Rights: Use'm or Lose'm

It is one thing to have rights, another to have a mechanism for exercising those rights, and yet a third to actually exercise them.

On the first and second points, there is an active national effort to destroy our limited rights to "petition the Government for a redress of grievances" (expressed in the first amendment) and due process (as in the fourteenth amendment aka just and sufficient cause.)  We as teachers typically exercise those rights through our unions and through an orderly grievance process spelled out in collective bargaining agreements, rather than avail ourselves of remedies available through the legal system. 

Yes, as teachers and public employees we labor under restrictions that do not apply to the general public, but historically we have had certain rights and protections pertaining to our chosen profession.  State by state, those rights and protections are being systematically stripped away, a death by a thousand cuts.

Both the rights (expressed through collective bargaining) and the mechanism for expressing those rights (a system of grievances and arbitration which sits outside the court system) are being abrogated.  My view is that this allows deferred compensation such as pensions to be treated as a piggy bank by unscrupulous politicians.  The disempowerment of workers facilitates our rightward lurch towards a capitalist/fascist dystopia.

On the third point, for those of us who have not yet experienced the cataclysm which is North Carolina, Wisconsin or Michigan, rights mean nothing whatsoever if they are not actively enforced.  Every act of meek submission to authority is another nail in the coffin of teacher voice.

Too many of us view teaching as apolitical, on the excuse that conflict will hurt our students.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  As government employees OUR JOBS ARE POLITICAL!  That is reality.  It goes against our natures, as the sort of human beings who enter a service profession, to embrace conflict.

The bottom line is that the conflict has embraced us.

It is not our fault.  It becomes our fault if we don't push back by whatever means are at our disposal.  Yes, some of those means are political.  The venues can be corrupt and scary.  Activism and leadership require courage - the courage to live with the consequences of your inevitable mistakes.

Those who would destroy our profession, "destroy the village to save the village," fail to realize that every act of disempowerment promulgated against educators, students, and citizens is a distraction from our core mission and a disruption of school culture and community.  Culture and community are critical to a successful education system. 

I don't believe we should be blaming teachers by complaining about their passivity.  This is a symptom of an increasingly dysfunctional and totalitarian political culture.  Rather, we should acknowledge the harsh realities of citizenship and government employment, and as compassionate leaders help nurture engagement. 

Could Ike Have Foreseen the Education-Industrial Complex?

In his farewell speech in 1961, Dwight Eisenhower famously warned of the dangers of the new military-industrial complex.  What he perhaps did not foresee was how that complex would become a paradigm for policy making outside the field of defense.  In the excerpt below I changed a few words, such as “military” to “education” and “federal contract” to “foundation grant”, and am struck by how Eisenhower’s prescient warning rings true for education in 2012.

"This conjunction of an immense education establishment and a large education industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the education-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge commercial and education machinery with our peaceful methods and goals, so that we may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-education posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.  In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary teacher, toiling in her classroom, has been overshadowed by task forces of researchers in foundations and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a foundation grant becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

The structure of the military-industrial complex has become a meme. It has recreated itself in the schools and universities of America.  A shadowy, revolving door world of government and quasi-government agencies, think tanks, foundations, corporations, universities, political and advocacy groups, and private contractors, form the ecosystem of education policy.  Oh yes – and unions, to be fair.  We need to call this out – it is the Education-Industrial Complex.

A self-reinforcing scientific-technological elite, detached from the everyday realities of the work, performs vast social engineering experiments behind closed doors in a cloud of group-think and acronyms.  Fueled by the endemic soft corruption of revolving six figure sinecures, as members pass easily from government to foundation to university, etc., this elite presumes to manipulate the masses of citizenry for their own good.

I have seen this with my own eyes.

It will take an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” to deal with the consequences.  But where will that citizenry come from if their education is being engineered by people whose interests are money, status, and power, rather than democracy?

Netroots Nation: Why am I here?

Attending Netroots Nation for the first time as a Democracy for America Scholar. What do I want to achieve?

In the last few years I've been deeply engaged in the nuts and bolts of progressive unionism and education policy.  After working all day teaching young children, then negotiating, serving on the VT-NEA Board, working for the US Dept of Education, etc., there is precious little time left for all of the other worthy progressive causes in the world.  But I believe that connecting across policy spheres is crucial to the success of progressive causes.  I am here to make that connection and learn about all the things I've been missing while actually doing the work.

One of the things I've noticed about the radical right is that there think tanks cross issues.  Look at Hoover - they have specialists in defense, economics, domestic policy education etc.  This enables them to develop a narrative across disciplinary boundaries.  The different policy areas become mutually reinforcing.

Contrast with the left.  Think tanks, such as they are, tend to work within silos.  The issue orientation leads the public to latch onto specific issues rather than a coherent and self-reinforcing narrative.  Teachers go, "LGBT, Native American? Those aren't my issues - I'm not gay, I'm not Native American."  Well dammit these are our issues.  Urban is a rural issue.  Rural is an urban issue.   

We are all in this together.

The great narrative battle is between private good and the public good.  The right believes there are very few public goods - maybe defense, but that the benefits of the society accrue to individuals, and therefore society can be atomized, privatized and government shrunk until it can be "drowned in a bathtub."

My view, one I hope we share, is that there are great public goods, things which are too profound and important to consign to the markets.  Drive a Ford or a Chevy, eat Rice Crispies or Cornflakes?  Private goods - that can be settled by markets.  But education, healthcare, marriage equality, civil rights public transit, the environment and, yes, defense, are great public goods, matters of profound social consequence in which we all have too big a stake to turn our back on the collective enterprise.  I refuse to turn my back on my neighbor.

We are our neighbors’ keepers.

I am hoping to connect with this bigger narrative here in Providence.  Wish me luck.

Follow the hashtag #NN12

Equitable Funding of Public Education

My friend and colleague Gamal Sherif teaches at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA.  We are both Teaching Ambassador Fellows for the US Department of Education (Gamal this year and me last year), and members of the Teacher Leader Network Forum, part of the Center for Teaching Quality.  We are both also union activists - I'm NEA and Gamal is AFT.  What I love about our friendship is the differences: I’m a rural elementary teacher and Gamal is an urban high school teacher, yet across these differences we share so much.  Gamal’s asked me to share his latest blog post and I urge people to follow his excellent blog ProgressEd.

Public education is underfunded because of:

1.       mis-management

2.       mis-use of our military in countries like Afghanistan

3.       warped emphasis on privatized wealth at the expense of the common good

Here are a few examples:

·         In 2001, the Philadelphia Public School Notebook reported that the State of Pennsylvania had taken over the Philadelphia School District. How has that oversight helped students and teachers be more engaged? What stability or efficiencies has state oversight provided? Most importantly, what are examples of effective school district organization? How can we help teachers create effective working conditions so that they and their students can flourish?

·         In 2011, The Washington Post reported that "[t]he U.S. military is on track to spend $113 billion on its operations in Afghanistan this fiscal year, and it is seeking $107 billion for the next." Are there better uses for that money?

·         The Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported that the outgoing CEO of Sunoco is receiving about $37 million in compensation for liquidating assets. How can we create a sustainable economy that honors labor and fosters a commitment to the social good? Individual excellence is essential, but we are all more effective when we advance social equity along with individual liberty.

If the explanations for inequitable funding of public education are accurate (numbers 1, 2 and 3 above), then what are the solutions?  Below is my list -- what's yours?

Federal solutions:

·         Reauthorize a modified ESEA that acknowledges "college and career readiness" with an emphasis on systemic creation of "school readiness." All children should arrive at school safe, well-fed, well-rested, and curious.

·         Re-visit the 14th Amendment and the Brown v. Board of Ed. decision with consideration of funding inequities that create a "suspect class." All schools should be able to fund education at equal (if not equitable) levels.

State solutions:

·         Ensure teacher representation on state-wide panels that roll-out RTTT.

·         Ensure equitable funding of all school districts akin to NJ's Abbott decisions.

District solutions:

·         Create real equitable choice options so that students can attend schools of interest anywhere in the city -- or across District boundaries.

·         Develop and sustain teacher leadership so that teachers lead the integration of curriculum, instruction, assessment and policy that engages students and teachers.

Union solutions:

·         Integrate the labor frame with professional and social justice frames for a enriched unionism.

·         Cultivate cohorts of teacher leaders who are connected and can advocate for effective working conditions, participate in teacher-led research, and foster democratic learning environments .

Administrative solutions:

·         Provide operational flexibility for principals to build community partnerships, coach teachers, know students, and build the capacity of learning organizations.

·         Require extensive support for nurses, social workers, therapists and counselors so that all students with diverse needs are recognized and supported.

Teacher solutions:

·         View teachers as experts and support the professional development needed so that teachers can effectively lead schools.

·         Create professional learning communities within and between schools and the community so that teachers are facilitating and modeling the collaboration necessary to life-long learning.

 

Common Core and Monkey Training

Wrote this before the RTT convening in Boston.  This is where I was - I will write more on this subject  with respect to the convening in the future.

I teach elementary music.  I’ll be touched more tangentially by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) than many teachers, but I do have wide experience thinking about and writing curriculum with reference to standards in both my endorsement areas, music and technology integration.  I don’t have to implement CCSS in my classroom at this point, but as an educator, I'm fascinated. 

The problem with grappling with the details of implementation is that it is important to be able to articulate the big picture, the broad principles which form the basis of the CCSS.  The big picture is helpful both to educators and administrators trying to get a purchase on how to begin the work of CCSS, and to parents and other stakeholders trying to understand the implications for students. 

Standards represent our aspirations for students, which then need to be interpreted through a rich matrix of curricula, increasingly fine grained plans for the delivery of instruction.  There many different types of curricula, such as the political curriculum, the district/building curriculum, the classroom curriculum, the shelf curriculum, the taught curriculum and the learned curriculum, all of which look very different.

I've come to the conclusion that the most important curriculum is the one that the teacher has internalized, enabling minute to minute decisions in work with actual students.  All of those other types just prepare the one that lives in the teacher's head.  In the heat of the moment we can't pull a binder off the shelf to make decisions; we need an internalized plan to guide appropriate instruction.

Hence the significance of the broad outline or principles.

·         The CCSS calls for fewer things taught in greater depth.

·         The CCSS puts greater emphasis on informational texts, which is a type of reading we use in real life.

·         CCSS calls for more persuasive writing and less personal narrative, again what we do in real life.

·         CCSS calls for an emphasis on higher order thinking skills, requiring new assessments that can actually capture them.

·         In math, CCSS calls for the ability to reason quantitatively, not just the ability to perform procedures.

·         CCSS aspires to have students be able to anticipate the next steps in their learning, and therefore be educational actors rather than passive recipients.

·         CCSS calls for higher order thinking skills (HOTS).

I'm interested in the potential applicability of broad principles of this sort in my discipline, music.  My Orff Schulwerk level III movement teacher Brian Burnett talks about how we make kids in into "trained monkeys" in music classes.  By the same token, math students who perform the steps of a procedure but can't ascertain whether their answer is within an order of magnitude of reality are also victims of monkey training.  I ask myself what a Common Core for music might look like.

I'm fond of giving carefully scaffolded composition/improvisation tasks to students as a means of assessment.  A couple of years ago I had a fourth grade class improvise pitches to the rhythm of a poem using their recorders.  The parameters I set were a Do pentatonic scale on G, using G as the home tone.  One of the students asked me if he could use an F.  I replied, "Convince me."  He proceeded to improvise a lovely piece in the Dorian mode, dutifully ending it on G, per the requirements of the assignment.  When he shared with the class, I asked him if there was a note that would be more suitable for the ending than G.  He paused and thought about it, listening inside his head, and replied "D".  I looked at him and said, "You understand the home tone."

Martin deployed judgment in his answer.  My only regret was that in the design of the task I had not provided easier avenues of deploying judgment - I guess we call that reflection.  In fact the other day I gave this same task to students again, but this time invited them to choose their own home tone from given pitch set, which most did quite effectively. 

Could this story be illustrative of how the broad principles of our Common Core aspirations could be appropriately deployed in non-tested subjects?  A rising sea lifting all boats....

A Real Teacher Appreciation Week

Teacher Appreciation Week is coming.  I suppose we’ll get some sort of luncheon.  Some parents will show up to take my recess duty, which I generally use to get caught up on some planning.  The media will report some lame accolades for teachers from various leaders, many of whom spend the rest of their time trying to make our lives worse.  Sometimes there’s a mug involved.  The whole thing generally blows over uneventfully.  It’s much more about the appreciators than the appreciatees.

What would real teacher appreciation look like?

Teachers are professional education experts.  If one week a year, teachers could make that expertise known in tangible ways in the places that education policy is made, that would be real teacher appreciation.

Much policy discussion happens during school hours.  The state legislature, and the state board of education meet while we are teaching children.  Our state board of education makes momentous decisions with real impact on our work, things like adoption of Common Core State Standards and application for an NCLB waiver while we are busy actually doing the work.  The legislature decides on issues like Fair Share and pension reform – during business hours

Yes, we have our union, and we have our paid lobbyists, and there are former teachers who represent us in these forums, but it is not the same as flooding these rooms with professionals whose situated expertise is essential to the implementation of successful policy.

The other night a colleague was noting the irony of a local board member testifying at the state house on a policy matter of interest to our union, and impossibility of our being there to counteract that testimony. 

In my ideal world every teacher would have a paid floating Teacher Appreciation Week which they could use for leadership and advocacy at the local, state or national level.  It could be used for policy or political work, but must be used for the purpose of bringing the professional voice of teachers to the broad decision making process.

There are those that would characterize this idea as just another benefit.  But if one week of access, and the broad leadership development it could foster in the profession, makes the other 170+ student contact days more effective because of a combination of grounded policy and superior implementation, it seems to me to be a very small, but wise investment.

Driving leadership and policy work into after hours, when we are exhausted, when we are taking care of families and ourselves (and yes, planning and grading….) is a formula mass for detachment.  Empowering people means creating the time and space for meaningful democratic engagement.

Unless you don’t believe in democracy…..

Creating the conditions for democratic engagement by education professionals – that would be real teacher appreciation.

Innovation, Ideology and Compliance

As we say in the union: a supposal....

Let’s set aside for a moment the heated arguments about the course of federal education policy. Let’s give the United States Department of Education (ED) the benefit of the doubt, impute good intentions, and take at face value their claim that they are trying to use federal policy to change the conversation about teacher quality from sorting and firing, to elevating the profession and improving teaching practice.  We can always revert to the noisy argument, but stepping back to a quieter place for a moment may illuminate  avenues for better policy.

Race to the Top and NCLB waivers are among an alphabet soup of ED initiatives intended to spur change and innovation at a state level.  Certainly there is guidance from ED as to what that change might look like, and that is legitimately a subject for political debate.  Let’s consider the possibility that to some significant extent these programs are intended less to be prescriptive, and more to be platforms for innovation.

There is a dangerous assumption embedded in policy of this sort: that states have the same capacity for creativity and innovation as the people who created the policy in the first place.  There may be states where capacity exists, but in many places this policy ship is dashed on the twin rocks of ideology and compliance.

Ideology is expressed in astroturf teacher bashing, and in policy and legislation that assume that bad teachers and the unions that protect them are the problem.  This is the “fire your way to the top” approach, which has the added advantage allowing politicians to evade the tough task of raising the revenue necessary to create a great education system.  From the left it consists of a cynical view that everything ED does is astroturf in disguise.  Ideology offers its proponents relief from the necessity of thinking.

When it comes to trying to elevate the teaching profession to advance the cause of great student learning in our schools, ideology is a noisy, destructive distraction from that task.  Federal programs designed to encourage creativity and innovation cannot succeed in states where this type of toxic thinking predominates. 

There is a second, more insidious impediment to the success of current federal policy: a compliance mentality.  State and district level bureaucrats often live in a culture of compliance.  Rather than using a program as an opportunity to create something progressive, they ask “What is the minimum we have to do to get the money/waiver/whatever?”  This mentality collides with the intent of the people who created the Federal policy.  That policy is designed to disrupt and change the status quo.  Compliance is about maintaining a comfortable status quo for adults, regardless of the impact that has on the end goal of the educational enterprise: great student learning.

There are places that have managed to keep the ideologues tamped down while responding with some creativity to federal initiatives.  Massachusetts is one such place.  The Massachusetts Teachers Association took a proactive approach to the RTT requirement to incorporate student achievement data in the new teacher evaluation system.  The MTA plan, which the Association characterizes as a “Triangulated Standards-based Evaluation Framework,” uses student achievement as one data point among several. 

The universities and think tanks in Massachusetts have the ability to help by providing a theoretical framework to support the work in strategic partnerships with other stakeholders.  Few states boast such capacity - certainly not my state, Vermont.

There is a pathway for more effective Federal policy.  Presuming good intentions here, if it is the intent to promote innovation rather than ideology or compliance, ED has to consider ways of building capacity in places where it does not currently exist, ways of getting colleges and universities to step up to the plate, of helping unions get past a circle the wagons mentality, of reaching people of good will and helping them to understand the issues at hand, not just in states that are the recipients of federal largess, but everywhere.

People who are numbed by the noise of worthless ideology, or deadened by the dull drone of bureaucratic compliance, cannot be the engines of innovation, cannot be equals and partners in a program of educational improvement. 

How can we move past the ideological noise of both the right and the left, and emerge from the suffocation of compliance in order to create great public policy?  How can we learn to govern ourselves again?

My Garden Sprouts

How often does a book on education achieve both literary and visual artistry?  How often would you expect any book on education to be both practical and inspiring?  Had you asked me these questions a couple of weeks ago, I would answered seldom to the second question and never to the first.  Both questions together?  Impossible.  Then I encountered My Garden Sprouts by Sharla Steever, illustrated by Diana Magnuson.

My Garden Sprouts is an annotated journal for elementary classroom teachers.  Its 127 illustrated pages are filled with space for a teacher to make notes about his/her unfolding practice over a three year period.   Each journal page begins with wise and insightful prompts.  The quality of these prompts grows from Sheever’s deep experience as a mentor and teacher leader at her school.  Magnuson’s illustrations are gorgeous; her self-professed Allegorical Realism is the perfect foil to Steever’s use of metaphor.  They are  understated, supporting, but never overshadowing the professional intent of the book.

A 2011 Classroom Teaching Ambassador Fellow for the US Department of Education and a National Board Certified Teacher, Steever is a master teacher form South Dakota who teaches fourth grade.  Her video Tokata: Moving Forward in Indian Education, illustrating her profound knowledge of Native American education issues, was previously reviewed here on Education Worker.   Magnuson is a gifted illustrator from Michigan with a large portfiolio of illustrated children’s books. 

Steever is also an accomplished gardener.  She uses gardening as a literary metaphor for teaching.  The culture of individual vegetables and flowers illustrates the character of students and situations one encounters in school.   Pumpkins “take up a lot of space.”   With regard to pumpkin students, Sheever invites us to consider how we can build their boundary awareness.  Onions “are socially repellant” – how can we peel back the layers, getting past the hunger, poverty or abuse to hold these students to “compassionate high standards”?  At every step Steever challenges even jaded veterans to consider students in novel ways, and with humor and wit asks us to reconceive our classrooms and the way we see our students.

This journal should become a modern classic for the induction and mentoring of new elementary teachers.  I could see it being a graduation gift for new teachers, or a gift to new hires, especially in rural places.  I could see it being a standard text for Peer Assistance and Review programs, directed both to the new teachers and struggling veterans typically served by these programs.

As I read, however, it became clear to me that this journal is for anyone at any level of experience who simply wants to ramp it up to the next level in their practice.  Compassionate, wise and eminently practical – how often does that happen in an education book? 

Responsibilty, Autonomy, and Reform - NEA Style

I was invited by Larry Ferlazzo to comment on his Ed Week blog Classroom Q&A on “Transforming Teaching” along with Dennis Van Roekel and Renee Moore. Here are my remarks; I urge folks to read the original.

In "Transforming Teaching," the NEA recognized one incontrovertible fact: you cannot coerce reform. There is reform done to teachers (we've seen a lot of that lately), reform done by teachers (think NBPTS, CTQ or TURN), and reform done with teachers. "Transforming Teaching" calls for the latter: deep organic reform rising from within the profession with meaningful and realistic cooperation from other stakeholders.

Good reform is ultimately about changing teaching practice in order to achieve better student learning. Without the full force and participation of the teaching profession this simply cannot be done.

A couple of settlements ago, our school board demanded and got a 7.5 minimum hour day. Administration immediately designated that the time before and after school as "collaboration time" and created uniform start and end times at all schools. In my school there was widespread resentment over what one teacher called "forced collaboration." People watched the clock. The minimum became the maximum. The scheme backfired, producing far less collaboration than might have occurred by creating a great climate where people want to stay and collaborate because they love their jobs.

This story illustrates principles of human psychology and group dynamics. Multiply that by three million, the size of the teaching profession in the United States. You can't do it to us, as satisfying as that might seem at times; you have to do it with us.

The NEA recognized the psychology of the teaching profession by forming the Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching, a group of master teachers charged, among other things, to tell NEA a few things it did not want to hear. What emerged is a picture of systemic reform by and for teachers to elevate teaching into a true profession.

"Transforming Teaching" calls for real reform by demanding the conditions that create great teachers: professional responsibility and collaborative autonomy. Notice that I said responsibility. Much has been made lately of that fact that there is no word in the Finnish language for accountability in the sense that we use it in American education. If we aspire to the level of the best performing systems we need to embrace an essential principle that drives these systems: collective responsibility.

Yes, "Transforming Teaching" makes demands on other stakeholders: on the unions and their professional staffs, on the US Department of Education, on legislatures, and on school districts. But read the document closely - given professional responsibility, we teachers are far harder on ourselves than any outside entity. Why? Because we work for and with kids and our lives are better when their lives are better. Teachers live reform and are the ones who must ultimately create it.