1 is the work of Lillian Xie, who is a junior at Palo Alto High School. She’s an accomplished pianist, a reporter for the high school newspaper (one of the best in the nation), and a superb artist. #2, the clever play on ‘sea’ and ‘C’, was created by a design team of two Castilleja students, Emily Hayflick, ’11 and Camille Stroe, ’12.

I am making a few final edits on the book itself, all 38 chapters, and expect to send it off to Amazon’s publishing division later this week. It should be available for pre-ordering in just a couple of weeks and in your hands not long after that.

Again, thanks for your participation and guidance in helping me choose a cover. It was interesting and fun to read all of your comments and suggestions!