Some Thoughts

Michelle Rhee, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Rhee and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/07/AR2008120702255.html?hpid=moreheadlines) who has been hired to not only run but also reform the 143 schools (and nearly 43,000 students) in the Washington D.C. school district, is making waves. Tidal ones.

In an effort to revitalize one of the worst school systems in the country, Rhee (who is the seventh superintendent in the past ten years in DC) closed 21 schools and fired 70 teachers and removed 36 principals. Like I said, tidal waves.

Based on the pathetic graduation rates and test scores, Rhee is more than justified when she said, “The children of this city receive an education that every single citizen in this country should be embarrassed by.”

She is recruiting new teachers who want to re-energize the school district and rescue kids. She is taking applications from across the country and bringing in teachers from non-traditional teacher ed programs like Teach for America.

Rhee makes no bones about changing things as she sees fit. Thanks to total support from Washington’s mayor, Adrian Fenty, and the fact that they did away with the school board, Rhee is free to overhaul the district in any way she wants.

Fenty has one motto: “One hundred miles an hour.”

That is how many feel Rhee operates, closing schools and firing people (she fired most of her staff at the central office, which, according to Time and several other sources, was a model for corruption and ineffectiveness) on a moment’s – or at least what appears to be a moment’s notice.

She is not without her enemies.

But I admire her gumption and initiative.

Could I cut it in her district?

One of Rhee’s new initiatives, and one of the most controversial, is the new merit pay or pay for test scores incentive. If you are at the top of the experience level in her district, a teacher can make roughly 64,000. However, and here is the caveat: According to Rhee’s new plan, using private founding and a budget surplus, a teacher can double their pay . . . if they agree to give up their tenure for one year.

I couldn’t help but wonder how this would go over here. I’m not one to hop on the high stakes testing bandwagon. Not at all. I believe the best stuff in school can rarely be quantified on a test. And I loathe teaching to the test. I loathe putting those kids through those tests (as one critic said, wherever in their lives will kids have to take a test with so much riding on it? Not in the work place, most likely. Or another critic said, judging a child’s education by more tests is like judging chili by the amount of beans in it).

Yet, $128,000 is a lot of money. Would that motivate teachers? Would that improve test scores? What happens if you give up your tenure and you don’t get your kids’ test scores up enough? Fired on the spot? What happens if you get a particularly difficult class with underachievers?

I think Rhee is banking on the new blood she brings into the district accepting this idea. After all, the teacher’s union is not nearly as strong as it used to be. That is certainly the case with younger teachers. However, the teachers union in Washington has not come close to accepting this policy.

But how interesting. Is this the new face of American education?

Paul Vallas, superintendent of schools in New Orleans, is pulling other interesting tactics.

He has brought in hundreds of Teach for America and Teach NOLA teachers to revitalize the workforce in New Orleans schools. He has extended the school day from 8-4:30 Monday – Thursday. School runs from late August through mid June. Every high school student has a laptop.

Again, how interesting.

Drastic times call for drastic measures. Or at least these school reformers would have you believe that.

Both of these leaders are working overtime to overhaul their schools according to the guidelines set down by NCLB. AYP must be met. Test scores must show improvement. This is the very definition of high stakes testing.

But is it going to do any good?

We have seen big changes, such as the billion dollar Read First reading initiative put into effect by the Bush administration, have negligible effects. Whatever happened to outcome based education? The grad standards and profile of learning are just remnants of what they used to be.

I wonder how many of the remaining staffers in Washington or New Orleans are wondering when “this too shall pass.”

The problem, though, is that too much has passed. I’ve been in education for a little over a decade now, and I’ve seen the grad standards come and go. When I was in high school and college the big talks was the important of “I-TV” where a student could take a class via TV from a teacher in another school. But that has come and fizzled. Teachers who came before me talk about outcome based education coming into vague and then disappearing.

When we will stop throwing policy after policy at the problem and just choose one and stick with it long enough to see if it really works.

That’s one reason I’m so intrigued by what Rhee is doing. She seems to have enough support from the mayor and enough control that she can really affect some change. Will it work?

That remains to be seen.

And how will we know if it does work? The test scores go up? Kids read at grade level? All proficient in science and math? Every little subgroup is meeting their AYP targets?

But is that progress?

Will we really be turning out students that are truly prepared to meet the challenges of a global economy and a world that is now flat? Will they be prepared to live in a country where 40 million jobs stand to be outsourced and where our children are not expect to live as long as their parents?

Two articles that challenge the tenants at the heart of NCLB – high stakes testing and the knowledge the tests say is the most important – raise some interesting concerns.

First, Sharon L. Nichols and David C. Berliner, authors of “Why Has High-Stakes Testing So Easily Slipped into Contemporary American Life,” note how backwards – or at least impossible – the high stakes testing of NCLB is.

The main problem, according to the authors, is that high stakes testing assumes that public schools can be run like a business: “basic business models were applied to our schools: ways were found first to monitor productivity, then to increase it, and finally to do so without spending any more money.” Of course, tests are the way schools are able to monitor how productive they are. Yet, our society demands that schools produce students who are so much more than any test could ever accurately measure. Our society asks that we produce students who not only read, write, and can do arithmetic but also be productive citizens, understand the world and society in which they live, and learn to live healthy lifestyles. We can’t possible test for ALL of that.

Another – and I think the most important – difference is that a business can control its supply of raw materials. If a local manufacturer doesn’t like the raw materials they purchase, they can find another source. They have control over this. However, schools take everyone. We have no such control over our ‘raw materials.’

If a business had to manufacture a product, regardless of the materials they were given, well, they might not be productive all that long. How long would Arctic Cat stay open if the metal they used in their snowmobiles was not up to grade or varied drastically from sled to sled.

Yet, in a single class, any teacher will tell you that we may have one student who lives in a million dollar home while another lives in a complete dump. One student has access to computers and books while another has nothing. One student has parents involved in their lives and who treat them with love and respect and another has parents who treat them as nothing more than a burden. How can we turn these raw materials into the same top of the line product.

That’s a good question. It also gets at the impossibility of NCLB.

Now, I’m not saying go back to pre-NCLB policies where the majority of unskilled students could ride the top 10-20 percent to success.

I’m just not sold on high-stakes testing as the answer.

I can offer a personal example. A few years ago I had a student named Jack. School and Jack never meshed well. However, I have more respect for Jack than nearly any student I’ve ever had. Jack was always honest and open. If he skipped, he owned up to it. He never sniveled at home and got Mom to excuse it. He looked me in the eyes and shook my hand, and I knew I could believe him. If he said he was going to get an assignment in, he did.

Now, the one thing Jack loved was carpentry and construction. Whenever he chose to write a paper on that, I just got out of his way and watched him go. It wasn’t perfect, but it was passionate. But when he had a personal stake in it, boy was Jack willing to revise and put in the effort.

But I will tell you this – I would not hesitate hiring his construction business (which I think he is working to get off the ground since his father passed away) to do work on my home. And it would not surprise me in the least if he made a very nice living with the skills he learned mostly from his father outside of school.

But did we fail him? Or did we just get in his way? Or could we somehow revise how we structure our curriculum to enhance the skills of students like Jack?


The same is true with my stepson, Casey. His passion is gaming. He is looking at attending Fullsail University. Casey had a media and technology class last year and he basically helped teach the teacher. His dream is to be a video game designer. Would I like to see his school have a flexible curriculum that would offer more media and technology classes that would help him excel? Of course. I’d also like to see classes offered that would enhance his writing skills (maybe technical writing) or computer based math skills related to that field. But the school is small and the emphasis is on math, science, reading, and writing. As a result, Casey is crammed with a lot of knowledge that won’t impact him.

Even here, we used to offer technical writing. But that elective was sacrificed to make room for more Composition I classes, which are designed (in part) to get kids to pass the Basic Skills Writing Test.

We had a great business/DECA program here too where kids were passionate and competed (and did phenomenally well) at the state level. Yet, when money was tight, that program was cut in a nanosecond. And, of course, there were never any standardized tests to measure what students were learning in there because those skills weren’t deemed vital. Yet, you should have seen how passionate those kids were in their presentations. I guarantee you that there are dozens – if not more – students out there using those same skills to make a very good living right now. But that opportunity is gone now.

What other programs are the first to be cut (other than music and phy ed) when it comes budget or referendum time? Shop . . . CAD . . . small engines . . . machining . . . carpentry . . . yet all worthy skills. But when are they ever covered on the MCA’s?

Recall what George Miller had to say when he referenced Allen Winder, an economist from Princeton, - we can expect some 40 million jobs outscourced over the next 30. Winder asks the question will you better off a decade from now a carpenter or a lawyer because they're going to outsource a great deal of your lawyering work but you might still be able to build a house here.

Nichols and Berliner raise other reasons against high-stakes testing, many of which I don’t buy (the older generation doesn’t care about the youth because they just want their social security and medicare and the younger generation be damned . . . the powerful upper class parents, whose kids will excel at the standardized tests, just don’t care about poor, minority kids and their welfare . . . the high-stakes tests are a result of our sports crazed culture (and if you listen to Vallas or other administrators getting their kids jacked up for the tests, it is eerily similar to a coach’s pre-game pep talk) where they can follow the success of students and schools in the paper like they follow their favorite quarterback’s rating or their favorite ball players ERA).

There does seem to be quite a bit wrong with our current high-stakes testing obsession. I do, for now anyway, agree that policy makers believe that we can runs schools like businesses, and that is ludicrous. You certainly can fire teachers (ala Rhee) like a business might fire inefficient workers. But what do you do when often the natural resources that are absolutely essential to the final products often are faulty or insufficient? You just can’t find another supplier for those natural resources. If you do, you will be leaving children behind. And that is the exact opposite of what is at the core of NCLB.

Another interesting article that relates to this discussion is “What Knowledge Has the Most Worth?” by Young Zhao.

This is a question I think about a lot. What am I teaching my kids? What are they getting out of my classes? Will it serve them well in their professions or in their personal lives? Is it making them better people? More critical thinkers? And just who decides what knowledge is most valuable? Does it have the same value for all students? Does certain knowledge ever lessen in value? How do I get a larger reserve of it? How do I get the students to recognize the value of the knowledge they encounter?

Well, I could go on for pages.

Zhoa, though, proposes an interesting take on the value of knowledge. If you look at the high-stakes testing, it would appear math, science, reading, and writing are the most vital skills a student must attain. We must, or so the educational philosophy goes, work harder than ever, devote more time than ever before (recall how Vallas increased the school day and year in New Orleans district. He did this so students would get all the help in math, science, reading, and writing they need without losing out on any other subjects).

But Zhoa argues that we cannot possibly catch up to the Chinese and other developing countries in terms of math and science knowledge. Well, let’s rephrase that. Every child in American schools cannot hope to catch up to the students who are educated in China and other developing countries (and, remember, many don’t offer an education to all of their students like we do here – well, some reformers will argue that we don’t really offer an education to all of our students either). Our top students can measure up. But not all. It’s ludicrous to even try.

Thus, and this is where Zhoa’s argument gets interesting, if the majority of our students cannot catch up, why even try? Instead, “Americans must have talents that are more valuable or unavailable in other parts of the world at a lower rate.” The author offers an example: With the same qualifications, engineers from India make $7,500 a year; Engineers from America earn $45,000, so “If we succeed in matching the high levels of mastery of mathematics and science of these Indian engineers, why would the world’s employers pay more than they have to pay the Indians to do their work?” and “They would be willing to do that only if we could offer something the Chinese and Indians and others cannot.” Now that is really interesting. Is the “something” else to offer the new knowledge that is the most valuable? And what exactly is that?

Well, according to the article, which references a book, A Whole New Mind: Moving From the information Age to the Conceptual Age by Daniel Pink, there should be a greater emphasis on right brain skills rather than left brains skills, for the left brain skills are the ones that are being outsourced. So we must look at what the Chinese and Indians and others don’t do in their schools that we already do here. Then we simply focus more on those skills, rather than pushing everyone to excel at skills that our competitors are already superior in. What are the right-brained skills that will be needed in the new global society . . . “design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning.”

As I look at the list of those skills, I see a lot of what I do in class already. I think I could apply our entire To Kill a Mockingbird unit to all but symphony.

American public schools get hammered constantly for their poor performance on test scores. This is not news to anyone. But what many people don’t realize is that some countries admire what we do here. Indeed I never realized that until I was listening to a podcast by Duke’s president, Richard H. Brodhead in which he stated that after touring different education systems, he stated that the Chinese are envious of the American school system (never heard that before) because unlike the Chinese, the American school system was not so focused. Instead, the American school system offers (or at least it used to) flexibility and choice. Now the Chinese are adapting to meet the challenge.

Of course, there is no guarantee we can corner the market, so to speak, on the right-brained skills. But the danger is that with the high-stakes testing of NCLB, we are moving away from those right-brained skills (again, think of all the departments that are either cut or reduced to focus on math, science, reading, and writing), “The U.S., on the other hand, has been emphasizing just the opposite. If NCLB and similar standardization efforts succeed, we may well lose the advantage in cultivating the right-brain aptitudes.”

One hallmark of Vallas’s overhaul of the New Orleans school district is standardized curriculum. I have always thought of standardized curriculum as an attempt to have almost ‘teacher proof’ classes. The lesson is so well organized and uniformed that instead of teaching, the teacher simply implements the lesson plan. This is really the opposite of teaching. It also believed to be an efficient way to raise test scores.

Zhoa observes that such a standardize curriculum is a hallmark of the Chinese schools system, “a standardized and centralized curriculum, another feature of Asian education systems, serves to further squeeze opportunities for individual differences. Teaching the same sequence at the same pace using the same textbook for all students leaves little room for exploring individual interests and accommodating different learning styles.”

This “teacher proof” system might ensure that test scores go up, but it also kills the very skills (design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning) that offer our students a chance to excel over other nations. These skills are what Zhoa believes “will help our children live a successful life” because those skills “will not come from holding schools accountable for adequate yearly progress in test scores.” But this upcoming generation is the one to lose out, for “AYP and similar measures aim to equip our children with knowledge that can be easily found at much lower cost in other countries, while squelching creativity and talents that are truly valuable.”

I certainly don’t have all the answers, nor do I claim to. I am very leery of the power connected with NCLB and AYP. I am suspicious of trying to run a school as if it is a business. I don’t believe you can prescribe one curriculum for ALL students. I simply would like to see – as I stated when I was talking about Jack – a curriculum designed (or maybe ‘undesigned’) to enhance ALL students’ abilities and interests. A curriculum that is flexible and individual enough to meet the specific needs of its students. A curriculum that can still push those kids who are passionate about science and math to excel yet still able to allow students whose interests lie in shop or small engines or computer programming to acquire a set of skills that will enhance their skills and lives.

I don’t know how that is possible. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe we can’t ensure that no one gets left behind. But maybe we can ensure that no one has to be dragged along either.