We all know how parent partnerships are so critical to the education of our students. We also all know that not all students go home to less than ideal situations.

I'm lucky that my parent interactions have been generally positive. I tend to try to work with the kid as much as possible before getting a parent involved, whether the issue is academic or disciplinary (which means that by the time the parents are fully involved, most other avenues have been exhausted). Even still, most of my parent partnerships are positive.

However, I've started becoming a little more direct about what I am willing to ask from my "parent partners." I might be overstepping some boundaries, but I figure that after ten years of parents asking me to create extra credit assignments in the last weeks of the year so their little precious can make up the points they squandered earlier in the semester, I might as well try a bolder approach and start making requests of what should be going on at home…not just from the kid, but from the parent as well.

For example, I told a pair of parents last year that they needed to have some backbone and take away the video games and skateboard away from their son. 

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By Tom

Back in the 80s I drove a 1966 Plymouth Valiant. It was slow, ugly, comfortable and simple. When I looked under the hood, there were about four different items and even I could figure out what each of them was supposed to do. Now I drive a 1996 Geo Prizm. Looking under that hood is like looking into a human brain. There are at least 175 different items and I have no idea what any of them do. I’m not even sure which thing is the engine.

Cars have changed. So has teaching. Specifically, I can think of three major changes happening right now that are having – and will have – a major impact on how teachers do their jobs.

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I've long been a fan of Mike Rowe, his show "Dirty Jobs," and the fact that he sheds light upon the backbone of our country: the skilled workers who keep pipes clear, lights on, toilets flushing, and walls square, among many other critical services.

What I particularly admire as well is that he is aware of how American public schools, buckling under the pressures of high stakes testing and the pervasive fallacy that "everyone must have a four-year-degree," have all but eliminated vocational education–and where it isn't eliminated outright, it is marginalized or labeled as "alternative" education. On May 11, 2011, Mike testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, highlighting this very reality and how it threatens the very backbone of our economy, country, and communities.

Though I encourage you to follow the link above and read his whole testimony, there is one portion I want to highlight. He says:

In general, we’re surprised that high unemployment can exist at the same time as a skilled labor shortage. We shouldn’t be. We’ve pretty much guaranteed it.

In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We’ve elevated the importance of “higher education” to such a lofty perch, that all other forms of knowledge are now labeled “alternative.” Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as “vocational consolation prizes,” best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree.  And still, we talk about millions of “shovel ready” jobs for a society that doesn’t encourage people to pick up a shovel.

In a hundred different ways, we have slowly marginalized an entire category of critical professions, reshaping our expectations of a “good job” into something that no longer looks like work. A few years from now, an hour with a good plumber – if you can find one – is going to cost more than an hour with a good psychiatrist. At which point we’ll all be in need of both.

Throughout his testimony, Rowe refers to the "Skills Gap." This is the very real situation where schools are producing droves of graduates who lack fundamental skills to, as he puts it, do anything that "looks like work."

This is a drum I and others have beaten again and again here at SfS. When we as a system finally realize that more tests, more often, are actually the best way to weaken our country by underpreparing an entire generation for "real work," perhaps we'll value the vocational arts and sciences once again.

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By Kristin

Dave Eggers is smarter, a better writer, and more successful than I am.  Plus, he has better hair.  It's hard not to hate him just a little, under all my love, admiration and gratitude.

And now he and Ninive Clements Calegar (who also has better hair than I do) have said what I want to say, but a thousand times better, and via the New York Times.

I'd throw my laptop against the wall in jealousy, but I need to make a quick donation to 826 Seattle – an amazing tutoring spot for kids.  A FREE tutoring spot.  Go Dave, Go.  And thank you.

By Kristin

The New York Times reveals the concern some feel about how little American students know about civics.  On a test given by the Department of Education, students did a pretty poor job of demonstrating mastery of "how government is financed, what rights are protected by the Constitution and how laws are passed."  Sandra Day O'Connor calls this a "crisis."

I call it a crisis too, but for different reasons.

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By Tom

It’s looking more and more like teachers in Washington State will get a pay cut. It’ll either be 3%, if the Senate gets its way; or 1.9%, if the Governor prevails. Whichever way it ends up, the issue begs the obvious question: should teachers work less days if they get less pay?

On the one hand, the last thing our students need is a shorter school year. And despite the logic that the public should “feel the pain” after voting down a couple of juicy tax bills last election, the people who would feel most of that pain are the citizens not yet old enough to vote.

On the other hand, it stands to reason that if you get less money you shouldn’t have to work as much. My brother in law works in construction. Things have slowed down lately in that industry, so his salary has dropped. But so has his workload; he now works a four-day week. Teachers work 180 days. According to my math, three percent of 180 is 5.4 days. If we ran the school system like my brother in law’s construction firm, teachers would get an extra week off for the next two years.

Personally, I’d rather work those extra days. I enjoy teaching and I have a hard enough time getting everything done in 180 days.  And I’m willing to take a three percent pay cut if that’s what it takes to balance the state’s budget.

I do, however, have some conditions.

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By Tom

Suffice to say, this hasn’t been the easiest year to be a teacher. And with the Legislature back in session, figuring out where to make cuts, it’s likely to get even worse. To add insult to injury, our school, like many, recently learned that we’re going to lose one of our teachers. As you might expect, she’s young, talented and enthusiastic. The kids like her, the parents like her and the rest of us like her. But she was the last one in, so she’s the first one out.

Many of us would like to see her stay. We’d prefer to have someone else leave; someone who isn’t as good at teaching.

It would be nice to have the means to do so, and if certain legislators have their way, we soon will. We may end up with a law that forces districts to force the least effective teachers out during staff reductions.

But while that might sound like a good idea right now, I don’t think it’ll work out in the long run.

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And, of course, I'd love to see Bill Gates teach sentence structure to a class of forty 14-year olds if class size doesn't matter.

In my last post about Teacher Credibility, I shared how my efforts to forge relationships and build trust with my students has resulted in greater success in my recent lessons about everyone's least favorite Language Arts subject: grammar.

This got me thinking about Bill Gates et al.'s assertions about increasing class sizes. Rather than take the standard educator response about the value of connecting to each student blah, blah, blah, I instead thought about sales.

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Dear Mr. Duncan,

Thank you for the letter. It was nice to read your sincere appreciation for the people who work in our nation’s schools, and a refreshing change from the treatment we received seven years ago when one of your predecessors referred to us as “terrorists.”

Most of us genuinely believe that you and the administration are working hard for the best interests of our public schools. We feel that you value and respect America’s teachers. While we may not always agree with all of your specific strategies or policies, it’s clear that you want the best for our students.

That said; I want to discuss the eighth paragraph of your letter:

“So I want to work with you to change and improve federal law, to invest in teachers and strengthen the teaching profession. Together with you, I want to develop a system of evaluation that draws on meaningful observations and input from your peers, as well as a sophisticated assessment that measures individual student growth, creativity, and critical thinking.”

When are you planning to begin working together with us? It’s been over two years since you’ve had this job and so far we haven’t seen much change in the federal law. I’m talking about NCLB, with its onerous sanctions. Those of us in the field are watching as good schools and good teachers are being labeled “failures” due mostly to the demographics of their student population and the relentlessly rising expectation of bad legislation.

And another thing. When you say you want to “work with us to change and improve federal law,” what exactly do you mean? As teachers, we know that could mean one of two things. There’s the “working together” where teams of teachers actually work together to plan a lesson or unit. In this form of “working together” the end is unknown at the outset. The team engages in genuine collaboration in which each partner contributes to the product. This is real and authentic teamwork.

Then there’s the other kind of working together. Many of us start the year by inviting our students to “work together” to form a set of class rules and responsibilities. For many of us, this is a disingenuous exercise; a façade in which the outcome is essentially predetermined. There’s no way, for example, that the rules we end up with won’t include something about “keeping our hands to ourselves.”

It might be OK to “work together” disingenuously when the rest of the team is eight years old, but we’re much older than that. And frankly, most of us know at least as much about education as you do.  

The evaluation system you describe in this paragraph sounds pretty cool. But it sounds a lot different from the plans proposed by the states that won your “race to the top.” Most of those plans seemed to use student performance as a proxy for teacher effectiveness. There’s certainly a connection between the two, but it’s not as clear as you might think. There’s a kid in my class, for example, who is so hyperactive that his body literally vibrates all day long. But his low test scores belie the enormous amount of effort and work it has taken to get him to read and write almost at grade level, and to get him to complete his math assignments independently. At the same time, the girl who sits across from him, whose parents are both doctors, reads better than either you or I. Her high test scores represent almost none of my effort and talent. I’ll gladly take credit for them, but frankly, she would have done just as well on that test with a folding chair in charge of the class.

One more thing. Our unions have taken a beating this past year. Mostly at the state level and by members of the media and business community. But there’s a sneaking suspicion by many of us that a lot of these people have become emboldened, not so much by what you and the rest of the administration has said or done, but by what you haven’t said or done. Contrary to popular myth, most of us actually feel represented by our unions. Their policies, after all, are directed by the teachers they represent. Our unions are us. And they do a lot of great work, for both teachers and students. Would it be too much to ask to have you stick up for us every now and then? 

So anyway, thanks for the letter. It was good to hear from you as we head down the homestretch of the school year. And if you really mean that part about “working together,” give me a call. I’ve got a few other ideas.

Tom