What do you do with a struggling school or student? Bring in stronger teachers? NO. Improve the student to teacher ratio? NO. Offer before and after school support classes? NO.
What you do is throw money at the problem, and I do not mean investing the money in ways that will improving the educational system. What some groups are trying to do is throw money at students as a way to get the students to do better on state tests. Some say incentive, others say bribe.
In Travis’ response to the policy meme, one of his top five began like this: “Education is not a business model. This will lead to the downfall of education, being caught up in a maelstrom of bureaucracy. In addition, business is not even an appropriate comparison for education.” What follows is an article on the subject that I first wrote for the TLN column in Teacher Magazine.
Like most households where teachers reside, there are many conversations about education policy talk in our home. My husband and I also discuss the Dilbert-esque policies implemented at the major manufacturing firm where he works. Not surprisingly, it’s fairly easy to find some common threads.
Not long ago we began to flesh out an analogy between public education and lean manufacturing, a concept now being pursued by many industries. In general terms, lean manufacturing concentrates on reducing costs by utilizing standardized processes and consistent raw materials that together minimize wasted resources, including time. Any variation in raw materials or processing requires adjustments in order to have the same output at a consistent cost.
It was the first day of school for my third graders, and they were all coloring. I roamed the room, trying to get a sense of what I was up against. I happened upon Jinhyuk. (Pronounce it Gin-Yuck, as in "What is this, gin? Yuck!") He was coloring everything turquoise. Himself, his family, their house, their trees, the dog, everything. Now, far be it from me to stifle anyone's artistic expression, especially on the first day of third grade, but curiosity ruled the day. "Everything seems to be the same color, Jinhyuk," I observed mildly, "Tell me about that." His neighbor, Cathy, the bossiest kid I've ever worked with, told me about it for him. "It's the only color he's got," she announced, "He only came with one crayon."
That told me something about Jinhyuk. (It told me something about Cathy, too, but that's another story.) It told me he was resourceful; a kid who uses what he's been given to make the best of whatever situation he's in.
This impression was confirmed two months later when he became the center of a minor scandal. One of the fifth grade teachers was holding an "unauthorized" candy sale to raise money for a field trip. Only fifth graders were supposed to know about it. Somehow Jinhyuk, with his limited English skills, caught wind of the sale and managed to sneak across campus during lunch, without a pass, to buy twenty dollars worth of candy from this classroom. Twenty dollars is a lot of cash for a third grader to carry around, but by the time we caught on to him, he had enlarged his fortune to thirty bucks by retailing the candy at a considerable mark-up. People were furious. It was suggested that he donate his earnings to the fifth graders from whom he bought the candy. I argued against it, saying he might not have even known he wasn't supposed to be buying and then selling candy to other kids, and that he'd only been in the country since August. I was told: "That kid knows a lot more than you think he does, Tom."
1. 72% of students in my school qualify for free or reduced price lunch. Whether or not you live in an area with entire neighborhoods in poverty, visit them and get to know the issues of students and families there in order to deepen your understanding of perspectives rarely represented at public meetings.
2. Observing how a student increases persistence or treats classmates more respectfully or overcomes reluctance to participate in discussion can be far more valuable in understanding student learning than a test score. . . .
This meme was sent out by Nancy Flanagan, a thoughtful blogger at Teacher in a Strange Land. The purpose was to get a group of people sharing their thoughts on what policymakers should know.
1. The students in my classroom deserve a well rounded curriculum that both challenges and inspires them. When making policy decisions, keep in mind that education goes far beyond skills in reading and math. A few years ago I had a student in my classroom who struggled with reading. One day she ran up to me crying at lunch recess. I asked her what was wrong. She handed me her class schedule. She had been taken out of choir to attend an additional reading class. I will never forget her looking at me and saying, “I know I need to work on my reading, but I love to sing.” My kids deserve the chance to sing, dance and create in addition to learning the basics.
This meme was sent out by Nancy Flanagan, a thoughtful blogger at Teacher in a Strange Land. The purpose was to get a group of people sharing their thoughts on what policymakers should know.
So, after many hours of whittling down my list of 104 items (trust me, that was down from the previous number), I have my five.
1. Forty-seven minutes is not an adequate or desirable amount of time to do deep, mature, extensive, thinking. You know . . . the level of thinking that creates meaningful learning and life-long learners.
2. . .
This meme was sent by Teacher in a Strange Land – what is it that I really want policy makers to know before they draft legislation that impacts my classroom?
Two years ago, the state agreed to double the bonus for NBCTs teaching in high risk schools. Is this fair? I must admit, I did a happy dance when I heard the news. I am National Board Certified, and I work in a high-needs high school.
When I started teaching, I worked in a school that had about 35% free and reduced lunch. Over nine years at the same school, I watched that number climb to more than 60%. Ruby Payne’s theories on poverty might be controversial, but I witnessed the change in school climate when we hit the tipping point where the “culture of poverty” became prevalent. Up until that point, middle class values of achievement, regular attendance, and valuing education reigned. There were enough middle-class kids to carry those expectations for the entire school, and the high-risk kids tried to live up to those expectations. As our middle-class population declined, so did achievement, assignment completion, regular attendance, and parental involvement. It became incumbent upon teachers to be the single most important motivating factor in student achievement, which led to another visible impact: an increase in teacher absenteeism and turnover. The extra time and stress of working with high-risk students took physical and emotional tolls on the staff. It is way too easy to get ours hearts broken when the reason we become teachers is to help kids and make it a little bit easier for them to successfully navigate their way through life.
High risk students come to school unready to learn for a variety of reasons. One student, “Jane,” came into my classroom early on the days she made it to school. She would eat a granola bar from my stash and curl up on the sofa in my room to sleep. I would try to coax her to get her make-up work done, but she was too tired. Jane and her mom had been kicked out of their apartment and were living in a car. The time she spent in my room in the mornings was the only safe sleep she got. In a high needs school, this is not an unusual situation. Maybe I was able to make school a slightly better place for her, but I sure wasn’t able to teach her much when she could barely stay awake during class.
Another year, we had a young first-year teacher quit halfway through the year when he found out that one of his 9th-grade students, Yolanda, was prostituting herself to help support her father’s drug habit instead of doing her homework. It was emotionally devastating to him, and he didn’t know how to face Yolanda after he found out.
An economically impoverished majority, including students like Jane and Yolanda, can lead to lower test scores school-wide. With the government so willing to blame low test scores on teachers, another type of pressure is applied in “failing” schools: funding cuts, interference from the state, and the simple disappointment of having to face "failure". Why would an accomplished teacher choose to work in a school where they have to work twice as hard to help students achieve?
In trying to help my students be successful over the years, I have “helped” them pay for school supplies, food, sports fees, yearbooks, textbook fines, clothes, and field trips. I know that I will not be the only teacher whom the additional bonus simply reimburses for money we have already spend at school. My only concern with this bonus is that it doesn’t go to EVERY highly accomplished teacher, National Board Certified or not, who has accepted the avocation of working with underprivileged kids. A mediocre teacher can be successful in a school where the kids come ready to learn (not that there aren’t amazingly competent teachers in those schools and not that we don’t have any students who are ready to learn). It just makes sense as a matter of public policy that students with the greatest needs should have the most accomplished teachers, and National Boards is one way to measure that competency that the state can reward.
Disclaimer to all administrators past, present, and future: I am sure you are all wonderful people. Work hard, care about students. Just wonderful. Smiley folks. Perhaps even a bit jollier than the average person. Smarter, too, I reckon. However, a colleague of mine just started his administration program and I have to admit, I felt a bit of sadness.
By Tom
This month we’ve heard both presidential candidates address education. Nothing too surprising was said: Obama’s in favor of parents getting more involved in their children’s schools but against vouchers. McCain’s in favor of vouchers but against teacher unions. However, there was one issue that both candidates seemed to agree on, at least in principle: merit pay.
The idea of merit pay has been batted around ever since I can remember. It sounds like a great idea. A win-win. Good teachers get more money while the students get a better education. Competition leads to better products and lower prices in the retail industry, right? Athletes thrive when they compete, don’t they? It sounds like a simple solution to a very complicated problem.
Which is exactly why it won’t work, at least the way most people envision it.