By Tom

I’ve been in Pakistan now for almost a week, conducting workshops and attending an international education conference. The conference was hosted by Beaconhouse Schools, a private school system based in Lahore that has branches all over Pakistan, as well as several other countries. In the past week I’ve learned an amazing amount about Pakistan in general and their education system in particular:

•  There is no pre-service teacher training in Pakistan. None. You learn it all on the job. Nobody goes to college to become trained as a teacher. In fact, teachers may or may not have gone to college. Most likely, they’ve only been through high school.
• You cannot support a family on a teacher’s salary in Pakistan, which is about $75-$100 per month. If you’re a teacher in Pakistan, you’re a woman who’s either married to a guy who makes good money, or you’re living at home with your parents.
• Unless you teach in a high school. High school teachers make a living wage. But there aren’t very many of them, because there aren’t a whole lot of high school students.
• There are basically two school systems in Pakistan. There’s the private system, which is fairly progressive, or at least heading in that direction, and the public system, which is apparently vastly inferior.
• The public school system is not free. It doesn’t cost much, maybe five bucks a month, but it is prohibitively expensive for a lot of people. Either 5% or 30% of the children go to private schools, depending on who you talk to and the point that they’re trying to make.
• There’s also the Madrassa school system, which nobody likes to talk about.
• Only about 40% of Pakistan’s children actually go to school. Forty percent. It might be twice that high in the bigger cities, but Pakistan is primarily a rural country.
• I met a guy named Muhammad Ayub. He started a school in Islamabad. He teaches at night, after work, during his free time. He was sick of watching kids with nothing else to do, digging through the garbage, trying to help their families survive. His school has no buildings, no desks, no chairs, and no books. It’s a teacher standing in front of a bunch of kids who are sitting outside in the dark, on the ground, writing information onto notebooks. And they’re happy to be there. Some of them have gone on to college. When he spoke at the conference I started to cry. If you want to join me in donating some cash to this guy, his email address is muhammad_ayub13@yahoo.com.
• The Prime minister also spoke at our conference. The attendees were polite and attentive, but they were primarily waiting to hear about the government’s support for education. Nobody cried.
• Writing bulleted lists is a lot easier than real writing; you don’t have to worry about connecting ideas with transitions.
• Teachers complain about the same things in Pakistan as they do in the US: The kids don’t pay attention, the curriculum is too prescriptive, the curriculum isn’t prescriptive enough, there’s not enough time for collaboration and there’s too much time spent collaborating.
• The biggest concern among the teachers at this conference was finding a balance between accountability and a teacher’s freedom and responsibility to teach lessons that are meaningful to his or her specific students. Hmm.
• The food in Pakistan is delicious. Absolutely delicious. Imagine Indian food, only better and slightly spicier. My favorite was the goat brain stew. Be careful, though, because it doesn’t taste nearly as good on the way back up. Trust me.
• The traffic in Lahore is unreal. It consists of cars, trucks, three-wheeled taxis, bicycles, motorcycles and donkey carts engaged in a 50 MPH free-for-all. It literally took me several minutes to figure out which side of the street the traffic was supposed to be on. (It’s the left) I have never seen bolder driving. I actually saw a guy getting a ticket, and I can only imagine what he did to attract that kind of attention.
• I have never worked so hard in my life. Before the conference even started, I spent three full days training 30 teacher leaders. During the conference, it got even more hectic: I presented a two hour session on brain-based learning, I hosted a two-hour discussion session on the future direction for the school system, and I was involved in three panel discussion, one of which I moderated. It was exhausting. But fun.
• Pakistanis are the most beautiful, warm-hearted, hospitable and generous people I have ever met. They are appalled and sickened by the recent violence in their country.

By Tom

Last August, completely out of the blue, I received an invitation to speak at a conference in Pakistan. After I accepted the invitation, my hosts asked me to come a few days early to work with some of their trainers. Long story, short; here I am in Lahore, trying to figure out the cricket game on TV, after a long day of teacher training.

My session today was on different instructional theories; comparing the relative merits of empiricism, behaviorism, progressivism and constructivism. My audience – thirty teachers and administrators – all lined up on the side of constructivism. Constructivism is what they like and it's where they want to go. And apparently, Pakistan views the US as being a constructivist country. Student-centered and relaxed; a place where schools respond to students' natural pace of development. They think we don't rush our children, or force them to do academic tasks that they aren't cognitively or even physically able to do.

That's what they think.

I sadly disavowed them of that notion. America, I told them, used to be a place like that. We used to respect the children we teach and the place they were on the growth continuum. Not anymore. Now we try to cram as much learning as possible into their tiny minds, spending three months teaching what should have taken three years.

And why?

We're moving toward test-centered education. Not student-centered. At least at the systemic level. And why is that? Partly out of reaction to, and competition with, the education systems in other countries. America is racing to become Japan, Finland and Singapore. And Pakistan. Pakistan, meanwhile, is racing to become America. At least the America they thought they were racing towards when the race began.

In Pakistan they have teachers who are trying to tell parents that their children need to learn math at the concrete level before they memorize the times tables and division algorithms. In America we have math trainers preaching less manipulatives and more worksheets.

Weird. Maybe ten years from now, after their curriculum has become totally child-centered and ours totally test-driven, they'll like what they see in our country and we'll like what we see in theirs. And then maybe we'll invite some third grade teacher from Pakistan to come over here to tell us how to become what we used to be ten years ago.

And that poor guy will have to try to figure out baseball.

By Tom

Now that Waiting for Superman has been thoroughly debunked as a complete load of hogwash by none other than Diane Ravitch, where do we go from here?

I think we should keep our focus on Superman. Because Superman will keep our schools safe. Superman will help our teachers do their work. Superman will run copies, watch the lunchroom and even umpire the kickball games. Moreover, Superman will go back to the real world from which he came and tell everyone what really goes on in our nation's schools.

And he'll do a much better job of it than Davis Guiggenheim.

Just who is this Man of Steel? It could be you, actually; or maybe your husband. It could be the man down the street or the guy who picks up your trash. It could be any man who has a kid, a niece, a nephew, a grandchild or a step-child in any school in our country.

What I'm talking about is Watch Dogs. Watch Dogs is a program started by the National Center for Fathering. It's simple and sustainable and it works. They put fathers and other father-figures into schools for a whole day, where they volunteer in classrooms, eat lunch in the lunchroom, play on the playground and keep an eye out for trouble. Watch Dogs was started only a few years ago, folllowing a tragic school shooting in Arkansas, by two dads who thought they could help their local school just by being there.

My son's school started Watch Dogs this year. I went to the kick-off event, which consisted of 40 or so dads eating pizza with their kids and then listening to the principal tell us what we'd be doing. It was short and simple: we'd be volunteering for a day at school, doing whatever they told us to do. Then he posted a large school calendar and I watched in awe as every one of these guys signed up for two or three days. Whole days. Vacation time. Days when they'd be working their tails off for free.

That was a month ago. My wife, who's the office manager at this school, gets to greet these guys on the way in, show them around the school, fit them into an official Watch Dogs tee-shirt, and say goodbye to them at the end of the day. The results are amazing.

Three or four days a week they get an extra pair of eyes out on the playground, which means that instead of a five minute kickball game followed by a fifteen minute argument over whether or not Edgar was out at second, the kids get a twenty-minute kickball game, and Edgar gets to be out. Three or four days a week they get an extra pair of eyes in the lunchroom, which means that kids eat their sandwiches before they eat their Twinkies and the food fights are stopped before they start. And three or four days a week they get an extra pair of hands in the classrooms, which means that the three kids who didn't understand the instruction and can't do their math get a guy to help them who already knows how to multiply fractions.

What's more, the children of these Dogs get to know that their dad took a day off of work just to wander around in their school. That's powerful.

But there's more. My wife tells me that every single Watch Dog, upon leaving at the end of the day, tells her how exhausted they are. They tell her they had no idea, no idea at all, how hard teachers work. They spend an entire day watching amazing people do complicated and exhausting work. And then where do they go? They go back to their jobs the next day, where they can relax. Where they tell their colleagues what it's really like in our public schools.

That's the kind of Superman worth waiting for.

By Tom

I don’t care for school reform. In fact, the very phrase “school reform” doesn’t really make any sense. “Reform” implies a fundamental change. But no matter what shape school reform takes, we’ll still end up with the same teachers, the same buildings, the same curriculum and most importantly, the same students. That’s not reform. It’s like remodeling a kitchen by pulling out all the cabinets and appliances and then putting them right back, but in a slightly different configuration. You haven’t remodeled anything. All you’ve done is waste an enormous amount of time and energy.

The people who scream the loudest about school reform usually have the most complicated, disruptive and expensive solutions: merit pay, charter schools and firing entire faculties of low-performing schools.

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By Tom

 I taught a pretty good lesson the other day, while trying to get my third graders to revise the rough drafts of their paragraphs.

I started by asking Audrey about her hair. Audrey has beautiful hair which is always combed into complicated arrangements. I asked her whether she used a mirror when she combed her hair each morning. She explained how she and her mom stand before the mirror, constantly making adjustments until it looks perfect. Like Audrey, most of my students are careful about their hair, and they could relate to our conversation.

I shifted the discussion to writing: Like hair, writing needs to be adjusted and revised until it looks perfect. I showed them what I was talking about. I projected a paragraph that they had watched me write the day before. I modeled adding details to my piece, switching words around, dividing sentences and combining ideas.

Then we put Taylor’s work up on the screen. I picked her paper because it was fairly well-written, yet presented several opportunities for revision. After we made a few changes to Taylor’s paper, I released the class to work on their own. They had seen me revise, they had practiced revising together and they were ready to work independently.

Most of them, anyway.  There were a few that I still had some concerns about, and I went to their desks first to help them clean things up.

After about ten minutes I told the class that as soon as their paragraphs were fully revised they could walk around and read other finished papers and write comments on the back to the authors.  After that we reviewed the main points about revising, put our work away and got ready for recess.

It was a good lesson. I took the class from one place to another. My students didn’t know how to revise their writing, and now they do. There was nothing particularly fancy about this lesson, nor was there anything seriously wrong with it. It was the kind of solid, meat-and-potatoes lesson that I’m expected to chunk out several times a day for the length of the school year. The kind of lesson that I love to teach.

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By Tom

First the good news: Students in Washington State scored the highest in the nation last year on their SATs. While scores across the nation stayed flat, our students improved. We might have a crappy baseball team, but on something that actually matters, we're number one.

Now the bad news. The Seattle Times, which by default is the most widely read paper in the state, gives absolutely no credit for this impressive feat to the teachers. None whatsoever. Here, read it for yourself. 

This after blaming teachers for everything that's bad about public education. Blaming them for the poor performance of students on state tests, Blaming them for obstruction to school reform. Blaming them for the need for school reform. You name it, teachers have been blamed for it.

Don't get me wrong; like The Times, I credit the students who actually took the SATs. They sat there with their pencils and answered the questions correctly. Good for them. And good for their parents for supporting them.

But for crying out loud, I want at least a little of that credit. Just a bit. Those kids learned how to write paragraphs from me. I taught them their multiplication tables. I taught them how to divide. How to subtract three-digit numbers with borrowing. I taught them how to listen, how to share glue. I taught them the water cycle. I taught them how to read.

So good for you, students. I'm glad you did well and I'm glad that you'll get into a good college. And I'm sure you know a third grade teacher or a middle school teacher or a high school teacher who helped you along the way.

It's just too bad that you're stuck reading a newspaper that doesn't know how to change its narrative in the face of data that doesn't support that narrative.

By Tom

The Los Angeles Times created a recent stir by publishing the standardized test results of some of their local teachers. The premise, of course, is obvious: teachers aren’t currently working as hard as possible or doing as much as they could to promote student learning. And they won’t improve unless motivated by shame. I couldn’t agree more.

And since I want to do everything I can to improve, I’ve got a plan.

I’ll start by publishing my class results online. Everyone will know exactly how many kids learned in my class and how many kids didn’t.

Then I’ll take it up a notch. In the interest of accountability and transparency, I’ll disaggregate the scores so that the world will know exactly which students I didn’t teach successfully. They’ll notice that some students did well despite my lack of effort and that some did poorly because of it.

Then I’ll upload my gradebook and attendance records. Everyone will see that the same students who did poorly on their state tests also did poorly on their classroom work. The astute readers will note that I even allowed some students to skip some of their school work. Not even turn it in. And they’ll be horrified to see that I didn’t even have everyone come to school every day. In fact, I actually had many of the lowest-performing students miss the most learning time. That should definitely make me improve.

But I’m not taking any chances. I’ll install web cams in my room so that everyone who holds a stake in the success of my students can watch my ineptitude. Newspaper editors can log in and watch me teach poorly. Members of the Business Roundtable can watch me fail to give my students the skills they need. Parents can watch their own children endure my weak lessons. Everyone will watch as my lowest-performing students engage in off-task behavior whenever possible and work hard only when under my direct supervision.

Yes, the new Tom will be totally accountable, totally transparent, and much, much better.

By Tom

I found out yesterday that Washington State didn't just lose the Race to the Top, we got creamed. Smeared. Hammered. We came in 32nd out of 36. It was like watching another Mariners season. It was humiliating.

Of course, having the Seattle Times editorial page rubbing it in didn't help matters.

They were right, of course. We didn't get any of the grant money because our reform package wasn't bold enough and it didn't have sufficient buy-in from all the stakeholders. Specifically, the teachers and their union.

I have to admit, I was a little upset, finding out that we did so poorly. I actually liked the package that our legislature put together, especially the proposed changes to the teacher evaluation system, and the fact that we'll continue to support National Board certification instead of pouring money into a merit-pay program. And I'm not convinced in the least that adding charter schools is any kind of a sustainable solution to the problems in education.

Disappointed and frustrated, I took it out on a long bike ride. Which seemed to help, because by the time I got home, I figured out what's really going on here.

It was never about the money. Not really. What the Obama administration was trying to do was shake things up. They had a nice chunk of cash to throw at education. And they had a choice; they could dole it out in the usual way, based on need, and expect the usual results. Or they could do things differently. They could dole it out to states based on the degree of innovation in their proposed changes, and the degree to which the stakeholders in those states bought into those changes. Which is what they did. 

And that actually makes a lot of sense, because now we all get to sit back and see what works and what doesn't. We may find out that merit pay is the best thing to happen to education since the Dry-Erase Revolution. Or we might find out that it's a complicated waste of money. We might find out that charter schools really do help their students learn and that they really do inform their surrounding public schools on best practices. Or not.

And if we find this stuff out, then we can use that information to improve education everywhere else. If we're smart, that is.

So taking the long view, this whole thing looks like one big educational experiment. Unfortunately, Washington, along with most of the other states, was unwillingly placed into the control group. We didn't get any of the much-needed money to pay for our innovations. But like this year's Mariners season, that's the way it goes.

Hopefully we'll all learn from this. And hopefully we'll use what we learn to improve education for all students.

Because that's what really matters.

By Tom

Once upon a time there was a family of rabbits. A mother rabbit, a father rabbit and a bunny rabbit. The mother took care of the bunny on a day-to-day basis and the father worked hard to support his family. In fact, he was know to tell others that taking care of his bunny was his "Paramount Duty."

After awhile the family split up. The bunny went to live with her mother, who eventually remarried. The father continued his financial support for the bunny, although not nearly as enthusiastically.

It soon became clear that the bunny needed braces. (See figure1) The mother mentioned this to the father, who sympathized with the situation, but claimed that he didn't have the money to pay for them, and besides braces weren't covered in their original divorce agreement, wherein he was only required to cover "basic care." He did however, give the bunny's stepfather permission to pay for the braces.

The stepfather, who had to look at the bunny's teeth on a daily basis, readily agreed. The braces were purchased and the teeth were corrected.

The end.

The moral of the story? If you shirk your legal responsibilities, someone responsible will come along and take care of them for you.

To which I can only add two things:

1. Thank you very much to the voters of the Edmonds School District for passing our school levy this week. You are awesome and it's an honor to teach your children.

2. Shame on you, State of Washington, for forcing them to do so.

By Tom

When I was younger I used to work in a swimming pool. Every day a guy named Nick would emerge from the boiler room and test the water. He would hang a thermometer in the pool and give it time to become accurate. In the meantime, he'd fill a test tube with water and check the ph. Then he'd collect his things, walk back to the boiler room, enter the data into a log and take whatever actions the results dictated.

Water is simple. It reacts consistently to external forces. And our swimming pool had an efficient circulation system. Water came in through valves in the bottom and it left through drains in the gutter that lined the side of the pool. There was also upwards of 100 people in the pool at any one time, swimming and splashing around, stirring things up. It was therefore reasonable to assume that testing one area of the pool would yield a result that was fairly representative of the entire pool. If the ph in Nick's test tube was off, then there was something wrong with the water in the whole pool.

But just to be sure, Nick would double-check whenever he got a weird reading. He would go around and test other parts of the pool, because wanted to make sure there really was something amiss before dumping an extra shot of chlorine into the pool.

Nick understood testing. He knew its value as well as its limitations.

I'm not so sure we do.

I just received the the reading scores from the state test that my students took last year. They came last week. By and large, most of my students performed well. If we had a merit pay system in place in my district, I'd probably be able to take my family to Disneyland next summer. It was good news.

And as I looked over the results, I saw confirmation of what I observed all last year. The kids who read well day in and day out performed well on the test. The kids who struggled throughout the year performed poorly on the test. 

With one exception.

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