By Kristin

Have you seen the education issue of Time magazine?  Be ready.  In an earnest but hackneyed effort, Time and its reporters Amanda Ripley and John Cloud throw a lot of numbers around ("16:1 Student-to-teacher ratio in 2007, compared with 22:1 in 1970."  Really?  Where is that 16-student average coming from?), highlight the temporary contributions of the Teach For America corps, and dabble a bit in some of the better-performing charter schools.  And of course, they vilify unions and discount the contributions of excellent public school teachers because they are union members. 

Let's take moment to follow the scent Cloud and Ripley wave across the trail, and then we'll look at some real solutions to help public schools serve challenged and challenging kids.

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By Kristin

My journalism students are writing their first opinion pieces.  One student chose to write about the poor teachers in our building.  She complained that her senior project class was chaos, a waste of time. 

"The teacher can't handle us," she said. 

"You are seniors," I said. "Are you unable to behave for fifty minutes and work on your projects?" 

"Well," she answered, "we're rowdy and when she tells us to get to work no one listens to her."

I am not even going to go into the skills of this particular teacher.  I think in the context of this situation it's a moot point.  Am I really to sympathize that twenty-five seniors - eighteen year olds, most of them – can't use a fifty-minute research period to complete a graduation requirement?  I find it hard to fault the teacher.  The teacher of this class is there to guide, edit, and encourage.  She should not have to manage the behavior of a group of young adults who fully expect to graduate.

Or am I out of line? 

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By Tom

The Los Angeles Times created a recent stir by publishing the standardized test results of some of their local teachers. The premise, of course, is obvious: teachers aren’t currently working as hard as possible or doing as much as they could to promote student learning. And they won’t improve unless motivated by shame. I couldn’t agree more.

And since I want to do everything I can to improve, I’ve got a plan.

I’ll start by publishing my class results online. Everyone will know exactly how many kids learned in my class and how many kids didn’t.

Then I’ll take it up a notch. In the interest of accountability and transparency, I’ll disaggregate the scores so that the world will know exactly which students I didn’t teach successfully. They’ll notice that some students did well despite my lack of effort and that some did poorly because of it.

Then I’ll upload my gradebook and attendance records. Everyone will see that the same students who did poorly on their state tests also did poorly on their classroom work. The astute readers will note that I even allowed some students to skip some of their school work. Not even turn it in. And they’ll be horrified to see that I didn’t even have everyone come to school every day. In fact, I actually had many of the lowest-performing students miss the most learning time. That should definitely make me improve.

But I’m not taking any chances. I’ll install web cams in my room so that everyone who holds a stake in the success of my students can watch my ineptitude. Newspaper editors can log in and watch me teach poorly. Members of the Business Roundtable can watch me fail to give my students the skills they need. Parents can watch their own children endure my weak lessons. Everyone will watch as my lowest-performing students engage in off-task behavior whenever possible and work hard only when under my direct supervision.

Yes, the new Tom will be totally accountable, totally transparent, and much, much better.

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By Tom

I found out yesterday that Washington State didn't just lose the Race to the Top, we got creamed. Smeared. Hammered. We came in 32nd out of 36. It was like watching another Mariners season. It was humiliating.

Of course, having the Seattle Times editorial page rubbing it in didn't help matters.

They were right, of course. We didn't get any of the grant money because our reform package wasn't bold enough and it didn't have sufficient buy-in from all the stakeholders. Specifically, the teachers and their union.

I have to admit, I was a little upset, finding out that we did so poorly. I actually liked the package that our legislature put together, especially the proposed changes to the teacher evaluation system, and the fact that we'll continue to support National Board certification instead of pouring money into a merit-pay program. And I'm not convinced in the least that adding charter schools is any kind of a sustainable solution to the problems in education.

Disappointed and frustrated, I took it out on a long bike ride. Which seemed to help, because by the time I got home, I figured out what's really going on here.

It was never about the money. Not really. What the Obama administration was trying to do was shake things up. They had a nice chunk of cash to throw at education. And they had a choice; they could dole it out in the usual way, based on need, and expect the usual results. Or they could do things differently. They could dole it out to states based on the degree of innovation in their proposed changes, and the degree to which the stakeholders in those states bought into those changes. Which is what they did. 

And that actually makes a lot of sense, because now we all get to sit back and see what works and what doesn't. We may find out that merit pay is the best thing to happen to education since the Dry-Erase Revolution. Or we might find out that it's a complicated waste of money. We might find out that charter schools really do help their students learn and that they really do inform their surrounding public schools on best practices. Or not.

And if we find this stuff out, then we can use that information to improve education everywhere else. If we're smart, that is.

So taking the long view, this whole thing looks like one big educational experiment. Unfortunately, Washington, along with most of the other states, was unwillingly placed into the control group. We didn't get any of the much-needed money to pay for our innovations. But like this year's Mariners season, that's the way it goes.

Hopefully we'll all learn from this. And hopefully we'll use what we learn to improve education for all students.

Because that's what really matters.

By Tom

Once upon a time there was a family of rabbits. A mother rabbit, a father rabbit and a bunny rabbit. The mother took care of the bunny on a day-to-day basis and the father worked hard to support his family. In fact, he was know to tell others that taking care of his bunny was his "Paramount Duty."

After awhile the family split up. The bunny went to live with her mother, who eventually remarried. The father continued his financial support for the bunny, although not nearly as enthusiastically.

It soon became clear that the bunny needed braces. (See figure1) The mother mentioned this to the father, who sympathized with the situation, but claimed that he didn't have the money to pay for them, and besides braces weren't covered in their original divorce agreement, wherein he was only required to cover "basic care." He did however, give the bunny's stepfather permission to pay for the braces.

The stepfather, who had to look at the bunny's teeth on a daily basis, readily agreed. The braces were purchased and the teeth were corrected.

The end.

The moral of the story? If you shirk your legal responsibilities, someone responsible will come along and take care of them for you.

To which I can only add two things:

1. Thank you very much to the voters of the Edmonds School District for passing our school levy this week. You are awesome and it's an honor to teach your children.

2. Shame on you, State of Washington, for forcing them to do so.