Category Archives: Education

Building a Hybrid Virtual School

Posted by Mark Gardner on October 29, 2010
Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Teacher Leadership, Web/Tech

By Mark

A colleague of mine posed an interesting proposition lately. Like many school districts, mine is apparently toying with the idea of a hybrid virtual/brick-and-mortar kind of school-within-a-school. The idea is that the curriculum would be administered face-to-face when necessary and via web interface when necessary, so this colleague of mine was casting out a few lines to see if any of us would bite.

I've voiced interest in participating, but have concerns and questions.

A few years ago, I was part of starting a small learning community "school-within-a-school" of sorts in my high school, and it is still operating, but that endeavor was small by comparison with what my colleague has in mind. I am wondering what models of this kind of hybrid exist, what are the benefits or shortcomings, and what the best course would be.

I'm definitely in the learning stages here. Sure, I can Google it or read some journal articles, but that only gives part of the story.

So, SFS readers and contributors: what do you know, or what advice do you have about building this kind of educational opportunity? If you are a brick-and-mortar teacher, what concerns would you have for a hybrid or virtual school? What hopes would you have?

Grades

Posted by Mark Gardner on October 21, 2010
Assessment, Current Affairs, Education, Life in the Classroom

By Mark

Every grading period, I engage in an odd ritual. I look over all of my classes and tally how many of each letter grade I've posted on the progress reports. This year got me nervous, as there were an awful lot of A's and only about seven F's out of my five classes of freshmen.

I think this habit of mine emerged a few years ago when I was accused of "inflating" grades when too many of my students were successful (earning B's and A's) and not enough were failing. Ironically, that accusation of inflation occurred immediately after I had begun implementing classroom intervention strategies aimed at reducing the number of students failing my class (which had been the complaint the year before: too many D's and Fs).

This is one of the debates-that-never-end in education: what is the function of the grade? Is it to demonstrate accomplishment of a learning target? Is it to demonstrate compliance with deadlines and classroom expectations? What about the kid who bombs every chapter quiz when we read Animal Farm, but who spends every afternoon for two weeks with me after school preparing for the final test–which he aces? Should he still be penalized for ten abyssmal chapters of poor performance even though he was able to demonstrate his knowledge and understanding in the end? What about the student who bombs the homework assignments in Algebra, but comes in for extra help and ends up flying high on the unit test?

In a meeting recently, my building principal asked that we teachers consider whether our grades were measuring behavior or achievement.

Later that same day, a good friend and colleague of mine shared a revelation he discovered from a guest speaker who came to visit with his department. That guest speaker, Dr. Frank Wang, shared many worthwhile ideas, but the one which seemed to resonate with my colleague was the very example I mention above: what if a kid struggles during the unit, logs a few F's in the gradebook, but ends up showing mastery by the time the summative assessment rolls around? Dr. Wang suggested that the constant ongoing entering-of-grades in effect de-values the learning that is the ultimate goal of education but instead rewards kids who "get it" quickly and penalizes kids who "get it" a little later than others–even though they still eventually "get it."

I'm wondering: are the letters A, B, C, D, and F part of the problem in education today?

Someone Please Give the Whole Story

Posted by Mark Gardner on October 1, 2010
Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Social Issues, Television

By Mark

I am just old enough to remember Paul Harvey, and the "rest of the story."

Eve Rifkin, at our Arizona partner Stories from School has helped flesh out the "rest of the story" on that annual USNews "Top Schools" list, and it is as if she was reading my mind.

Between Waiting for Superman, Oprah, Education Nation, Obama's charge to raise the bar, and the resulting present (and I pessimistically argue ephemeral) empassioned focus on education in this country, it is clear that the whole story has not been told in far too many instances. Here is my take on the untold halves of the many stories told in the last couple of weeks…the rest of the story, if you will:

1. Unions oppose merit pay not to protect lazy teachers but because no one can come up with a fair and reliable way to assess teaching "merit." Issue number one: test scores don't work because not all teachers are in tested disciplines.

2. Those other countries who post great education stats? Their systems are different than ours. Some screen out special education kids. Some have separate vocational tracks which are conveniently not part of their data. Many in those systems lament the fact that the kids they produce are test-takers, not thinkers.

3. Weighing myself will not make me lose weight…I've being weighing in for years and the number is only going the wrong way. Testing kids more will not make them learn. In fact, testing actually takes up instructional time, the loss of which not surprisingly has a negative effect on test performance.

4. American schools held up as models of success always have the following by comparison to the mainstream: extra funding or an enrollment screen or both. These models are neither replicable nor sustainable in other schools unless those schools also get extra funding or an enrollment screen or both.

5. Every child can learn, but not every child will. To blame that solely on teachers or on students is yet another heinous oversimplification of the complex problems facing education, educators, students, and families today.

The rest of the story? I'm sure there's even more. I'm tired of hearing half-stories in the sound bytes mainstream America turns to as it's source of facts.

Would Value-Added be More Fair?

Posted by Brian on September 30, 2010
Assessment, Education, Mathematics, Science

by Brian

About a year ago I wrote a post on the idea of using "value-added" as a tool in teacher evaluation. The Seattle Times weighed in recently with an editorial endorsing it, and encouraging "retrograde union leaders" to quit opposing attempts to link teacher evaluations to student learning. As a local union leader I cringe at being called retrograde, but I'm getting used to the Times anti-union bias. I am not opposed to looking at student progress as part of an evaluation system. That makes sense. What I do think is important is that the weight placed on any test score used for evaluative purposes must be commensurate with our confidence in the reliability of the test. In my high school last year 84% of the students met standard on the Reading HSPE, 91% passed Writing, 42% passed the Math portion, and 43% passed in Science. In Reading and Writing our students did significantly better than the state average; in Math and Science we did slightly worse. But look at those numbers. Is it really reasonable to believe that the same students that do so well in Reading and Writing are so terrible in Math and Science? Or to believe that somehow the language arts teachers in the state are far and away better teachers than their colleagues in math and science? Is it possible that the tests might not be fair? Isn't it possible that the bar has been set at the right level for Reading and Writing, and far too high for Math and Science?

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Classroom Management: Fear vs. Understanding

Posted by Mark Gardner on September 20, 2010
Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom, Parent Involvment

By Mark

I have a three-year-old son at home who is that child whose behavior is my karmic payback for the times I mouthed off to my parents. He's a boundary-tester and an eye-lash-batting innocent cherub for whom consequences like time out and taking away of toys have no influence on behavior. Though I regret it, there have been times when the worst of me has come out, and this 32-year-old ends up shouting at that 3-year-old.

And then he cries and cries and I feel horribly guilty.

But usually it changes his behavior, at least for a while. The same results cannot be said for a stint in time-out.

I was venting my frustrations to my dad this last fourth of July when he mentioned that behavior changes only result from one of two things: fear or understanding. I don't know if he discovered this on his own or if he learned this from some workshop, but it rings very true. My dad is a well-respected educator who taught for over three decades, served in the military, and has even volunteered in prisons to teach math to inmates. He made me realize that if I want to influence my toddler's behavior, I should aim for understanding. My son needs to understand why it's not okay to punch his brother or jump off the dining room table. Sometimes a lesson is learned the hard way (he hasn't leapt off the back of the couch even once since that trip to the ER with bashed-in teeth) but there are many other lessons I'm having a hard time teaching him simply because there are a lot of things a three-year-old just isn't capable of understanding yet.

There are obvious analogies to teaching.

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Kicking the Tires

Posted by Kristin Bailey-Fogarty on September 2, 2010
Assessment, Education, Education Policy, Life in the Classroom | education reform, effective teaching strategies, evaluating teachers, teaching unions

By Kristin

Buy this car. I'm serious. Come on. This car has been around a long time. It has proven its worth. It deserves to be on the road and anyway, the rules are that you can't buy another car until this one is purchased.

I wouldn't buy the car in the photo. I don't have the time and money to make it queen of the road, and I don't need test results to know that. Unfortunately, because we can't seem to design a better system of teacher evaluations than seniority, this "you have to take it" policy is what many buildings face when they have a position to fill.

The system is faulty, and districts and their communities are trying to fix it by placing more weight on student test scores. We don't need test scores to identify ineffective teachers, we just need to make it easy for administrators to evaluate their staff. I think it can be easy, and measurable, because you can kick a teacher's tires, so to speak.

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One Thing

Posted by Mark Gardner on August 23, 2010
Education, Life in the Classroom

I'm gearing up. I know some of you are already back in the classroom, but I'm still two weeks from first period English 9. This will be year nine for me, and past summers about this time I'd be shopping for school supplies and focusing on what kinds of posters to put up and how to organize my classrooms. However, all that external preparation is no where near as important as the internal preparation.

Now is the time for reflection: examination of what has worked in the past, what to reframe, and what to roundfile.

In much of the reading I've done about effective teaching and impacting student learning, again and again I see reference to one of the trait of an effective educator: the thoughtful and purposeful examination of one's own practice in order to develop oneself as a practitioner. Again and again, I hear about this internally driven introspection as "the most valuable professional development." I'll keep that in mind as I sit in staff meetings and trainings all next week.

For me, my one thing to do is the writing goal activity I did last year with my kids' short writing samples. Instead of becoming a teacher-turned-proofreading-service, with my feedback on each short writing sample I gave the kids two or three specific individualized writing goals. Then, in the next sample, they had to explain how they addressed those specific goals and improved their own writing. It made for quick turnaround, very meaningful feedback and very rapid progress in their writing.

As for what I vow to never do again: I tried this twist on creative writing and writing workshop. I don't want to say it went down in flames, but let's just say that there's not enough wreckage to piece it back together and if I do creative writing workshop again I'll be starting with factory-fresh parts and expert advice.

Think back to last year. What one thing did you do last year that you feel is most important to do again in order to teach effectively? Or, conversely, what one thing did you do last year that you vow to never do again?

TTWWADI

Posted by Mark Gardner on August 22, 2010
Education, Education Policy

Mike Lee at Arizona's Stories From School blog has enlightened me about the evil beast known as the TTWWADI…"That's the way we've always done it." As he points out, the TTWWADIs are the real forces which undermine our efforts to reform education and improve our practice (and thus, student achievement)…and TTWWADIs need to be closely examined if we ever wand to move forward. Take a read and add your thoughts.

The TTWWADI which stands out most to me: advancing kids from one grade
to the next based more on calendar year than actual readiness. In your perspective, what TTWWADIs need to become TWWUTDIs (The Way We Used to Do Its)?

Should Math and Science Teachers be Paid More?

Posted by Mark Gardner on August 19, 2010
Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Mathematics, Science

By Mark

An article in this week's Tacoma News Tribune points out that in the state of Washington, high school math and science teachers get paid less, on average, than teachers of other disciplines. The assumption–not backed up by research or widespread observation–is that math and science teachers are lured away to more lucrative careers in the high tech industry and therefore do not stay in teaching as long.

Besides that, this study by Jim Simpkins, Marguerite Roza, and Cristina Sepe and produced by the University of Washington's Center for Reinventing Public Education raises several valid points about teacher compensation. However, it is what the study does not include that concerns me most.

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