Improving Public Schools: A Final Thought

January 25, 2024January 26, 2024 John Merrow Uncategorized education, learning, schools, teachers, Teaching

Back in August I began using this space to suggest simple changes that would, I believe, improve public schools significantly. Five months and fourteen suggestions later, it’s now time to wrap this up, not because I’ve run out of ideas but because I’m hoping some readers will take this list of ideas and run with it. Perhaps some of you will work with your local school boards to implement these changes. I hope that, if candidates for school board start ranting about “DEI” or “Critical Race Theory,” you will confront them, because those aren’t real issues; what matters are specific changes that can make schools more interesting, challenging, and effective. Perhaps some of you might even run for your local school board!

With that in mind, I have one final suggestion: Consider adopting as your guiding principle the wisdom of Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” Applying that to schools and education suggests to me that:

*Because we want children to be able to write well, they need to write often in their classes.

*Because we want them to be comfortable speaking in public, they need to practice that in school.

*Because we want them to work well with others as adults, they ought to be working together on projects, teams, plays, bands, et cetera, in school.

*Because we want them to be successful as adults in a rapidly changing world, they ought to learn at least two languages in school.

*And so forth….

Here, briefly, are the other suggestions: 1) Looping, which I expanded upon a short time later in Looping (revisited). Looping means a teacher moving up with her or his students. It’s quite common in other countries because it’s been shown to improve both student learning and behavior, for openers.

2)Play. Simply put, kids need to be kids. And for those who are concerned about learning, stop worrying because free play contributes to improved learning.

3) Practice Democracy. Apply Aristotle here: If we want children to function well in a democratic society, they need practice. Right now, schools are essentially undemocratic–by design. That’s the worst possible preparation for adulthood. And giving young people more ‘agency’ over their own learning actually works!

4) Business Cards for Teachers. If you are a professional, you carry business cards, which you give out to people you want to stay in contact with. Teachers are professionals! Treat them as such.

5) Involve Outsiders. The vast majority of households do not have children in public schools, and schools need public support. The best advertisement for public education is the kids. Let them strut their stuff!

6) Multiple ‘Talent Nights.’ This is an easy way to make parents feel at home in school. Education is a team sport, and educators need to welcome parents, not treat them as extraneous (or worse).

7) Extended Homeroom. Right now most homeroom periods are short, really just a way for administrators to take attendance. After Covid, kids need more down time. Extending homeroom into a full period provides that.

8) Ask the Right Question. I’ve been pushing this for a long time, but it’s worth repeating: The most important question to ask about all children is ‘How Are They Smart?’ and not ‘How Smart Are They?’ because every child has skills, abilities, and interests that can be tapped into and developed.

9) “Education Grand Rounds.” Teachers need opportunities to watch each other at work so they can improve their own practice.

10) “Making Stuff”. There’s nothing more satisfying than creating something useful. Bring back wood shop!

11) Make the School Safe. Schools need to be physically, emotionally, and intellectually safe. Stop focusing only on physical safety. In intellectually safe schools, it’s cool to be curious, and it’s OK to admit ‘I don’t understand.’ In emotionally safe schools, bullying is not tolerated…and adults and student leaders step up to prevent it.

12) Serve Your Community This is NOT the same as ‘Community Service.’ The distinction makes all the difference.

13) Ban Cell Phones. Completely! That’s right, ban them completely!

14) Acknowledge the “Opportunity Gap”. Most school districts and policy makers focus their attention on ‘The Achievement Gap,’ but, if we close the “Opportunity Gap” (and its companion, the “Expectations Gap”), outcomes will improve across the board. One way to do this is to adopt a proven curriculum like Core Knowledge, EL Education, or the Comer School Development Program. Another option to explore: become a Community School.

Reactions from readers convinced me that I stopped making recommendations too soon, so here are three more:

15) Change the opening time for adolescents, who need more sleep and aren’t getting it. This important piece by Dr. Mary Carskadon and Lynne Lamberg (a reader of this blog) is both comprehensive and persuasive. Here’s more on the issue.

16) Improve school food because better nutrition is a cost-effective way of improving students’ life chances, and because, sadly, for many kids their school meals are the only healthy ones they get. Changing the cafeteria is a good opportunity to Practice Democracy (suggestion #3).

17) Teach reading effectively by avoiding the extremes. Don’t let the ‘Reading Science’ craze push schools into going mad for phonics. Phonics is necessary but not sufficient, because our English language is complex and contradictory. (eg, why don’t ‘anger,’ ‘danger,’ and ‘hanger’ rhyme?)

Other changes, especially reducing class size and repairing or replacing dangerously dilapidated facilities, are also called for, but these will cost real money. None of the 17 changes I am suggesting will cost school districts big bucks, but some do involve changes in habits and schedules, which often makes adults uncomfortable. That is, these changes are simple, but that does not mean they will be easy. I believe, however, that they are the path forward, toward schools that are effective and challenging, places that children will want to be.

A Tale Of Three Teachers

March 30, 2012 John Merrow 2012 Blogs Graduate Schools, Schools of Education, Teacher Training, teachers, Teaching

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The young teacher started right off making a rookie mistake in the opening minutes of his first class, on his very first day. “How many of you know what a liter is?” he asked his high school math class. “Give me a thumbs up if you know, thumbs down if you don’t.” None of the kids responded, so he entreated, “Come on, I just need to know where you are. Thumbs up if you know, thumbs down if you don’t.”

An experienced teacher would not have asked students to volunteer their ignorance. An experienced teacher might have held up an empty milk carton and asked someone to identify it. Once someone had said, “that’s a quart of milk,” the veteran might have pulled out a one-gallon container to be identified. Only then would she have shown them a liter container, explaining that most countries in the world use a different measuring system, et cetera.

But the rookie didn’t know any better. He’d graduated from Yale that spring, had a few weeks of training that summer, thanks to Teach for America, and then was given his own classroom.

Another first year teacher made a rookie mistake in the spring. “How many of you dislike poetry,” he asked his high school seniors? “How many of you really hate poetry?” When most of the hands went up, he announced, “That’s going to change, because I am going to turn you into poetry lovers.” With that simple — and stupid — declaration, the rookie had made it all about himself, not about the poems. He had challenged his class on personal terms, making it an ego trip for himself, not an educational journey for his students.

Matters never really improved for the first rookie that year, and he was not invited back for a second year. I was the second rookie. I taught for two years and then moved on, but it wasn’t until years later that I recognized how counterproductive my approach to that poetry unit was.

So what’s the point? Rookies make rookie mistakes? Or is it that teachers need serious training (I had none whatsoever, not even the equivalent of a TFA summer) before taking over classrooms?

This brings me to the third teacher in this short essay, a young woman I observed doing a bang up job of teaching first graders to read. She seemed to have all the moves down, phonemic awareness, chunking, words that must be memorized (like ‘the’) because they don’t follow the rules, and so forth. Her first graders were reading confidently and competently. We made a piece about it, for the NewsHour:

I knew that she had completed a five-year program at a reputable state university, giving her both a bachelor’s and a master’s in elementary education and a certificate to teach. In short, she had it all.

Or did she? “That’s where you learned how to teach reading,” I stated as a half-question. “No,” she responded emphatically! “They never said a word about phonics in any of my classes. I had to learn all of that here, on the job.”

I was dumbfounded and disbelieving, but a search of that education school’s course syllabus and a phone call to a now-retired professor there confirmed what she had said. Phonics was barely acknowledged. Apparently the reading wars continue, at least on that campus, with ‘whole language’ still planted firmly in the saddle.

Given a choice between bad training and little or none, what is one to do? And if that’s the choice right now, what can we do to change the odds? Let me suggest it’s time for a 180-degree turn. We need to make it more difficult to become a teacher, which we could do by raising standards for admission into training programs and then providing one-year apprenticeships before teachers are given their own classrooms.

Teacher — How are we going to raise the bar for entering the teaching profession?

The first change — tougher admission standards — applies to virtually every school and college of education: Raise the bar for getting into the profession. Improve programs by weeding out professors who are still waging old battles. Do much more of the training in real schools and real classrooms.
(Some schools and colleges of education are already going down this road, including Arizona State, Michigan, Berkeley, and Teachers College. All led by women, by the way. Add to that list Stanford, which was, until recently, also led by a woman.)

The second change — a one-year apprenticeship — applies to TFA, which already has remarkably high admission standards to its two-year program. But it’s the rare individual who can take over a class after a few weeks of summer training and be genuinely effective. Even successful TFA teachers often admit that much of their first year was a wash, at best. What if TFA were a three-year program, with the first year being an apprenticeship? Would that produce better teaching and also help TFA weed out the ambitious ones seeking largely to punch up their resumés?

As I say, I think the country needs to make a U-turn. Because most schools of education have low admission standards, it’s far too easy to become a teacher. And because many of our policies and practices are hyper-critical, and even punitive, toward teachers, it’s now very difficult to be a teacher.

It will take a concerted effort on the part of governors and university presidents to make it harder to become a teacher. Governors have to be convinced of the economic and political benefits of having their constituents’ children taught by skilled professionals. I fear that the leadership at many universities is comfortable with the ‘cash cow’ aspect of their education programs, which take in more than they spend. What sort of pressure would be required to get them to change?

But making those changes seems like a walk in the park compared to what it would take to do to reverse our current ‘blame the teacher’ approach. Making it easier for today’s teachers to teach won’t happen unless and until we come to our senses. Does anyone see that happening soon?

Michelle Rhee Resigns: What’s in store for DC schools now?

October 13, 2010 John Merrow media, Michelle Rhee dc, Leadership, Michelle Rhee, reform, Teaching, washington

The sudden resignation of Michelle Rhee actually makes perfect sense. It was inevitable, so why wait around? It’s easy to imagine Ms. Rhee coming to that conclusion once she recognized that she and the next Mayor, Vincent Gray, would not be able to work together the way she did with the current Mayor, Adrian Fenty.

Michelle Rhee Resigns What happens next in Washington is the big story, although most of the attention will be on Ms. Rhee. She’s a national figure, subject of much speculation. Will she go to California if Meg Whitman wins the gubernatorial race? What about New Jersey? Iowa? Funny how the Republicans love her to death now, even though she was chosen by an ardent Democrat and has been praised to the skies by President Obama.

We’ve followed Ms. Rhee closely during the three plus years she’s been in Washington, airing a total of 12 segments on PBS NewsHour about the changes she’s made there. Scores and enrollment are up locally, but, make no mistake about it, she also has altered the national conversation about how teachers are paid and evaluated. No one can defend the current system, which bases everything on years in the classroom and number of graduate credits, as appropriate or rational. That approach is history, even though it may take years for it to be removed for good.

What is going to replace the old way is now the question. Continue reading →

Time to Stand and Deliver

April 6, 2010 John Merrow bullying, Op-ed, teaching bullying, jaime escalante, phoebe prince, 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.” In 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 →

5 Ways to Change the Status Quo: Interview with Phillip Kovacs

December 16, 2009 John Merrow Op-ed, school reform education, Higher Education, john merrow, learning, learning matters, nclb, philip kovacs, race to the top, reform, schools, taking note, Teaching, university of alabama-huntsville

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know that I’ve been interviewing a lot of folks who are well known in education, Debbie Meier, Margaret Spellings, Diane Ravitch, Pat Callan and others. Many readers have posted comments, which I read with interest. Sometimes I wonder about the writers, and sometimes I reach out.

This post came from my interest in one reader’s comments to my recent post on innovation in schools. His name is Philip Kovacs, and he’s a former high school English teacher who now teaches would-be teachers at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. I also know that he has a PhD in Educational Policy Studies, a 6 month-old son, and some strong convictions about public education. (The latter is the focus of the interview, although the proud new Dad manages to work his son into the conversation a couple of times).

The Interview

So tell me what you believe, and why.

In my dissertation I argue for keeping public schools public, but after four years working with local public schools, I’m open to alternatives. I am now working on starting a project-based lab school.

How did you find Learning Matters?

The More things Change It was research into the Gates Foundation that brought me to your website in the first place. The Foundation funds an unbelievable number of projects, some of which argue against one another, though the larger of the funded organizations agree on key points, none of which, in my humble opinion, are very innovative. I do not, for the record, think Bill Gates is controlling your content!

I am now editing a book about the Gates Foundation’s involvement in educational reform. I am 100% sure that the edited volume is going to anger the educational “right” and “left.”

You sound as if you want to anger both ends of the spectrum.

I guess I do, now that you mention it. Three years ago I helped about 30 scholars, teachers, and other concerned individuals create and post a petition calling for an end to No Child Left Behind. Continue reading →

What’s Innovation? Clear Goals, Training & Accountability Are a Good Start

November 24, 2009 John Merrow Op-ed, teaching, technology, WISE education, goals, innovation, john merrow, measurements, qatar, Teaching, training, wise

I’ve just returned from Doha, Qatar for the first-ever WISE, the World Innovation Summit for Education. For three days we talked about innovation. Is technology an essential component of innovation? I found myself wondering what produces innovation in education—in teaching actually. And it occurs to me that, unless one happens to be sadistic or off the charts antisocial, all of us are, on certain occasions, innovative teachers. At those moments, we are wonderful role models of what our education system ought to be striving to emulate. And our motivation is a combination of self-interest and basic human decency.

Driving Directions You’re not a teacher, you say? OK, neither am I by profession, but sometimes we are put in that role. Imagine you’re walking in your neighborhood when a stranger stops her car, rolls down the window, and asks for directions to a local restaurant. You know the place she’s asking about, so you immediately begin figuring out how to explain it to her.

You are, for the moment, her teacher, she your pupil. Continue reading →

The Sources of Innovation

September 14, 2009 John Merrow Op-ed, school reform, teaching classrooms, innovation, john doerr, john merrow, learning matters, newschools venture fund, Teaching, the new teacher project, widget effect

What produces innovation? Why does there seem to be such an abundance of it in serious fields like medicine and computer technology and trivial ones like online dating, but so little in education, arguably the most important of human activities?

First, let me support my premise, that schooling is largely bereft of innovation. A doctor or an auto mechanic from the 1950’s, if dropped into today’s hospital or garage, would be baffled. A teacher from the 50’s, however, would feel pretty darn comfortable in today’s classrooms. Maybe the desks wouldn’t be attached to the floor, and perhaps the blackboards would have been replaced by whiteboards, but there’d be bells every 50 minutes or so, attendance to be taken, and interruptions by the principal. I rest my case.

Back to why: The thirst for money, prestige and fame are reliable spurs of innovation. Living in Silicon Valley as I do, I’ve seen plenty of evidence of that. Unfortunately, public education is not the road to travel if your goals are money, prestige and fame.

Another spur to innovate is a supportive but challenging environment, one in which failure is seen as an opportunity to learn, not a stain. Does that describe most schools? I don’t think so.

John Doerr’s New Schools Venture Fund is working to recreate in education some of the conditions that have spurred Silicon Valley’s growth. That’s an uphill battle with a number of hurdles standing in the way, including a ‘one size fits all’ mentality and a glut of ‘experts’.

Education’s ‘one size fits all’ approach to evaluating and paying teachers has to dampen enthusiasm for trying new approaches. Why bother if you aren’t going to be rewarded? Continue reading →

Public Schools Need a Wake Up Call!

September 8, 2009 John Merrow Op-ed, school reform, teaching education, education speech, john merrow, K-12, kids, president obama, schools, Teaching

“Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer.”

President Obama’s speech to students, September 9, 2009

Those lines imply support for a progressive, child-centered view of schooling: educate through the strengths a child possesses.

President Obama gives education speech But the President went on, “And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.”

And when and if a child discovers those interests and abilities, what happens? Are classrooms set up to work with individual kids and nurture their talents, or do other pressures force teachers into cookie-cutter behavior?

Kids want to believe. Visit any elementary school on a morning of the first few weeks of school, and you will see joyful youngsters cavorting, laughing and shouting with glee. Their giddy anticipation is palpable and infectious, because they are actually happy to be back in school. “This year will be different,” their behavior screams. “This year I will be a great student, I will learn everything, and teachers will help me whenever I need help.”

However, this celebration, a child’s version of the triumph of hope over experience, is generally short-lived, and for most children school soon becomes humdrum, or worse.

What goes wrong, and what can be done about it? Continue reading →

Re-evaluating Teacher Evaluations

August 26, 2009 John Merrow Op-ed, teaching classroom, evaluations, john merrow, K-12, teacher observations, teachers, Teaching

What prompted this post was my discovery that only 15 of the 714 Chinese drug factories get inspected every year. On average, foreign medical factories that bring products to the US are inspected once every 13 years. Our 300+ ports receive 18.2 million shipments of drugs, cosmetics, food and devices a year, and the Food and Drug Administration has only about 450 inspectors. Do the math!!

Teacher Evaluation That got me thinking about teachers and how they are ‘inspected.’ For a few months now I have been corresponding with teachers I know. Here’s what they told me, with a few of my own thoughts stuck in here and there.

In the old days, teachers closed their doors and did their thing, for better or for worse. As long as things were quiet, administrators rather bothered to open the door to see what was going on, and teachers never watched each other at work. That’s changing, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. In some schools today, teachers are actually expected to watch their peers teach, after which they share their analysis. In other schools, however, principals armed with lists sit in the back of the class checking off ‘behaviors’ and later give the teacher a ‘scorecard’ with her ‘batting average.’

No Child Left Behind was supposed to close what is called ‘the achievement gap’ by forcing schools to pay attention to all children. Unfortunately, the gaps persist: Only 14% of Blacks and 17% of Latino 4th graders are proficient in reading, compared to their Asian American (45%) and White (42%) counterparts on the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress. NCLB’s critics claim that the law has narrowed the curriculum to a single-minded focus on reading and math, eliminated programs for the gifted, and turned schools into ‘drill and kill’ factories, and those claims are, in some places, supported by facts.

NCLB’s biggest change may be in teaching itself. For better and sometimes for worse, what teachers used to do behind closed doors is now scrutinized, often on a daily basis. That is, someone, often the principal, drops in regularly to watch the teacher at work. Whether these observations are diagnostic in nature and therefore designed to help teachers improve or a ‘gotcha’ game is the essential question. The answer seems to vary from school to school.

What were ‘the good old days’ like? Continue reading →

Getting Parents Involved

June 1, 2009 John Merrow Op-ed, parents, teaching family, john merrow, parents, Teaching

Full Text:

Parents getting involved When it comes to parent involvement, too many educators love to play the blame game. And if they’re not carping, they’re probably emitting hot air. It’s fundamentally arrogant, based on the assumption that parents don’t get it.

Here’s the pattern I’ve observed: Schools and districts appoint committees and task forces to organize parents or to study the issue. Some schools make parents sign contracts promising to come to meetings. Some set up classes for parents to teach them how to be involved in their children’s education. Perhaps they change policies so that parent teacher meetings can be held at more convenient times. They might even provide baby-sitting services at ‘back to school’ night.

If schools began involving parents at the most basic levels in the early grades, things would be different. And not with high-falutin’ pedagogical concepts and principles–but with real stuff.