Category Archives: Education

NEA President is Concerned about Common Core Implementation

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Professional Development

070309 Petco 2By Tom

As you may have heard, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel had some sharp words to say about the rollout of the CCSS. He called the implementation “completely botched.” His assessment is apparently based on feedback he’s received from NEA members over the past year. There’s no way to interpret this as anything other than a major blow to proponents of the Common Core. The NEA – our nation’s biggest teacher organization – has been one of the strongest supporters of nation-wide standards and has consistently pledged to use classroom teachers as “ambassadors” to spread support for CCSS.

I certainly can’t speak for all NEA members, but I can speak for myself. When I first started teaching, thirty years ago, standards were effectively hidden; curriculum companies seemed to know what students should know and be able to do at each grade level and they used that information to write and publish textbooks. Teachers were simply consumers; we used what they wrote and didn’t ask too many questions.

There was an attempt in the early 90s to create a common national set of standards, but it was defeated by conservatives who argued for local control over education. Each state subsequently began to write and implement its own educational standards.

Then came 2001. With NCLB, our lawmakers decided that every school had to get every kid “up to standard” within twelve years, something not even Finland could ever achieve. Making it even more ridiculous was the fact that by that time every state had its own standards and assessments. Actually, some states didn’t even have standardized assessments.  

As the sanctions required by NCLB began to loom large, Obama became president. He decided to use the threat of those sanctions as leverage for his own reform agenda, which included the Common Core. Not surprisingly, 45 states and DC signed on, partly because they liked the standards, but partly because they wanted a waiver from NCLB sanctions.

As a teacher, I embrace the standards from an instructional perspective. The standards themselves make sense; they’re narrower and deeper and for the most part seem developmentally appropriate, at least from my perspective. But what really appeals to me is the fact that they’re (mostly) national standards. Not only will curriculum publishers have more consistent targets, but it opens the door for collaborating at a scale never imagined before.  

But with the standards came the assessments. When I first started scrolling through the fourth grade SBAC language arts assessment, I remember thinking, “Wow, this will be challenging for my students. But I’m sure there will be support and with that support I’ll be able to get my kids to achieve something remarkable.” And in my state and my district, that support has started to materialize. We’re focusing on CCSS-related instruction in district professional development time, and I hooked up with an awesome training in an instructional model called Literacy Design Collaborative.

But there’s a problem. The implementation of Common Core and its attendant assessments are unfortunately occurring while teacher evaluation is undergoing a major shift. Teachers are, for the first time, being assessed in part on the basis of student growth; student growth which is – or soon will be – measured by brand-new assessments based on a brand-new set of standards.

Teachers are, quite predictably, freaking out over all this. It’s one thing to change the standards and the tests used to measure those standards. It’s another thing altogether to use those tests for teacher evaluations before teachers have a chance to fully delve into those standards and understand what the assessments are actually demanding from our students.

That’s exactly why Dennis Van Roekel is calling for a “course correction.” It’s a simple request to slow things down to a manageable pace. Let us get to know the standards. Let us understand the tests. And then, down the road, maybe we can use those tests as part of teacher evaluation. Or maybe not. But to press on both fronts right now is counter-productive. The only way to ever successfully implement the Common Core is to get teacher buy-in.

And the only way to insure that the Common Core is not successfully implemented is to alienate those same teachers. And that seems to be what’s happening. 

Inslee and Arne: If I Wrote the Governor’s Talking Points

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Social Issues

500px-Seal_of_Washington.svgBy Mark

Now that fear-inspired changes to teacher evaluation law (to include "must include state tests" rather than "can include state tests" under the ominous threat of losing our NCLB waiver) are effectively "dead" in our state legislature, Governor Inslee will be meeting with Arne Duncan in D.C. this Monday, February 24th, to seek some sort of agreement that keeps the two Washingtons copacetic.

Regarding our teacher evaluation law, this is what I hope Governor Inslee communicates to Secretary Duncan:

1. Our current teacher evaluation law, though it does not require state test scores, does something better: as written it holds every single teacher in the state of Washington accountable for demonstrating student growth. State test scores, at the very best, could "hold accountable" roughly 16% of teachers. The current law sets a higher bar.

2. Our current teacher evaluation law recognizes the reality of the learning process, and thus requires that teachers do not simply demonstrate student achievement, but instead must demonstrate a change in student achievement between two points in time; change that must be based on multiple measures (RCW 28a.405.100:2f). The current law demands more from our teachers.

3. Our current teacher evaluation law includes language that requires that student growth data not simply be used for data's sake–student achievement data must be "relevant to the teacher and subject matter" which helps ensure that data used to evaluate teachers is actually reflective of that teacher's impact on student learning; this is unlike other states where, say, the PE teacher's evaluation is based on the building's state reading test scores. Washington's current law holds teachers accountable for what they are actually charged to teach.

The simple conclusion: We deserve the waiver.

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Randy Dorn Favors Using Achievement Tests on Teacher Evaluations

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Elementary

20110830-203622-pic-719702789By Tom

In a recent guest editorial in the Seattle Times, Washington State School Superintendent Randy Dorn spoke in favor of using student achievement tests on teacher evaluations. Basically his rationale boils down to two reasons:

1. The state’s NCLB waiver is at risk. The Department of Education granted us a waiver from the onerous requirements of NCLB, but takes a dim view of our teacher evaluation system’s provision that student test scores can be used for evaluative purposes, instead of mandating that they must.

2. Using student test scores will make teacher evaluations more consistent, since these are tests all students must take, as opposed to district-based tests, which vary from district to district.

Let me respond to his second reason first, since it’s the weakest. As we’ve reported time and again on this blog, a main argument against using student test scores is that they aren’t consistent. The fact is, only a small minority of teachers teach in “tested” grades or subjects. Consider my school, which has 34 certificated employees. These include four music teachers, one PE teacher, one librarian, six special education teachers and one counselor. We also have three kindergarten teachers, four first grade teachers, three second grade teachers, and three third grade teachers.

None of these people teach grades or subjects for which state achievement tests could be used for their evaluations.

We also have three fourth grade teachers, three fifth grade teachers and two sixth grade teachers. That’s only eight teachers. Eight out of 34 teachers – less than 24% – for whom state tests could be used. The rest of our faculty would have to use district or classroom based tests. Yet Mr. Dorn argues that using state tests would be more consistent? How?

On the other hand, his other argument – the risk of losing the waiver – does make sense. I have to assume that Randy Dorn, Governor Inslee, or both of them have asked Washington’s congressional delegation to press Department of Education officials about the true risk to Washington’s waiver. And the fact that Mr. Dorn is still arguing in favor of capitulating to the DOE’s demands means he doesn’t think they’re bluffing. Either that or he just doesn’t want to take the chance that they aren’t.

And that’s where he and I agree. Like Dorn, I’m not willing to gamble that much money ($38 million) for the sake of fairer evaluations for teachers like me. Put another way, I’m willing to use state achievement tests instead of more meaningful district or classroom based tests as part of my evaluation if it means ensuring our NCLB waiver.

Adjunct Math Instructor right after College: What was that like?

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Mathematics

Community collegeBy Maren Johnson

I had just graduated from college and I wasn't sure what I was going to do next: Graduate school? Peace Corps? I didn't know, and I needed an interim job while I figured it out.

I answered an ad in the local paper to be a math tutor for a nearby community college. I got a call-back after the interview—they didn’t need me for a tutor, but there were two math classes starting the following week—would I be willing to teach them? I was very surprised by the offer, but I thought, “What an opportunity!” and said yes almost right away.

And why was this community college willing to hire a 22 year old biology and French major, who had graduated just 4 days previously, to be their new math instructor? I perhaps should have done more inquiring–I knew nothing at that point about the ins and outs of education employment, and the world of being an adjunct instructor.

The job paid very little, but by living in the bedroom of a house I shared with some college friends, I was able to make it work, at least for the short term. I taught evening classes which ended at 9:00 pm, and then had to drive home across town afterwards.

With no office or regular classroom, I held “office hours” on some chairs near the building entry way, providing assistance to students with their math as crowds strolled by.

The perks of the job? I had interesting colleagues, and I did help a lot of students learn some important math.

This turned out not to be enough as I could not support myself. After two quarters as an adjunct instructor, I ended up joining the Peace Corps. At least as a Peace Corps Volunteer I would have health insurance. I taught math while I was in the Peace Corps, and then became a high school science teacher.

Why am I writing about this now? The adjunct issue has recently seen some federal interest. With a surprisingly humorous title for a congressional paper, the “Just-in-Time Professor” report, authored by staff of the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, notes that 50% of all higher education faculty are now adjuncts. Other estimates put the figure at 60%.  The report states that these contingent or adjunct instructors have “no job security from one quarter to the next, work at a piece rate with few or no benefits across multiple workplaces, and far too often struggle to make ends meet.” I’m here to tell you from personal experience that is no exaggeration.

A full time adjunct might make only $21,000 a year, according to a recently posted article about the issue. The work performed by adjunct instructors is critical to our education system—they provide a foundation in basic skills to students who are pursuing two and four year degrees. Adjunct instructors deserve a living wage. It is shocking they do not receive one.

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Class divide: Adjunct professors fight for better pay

Squeezing the Joy out of Teaching

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom

Red_geranium_largeBy Mark

Common Core State Standards, TPEP, data-collection, student growth. These have all been the culprit in many conversations with teachers wherein they, with understandable sadness, talk of how all of these new initiatives and expectations are squeezing the creativity and joy out of teaching. I empathize with where these teachers are; I even wrote here a while back about the sense of mourning I felt as I began to align my course content to the Common Core.

When I was in the ninth grade, we found out that my mother had breast cancer. As a family before and even during this, we experienced little strife–I had it quite good on our little farm in the middle of a blank spot on the map of Oregon–but we were not particularly emotional, super touchy-huggy, or all that. (When we were first together, my wife, lovingly, equated my family's mealtimes to a board meeting.) After the cancer diagnosis, I'm sure the experience for my mother and father was very different, but I remember only the simple resolve with which my parents approached her cancer as a task to be taken care of–it is what it is and now we need to do something about it. Surgery and a slew of pills took care of the first round of cancer. It returned again a couple of years later, and surgery again was, thankfully, enough. My mother has been cancer-free since.

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The Simple Solution: TIME.

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Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Social Issues

File52fd6410c3384By Mark

My six-year old son sometimes gets frustrated that there are certain privileges I enjoy as a grown-up that he cannot due to his age and size. Recently, as we built his car for his school's pinecar derby, he just didn't want to accept that we was neither allowed to use the radial arm saw nor the set of carving chisels I have in the garage. I tried to explain to him how hard it is to reattach fingers, but he wasn't having it.

"When do I get to?"

"Not yet," I explained, as I handed him a rasp and some sandpaper and readied the plastic miter box and back saw he could use to angle the nose of his car. Time, practice, growth… that's all he needs. He's a hands-on boy and I have no doubt his skills can soon surpass mine tinkering with scraps of wood in the garage.

I mentioned in comments earlier on this blog that I recently had the opportunity to host two legislators in my classroom. The discussions were wonderful, and one exchange in particular stands out: when asked how long policymakers should expect for changes in education to show real fruit, I replied "twelve years." For change to take root, it takes time. Our state education system includes something like 295 individual school districts, 60,000 teachers, and around a million students. You cannot expect to see the "change" as the result of policy changes even within the term of a single elected official. My guests admitted that they had never really thought about an implementation timeline like that.

Just like my son working his way from a rasp, sandpaper, and plastic miter box up to carving chisels and power saws, seeing the desired outcome will take time. If I rush my son into it… I give him a crash course in powertool safety and toss him a pile of wood… the likelihood that he will fail (in limb-threatening ways) is incredibly high. What we need time for if we are going to do it right:

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Enough is Enough: Fund the COLA

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy

ColaBy Tom

For the past six years, educators in Washington State have gone without a cost of living adjustment to their salary. In two of those years, 2011 and 2012, teacher salaries actually went down. All of this despite the fact that back in 2000 the state voted two-to-one in favor of Initiative 732, which provided an automatic, annual COLA.

Although many legislators oppose it, Governor Inslee has proposed reinstating the COLA for several reasons. He thinks it’s fair, he thinks we can afford it and he thinks the State Supreme Court has essentially mandated it, by insisting that the state spend more on education.

I agree. Since 2006 teachers have lost 16% of their purchasing power. Housing, groceries, fuel and college prices have gone up, while our salaries have either gone down or stagnated. A COLA, by definition, is not a salary increase. It is a salary adjustment; a device meant to keep salaries parallel to the cost of those goods and services that we use our salaries to purchase. The absence of a COLA, also by definition, is a salary decrease; there’s no other way to conceptualize it.

When voters passed I-732 fourteen years ago, critics were complaining that we were passing a spending bill without a corresponding mechanism to pay for it. Maybe not, but consider this: in a state that’s essentially financed by sales tax revenue, the sales tax is effectively that mechanism. As the cost of goods and services rises, so too does the sales tax. Since teacher salaries are financed by sales tax, increased revenue should correspond to increased expenditure.

Another point that bears mentioning is that the workload of teachers in recent years has greatly increased coincidental to an actual decrease in salary. We’re doing more work for less money. The new teacher evaluation system requires, in my estimation, at least 40 hours per year of hard, thoughtful work by every teacher in the state. Although some of this work has been incorporated into our in-service calendar, not all of it has, and even those hours that are part of our paid time have effectively displaced other, necessary tasks, so that the net result has been an additional 40 hours of work time.

In addition to the increased workload resulting from the new evaluation system, our class sizes have also gone up. Fifteen years ago I was used to classes to 23 or 24. Now it’s more like 28 to 30. Every new kid in my room means more time planning lessons and more time evaluating and scoring student work. As a fourth grade teacher, I can feel the difference in my workload when my class size goes up by five percent; I can only imagine what it’s like for my high school colleagues, especially those charged with reading and grading extended student writing samples.

I sympathize with our lawmakers. They’re on the hot seat. They have a lot of programs to fund and not enough money to fund them. That’s a tough job. But remember, that’s the job they were begging us for. Remember all those yards signs and TV ads? Our legislators not only knew what they were getting into, they couldn’t wait to start doing it. So do it. Teachers have gone too long without a COLA. That has to end.

More work for less money isn’t fair.

Playgrounds and Education Policy

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Elementary, Games, Life in the Classroom, Parent Involvment, Social Issues

File52eec04d490efBy Mark

This story was circulating on social media recently, and despite my initial reactions, it appears to be true.

A primary school in New Zealand has changed rules around recess as a result of research conducted at local universities. The essential finding: fewer rules on the playground resulted in "a drop in bullying, serious injuries and vandalism, while concentration levels in class are increasing" (from the article linked above).

At my own son's elementary school, students are apparently not permitted to run during recess. That's right, no running during outdoor recess. Only brisk walking. And forget about tag, let alone touch football. I am not an elementary school teacher or staff member, so sure I can sit over here and judge, but the findings from this (albeit small) research project where children were allowed to be children during recess seems to me yet another indicator of how our drive to protect children from harm actually harms them more than the bumps, bruises and grass-stained knees we want to spare.

Sadly, this article above also makes this statement:

[M]any American school administrators do not feel they have the freedom to eliminate playtime rules the way Swanson [the primary school in New Zealand] did. And they certainly don’t see it as a zero-cost game. Parents drive our nation’s tendency toward more restrictive playground rules because parents are the ones who sue schools when their children get hurt.

It is all very interesting to me both as a parent and as an educator.

I wonder: what if a whole education system had no externally ascribed rules? Would the flaws we are trying to eliminate with laws, rules, and policies diminish (and achievement increase) as analogous to the positive changes witnessed on that playground in New Zealand? 

Why I support SB 6082

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Education, Education Policy, Elementary

ImagesBy Tom

One of the ironies of my job is how lonely it sometimes feels. I’m surrounded by kids all day long, yet I seldom get to talk to the teacher who works right next to me in the hallway. That irony was brought home last week when I noticed some of her kids working in the hall on a social studies project involving Native Americans. As it happened, my class was also studying Northwest Tribes, and both classes would have undoubtedly benefitted had the two of us planned that unit together, instead of in total isolation.

But unless Olympia does something, it’s only going to get worse.

Currently, students have to receive 1000 hours of instruction per year. But this only has to be a district average, which means some kids have more than a thousand, some less. According to legislation passed last year, next year’s students are supposed to have six hours of instruction per day, 180 days per year. That works out to 1080 hours. That’s for secondary students; for elementary students the total has to be 1000 hours.

Teachers, for the most part, will probably not notice the increase in hours. What they will notice, however, is the DECREASE in collaborative time. Take my district, for example. We have a waiver from the state to convert five of those 180 days into professional development days, which are divided into district-wide PD, building time, collaborative time and individual time. The thinking is that the decrease in instructional time is offset by the benefits gained through the professional development of the teachers. Up until now, the state has agreed with that thinking and granted our district a waiver, year in and year out.

Last year the Legislature changed the law. But this is the same Legislature that passed TPEP, which includes a mandate for teachers to collaborate. Districts like mine, therefore, are stuck in the position of mandating that teachers work together, yet will be unable to provide time for that to happen.

Enter SB 6082, sponsored by Senators McAuliffe and McCoy. This bill simply includes language that allows teacher collaboration to count as part of those 1000 or 1080 hours. (By the way; recess, passing time and parent-teacher conferences are already counted.) This doesn’t address the issue of district time, building time and individual time, but it does allow teachers to work collaboratively.

There are other ways to increase collaborative time, of course, but they involve money. And it’s looking more and more like the Legislature is holding tight to the purse-strings. Which is why SB 6082 was introduced.

It makes total sense. If we value teacher collaboration – and we apparently do, since it’s mandated by law – then we should include it in the school day.

And maybe I’ll be a little less lonely.

At least there’s one school that won’t be wasting time on test-prep this year

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Assessment, Education, Education Policy, Elementary

Wasting-timeBy Tom

In years past, February marks the beginning of “Test-Prep Season” in my classroom. It isn’t all we do, of course, but I try to weave activities and practice assessments into my plans, gradually increasing the intensity throughout the late winter and early spring until mid-April, when it’s basically an all-out siege.

But not this year.

This year I’m not doing of that. This year I’m teaching, and my students are learning, all year long; including the second half of April.

And here’s why: this year our school board decided that each school in our district (Edmonds) could decide how they wanted to transition from the MSP to the Smarter Balanced Assessment. Option one was to take both. Option two was to take only the MSP. Option three was to field test the SBA and not take the MSP. We chose option three, in the most lopsided vote we’ve ever had, even though the results of the SBA would not be released.

I voted with the majority on this one; in fact I was a leading voice in the discussion that preceded the vote. Option one, taking both tests, seemed ridiculous. Our faculty is trying to become familiar with the CCSS, and that takes time. Getting the students ramped up for another round of MSPs also takes time, and time is the scarcest resource we have. It also takes time for students to become familiar with the new standards, which is what they’re doing this year. Taking two tests on two different sets of standards seemed like a bad idea.

Option two, taking only the MSP, was another non-starter. In order for our students and staff to get a handle on the new standards, it seemed imperative that we get a chance to see the new assessment this year. Besides that, the new tests are all on-line, and piloting the tests will give us a chance to see if our technology can handle the demand. Furthermore, we wanted to have our students’ scores become part of the pilot pool. We have a relatively high-need population; when it comes time to set the benchmarks, it’s good to have a broad student base.

But the most important reason for me was the simplest one. I love to teach and I love to watch my students learn. Test-prep is not teaching and taking practice tests is not really learning. And when you’re in a classroom and you’re not teaching or you’re not learning, you’re wasting your time.

I hate wasting time.