So it has gotten ugly in Wisconsin.

It didn't help when massive numbers of teachers called in sick for as many as three days in a row in order to go protest in Madison–forcing some schools to temporarily close doors to students. 

And somehow, the Democratic state legislators felt that the best course of action was to skip town. Sure, I get that the tactic was to avoid quorum and prevent a vote and hold out for compromise, but that reminds me of how my six year old storms out of the room when I tell him to pick up his toys. (This tactic has also been tried in other states, but did not accomplish the fleeing groups' aims.)

And then there were the signs that some of the Wisconsin protesters were holding up, depicting Wisconsin governor Scott Walker with a Hitler mustache and making visual comparisons between Walker and other tyrants and dictators. That is of course a level-headed response which invites constructive discourse about Walker's proposal to eliminate collective bargaining and require teachers and other public employees to pay more of their health care benefits. I know that whenever I try to reason with someone I begin by comparing them to Hitler.

To be clear, I disagree with what I understand about Walker's ideas and even more emphatically disagree with how he has declared his unwillingness to compromise.

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By Kristin

Natalie Munro, a Pennsylvania teacher who has said uncomplimentary things about her students on a blog – a personal blog, one unaffiliated with her job – has been busted.

Natalie's story made me think of how we're more comfortable tearing down than building up, how we expect parents to make our lives easier, and how we so readily wave the superhero cape but don't often put it on and get to work.  After all, we're not superheroes.  We can't fly.  We would be fools to believe we could.

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By Tom

I once watched an interview on 60 Minutes with Derek Jeter, one of my favorite baseball players. He was asked what he thought about when he stepped into the batters' box. "I know I'm going to get a base hit," he said. "I don't hope for it, I don't think I'll do it, and I don't know I can. I know I will." When it was pointed out that he only succeeded thirty percent of the time - a remarkable achievement – he said he didn't think about that. All he thought about was knowing that this time he was going to get a hit. And when it doesn't happen? "I'm always surprised."

That's how we need to think about our students. Every time we teach a lesson, we need to know that every child will learn what it is we're teaching. We can't hope they can, think they will or know they can. We need to know they will.

Obviously there's some disconnect going on. If a ballplayer has to know that he will get a hit every time he gets up, he also knows that he'll only succeed some of the time. Those two facts are mutually exclusive. There's bound to be some cognitive dissonance. So what happens to the baseball players that try to resolve this dissonance?

Simple: they enter the workforce with the rest of us and play slow-pitch softball in the evenings.

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By Tom

King 5 News aired a segment on the show "Up Front with Robert Mak" about the governor's proposal to eliminate the National Board stipend from the next budget. It's well done; he gets most of the facts right, and it features a very articulate third grade teacher from Bellevue.

Check it out:

“Rewarding good teachers in tough times could take a hit.”

I don't have much to add, except this:

This money was promised. It is not a "bonus" in the strict sense of the word. A bonus is a reward, usually given annually, for achieving a certain level of performance. A bonus is something companies usually distribute when they had a particularly good year.

This money is actually a stipend. A stipend is a raise given to somebody in recognition of a past accomplishment which has been determined to have a positive effect on current performance.

The distinction isn't trivial or technical. A bonus is something that an employee shouldn't count on. A stipend is. Taking away a bonus returns the person in question to their normal place on the salary scale. Taking away a stipend takes that person to a lower place on the salary scale.

It's a pay cut. And it discourages teachers from undergoing the most powerful professional development they're likely to come across during their entire careers. 

To her credit, the Governor looks very upset when discussing this issue. It's clear that this was a painful decision for her. She also holds out hope that the stipend will return when the economy picks up.

Sounds familiar.

By Kristin

I've got a problem.  The previous owners of our house didn't seal this window enough.  Luckily, there's this – my chop saw.  

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By Tom

What are we supposed to wear to work? It seems like business people have it figured out, as do dentists and janitors. Baseball players have it figured out for them, just like inmates and cops. Teachers, though, are all over the place.

I was thinking about this the other day while reading this piece in the Tacoma News Tribune. It's about a teacher who earned National Board Certification, only to learn that the Governor's proposed budget did away with the National Board bonus. It was a good article about a sad situation, featuring a young lady who, by all accounts, is a wonderful teacher. 

But then I got down to the bottom of the page, where the comments began. Wow. Read them for yourself, if you have the stomach, but what really caught my attention was a series of remarks about the fact that the teacher was wearing jeans. I had to look back at the picture to confirm it, and sure enough; there she is, wearing blue denim.

Judging by the comments, jeans are not universally considered proper attire in the classroom. Apparently some people think jeans are unprofessional. And they can't get past that to see what the person wearing the jeans is actually doing in them.  

And that's unfortunate. Clothes shouldn't matter. Objectively speaking, anyone should be allowed to wear anything they want anywhere. Within reason. 

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By Tom

The Washington State legislature is currently dealing with a pair of bills designed to make it easier to fire bad teachers. The house version is apparently gaining traction. The senate version (SB 5399) is stalled, held up by Senator Rosemary McAuliffe, who chairs the leading education committee.

Good for you, Rosemary.

These bill are driven by the popular narrative that bad schools are caused by bad teachers, and bad teachers are nearly impossible to fire because of their powerful unions and because they have "tenure."

If that's true, then there should be data to support it, right? 

But there isn't.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average school district in 2007-2008 had 211.4 teachers. Of those 211.4 teachers, 4.4 of them were fired for poor performance. That's about two percent. I challenge you to find another profession with a higher termination rate.

But here's the weird thing: of those teachers who got fired, most of them were "protected by tenure." That's right; the average district fired 4.4 teachers. Three of them were tenured, and 1.4 of them weren't.

But isn't it impossible to fire tenured teachers? Apparently not. According to the standardized data, it seems easier than firing untenured teachers; 1.4 compared to 0.7. Twice as easy. And according to Perry Zirkel, professor of education and law at Lehigh University, when districts and teacher unions go to court to settle a termination issue, the districts win by a ratio of three to one. Not only is it possible to fire bad teachers who have tenure, but it happens quite often.

So on the one hand, we have the press and the president and Davis Guggenheim telling us that the problem with American education is bad teachers and their unwavering protection by the NEA and AFT.

And on the other hand, we have data that tells us differently. The data contradicts the popular narrative.

The irony, of course, is that so-called "education reformers" want more data used more often. They want the kids with bad data held back. They want the schools with bad data shut down. They want teachers of kids with good data paid more.

But more than anything, they want teachers of kids with bad data fired.

And they're frustrated by the fact that teachers and their unions disagree with them. So they perpetuate this myth that teachers are nearly impossible to fire.

Which simply isn't true.

And the last thing our state lawmakers should be doing right now is passing unnecessary legislation based on a myth. 

By Kristin

Like many other Washington parents, in the fall I checked my daughter's MAP scores.  The test, the Measurement of Academic Progress, is Washington's best bet for measuring teacher impact because it's given in the fall, the winter, and the spring.

At least, a few weeks ago I thought it was the best tool.  Now I'm not so sure.

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By Mark

• A while back I posted a short piece inspired by my revelation to my freshmen that Jersey Shore was in fact not real. (I was nearly burned at the stake for my heresy…luckily they forgot quickly.)

• A colleague of mine shared with me this article from Educational Leadership (ASCD), provocatively titled "Too Dumb for Complex Texts?" which points out evidence that students lack the skills (and patience) to work through difficult texts, and are thus scoring more poorly on college entrance exams and undergraduate coursework.

• And then there's the NPR piece about the "Incredible Shrinking Sound Bite" (which I always thought was spelled "byte," go figure) that points out the amazing lengths, or shorts, that statements which function as "news" have achieved…thus reducing communication about highly complex issues to what amounts to less than nine seconds of spoken words, or approximately the length of a twitter post if it were spoken aloud.

Together, these three are speaking to me, more loudly than ever, that we need to change our approaches to literacy instruction in public schools–especially at the secondary level if not earlier. The first, my ruminations about "reality" and the Jersey Shore, have to do with increasing kids' literacy about how messages are constructed. The latter two though suggest that perhaps the media has conditioned people to not do precisely the thinking I want my students to do about the Jersey Shore.

So here's the big question: what does it mean to teach someone how to read?

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by Brian

After I read Tom's pungent post about the bill that proposes to change Reduction in Force criteria from seniority to evaluation, I spent Friday at a workshop sponsored by ESD 114 and WEA-Olympic Uniserv thinking about how to create the new evaluation system (mandated by last year's SB 6696 and to be in place statewide by 2013-2014) that will put a number to an evaluation. Tom's post sparked a lively debate, but to debate seniority vs. effectiveness we first have to agree that we could even come up with a number from a teacher's evaluation.  That is a huge assumption that requires some critical thinking. And we have to think about what we want the purpose of an evaluation system to be. If we want the system to promote growth, instead of just verifying compliance with state law, will applying numbers help?

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