Author Archives: Tom White

No Pony for Christmas

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Education Policy

Purplepony

By Tom

A year ago, before the economy went sour, the Basic Education Finance Task Force was told to figure out what the state of Washington would have to do if it was serious about providing a high-quality educational system. So they did. And to no one's surprise, the fixes involve spending more money. Billions of it.

The timing couldn't have been worse. Our state is looking at a $5 billion deficit as we head into the legislative session. Education amounts to about 40% of the state budget. The Task Force proposals will cost up to $3 billion beyond what the state already pays for education. So where is all that money going to come from? Good question. And it's exactly the question Governor Gregoire asked Dan Grimm, the chair of the Task Force.

As a former state treasurer, Mr Grimm should know his way around the state budget. His response? Increase taxes. Specifically, extend the state sales tax, currently applied only to the sales of goods; to services, such as doctor visits. The governor also told him that she would put the Task Force's funding proposal to a voter referendum. Hmm. I could probably name about four people that would vote for a tax hike at this point in time. And I work in a school.

Which means we won't be getting a pony for Christmas this year. We won't be starting the next school year with the school system described in the Task Force proposal. That's too bad, since the proposals address most of the obstacles that stand between us and a really effective public school system.

Is there a silver lining to this cloud? Perhaps.

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Task Force’s Final Draft

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Education Policy

This is huge. Anyone who teaches in Washington State, has school-age kids or grandkids in Washington State, or plans to do any of the above should sit down and pay attention. The Basic Education Finance Task Force has been quietly working since way before the economy fell apart, drafting a recommendation to completely change the funding structure of our state's school system. The last time we posted about the Task Force on this blog they had five separate proposals. Now there's one. (Imagine being at that meeting.)

All told, the Task Force made six Key Recommendations:

  1. Define basic education as the opportunity for students to meet proposed new high school graduation requirements.
  2. Basic education includes supplemental instructional opportunities for disadvantaged students, including at-risk pre-schoolchildren.
  3. Establish a new state budgeting system with allocations based on class size and instructional hours in model elementary, middle and high schools, with flexibility for local school district spending. Increase state allocation to school districts based on reduced class size assumptions, especially in grades K through 3, and more instructional time, and increase allocations for at-risk preschool children.
  4. Reform the compensation system:
    • Determine salary increases and continuing contracts for teachers based on performance factors.
    • Set school employee salary allocations benchmarked by comparable wages in regional non-school employee labor markets.
    • Eliminate state allocations for teacher salary increases based in additional educational credits and degrees.
    • Create new performance-based teacher certification system supported by increased resources for professional development and mentoring
  5. Implement a common state-funded accounting and budgeting system for all school districts and enhance the statewide student informational system.
  6. Implement the State Board of Education proposed accountability system principals.

For this post, I'm going to focus on numbers 3 and 4. Not that the others aren't important. They are. But space, as well as my expertise, are limited. And again, I strongly encourage anyone with a horse in this race to read the entire report.

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Welcome and Congratulations New NBCTs!

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National Board Certification

By Tom

"As the circle of light increases, so does the circumference of darkness around it." -Albert Einstein

Ten years ago I thought I was a much better teacher than I think I am now. I had things in my classroom well under control. I'd taught the same grade at the same school for over fifteen years. I knew the curriculum really well. My kids behaved themselves. Parents liked me. My job was becoming increasingly effortless. I had conquered teaching as I knew it.

It wasn't always easy. When I first started out, teaching was very difficult for me, particularly the organizational part of it. I forgot important stuff. During my second year on the job I forgot to hand out the order forms for school pictures. Fortunately one of my colleagues spotted them on my desk and expressed concern that my entire class wouldn't be able to order their pictures. "You know, for a lot of moms, those are more important than report cards!" Of course by then, the kids had gone home, and the pictures were the next day. So I was on the phone all evening, describing the various packages to all 24 mothers. "…Package B includes two 5 by 7s, one 8 by ten and sixteen wallets. The price is $12.95. Now Package C, on the other hand…"

It was a long night, and a valuable learning experience.

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The Good, The Bad and the Grimm

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Washington State is taking a serious look at the way schools are funded. In fact, the "Basic Education Finance Joint Task Force" is currently discussing five separate proposals, each of which would dramatically change our state school system.

I like the proposal put forth by the Full Funding Coalition a lot. I think it's pretty good for a number of reasons. I don't care so much for the status quo. I think it's bad. And there's one proposal on the table that just plain frightens me. That's the one proposed by the chair of the Task Force, Dan Grimm.

Before I get all specific with you, I need to claim a caveat: my experience has not prepared me to pass judgment on all aspects of these five very detailed proposals. But I do know what I'm talking about on certain topics, including teacher professional development time, class size, and performance pay. So I'll stick to those.

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The New Kid

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By Tom

I got a new kid this week. I first spotted him in the office. He was sitting there next to his mom, who was filling out the new kid forms that we use in our school. So I started up a conversation, asking him where he was from, how old he was; the usual things adults ask kids when they don’t have anything to talk about.

 

Turns out he’s a third grader, and he’s assigned to my class. He started the following day, after I got to learn about him from his file. And from the CPS field officer assigned to his case.

I’ve been thinking about the task ahead of me. And I’ve also been thinking about apples, our profession’s ubiquitous icon.

 

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It’s Parent Conference Time!

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Images[1] 
By Tom

I've only had to use it once, and man was I glad it was there.

It was parent conference time, a fall tradition since before chalk. I was setting the stage; grown-up chairs, regular table, student files, notepaper, pencils, and of course the obligatory Box of Kleenex.

The first conference that afternoon was with Anthony's mom. Anthony wasn't doing well. He was behind in reading, math, writing, science, everything. He even had trouble with lunch. In fact, the only thing Anthony was doing well at was art. In art he was amazing. The rest of the class would line up at his desk to get him to draw the people in their pictures. I had to put an end to it, because it got to the point where he was doing most of everyone's art.

So my plan was to begin the conference by telling Anthony's mom what a wonderful artist he was and then move from there to the trouble he was having with everything else. The old Good News/Bad News device.

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What It Takes; Tom’s Take

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It’s about time someone finally looked at our state’s constitution (or at least the preamble) and then looked at how we actually execute the "paramount duty" of educating our children.

And then explained how to make up the difference.

That, in a nutshell, is how I view the plan by a new task force on school funding. It’s quite a document (Thirty pages! With no pictures!) and it goes a long way towards describing what this state needs to do. It doesn’t tell how we’re going to pay for it, but that’s probably a topic best tackled after the election.

The part of the plan that particularly caught my attention was about how teachers would be assessed in order to receive additional compensation commiserate with improved classroom skills.

As I read this I recalled one of my earliest evaluations.

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Bail This Out

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By Tom

I found myself at a district technology workshop yesterday. I was sitting next to my friend Taylor, who teaches third grade across town. We spent the day planning ways to incorporate technology into our curriculum. Taylor’s a smart teacher and she had some great ideas. I learned a lot from her, and she might have learned a few things from me. Or maybe not. The point is, we came from different schools and spent the day sharing ideas and working together to improve our teaching practice. There was no competition. I may or may not have been helping Taylor’s students outperform mine, and I couldn’t care less.

From time to time, I checked the internet to see how things were going in Congress. That’s right; I was off-task. And as it turned out, Congress was in the process of letting the administration buy up lousy loans in an attempt to save the US economy.

I hope it works. But as I was switching back and forth between my curriculum and my country, I couldn’t help but notice something. We’re going to spend $700 billion bailing out a system that is supposed to deal with failure in a Darwinian fashion. And at the same time, many of the same clowns who ruined the very economy that they’re supposed to manage are trying to get public education to act more like private enterprise.

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The New Teacher, Part 1

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Life in the Classroom

If you’re like me, you will never forget that wild year. The first year of teaching. The days when you came home on top of the world. The world that you were changing. You had the kids in the palm of your hand. They loved you, you loved them, and everything was apple trees and sunshine.

Then there were the other days. The days when nothing worked. Not even the pencil sharpener. You ran off the wrong set of copies and the principal stopped by to watch. You marked the wrong kid absent and her mom freaked out. In your room. In front of your class.

Ah yes, the first year of teaching. The ups, the downs, the loneliness, the stress. It’s no wonder that many of our young teachers leave the classroom within their first five years, given the fact that we’re the only profession in which first year practitioners have essentially the same responsibilities as thirty-year veterans. Fortunately, this problem has been recognized and smart people have started to address it. Studies have shown that effective teacher induction programs can dramatically reduce new teacher attrition.

But I want to do something a little different here. Something that I hope will raise the awareness of what brand-new teachers experience as they begin their careers.

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