By Tom

I love irony. I live for it. In fact, one of my favorite moments was during the end of the year assembly a few years ago, when the principal was giving out awards for Everything You Can Imagine, including perfect attendance. All the perfect attendees proudly strode to the stage, except one. He was absent. 

So when these three stories came to my attention, all on the same day, I couldn't resist.

The first story is a report from the National Board showing the positive impact National Board Certified Teachers have had on student achievement in Chicago. And it's been huge.

The second story was about Washington Governor Christine Gregoire. Gregoire recently received an award from the National Board for her contributions to education. Specifically, she was able to increase support for National Board Certification even during tough economic times. For all intents and purposes, Gregoire's support for National Board Certification consists of merit pay for those teachers who demonstrate that they've reached the profession's highest standards. For more on the award, check out Mark's post.

The third story was about a series of grants given out by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The grants don't go directly to schools. They're to be used to help states apply for the Race to the Top money. The money that Education Secretary Arne Duncan is giving to states that promote charter schools and merit pay based on student test scores. Gregoire has all but written off Washington's chances for claiming any of this money, since charter schools have been rejected three times by the voters and test-based merit pay is a non-starter with the WEA.

What a weird irony. A Washington governor gets an award for promoting National Board Certification, a process with proven results, recently and specifically in Chicago. That's where Arne Duncan's from. The guy who authored Race to the Top. But his idea of merit pay is based on the use of test scores. An idea that is strongly promoted by the Gate's Foundation, which is based in Washington State.

So Gregoire's state gets none of the money from the guy from Chicago, a place where her idea of merit pay has made a huge impact.

Hmm. 

We want to alert our readers that we'll soon feature a joint post by Senators Rosemary McAuliffe, 1st District; Chair of Early Learning and K-12 Committee and Senator Eric Oemig, 45th District; Vice Chair of Early Learning and K-12 Committee.

 
Senators McAuliffe and Oemig were both instrumental in the passage of House Bill 2261, which redefined and restructured education in Washington State. Both senators now sit on the oversight body for 2261 called the Quality Education Council.

 
Following the passage of this bill in the last legislative session, they embarked on a listening tour through the state to hear what teachers had to say about the bill and education in general.
 
Stay tuned and check back to read their post this week. We’ve seen it, and we’re confident that it’ll spark some lively debate.

By Tom

A recent editorial by Seattle Times columnist Lynne K. Varner caught our attention. She argues for school reform, specifically in the Seattle School District.  I like what she says about teacher evaluation, I agree (to a point) with what she says about firing bad teachers, but I take exception to what she has to say about merit pay.

And as Meatloaf famously told us, "Two out of three ain't bad."

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By Kristin

I haven't seen "Mike" in class for four days and the online attendance system shows he's skipping most of his classes, so I phone his mother during my prep period to let her know.  Mike and his mom don't have internet, and she's not home when the automatic system calls to report an absence.  This is the third time I've called her in two weeks; she is not happy to hear from me, and I don't really blame her. 

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By Mark

Scientific American recently posted an article with mild criticism of education's current focus on prizing right answers over thinking and learning processes.

While we educators know that repetition and practice is one path to learning, this article is a good reminder of something else we ought to be intentionally fostering in our students: thinking.

Learning from "failure" is important, as is learning from wrong answers. This may seem like a silly question, but its an important one in our present climate where snapshot high stakes tests and summative data form critical assessments of both student and teacher success: What do you do as an educator or parent to take advantage of "wrong answers" in order to help children learn to think?

One of the decisions which has made me the educator I am today is my decision to always put my kids first. By my kids I mean MY kids: the three boys who call me Dad. I am finding that a balance between parenthood and teacherdom has made me more effective in both realms; when the two are out of balance, they both suffer. And of course, the two seem to overlap in many ways. I chose teaching not only because of my love of learning and the desire to help young people learn, but also because teaching as a profession offers me the kind of schedule that enables me to be invovled in my own kids’ lives.

Though I don’t believe I should be obligated to sacrifice my life and my family for my job, I do work hard to devote my entire professional life to impacting student learning whether in my own classroom or in the classrooms of my peers. In 2014-15, I’ll be in my third year in a hybrid role teaching high school English half time and working half time as a TOSA to facilitate professional development experiences for teachers around content literacy and effective practice, as well as to support new teacher induction. I teach in a suburbanish-rural community high school, and am very lucky to be in a community which consistently supports its schools. 

I was born, raised, and public-school educated in Oregon. I grew up in a tiny farm town situated in the blank part of the map of Oregon (out in the everbrown), then managed to be one of only a handful in my graduating class to go on to college. After an undergrad degree from Oregon State and an MAT from Willamette, I started teaching secondary English in 2002-03. I earned my National Board Certification in Adolescent-Young Adult English Langauge Arts in 2006. 

I am open minded and, though opinionated, I know I have a lot to learn. I am always willing to consider (and adopt) new perspectives as I learn more–and I do not consider the willingness to change one’s position on a matter in light of new information to be a sign of weakness. If I can teach that to my kids, and MY kids as well, I think I just might have done something right.

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by Brian

My wife owns her own business, a home decor shop, and I think I first heard the phrase "value-added" from her.  She talked about finding an article at an estate sale, adding something to it to increase its value, marking up the price, and making some money.  Value-added.

Now the phrase is being used with respect to evaluating teacher performance:  when you get a student in September she knows something.  Measure that and compare it to what she knows in June.  If she knows more in June, value has been added.  If she knows a lot more in June, there is real evidence that effective teaching has occurred.  If there is little improvement from September to June; well there's the rub, because there are a myriad of reasons to keep a student from advancing that are outside of a teacher's control.  So the largest teachers' unions (the National Education Association, and the American Federation of Teachers) have been reluctant to endorse any kind of value-added component for teacher evaluation.  But doesn't this make more sense than measuring last year's class against this year's?  Or this year's against next year's?  The idea that each year the class we are testing should do better than the class we tested last year is so dumb it's not even wrong.

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By Rena

According to the August 2009 Draft of The State of Washington OSPI Committee for Gifted Education, the purpose of gifted programs is to provide all highly capable students, including those at-risk, with differentiated opportunities for learning. Programs shall be designed to identify, nurture and encourage students who posses extraordinary talents and abilities.

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By Tom

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