By Tom

Recently I was part of a radio show. It was on BAM Radio, which I think is only broadcast over the internet. Our host was Rae Pica and the topic was teacher advocacy. Besides me, there was Anthony Cody, who blogs at Living in Dialog and who was instrumental in planning the Save Our School March in Washington DC; Karen Horwitz, who wrote a book about teacher abuse after she was fired from her teaching position; and Marilyn Anderson Rhames, who blogs at Charting My Own Course and teaches science at a charter school in Chicago. 

I won't say too much about the content, since you can listen to it yourself. One thing you'll notice is that all four of us have strikingly different opinions on the issue of teacher advocacy.

Enjoy!

By Mark

I teach high school English. At our inservice meetings this past week, last spring's HSPE scores were unveiled. Our 10th graders passed the reading HSPE at a rate of 91.7%, above the state average of 85.1%. Bolstering our pride even more, 75.3% of our 474 tested sophomores earned an L4 score, the highest bracket of scores. Out of all 474 students, only six scored L1 ("well below standard"). While we certainly still need to keep finding ways to support those kids who don't yet have skills up to standard, those numbers are pretty good. Data doesn't lie, right?

Something to celebrate, right?

Nope. The data, when read properly, actually proves that we failed. We failed miserably.

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by Rena Mincks

Once again my district is mandating a top down decision. The powers that be have just decided to join the RTI (Response to Intervention) acronym band wagon. Yes, I know it has been around for about 10 years or so, but now there seems to be some funding opportunities, so why not?

Well, I will attempt to say why not. First a bit of history, as I understand it, RTI was an attempt by Special Education to fix General Education. IDEA realized that there were just too many referrals and too many students in Special Ed. Therefore, let’s test students so we have enough data points, plot and graph these points, and then suggest an intervention that will “fix” this student before having the student receiving special education services.

So now, my little first grade students (average age 6) will not have a DIBELS (Dynamic Indicator of Basic Early Literacy Skills) and MAP (Measures of Academic Progress). The MAP test is done on the computer. This data will then be used to qualify students for Title One reading support or further testing for Special Ed. Consideration.

We have been in school four full days and I can already tell you which students will do just fine, which students need additional opportunities to learn and time to practice phonics, phonemic awareness, reading, addition, subtraction, measurement, number and letter writing, and which students will need accommodations to challenge them.

It is difficult to see students unable to use the computer lab for approximately twelve weeks a year due to testing. I believe most teachers can arrive at the same conclusions with out waiting five weeks to receive data which that may or may not guide instruction. I would rather our district put forth some effort to look more closely at Universal Design for Learning. (http://www.udlcenter.org).

UDL looks at providing multiple means of representation, action and expression and engagement, not one intervention to fit all. It is about options and flexibility of educators. I think it is important to recognize that learners differ in ways that they can navigate a learning environment and express what they know. The tests my first grade students will be subjected to are just a moment in time a data point. I believe that my students are real people and much more than a point on a grid or graph. Let’s get back to educating children and not just collecting data, which takes precious time away from instruction, practice and learning. I will just treat this like a bandage, rip it off quickly and let the healing begin. I see the RTI as another plan that will fail due to the lack of funding or will just fade away and make room for the next acronym.

By Tamara

On the heels of two posts about Washington state's adoption of the common core standards comes an article in the New York TImes decrying those standards as the wrong way to improve U.S. students' math skills and "quantitative literacy". Sol Garfunkel (executive director of the Consortium for Mathmatics and its application) and David Mumford (emeritus professor of mathmatics at Brown) posit a more applied "real-life problem" approach to math would better equip students for 21st century careers and life in general.They argue a course of math study based on finance, data and basic engineering would improve basic skills and more realistically prepare students for work because "how often do most adults encounter a situation in which they need to solve a quadratic equation?" Such an applied math curriculum in their opinion would create what they call "quantitative literacy".Whereas in their estimation the Common Core Standards are, as Mark pointed out, a re-wording of what we have been doing for decades. According to Garfunkel and Mumford what we have been doing is not producing "quantitative literacy" and thus we are falling behind.

It is no secret that higher ed and industry find high school graduates woefully ill prepared for both upper level and applied math. So I have to wonder along with Mark, if the folks that get our graduates are questioning the value of Common Core standards, why have 40+ states signed on? Now full disclosure: I am a fan of nation-wide standards. Finland, Singapore and South Korea have completely turned around their education systems and achieved profound proficiency from their students in all disciplines after adopting national standards. We as teachers complain we are not consulted enough about decisions impacting what we do in the classroom. But do we in K-12 education seek to consult with higher ed and industry about decisions we make that impact their ability to work with our students? Perhaps the time has come for a sincere effort at "vertical alignment". Otherwise Mark may be on to something about the real winners in the Common Core Standards adoption being the test/textbook publishers.

By Tom

A few years ago I found myself on our school’s Mission Statement Task Force. After our first meeting, we were each told to return with a suggestion. I came up with “We’ll do what we can.” It seemed like the perfect blend of steel-toed optimism and existential dread. And weighing in at only five one-syllable words, it seemed likely that most of us could remember it.

Alas, it failed to gain any traction and was soundly defeated by a long string of edu-blather with enough mumbo-jargon to make Robert Marzano blush. And I’ll bet my next pay raise that you couldn’t find one person on staff that could recite our mission statement at gunpoint.

I was thinking about my tenure on this task force last week while exploring the Center for Education Data and Research’s (CEDR) new web-based tool that compares Washington State school districts using every imaginable statistic. But there’s a twist: acknowledging that poverty has a profound effect on academic achievement, CEDR’s Dan Golhaber and his research team use complicated math to “control for the percent of students receiving free or reduced priced meals in a district to provide a more balanced comparison of district performance.” The result is an interactive tool that lets you see how well a district is doing, independent of their level of poverty.

I had fun with it. And after an hour or so, I was able to conclude that there are vast differences in the performance of districts, even when you control for the level of poverty. That was clear. My own district, for example, doesn’t fare so well. And I’m sure this will lead to a lot of soul-searching within our leadership, followed by a few well-placed phone calls across the state to see what we could be doing better in regards to professional development and curriculum acquisition. Their first call might well go out to the Highline School District.

Highline lies noisily under the SeaTac Airport flight path, and according to the data, they perform well above what would be predicted, given their demographics. Highline serves cheap lunch to over 65% of their students, many of whom are still learning English. When the Michelle Rhee’s of the world talk about how “some people in education are climbing mountains every day,” They’re talking about the people who work for Highline Public Schools.  

But when I hear this, I often wonder what would happen if you applied the same effort put forth by those mountain climbers towards a population that wasn’t so needy. Instead of mountains, what would happen if hard-working teachers only had to climb a few low-lying hills?

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