Author Archives: Tom White

ACLU vs OSPI

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Current Affairs, Education Policy, Elementary

Last week the ACLU sued the OSPI because Washington students with emotional disabilities are suspended or expelled from school at twice the normal rate. The suit alleges that the state should ensure that teachers “de-escalate” situations in which students with emotional disorders are having outbursts.

I have always admired the ACLU. They consistently take contrarian stands in support of the most marginalized people in our society. It’s an important role, now more than ever.

And on this issue they are true to form, advocating for the highest of the high-needs students, the kids with disabilities that prevent them from controlling their behavior well enough to make it through a day in school without having a verbal or physical meltdown or endangering their classmates or teachers. These kids need advocates.

I know because I’ve got one of these kids in my class this year. He has an IEP for academics and behavior. He performs about two grade levels below his peers and spends most of the school day in a series of learning support small-groups.

And as long as no one makes any demands on him, he’s fine.

But it’s hard to go through a school day without anyone putting demands on you. Teachers are supposed to ask students to do such things as read, write, solve math problems, join discussions, walk in the hallway, stop talking, take turns, and so on. And when someone asks this guy to do any of those things, there will be an outburst. There will be yelling, door-slamming, chair-throwing, running off and swearing. And by swearing, I mean serious filth; the kind of talk you’d expect from a hung-over stevedore trying to start a cold, 2-stroke outboard engine.

And then there’s the playground. Most kids are able to handle the give-and-take of the somewhat unstructured playground environment. There’s bound to be some teasing, perhaps some taunting and occasionally it can get a little nasty, which is why we have supervision. Most kids know when to pull back before a situation turns violent, but once in awhile we have kids who don’t, and again that’s why we have supervision.

This little guy has no filter, no control. The slightest slight by another student is cause for a full-on response, consisting of violence, racial and sexual insults and, of course, swearing.

All of this is despite the fact that he has a full-time, one-on-one aid. She shows up every morning, follows him around all day, helps him with his assignments and does everything possible to de-escalate his outbursts. It’s literally a full-time job and it’s required by his IEP.

Which brings me back to the ACLU lawsuit.

I get it; kids should not be suspended or expelled because of their disability. But as I explained to the parents of this particular student, there comes a time when I have to advocate for the rest of the class. And the rest of the class is terrified of this student. When he enters the room, they all get quiet and try to become as small as possible. His racial insults make them cry. He’s getting big enough that when he hits them it causes serious pain.

Consequently, he has been suspended at least three times this year. We did not do it lightly. We were fully aware of the consequences of our actions. We knew that he suffers a disability that affects his ability to self-govern.

But there are 600 students in our school and 27 students in my class. They need advocacy, too. At some point the right thing to do for the larger population might not be the right action for one particular person. When a student, no matter who it is, crosses the line and does or says something completely beyond the pale, suspension is an action a school must have at its disposal.

I’ll be interested to see how this lawsuit proceeds. If there’s another way to deal with students who display extreme behavioral disorders, I’d love to know about it. But until then, I think we need to continue to use school suspension as a last resort.

Addressing the Teacher Shortage Without Sacrificing Quality

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Current Affairs, Education Policy

 

There’s a place on the Washington coast called Taholah. I’ve been there a few times on my bicycle, riding up Highway 109 from Ocean Shores. The scenery is staggering. There’s huge trees everywhere, a river on the north end of town and an ocean to the west.

Also staggering is the obvious poverty. There’s run-down homes, stray dogs and abandoned cars. I didn’t see any stores or restaurants.

Taholah looks like a tough place to find work.

It also looks exactly like what you’d expect to see if you went there after reading the data. Per capita income is half that of the rest of the state. Housing values are about a third. About 5% of their 11th graders met standard in math; about a fourth met standard in ELA.

Twenty-three percent of their seniors graduate on time.

The other thing you should know about Taholah is that their population is 80% Native American. It’s the headquarters for the Quinault Reservation.

One more thing. According to the Seattle Times, 22.5% of their teachers are “Emergency Teachers,” teachers who are not certified and may or may not have a college degree. School districts are only allowed to hire emergency teachers when they’re unable to find anyone qualified to teach. According to my math, that means four of the seventeen teachers in Taholah are emergency status.

My district, on the other hand, attracts dozens of qualified applicants for every open position. Two summers ago I spent most of a sunny weekend wading through application packets, meeting with the rest of the hiring committee, and interviewing the five finalists before hiring the competent teacher who works next door.

That’s the thing about this teacher shortage. It’s like a large, complicated lake in the process of drying up. The shallow inlets are the first to empty out, while the deep water in the middle is safe for a long time. Taholah, with its poverty and lack of amenities will suffer the teacher shortage a lot sooner and a lot more severely than Edmonds, where I work.

So what do we do about it? One answer is to loosen the requirements to teach in Washington, a place well-known for having tough hurdles for prospective teachers, particularly those coming from out-of-state.

But is that really what we want? Do we really want to make it easier for people to teach in this state? Those requirements, after all, weren’t written out of spite; they were written to ensure that the kids in Taholah, as well as Edmonds, have a competent, qualified teacher in front of them.

We’ve got a problem. We’ve got a teacher shortage that hits small, rural – and frequently poor – communities much harder than it will ever hit more affluent communities. How do we make it attractive to teach in Taholah without sacrificing teacher quality?

I wish I knew.

How to Appreciate a Teacher

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For some reason, we had Teachers’ Appreciation Day last week instead of this week. More proof, apparently, that Lynnwood, Washington is ahead of the curve. It was a low-key affair, with a free lunch provided by the Parent Club and a few gifts from some of my students.

But for me, the appreciation came a week earlier. That’s when we had our district-wide STEM Expo. A STEM Expo is essentially a science fair open to fourth through twelfth graders, and it’s completely voluntary on the part of teachers and students. I decided to have my students participate, mostly because I like teaching science, technology, engineering and math.

We did a project involving angles. The students built stomp rockets and found out which angle was best in terms of sending a rocket the greatest distance. (45 degrees won in a decisive victory over 30 degrees and 60 degrees, in case you’re interested.)

The kids had fun building and flying their rockets. They also enjoyed creating their display boards, especially the group that smuggled glitter into my classroom and didn’t quite get all of it onto their project. Grr. They learned a lot about angles, predictions, writing, teamwork, and how scientists control variables during experiments.

And then came the STEM Expo. For context, you need to know that my school serves a fairly high-needs population. Our parents work hard, many in the service industries, and many in multiple jobs. They’re busy. We usually get about 30-40% turnout for evening events, including Curriculum Night. Curriculum Night, the night when you first meet the person with whom your child will spend 35 hours per week for the next ten months.

For STEM Expo, I had 24 of my 26 students show up. It was unprecedented. I put in a lot of extra effort for STEM Expo and almost every family responded by taking their kid to an evening event to share and celebrate their learning.

They didn’t do it for me, of course; they did it for their child. Nonetheless, they were supporting what I do for their kids in the classroom, so I took it personally.

I felt appreciated.

Are We Doing Testing Wrong?

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If your school is anything like mine, you’re about to enter Testing Season. We come back from Spring Break, get reorganized and start gearing up for the SBAs. We review important material and have our students take practice tests on their computers. We teach test-taking strategies and emphasize the importance of sleep, diet and attendance.

Then it’s on to May, when the actual testing takes place. We rearrange the schedules, organize the technology and the tech support team and review proctoring guidelines. And we generally freak out as if our reputation is on the line. Because it sort of is.

When June arrives we relax. Maybe too much. The kids get the sense that the main event is over and they act like it. The teachers loosen up a little and roll out the “Fun Projects.” Or they start teaching stuff like science, social studies and art. I’ve actually seen School Improvement Plans that specify holding off on the science units until after the tests. Seriously.

But what if we didn’t have to go through all this? What if we could teach all the way through June and not have to go through all this nonsense?

Here’s what we do: We test in the fall. Early; like the second week of school.

First of all, we could actually use the data throughout the year. As it is now, we give our students a bunch of pretests in the fall so we know who we’re dealing with. Why not use the SBA instead? After all, with the CCSS, our assessments and curriculum are aligned (or should be) and the results come quickly enough that we could access the most useful data possible at the time when it’s most useful.

Furthermore, the testing would be more accurate. Teachers are human. We want our kids to do well, for their sake as well as ours, and sometimes we help more than we should. Or we prepare them for what we think they’re going to need right when they need it, without a thought for the long-term. But with fall testing, we’re testing only the students, not ourselves. Plus, it comes at a time when we haven’t bonded with our students, which would make it easier for us to be more objective, and ultimately, more fair.

And finally, our school year would be effectively longer. We would teach the standards all the way through the last day. There would be no “Garbage Time.” Not only that, we would focus on long-term retention; teaching our students as if we wanted them to remember it forever. Which is actually what we do want.

So yeah; I think we’re doing testing wrong. We should be doing it in the fall when we could use the data, produce more accurate data, and use the rest of the year – all of it – to focus on deep learning.

Waiting to be told?

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Education Policy, Elementary, Life in the Classroom

By Tom

After our new Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, stepped into a public school last week, perhaps for the first time, she told a journalist that the teachers seemed to be “waiting to be told what they have to do.”

Maybe they were, but I doubt it.

If they’re anything like me, they have a pretty clear idea of what to do.

Last week, for example, while DeVos was visiting a school, I was teaching in one. And I spent most of the morning helping my fourth graders finish their reports and come to logical conclusions.

Their reports were about Native Americans in Washington State. From the early days through the settlers. After a short discussion the consensus was clear; the only logical conclusion was that America stole Indian land.

It was hard to argue with that conclusion.

Later that day I was working with the afterschool “ELL Homework Club,” a free service we offer to our many recent immigrant students. The last kid in the room was picked up at 5:10 by a mom who was born in Pakistan and fled to Thailand, where she had kids before moving to the U.S.

The mom was apologetic. Her appointment with a refugee counselor ran late. We talked for a while and I told her about my experience working with some teachers in Pakistan a few years ago. We agreed that her daughter stood a much better chance of getting an education here in the U.S. than back in Pakistan.

That said, she was worried about recent events.

After listening to her concerns I felt the need to apologize, “Please know that I, along with teachers everywhere, welcome you and every other immigrant. We’re glad you’re here and we value the diversity you bring to our school community.”

She seemed glad to hear that, and a little surprised.

No, Mrs. DeVos, I’m not waiting to be told what to do. I know why I’m here. I’m here to explain the dissonance between past and present; the contradiction between what we should have learned and what we aren’t doing. I help ten-year-olds understand how a nation that barged in and took land from people who lived here for “Time Immemorial” now arbitrarily denies access to legitimate refugees.

My job is to help them understand our nation’s sad, sloppy slog toward progress. How a nation that had slavery fought itself to end it. How a nation that imprisoned Japanese-American citizens liberated Europe and shut down Auschwitz.

But there’s more. I work with America in the present. The America I see in my classroom. Kids whose families long ago came from England, Ireland and Italy, and kids who came last year from Libya, Vietnam and Pakistan.

I know exactly what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to teach.

School Choice

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Current Affairs, Education Policy, Elementary

I’m getting a new student tomorrow. I haven’t met him yet, but I’ve met his discipline record, and it’s staggering. He’s packed more misbehavior into his short life than most of us commit in a lifetime. Not only that, but academically he’s at least three years below the rest of my class.

Before school I’m going to meet with my new student, along with his mom, the principal, the assistant principal, the dean of students, the school counselor, the learning support team and the para-educator who will work with him one-on-one throughout the entire school day. We’ll review his IEP and work with the behavior plan established at his old school in a way that fits the resources and capacity of ours.

How do I feel about my new student?

It would be easy to resent his arrival and fret over the possibility that he’ll disrupt the carefully constructed learning community that I’ve established. I could easily wonder “Why me?” and look for every opportunity to kick him out of the classroom, perhaps for good.

But I’m optimistic. I sincerely want the best for this little guy, and I honestly believe that my classroom will be the best place for him.  I want to work with my team to make this situation successful. I want desperately for him to look back in ten years and see his fourth grade year as a turning point.

And trust me, he will.

Coincidentally, our next Secretary of Education will spend tomorrow explaining herself to the Senate Education Committee. She’ll tell them about the wonderful things she’s done as a billionaire philanthropist in her home state of Michigan.

Most of those things involve pushing the agenda of school choice. School choice advocates want to increase the number of charter schools and they want parents to use vouchers to enroll their children in private schools using tax money that would otherwise have been used for a public school education.

Charter schools and vouchers can be great for those families who take advantage of them. Although many don’t, some charter schools outperform non-charter public schools serving the same population. Some private schools do, as well.

But not everyone gets to go to those charter schools and private schools. And sometimes those schools decide that certain students “aren’t a good fit” for their school. And those students get to go back to the regular public school, a school that has no choice but to accept that student and goes out of its way to accommodate him or her. The kids who do stay at those schools stand to benefit when the “misfits” leave. Their classrooms are quieter and there’s nobody slowing them down.

And if that wasn’t unfair enough, the charter schools and private schools then get to brag about how their schools are outperforming the nearby public schools. Even when they aren’t.

I wish Betsy DeVos (and her boss) nothing but the best. She is, after all, about to be running the federal department that oversees my profession. And he’s going to be president. But I want both of them to remember that public schools are not just the default choice for those waiting to be rescued. Public schools are, and always have been, thriving communities that enthusiastically and effectively serve every kid who happens to live nearby.

Including my new student.

Keeping the Bonus

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National Board Certification

downloadLast month we had an incredible event. Nearly 100 NBCTs met to talk about how to preserve the National Board bonus in Washington State. My role was interesting; I got to monitor the conversations at seven different tables and glean the common, high-leverage ideas that emerged. What I learned was this:

National Board Certified Teachers feel that the certification process has made them into better teachers. Many, if not most of them, were motivated to complete the process because of the bonus. Most, if not all of them, are convinced that the bonus is an important part of our state’s overall education system because of the impact that National Board Certification has on student learning. And finally, there was a broad consensus that the state should integrate the bonus into the Salary Allocation Model.

Making that happen is going to be difficult. First of all, this is probably the year when the Legislature tackles the McCleary Funding Issue. Suffice to say it’s going to be expensive, which means everything the state spends on schools will be looked at closely, including the NB bonus.

Furthermore, no one in Olympia has made any indication that they’re looking at significantly increasing revenue. A lack of increased revenue matters because the number of NBCTs has remained level since 2014, when the National Board revised its assessment process. Next year, however, the number of NBCTs could nearly double, depending on the success of the candidates who’ve been working through the new process. Our state is already spending upward of $50 million on NBCT bonuses; increasing that amount by 50 to 100% will give our lawmakers pause.

And finally, the Legislature that meets next month is not the Legislature that approved the $5000 bonus and the additional $5000 for teachers in high-needs schools. On average, state legislatures have about a 20% turnover whenever there’s an election, and there have been four elections since 2009. Should they decide to dump the bonus, there aren’t many lawmakers who would be killing a program they helped initiate.

So how do we go about convincing a bunch of lawmakers to spend an incredible and growing amount of money that doesn’t exist on a bonus they probably didn’t vote for in the first place?

Simple. You show them the standards that we, as NBCTs, met when we certified. You show them the standards and you tell them you met those standards. You tell them that going through National Board Certification helped you rise to that level. And then you give them examples of what you do every day in your classroom that illustrates how you embody those standards. The nice thing about the National Board Standards is that they’re written in the form of a description of an accomplished teacher. I don’t see how anyone who reads and understands those standards could look at a teacher who met those standard and deny them a $5000 bonus. I really don’t.

The only hard part is logistics. Somehow we need to get an NBCT and a set of standards in front of every lawmaker in Olympia for about an hour. It sounds complicated. But it also sounds important. It sounds like another incredible event.

Who’s in?

My Post-Election Lesson

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220px-us_marshals_with_young_ruby_bridges_on_school_stepsI had plans for last Wednesday.

We’ve been studying historical fiction and I was planning to teach my fourth graders about Ruby Bridges. I was going to have them write an historical fiction piece about her first day at school. But as I was getting ready for school, my voice of reason reconsidered. Somehow the idea of telling my diverse group of students about a six-year-old girl who endured a storm of racial epithets didn’t seem appropriate after what happened Tuesday night.

But another part of my mind pushed back. I could have pointed out that Ruby had every right to be at that school even though she didn’t feel welcome. I could have explained that American citizenship doesn’t have degrees; the Muslim kid in my class who was born two months after his parents fled Libya is just as American as his 55-year-old teacher who’s a direct descendant from a Jamestown settler.

I could have pointed out that Ruby had her classroom to herself. None of the other families wanted their children to study with her. Many of them left the school altogether, not unlike what will happen when the Department of Education begins to push for “School Choice,” a thin veil for a voucher system, sold as way for poor families to enroll their children in private schools. In reality, of course, the only beneficiaries are those families who are not only able to transport their kids to private schools, but affluent enough to make up the difference between their vouchers and private school tuition.

I could have pointed out that only one teacher in Ruby’s new school would agree to teach her. I could have shared how teachers aren’t perfect. Like most humans, they can be petulant and small. Even now, we can sometimes dispense with restraint and politesse and gripe about the amount of resources we pour into our ELL programs or the lack of Christmas carols during the Winter Concert. And while it’s one thing to notice that our Hi-Cap programs, honors classes and high school orchestras are dominated by Asian Americans, it’s another thing altogether to complain about it. I could have warned my students that restraint and politesse will probably be in decline throughout the near future, even in their teachers.

I could have done all these things, but I didn’t. On Wednesday my kids were stunned. Some were terrified. Their families came from virtually everywhere: Mexico, El Salvador, Columbia, Ukraine, Libya, Eretria, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam and Korea. They may have come to America for economic opportunity, but they came to our community because they feel welcome. Now they aren’t so sure.

I didn’t teach them about Ruby Bridges. I couldn’t. Instead I taught them about the Pig War and let them write historical fiction pieces about that. The Pig War, I explained, was a stupid little event in which American and English settlers on San Juan Island weren’t getting along very well and nearly took up arms after an American farmer shot an English pig that wandered into his yard. (In an irony lost on my students, it was President James Buchanan that smoothed things over and prevented the actual war.)

They had fun with their stories and it was just the distraction we needed. And although I told them the Pig War happened in 1859, I didn’t tell them it happened one year before an election that was more divisive than one we just endured.

Nor did I tell them what happened after that election, which was way worse than anything Ruby Bridges endured.

National Board Policy Summit: A Salary Proposal

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butterI’ve been on more committees, task forces and planning teams than I care to remember. Many of them were productive and well worth my time. One particular team produced this, which was awesome. If that experience represents the apex of my career as a committee member, then the low point – the nadir, if you will – came when I led a task force charged with choosing the interior color of our school. After 45 minutes listening to a debate on the relative merits of “Warm Butter” vs “Morning Lemon,” I fled. I can’t even remember which name for yellow we chose.

I’m sure everyone has a “committee story.” In fact, turn to the person next to you and share an experience you’ve had, positive or negative, which entailed working on a committee.

OK, eyes back up here.

If there is one committee whose work I respect more than any other, and whose final product received far less fanfare than it deserved, it would have to be the Washington State Compensation Technical Working Group of 2012. Yes, that is a mouthful, but those people, all sixteen of them, came up with this report. Read it if you want, but the part I want to focus on is this:

cwg-model

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is their proposal for a teacher salary schedule. For our purposes, we’re going to ignore the actual dollar amounts; that’s a topic for another time. What’s more important are the numbers below the dollar amounts. Those are the factors by which the base salary is multiplied to arrive at each of the ten salary figures.

I also want you to notice the columns. This model provides a salary increase for teachers who complete their ProCert, a feature that’s sorely lacking in our current schedule. The whole point of ProCert, as I understand it, is for teachers to prove that they’ve reached the second tier of their professional growth. In other words, they’ve shown that they are more valuable than they were when they started. Compelling teachers to fork over upward of $600 to complete an assessment proving their increased value, and not paying them more after they’ve done that just doesn’t seem fair. This model corrects that.

It also adds a column for National Board Certification, instead of our current practice of adding a bonus on top of a regular salary. I like that for two reasons. First of all, it bakes the bonus into the salary schedule, making it more permanent and less subject to the ebb and flow of the economy. It also implies that every teacher should aspire to NB certification as a career goal; there it is: on the bottom right corner of the table, waiting for and calling out to everyone.

As I’ve shared recently, about 100 teachers will gather later this month to focus on two issues: the future of second-tier teacher certification in our state, and a sustainable model for rewarding National Board Certification.

In my view, the salary model above – the one pounded out by the Technical Working Group of 2012 – serves as a good starting point for the discussion. I have a few qualms with it; like the fact that there’s no yearly raise, only big jumps ever four or five years, or the fact that there’s no raise at all after year 10; but like I said, it could certainly serve as a starting point in the discussion.

And what a discussion it’ll be. The policy summit is on November 19th. Stay tuned to this blog for more information before, during and after the event. And if you made plans to attend, I’ll see you there!

And I promise we won’t talk about yellow paint.

Tell Your NBCT Story

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imageEvery National Board Certified Teacher has a story. This is mine.

As an elementary teacher I’m responsible for teaching every subject, which includes social studies. And in fourth grade social studies focuses on Washington State. One of the concepts that my students have always struggled with is the Rainshadow Effect. Over the years I’ve tried everything: different videos, different texts, relief maps, you name it. The results have been discouraging. When I assess my students, they generally don’t understand the Rainshadow Effect.

There was a time in my career when I would have simply let it go. After all, the Rainshadow Effect will never show up on anyone’s standardized test. It’s only social studies, for crying out loud; give it a shot and move on. If they get it, great; if they don’t, they don’t.

But I couldn’t let it go. The Rainshadow Effect isn’t just a random meteorological phenomenon covered in chapter three of our textbook. It explains the major differences in the regions of our state, which is what chapter four is all about. It also explains the main differences between the Plateau Indian tribes and the Coastal tribes, which is the essence of chapter five. Not only that, but the Rainshadow Effect is one of the main reasons for all the dams along the Columbia River, not to mention the fact that Central Washington is a major producer of fruit, which largely explains its large Hispanic population. Chapters eight, nine and twelve.

The Rainshadow Effect is a big deal and I’ve been determined to get it right.

This year I tried something different. I put a fan on one end of a table in the front of the room. I asked five volunteers to place their backpacks in a large pile on the middle of the table. Then I took a wet sponge. “The prevailing wind, represented by this fan, blows wet air toward the Cascade Mountains, represented by these backpacks. When the air hits the mountains, it has to go up. When air rises, it gets cold, and cold air can’t hold water very well. That’s why I’m squeezing this sponge and that’s why these backpacks are getting wet. As the air passes over the mountains, it goes back down and warms up. Warm air hold water better. That’s why I’m not squeezing the sponge anymore, and that’s why there’s less rain in Eastern Washington. That’s the Rainshadow Effect.”

I discovered the same thing Annie Sullivan discovered 119 years ago: pouring cold water on something increasing student achievement. For some reason, my students loved watching the backpacks get wet. And they now understand the Rainshadow Effect. All of them.

Washington State spends $50 million on stipends for NBCTs. That number could nearly double in a few years, and with education funding moving to the front burner this Legislative Season, some people in Olympia (where it rains a lot) are going to be asking whether we’re getting our money’s worth.

There are different ways to answer that question. Some people prefer data, and the data certainly looks good. My problem with the data is that it’s too limiting: it focuses too much on test scores. Teaching kids the Rainshadow Effect will never show up in that data.

I prefer to justify our National Board stipend by telling stories. Because every National Board Certified Teacher has a story illustrating how the process made them a better teacher. When I went through the process I became a better teacher, a teacher committed to student learning. A teacher who knows the subject matter and how to teach it to kids. A teacher who is responsible for managing and monitoring student learning. A teacher who learns from experience and a teacher who is a member of a learning community.

What’s your story?