Just listening to the new podcast from Learning Matters. It’s an interview with Paul Vallas, superintendent of the Recovery School District of New Orleans. He’s spent the past three years there turning the system around.
It cannot be denied that the system was horrendous prior to his arrival. It cannot be denied that he has turned it around. Here are some of the things he instituted.
He lengthened the school day and year. US schools go to school about 65% of the time that all other countries do. He lengthened the school day to focus intensely on math and science without hindering the liberal arts. Gotta admire that.
He vastly increased the number of charter schools, closing down many public schools and re-opening them as charters. This was done to work around unions. It’s difficult to can poor teachers in a public school. Not so at a charter.
He got a laptop for every student.
Vallas brought in massive amounts of Teach for America teachers. He is banking on their intelligence and work ethic and passion to turn things around. There are mixed results. Most Teach for America teachers leave the classroom after their two year commitment. Many are not fully prepared for the reality of their classes. I mean going from Harvard, Princeton, or Amherst to inner city public schools is not a transition for the feint of hear.
He implemented standardized curriculum. If you are in third grade, you can go from one school to another on the same day and see the same books, the same lessons, and the same goals. Personally, I hate this. But when 30% of your kids are on grade level, well, then drastic measures need to be taken.
Vallas - with the authorities - really cracked down on truancy. This is one o the most powerful moves. In a News Hour special on PBS, a camera crew visiting Vallas went with police officers as they went to students’ homes to warn their parents to get their kids to class or face a court date. In one instance, a female officer is talking with a parent about allowing her child to miss 20 days. She warned the mother that a few more will result in her child being taken away by social services. The mother blatantly wonders, “how many would it take for them [her kids] to be taken away?”
The officer wonders, “It sounds like you don’t want them.”
And the mother replies, “I don’t.” Now how can you educate a child whose mother doesn’t even want him or her?
Vallas got his students to earn credit and get paid extra for holding down jobs.
And the schools are now turning around.
What’s next for Vallas (who is a big shot, school ‘turn around’ specialist)? He’s off to Haiti after this year.
While I admire all that he has done - though I don’t agree with it all - I greatly disagree with the latest podcast about Vallas.
He states that teaching should not be a career.
In fact, I could not disagree with this more. And not just because it is my career and there’s really nothing else I could ever do to support my family.
But I speak from experience that teaching should be a career. Now Vallas wants to model teaching and Teach for America, where teachers have a tour year commitment before fleeing to the private sector as doctors and lawyers and venture capitalists.
He argues that it takes so much passion and commitment that only a young person without a family (and a life, it seems) could really devote themselves to being a great teacher.
While this could be true, in my case it simply isn’t.
When I was first teaching - and without obligations or a family - I spent hours planning and working and reading, but I’m a hundred times more effective now 12 years later.
Hell, I’m going to be more effective this year than I was last year.
I would not have done any of my best and most rewarding work if I had quite after two - or even four - years.
I worry that Vallas’ approach will catch on. We already had a push for alternative certification in Minnesota that would allow non-education majors to enter the teaching realm. Now, I’m not all against this, for I think of certain individuals who are not teachers (my wife, sister, and brother come immediately to mind) who I think would be superior teachers. But I also know of a community member who taught at a local college and bored many to tears - because he had no idea ‘how’ to actually teach.
One thing I found when I was teaching in my first two years that I didn’t have my own distinct teaching style. That took about four years (and one trip to grad school) to evolve. I think when teachers first start out, they do one of two things - the either teach like the teachers they had in high school or they teach like the teachers they had in college. Both of these instances are bad. For I believe you must find your own style of teaching to be effective. I question how much of their own ‘styles’ first year teachers really have.
Yes, they have the passion and idealism and relatively few obligations, but does that mean they are better than a veteran teacher of 15 years who is committed and works just as hard?
Or is Vallas stealing a concept from the meat packing industry - best illustrated in The Jungle - where the immigrants are brought in - and the zealously work hard for their first few years - only to be chewed up and spit out by the industry? Or is it that his young teachers are too busy with their noses to the grindstone to see how administrative systems work, like veteran teachers who begin to see the redundancies and foolishness is many government policies regarding education?
Yes, 13 years in, I have a family - that is about to get even larger this winter - but being a father and husband has only improved my teaching. I cannot devote the hours I once used to. I no longer spend evenings in my classroom; nor do I spend chunks of Saturdays and Sundays there either. But I find myself working a lot smarter (because of my experience and professional growth) instead of harder.
What Vallas should be pushing is a system of renewal for teachers. The podcast refers to a study that shows how teacher effectiveness stagnates after about seven years in the classroom. This is nothing new. I recall my college advisor talking about the importance of renewal. Teachers tend to hit a lull after their third year (by then, though, most TFA teachers are in the private sector). But this is remedied by some form of renewal (for me it was a leave of absence to attend grad school). There is also a lull after the seventh year. But this too is remedied by renewal (the RRVWP for me).
I think we need a blend of young, idealistic teachers who can make some of us grizzled vets rethink our approaches to the business. But I also think we need those veteran teachers to make the rookies see that the art of teaching is a marathon and not a sprint.
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