Charter Schools: The Stanford CREDO Study and Charter Progress

Posted on October 24, 2012 by schooldog

Summary: The Stanford CREDO study provides some ambiguity and fodder for different points of view, but also direction for the charter school movement.

In descending a variety of pathways into the question of charter schools, it is not long before one arrives at the doorstep of Stanford University, where one can bask in almost perpetual sun, obtain an elegant education, or encounter the Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO) and its currently gold standard report, or at least much cited report, on performance of charter schools in comparison to traditional public schools (TPS).

The report, entitled “Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States,” has been much discussed in various media, and I assume has woven its way in and out of many academic discussions in diverse settings.

For good reason. Its ambitions are no less than the capture of the state of progress of students in charter schools in the sixteen states in question. Aside from serving as an annoying reminder to me of my folly in ducking all opportunities to subject myself to a course in statistics, the results are sufficiently ambiguous, borderline contradictory, and subject to the eye of the beholder, as to arrive plausibly at their goal – an accurate statistical reflection of the reality on the ground in a topic fraught with winds of ideology and passion.

Without such research, which we hope can give us accurate data, the argument over charter schools becomes an exercise without boundaries and without any internal or guiding metrics.

The methodology in the abstract is simple enough. In a sample of over 2400 charter schools and 1.7 million “records”, the researchers paired each charter school student with a “virtual twin” in a traditional public school (again, TPS). Apples to apples, in other words. The twins are matched via a variety of prime demographic measures, and their subsequent test results in reading and math are compared during a given time span. If the charter student outperforms his TPS “twin,” then the charter school is deemed to have outperformed the TPS in that particular instance, and vice versa. The comparisons in aggregate are then used to judge the progress of charter schools as one group across the sixteen states, the progress within each of the sixteen states, and finally progress by comparison of charter school performance within specific school districts with those schools charter students would have otherwise attended.

The ambiguity and any resulting spin comes from the most publicized finding, the aggregate of all charters against all traditional public schools, which of course has been the most prominently publicized, and which encapsulates both good news and bad news.

Simply stated, 19% of charter schools in the full aggregate study performed better than their traditional public school counterparts (TPS), 46% did no differently, and 37% of charters performed more poorly than their respective TPS.

Some commentators have correctly lamented that 37%, or roughly one third of charter schools, performed more poorly than their corresponding public school, and caution against charter implementation. One advocate of charter schools in my state spun the same figures to say that two thirds of charters at least did no harm. More savvy commentators, to my thinking, noted that the 19% represents schools that seem to be having success that begs an attempt to replicate.

These are initial fruits of our national experiment.

The CREDO report promises an additional study in 2009 on the “influence of operational characteristics on performance” that would seem to shed light on how the 19% are successful, but as of posting I have yet to locate a copy. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, Roland Fryer, a professor of economics at Harvard’s “EdLab,” and a MacArthur Fellow, has separately studied demonstrably successful charter schools run by the Harlem Childrens’ Zone and by the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) network of charters, and has extracted what he believes to be five key ingredients of the improved academic results coming out of the two sets of schools. The betting on my part would be they will align well with the CREDO findings.

— Increased instructional time.

— A culture of high expectations.

— Heavy doses of tutoring.

— Consistent feedback to teachers and sturdy investment in their increased competence.

— The use of data to drive instructional choices.

Currently Fryer is implementing his ideas in a number of Houston schools. Early returns have been promising. See his monograph, “Injecting Successful Charter School Strategies in Traditional Public Schools – Early Results from an Experiment in Houston”.

Meanwhile, the CREDO study has additional, nuanced, less publicized conclusions worth further focus, which I will meander  through in upcoming posts.

The long march to educational reform continues.

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Schools and Politics: The Waiver Game Dilutes No Child Left Behind?

Posted on October 9, 2012 by schooldog

Summary: Waivers to No Child Left Behind by the Obama Administration in the face of the failure by many schools to fully meet Annual Yearly Progress, and Congressional failure to update the law, nonetheless run the risk of derailing impetus toward school reform.

In his recent column in the Seattle Times 9/12/12, “Still Leaving Our Kids Behind,” Michael Gerson blasts the Obama administration’s decision to grant exemptions to states from certain of the requirements of No Child Left Behind, most pointedly the expectation that all racial, ethnic, and educational groups (such as special education students) be made proficient in the very near future. Mr. Gerson glosses over the indigestible reality, the ultimate ingredient of NCLB, that a high percentage of American schools, as much as 80%, would be deemed failing in the near future and be subject to  unwieldy penalties by their respective states.

As much as I have felt for some time that the structure of No Child Left Behind, promulgated by the George W. Bush White House and passed into law by Congress, tried to impose a directive from on high onto a highly complex web of grass roots realities to which it seemed poorly attuned, and so was doomed by the time line it set for itself, I have since come to respect its blunderbuss aspects, the kick in the rear to schools each fall as the previous year’s test scores were dissected. It was never finely tuned, never particularly mindful of the quandaries faced by well intentioned educational professionals on the ground. In essence, it just commanded, “get it done.”

Fear does motivate, though not in a pleasant manner. And so NCLB did get us going on a stronger trajectory than prior, and I believe in many communities, even if not most communities, clear progress has been wrought. My high school has been a case in point. In some categories, even most, clear progress has been made, and in some categories the goals as stipulated by NCLB formulas have been met.

Mr. Gerson gets overly wound up later in his column and exclaims against an “educational establishment that has adopted a policy of massive resistance to effective accountability,” and indeed it may seem that way from his vantage point well screened from the day to day of work in the trenches, but the work I have seen and experienced has been heavily wrought by awareness of NCLB goals and its mandates.

Just not quickly enough nor broadly enough, with the result that the Obama Administration has bowed to the current reality, made the decision that the penalties due to the majority of schools were simply not appropriate, and allowed states to renegotiate the terms and goals under which they will continue to operate under the NCLB umbrella.

It is in this seam that retrograde elements have flourished, according to Mr. Gerson, and specifically where goals for minority youth are concerned, which gets to the heart of NCLB, because the lagging skills of African American, Latino, and Native American youth were a prime target of the law.

His prime exhibit, allegedly the most egregious example of negative consequences in this rollback of expectations, comes from the great state of Virginia. After complaining briefly that the new expectations were laden with educational gobbledygook (and here he has my sympathies — there are few languages more useless than educationalese), he got to the point.

“Eventually it came out that Virginia was codifying the goal of having 57 percent of African-American students proficient in math, compared to 78 percent of white students.”

And then, in beautifully dry sarcasm: “It is an educational objective so ‘realistic’ that it is difficult to distinguish from racism.” Sure looks like it.

Though Virginia has been forced by ensuing firestorm to rethink its goals, Mr. Gerson acknowledges that particular example was merely the most flagrant of those of which he is aware.

Throughout the renegotiation process Gerson tracks the lowering of expectations in test scores and graduation requirements, obfuscations that hide wavered commitment to the original strict goals, escape from NCLB’s “reconstitution of consistently failing schools,” and what Gerson characterizes as “the broad institutionalization of lowered expectations.”

Absurdities occur, such as one waiver standard that singles out schools for penalties and action if they are among the lowest 15th percent of test scores in each state, which implies that the lower 16th through 20th percent schools and on up the line evade similar scrutiny.

One might ask correctly, how and from where does Mr. Gerson get his information? Who are his sources? Reasonable question, but the concerns he cites are altogether too believable. The Huffington Post references (Joy Resmovits, 7/16/2012) a survey by Whiteboard Advisors that suggests the disenchantment with the waivers is wider and deeper than solely Republican ranks. Allow people to get off the hook, and the wiggle begins.

So the conundrum sits before us in bold outline. No Child Left Behind, without modification, would label an estimated 80% of schools as failing (Arne Duncan’s own estimate), and consequently calls for sanctions (from mandated improvements up to state takeover) on a strong majority of schools across the nation, which would be both politically fraught and operationally impossible.

But alleviate the pressure NCLB has brought to bear, and what but the most elegant of politicians will not opt for a bit easier road?

Where is the middle ground that will reset goals, but reset them in such a way as to retain the urgency and the accountability that NCLB brought to bear?

Congress, called upon to reauthorize NCLB in more realistic terms, has dropped the ball, a distressingly familiar story, so the Obama administration has stepped into the breach, and has effectively recast NCLB via the waiver process.

The devil, as one says, will be in the details. The details Gerson cites lead one to believe that the pendulum, via the waiver process, has swung in a fatal direction in too many states.

I am left with respect for NCLB, grudgingly so, which has kept conscientious educators with their nose to the grindstone, in some ways fairly, in other ways not, but has been a necessary reminder of our obligation to the children we teach, with fear of our jobs in the balance. Ugly and unrefined, perhaps, but an enlightened coercion, nonetheless.

NCLB brought urgency to the table, underlined the current failures of real kids, and quantified our responsibility to rectify the matter in real lives which otherwise would face a foreshortening of prospects. “What is most shocking,” says Gerson of the renegotiation process, “is the utter lack of urgency” that characterizes the resulting metrics. I hope he is wrong in some part. If not, I fear substantial school reform is effectively stopped in its tracks.

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Schools and Politics: Charters Schools and Teachers’ Unions

Posted on October 2, 2012 by schooldog

Summary: Last week, as part of a discussion of charter schools, I cited the Harlem’s Children Zone as an umbrella project that has changed the “context” of associated schools, and thereby the expectations of students and the realities from which they undertake their education. The context of schools includes their relationship to the unions that represent teachers, as well as other school workers. This post explores some of the issues around such unions.

Part of the changed context, I suspect, of the Harlem Children’s Zone is the sense of mission in each worker that can be stunted over time in standard public schools, and which must be a key variable in the exit of 46% of teachers in their first five years of teaching. Where a charter teacher may feel empowered, too often the standard public school teacher finds initiative blunted.

In the discussion of changing the context in which learning occurs, unionism has become a battleground. Among the rules suspended by school boards in many charter schools are those that govern the relationship between teachers and the schools they serve. Certainly these rules in the most egregious example protect incompetent teachers. No school will go anywhere on the backs of the least productive teachers, however that is measured or defined.

Caution is nonetheless mandated by stories of some charter school teachers who have moved to unionize where they are not already collectivized. By these tales, in the zeal to change kids’ lives charter teachers run the same risks that face their public school colleagues.

Such is the demand on their time by the extensive needs of their kids that their energies and unremunerated time drain their private lives, and verges them on the burnout familiar to their regular public school counter parts. Unions are sought as shelter from the unremitting demand of both the job and the administrator. Regular public school or charter, the danger to all is that one shoulders too much responsibility and commits increasing amounts of time and energy to work that will simply overwhelm any one who does not observe appropriate boundaries.

Those steeped in union history will recognize this tale as a creation story for unions in general.

It is no accident that many successful charter schools staff themselves at a richer mixture of adult to student, and is tacit recognition that any one adult can only give so much, and more human power is needed, more than the public purse will currently allow across the broad sweep of American public schools.

There are those in the business and corporate community who take up legitimate criticisms of union intransigence and broaden them to include an attack on unions as the lynchpin of school failure.

On one hand, the thinking strikes me as too simplistic in a very complex topic, and on the other as self-serving. Since unions protect salaries and normally try to enlarge upon them, then the breaking of unions means the cost of government recedes, and the pressure on wealthy individuals and corporations to fund government via taxes diminishes. Not to mention that teachers’ unions are potent political contributors. The attack begins in substance, but is fueled by greed and the partisan ambition to weaken financial and electoral support of a political enemy.

This cross wind is destructive in another way. Generally there is an agreement from many points on the political compass that teachers need to be paid more, and their status upgraded professionally, in order to bring elite university graduates into teaching. It strikes me as contradictory that some would do so by breaking unions, implicitly attacking the fiscal protection and the collective channel of salary enhancement that might attract more of these elite.

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Last week in the post “Charter Schools – The Emerging Lessons”, I noted that a prime lesson of success in some charter schools is that an enhanced adult to student ratio, funded by foundation dollars, and the set of relationships thereby made more feasible, has been key to heightened test scores, graduation rates, and consequent turnarounds in individual student lives.

As I reflected on my earlier argument, I realized that low-income public schools across the country have had access to Title I supplemental funds for years, which in theory could have served much as the foundation money has served charter schools. This realization complicates my argument, converting the question into the subject of a doctoral dissertation. Clearly some Title I schools have continued to fail, or do they fail less than they would have without the Title I monies? Is the Title I money so much less per capita than the foundation grants to charter schools as to be relatively inconsequential, or has the critical re-imagining of some charter operations, what I have called the changes in context, somehow made more vibrant the infusions of cash? More basically, am I correct that adult to student ratios are superior in successful charter schools, by comparison with public schools?

Hopefully, a look more closely in this space over the next months at specific programs will help get at these questions, since I will likely leave the doctoral dissertation to others.

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Charter Schools: The Emerging Lessons

Posted on September 24, 2012 by schooldog

Summary: A review of lessons from charter schools so far unfortunately boils down to more money for staffing to reach at risk kids, and creative changes in the context through which kids approach school, also likely to require more funding.

My own state, Washington, is going through a third round of initiative voting in November to determine if the voters will approve a version of charter schools in the state. Currently Washington is among a minority of states who have yet to wade into charter school waters. The previous citizen initiatives have done poorly, though I am unclear why, other than to acknowledge that the state teachers’ union, the Washington Education Association (WEA) has opposed them, and for their stance the organization has been vilified from some of the usual quarters. It has seemed to me that the WEA could be more proactive in this area, more in front of the curve, more creative, rather than play mere naysayer, which invites criticism as simply a defender of a less than satisfactory status quo.

Frankly, however, the more I wade into these waters, the less simple the issue seems, the more laden with ideological positioning, and the less blessed with carefully wrought rational discourse. I admit, in the current political climate, I am careful not to buy uncritically the arguments of even my ideological soul mates, for fear the facts they cite and the arguments they propound sit on shifting sands.

As a recent retiree from public high school, and before that thoroughly immersed in the day to day striving and survival of such a setting, I have not previously made it my business to bring myself up to desirable speed on charter schools.

I enter the realm having read assorted articles about charter schools, from local argument to more nationally based scribes, reported from various locales. I’ve noticed, and been perplexed, that seemingly conscientious reporters will conflict even on matters of fact, and cite the same august research to back up their point of view. Yes, it seems minority students achieve better at charter school X, but then the claim arrives that same charter school, or category of charter school, dis-invites those students that don’t comply with expectations, and so are essentially cherry picking. Public schools do not have this luxury, though wags might argue with justice that standard public schools “dis-invite” minority students by their failure to engage them.

I enter the realm favorably disposed toward charter schools, nonetheless. Schools too often are uncreative, in the sense that creativity is not fostered because too many bureaucrats at too many levels think they know better than the teacher in the classroom. The teacher is relegated to labor at the behest of what others tell them to do. Certainly teachers need support, and otherwise welcome fresh ideas, but I will look to charter schools that unleash teachers to become professionals within a goal oriented framework.

It seems obvious to me that when in trouble, and unsure of direction, before committing huge sums of money, one should engage in experiment, try different solutions, tweak the results, measure carefully, with reference to student progress rather than ideology. Isn’t it obvious that charter schools might fulfill – in fact are fulfilling in some cases – this pressing need?

In truth, there are charter schools that plausibly report progress with the same low income, often children of color, who standard public schools so floridly fail. Research out of Stanford, and other universities, for example, seems to vet hard won progress by the KIPP Charter School network, and by localized efforts such as those coming out of the Harlem Children’s Zone.

Standard research, hard research, which has too often been on the softer side in education, requires that findings in one area be replicated by other researchers. Through networks of charter schools, I have to assume there is communication and borrowings of successful methods, but have yet to encounter studies that specifically try to replicate reported successes elsewhere, perhaps in part because doing so rigorously encounters the same difficulties educational research has always encountered, namely that the multiplicity of variables endemic with human subjects, let alone communities of subjects, makes it challenging to create anything approaching the relatively hermetic conditions of hard research.

We are advised, I think, to be wary of “proofs” rooted more in the enthusiasms and passion of those soulfully engaged in the field than in hard nosed, replicable research.

With all this preamble (perhaps warnings to myself), I nonetheless think I see two strong variables present when I read of charter school whose efforts have been identified as successful by current research.

The first is the confluence of enhanced funding and a higher ratio of staff to students than is the general norm in public schools. Charter schools by definition receive the same funding per student as do associated regular public schools, but frequently – at least in the more successful versions – charters obtain additional foundation funding, which is in turn ploughed back into human resources.

Educational research has long found that relationship with adult mentors is essential to the gradual repair of the damage wrought in at risk student psyches by family dysfunction, community turmoil, the toll of racial and ethnic diminishment, and the multiple subtle ravages of low income existence. It ain’t easy, baby, and it takes more time, and a long time, commitment in the face of struggle, more than the normal measure of human adults willing to the commitment, and hence money to pay the salaries of enhanced staffing. Normal public school staff-to-student ratios are simply not up to the multiplicity of task, from my experience.

Successful charter schools seem to recognize this reality, and structure and fund themselves accordingly.

A thoughtful restructure of context seems to be a second major variable of successful charter schools. By context I mean the nexus of expectation, student self image, staff commitment or otherwise to creative solution, belief, and school and community culture.

For example, some charters I have read about have instituted uniforms. More generally a strict dress code removes the subtle comparisons of costume that can blight sense of self in poor students, and also sends a subtle message that somehow we are doing something different here, that the game as usual has changed. New rules.

The Harlem Childrens’ Zone is worth citing at this point in the argument. Pregnant mothers are actively sought out in order to bring the early months of the child in womb into the protective zone of the community. From there, adults with different roles follow the child throughout his life. Family assistance is provided, along with Head Start, and health care services. At the other end of the continuum, the student is monitored well into college once high school is completed. Such a full service outfit sends a compelling message to those enveloped in its reality that the game has changed, and now the game is success, and one has no choice but to get on board.

I assume much effort in the Harlem Childrens’ Zone has been to coordinate the various public agencies charged with the well being of the poor, but I suspect even these services have been beefed up by – what else – additional funding.

Regardless, the lesson of charter schools thus far comes into focus. Though the apparent success of such efforts needs to be sustained and broadened – in the research sense, replicated — the outlines of an argument for greater and more funding for public schools can be discerned: money to create and sustain a richer context of relationships with kids, and money to drastically restructure the context in which learning is created.

We need more adults teaching fewer kids, and resources, often human, to peel back the toll of poverty, racial and ethnic difference, and family and community dysfunction. To these horsemen I would add the sense of entitlement and waywardness of too many kids of all socioeconomic levels, liabilities of a current culture that holds them accountable too poorly.

It will take considerably more political will and consensus than exists in the present, and evidence beyond the still heuristic picture charters now present. I am an easy sell on this one; for those not so immediately in the school game, the general voter, it will take some political and social vision to see one’s own benefit in support of growth and change in others distant from one’s own immediate life. For now, we need more evidence, and I need to deepen my understanding of how and in what format charter schools can serve us.

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Schools and Culture: The Wearing Down of Teacher, Part B

Posted on September 4, 2012 by schooldog

Summary: Last post I reacted to news that 46% of teachers leave the profession in their first five years, and suggested some of the reason has to do with ills in the culture, ills that create students too little connected to legitimate authority, unimpressed by and unwilling to engage with too many of the good enough efforts on the part of their teachers. This post continues the thought.

As I contemplated the stunning news that 46% of teachers quit the profession within five years, I remembered a conversation last spring with one of my students who belatedly recognized that he was going to fall short of credits for graduation at the normal time. Our interaction speaks to the indictment of culture I discussed in my previous post, and also to the frustrations of teachers, particularly young teachers not so much older than their high school charges, who may finally become fed up with the resistance of their students.

Though inspired by a particular individual, these observations are really a composite of too many such stories.

Harold showed up in my office, perhaps at my instigation, perhaps his, but early in the second semester of his senior year when renewed analysis of his credit situation made his graduation on time a long shot. This was not the first conversation we had had about his credit deficiencies. A bright enough kid, with clearly the capacity to handle what his teachers placed before him, he nonetheless failed too many of his classes. Each year his parent would receive a letter detailing what he needed to do to enroll in a credit recovery program.

Most kids I encounter in such a situation are contrite, worried, and vow to turn things around. Most in a passive manner accept the application for credit retrieval that I offer. I am normally pretty straightforward about my assessment of their chances of making up the missing credits on time – that is, by their scheduled graduation date. If it becomes clear that he or she has run out of time, the strategies to get to graduation might shift to include a wrap up stint at one of our alternative high school programs.

So it is with Harold. He is in absolutely the last category of long shot. Does he have the skills to pull it off? Possibly. Will his study habits and his motivation undergo the radical transformation necessary to pull it off? Pretty unlikely.

As I outline as I have for many others the choices before him, Harold surprises me by going on the offensive, angrily, accusingly. The school, he declares, is not teaching him anything he needs to know, and so has not been worthy of his attention. It is not his fault that he has fallen short as he has. Were the teachers more engaging, were the curriculum more stimulating, he implies, he would be right there at the nub of the interaction. The failure is with the school; he seems to lay the responsibility right in my lap, as its representative.

Now, I will not ever claim that everything we do in our school is true and beautiful, nor that any one of the mortals in the classrooms are endlessly exciting, but many students, even mediocre ones, come to appreciate one or another — usually several — of their teachers and, despite the same hindrances Harold addresses, still seem to squeak through on their 60% effort. They take care of business, if not well. Many of our teachers are reasonably substantial human beings, and have things to offer that Harold apparently has been too blindfolded to see.

Though Harold’s charge seems ludicrous on the surface, I believe he speaks for an undercurrent of sentiment in many students. Simply put, authority ain’t what it used to be.  Fifty or sixty years ago, standard authority, that of teachers as well, was much more intact than at the present. Students of that era seldom thought to question the legitimacy of what they were taught, though such passivity was a problem of a different sort.

Today by contrast, all authority has become suspect. It is too facile to say parents have not been authoritative enough with their children; the phenomenon we see in our students is too widespread, too deeply ingrained in the culture, to simply hang parents out to dry. Truly the reasons are complex, beyond the scope of this brief post, though would likely start with the iconoclasm of the 60’s and 70’s that has left us with both yin and yang, pro and con.

Among the con, I would say, is breakdown in the inclination of youth to value as much as should be valued the wisdom of their elders, whether parents or teachers, cops or priests. With communication explosions, including the internet and the ubiquitous cell phone, youth have many alternate sources of authority available to them, whether friends or cultural avatars, without the experience to choose who to follow in their own best interest.

With a softening of the old hard authority, and the entrance of negotiation into the family nexus, together with the cultural arrival of more second chances, fear of authority has diminished, which makes the search for wider sources of information less intimidating. Of course some of this is positive, but the pendulum has swung too far for our children’s good, to the point where they are too much rudderless.

Thus is way too quick a trip taken through the cultural changes of the last forty or fifty years.

The brief voyage brings us back to Harold and his teachers. Not only do the latter have to be expert in their field of instruction, know how to manage a class and bring them to a cohesive understanding of the material in a semester or two, they also have to roll back sixteen or so years of Harold’s cultural experience that has left him wary of the authority of those around him and collapsed into a fortress like blame of others. In one sense he is right to blame; I do think the culture lets kids down.

But the discussion for now is the effect on the 46% of teachers who quit within five years. Teaching is tough enough without having also to repair the ego structure of students for whom the adult world has simply not spun a compelling enough narrative. For the 46% who leave teaching, arguably the uphill battle too much ravages their energies and their personal buoyancy.

The other side of the blaming, and the rejection of authority, is a kind of narcissistic celebration of one’s own juvenile impulse. Harold quite seriously tells me in our discussion that he “will quit school if he can’t graduate now.” His threat has the quality of a much younger kid threatening to take his ball and go home, as though somehow doing so will hurt someone else more than himself. He leaves me speculating how this same schema plays itself out as a threat in his household, with parents that I suspect may have heard the same tactic.

His is an assurance that he knows best, and is impervious to my inventive (I think) efforts to convince him to the contrary, as though he is one not used to accommodating an adult challenge to his alternative reality.

Again, I draw the picture sharply from composite to make the point. More commonly too many students I have worked with will not be as articulate nor as extreme as Harold in voicing their objections. More commonly they hang their head, vow to do better, and if fact sometimes do so in a piecemeal and inconsistent fashion. Beneath the surface of such ambivalent response is confusion about who they are, what they want, and where they are going, together with an unspoken distrust of efforts to direct them, which I trace in part to the culture in which they have been incubated. They seek refuge in pop culture, or music, their friends, and the many electronic devices that amplify all that impact. Not bad things in themselves, but as obsession serve poorly too often to prepare for the future as adults. And they serve as entropic forces that teachers struggle to corral and redirect in the classroom. Some finally tire of the struggle. 46% to be precise.

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Schools and Culture: The Wearing Down of Teacher

Posted on August 25, 2012 by schooldog

Summary: 46% of American teachers quit the profession within their first five years; what role does contemporary culture and the characteristics of the kids it turns out play in this appalling statistic?

Recently I read with astonishment a reference in the July/August Atlantic that 46% of American teachers quit the profession within five years — just about when they normally are on the verge of being truly effective teachers, at least for those who have the basic aptitude.

The Atlantic citation comes in the context of a plea by Amanda Ripley, author of a forthcoming book, Where the Smart Kids Are, that our new teachers be far more fully immersed in supportive supervision than has been the typical case. Teaching is a complex intersection of knowledge of material, communications skills, ability to motivate, familiarity with brain chemistry and cognitive development, and just plain old ability to value and relate to younger people. The deft weave of all this into an effective teacher does not happen over night, and certainly not prior to arrival in the classroom, no matter how enlightened a teacher training program might be.

Conservatively, half of what we know about teaching we learn on the job, but regrettably we do so too often in isolation from our peers, and our solutions to the problems we face are inadequately vetted by any matrix of communication with our colleagues. So Ms. Ripley is right on the money in calling for better support in the classroom, and for creativity in teacher training that will enhance the readiness of new candidates to enter their first teaching challenges.

Parenthetically, I cannot resist a reminder that more supervision, at least, will cost more money…..

No doubt the 46% attrition rate will elicit scrutiny and proffered solution from multiple perspectives other than Ms. Ripley’s, as well it should. I will try to provide one of those other perspectives.

Previously I indicted the peculiar complexities of our culture for its part in the dismal academic performance of a large segment of our children. The same matrix of social behavior that confuses the educational growth of our kids creates the Sisyphean battle that teachers have to wage against the prevailing culture in order to adequately educate their charges. For too many the battle proves not worth it, and they leave teaching.

Most folks who enter the teaching profession seek “to do good,” a motive fraught with pitfalls, but in its positive spin a motive of the heart, and an impulse to contribute to a good broader than one self’s own narrow confines.

So it is frustrating for a high school teacher (who I will know best), motivated in such a deeply personal way, to encounter a majority of his or her students not willing to give more than enough effort to just get by, earn a C or a D, and get a diploma. Of course, too many give too little to even meet that modest mark, or miscalculate the effort needed, and fail to graduate on time because their head pulls out of the ground only too late to meet the mark.

I am convinced from my exposure to high school students over many years that the percentage who fail to graduate on time, or ever, due to personal and family upheaval is well short of the whole catastrophe in our graduation and academic skill rates.

Put another way, why is it that perhaps 60% of high school students as I have experienced them in my reasonably good high school give 60% or less of the requisite energies to their studies?

It is easy to blame such statistics on a failure of teachers and schools to motivate, and surely we can do better, but in the school I have known well for many years a high percentage of teachers are competent human beings capable of engaging other humans, young ones, in a learning enterprise. That they do so less successfully than all would like begs the question as to why we fall more short of the mark than we would like.

One element in the complex set of answers lies with the cultural preparation kids receive for school.

A conversation last spring with one of my students whose belated recognition that he was going to fall short of credits for on time graduation has lingered with me and is relevant to this discussion. Our interaction speaks to the indictment of culture, and also to the frustrations of teachers, perhaps particularly to young teachers not so much older than their high school charges, who may finally become fed up with the resistance of their students.

The case I relate below, in reality in my next post, though inspired by a particular individual, is really a composite of too many such stories.

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At Risk Students: Technology and Improving Student Performance

Posted on August 5, 2012 by schooldog

Summary: Can a new generation of online instruction free teachers to work more closely with at risk students?

Some tech types paradoxically champion technology as one key to unlock more resources for education in troubled economic times. Highly qualified individuals must be attracted to teaching, more teachers are needed together with more mentoring for at risk students, and computer technology must be purchased in order to provide less fortunate students the tools for the 21st century, among a host of potential outlays. How can technology do all of this, when consistently upgraded hardware and software are themselves expensive?

A counselor myself, I have been skeptical that machines will serve where relationships must be, at the core of learning, particularly for at risk kids. It would be providential if computer learning could eventually free teachers from basic instruction so they can focus more on substantial human contact with their students as a route to their greater academic success.

So I have read with interest recent articles about a vigorous generation of online programs not specifically for the high school world, but for the undergraduate and graduate technical level. Coursera, an online offering of computer related curricula, started by a couple of Stanford professors, has gotten some ink, and begun to stretch a web to other universities (“UW joins Stanford, others in offering free online classes,” by Katherine Long, Seattle Times, July 17, 2012). The content is for now free of charge, and both rigorous and closely aligned with courses the originators themselves teach at Stanford. As such, the course work will attract only the motivated and highly technical themselves, which it is doing at a vigorous pace, it appears.

Clearly, the beast has evolved to a higher form.

I remember in the sixties and into the seventies, as I began my training as a teacher, what was called programmed learning was alleged to soon render teachers obsolete, so successfully would these primitive computer programs teach the reading, writing, and arithmetic that so many teachers failed to do with so many kids. History will record that “programmed learning” lives on only in the vague memory of fossils such as I.

Later, much later, a host of poorly designed, confusing, and in general inadequate online credit retrieval programs appeared on the high school scene. I as a counselor have had a front row seat on these offerings because I have worked with so many students who have failed classes. Regularly, over 20% of students in a given graduation class would fail one or more courses in a given marking period, and so would need credit retrieval. The credit retrieval courses of this recent era were poorly aligned with district course content guidelines (“student learning objectives”, or SLO’s), or were simply not of the rigor of the course credits they replaced. They had the benefit of giving kids a chance to catch up to graduation requirements, but no one pretended they matched up to the course work originally failed.

These offerings however filled the breach in a transitional phase from traditional teacher taught summer school to credit retrieval coursework available throughout the school year and summer. The transit seemed a response to fiscal constraints (online may have proven less expensive), and to significant upticks in the number of courses failed.

Very recently, our school district has implemented a newer generation of online credit retrieval course work that more closely aligns with the in school SLO’s, promises improved rigor, and which presents learning material in a manner in which the older programs did not do. Progress.

The combination of the arrival of highly rigorous offerings on the college and graduate level such as Coursera, and the continuing evolution of high school credit retrieval begins to beg the question, will finally technology meet its earlier promise and take over some of the pure instruction that has been traditionally the function of a human being live teacher?

I remain a skeptic, but if certain forms of instruction, perhaps in math, the mechanics of grammar and spelling or even writing, world language vocabulary and grammar, instruction in the facts and reasoning behind certain subject matter, and so forth can significantly remove the teacher to the role of “guide on the side”, teachers may able to shift more substantially into guiding relationships with at risk students.

Clearly from my own experience and the testament of those promoting programs such as Coursera, a student has to be motivated independently in order to succeed in online learning. For example, we have found that we need to require students to work online in a classroom, with a teacher, at least part time, with the remainder of the work done independently at home. High school students who do online work solely at their own devices tend to fail at an unacceptable rate, not because it is too hard, but because they seem unable to structure their time to a requisite degree without some classroom support.

Thus more fully evolved programs targeted at certain instructional needs, together with restructured teacher roles designed to support computer learning, will not automatically reboot at risk kids, and others who lag behind, toward academic excellence. A critical link will have to be a return by teachers to an earlier, more traditional role as private ear to student crisis, a cheerleader in difficulty, an adult friend to the otherwise isolated, all in a kind of teacher/counselor role.

While the move to improvement in basic skills as monitored by standardized testing will not nor should not disappear in the foreseeable future, part of the success of those standards will rely on the success of teachers who develop relationships with kids whose skills lag because of their own personal circumstances, or because they simply have not bought into the race to the top.

Relationship is a key ingredient to at risk student success. May we hope that online curricula can paradoxically upgrade the human component in the classroom?

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Schools, Culture, and Politics: David Brooks’ “The Widening Opportunity Gap”, and Washington State’s College Bound Scholar Program.

Posted on July 26, 2012 by schooldog

Summary: Can incentive scholarship programs such as Washington State’s College Bound Scholar impact the growing economic gap between low and upper income groups, and reestablish mobility into the middle class?

How refreshing it is to find a conservative who laments the growing opportunity gap in today’s educational and job market between those who grow to maturity in low income families and those who grow up in relatively more affluent surroundings. “Economic opportunity, once core to the nation’s identity, is now a tertiary concern,” intones David Brooks, the New York Times scribe. He labels the shrinking of opportunity for lower income folks a “potential national suicide,” in his recent column, “The Widening Opportunity Gap,” (The Seattle Times, July 11, 2012).

As such he brands himself not so much a bleeding heart liberal (God help him were he such), but as a patriot concerned about the future of the nation, presumably because a fundamental ideal upon which the nation was founded, opportunity for all, is being ground under by the current character of our national politics and cultural standards. He is hardly the first to comment on the growing “bifurcation” in our society, and credits other writers, among them Charles Murray and Timothy Noah, who have raised similar alarm.

In my own state, Washington, the same concern, amplified by the sluggishness of low income students’ standardized test scores, has given birth to the College Bound Scholars program, which guarantees college or university tuition for qualified low income students. More on this program and its promise shortly.

In the simplifications of current presidential and Congressional politics, the widening income gap is being played out around tax cuts, and for whom, within the struggle around what to do about the burgeoning national debt. In the background lurks federal activity from Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency, into the New Deal, and extending through the Great Society – all of which has alleviated economic and opportunity gaps between the strata of American society.

Republicans seem to ignore the issue, unless should count the discredited argument that cutting taxes for the wealthy will accelerate the trickling down of wealth to the masses. Democrats seem more to get it (moderate Republicans used to), and are after all the champions of the downtrodden in relatively recent history, but are stymied on the budget issue by both parties’ inability to forge much compromise, and the apparent belief among Republicans that intransigence on their part forms the pathway back to the White House.

Brooks’ concern about the issue is refocused by research out of Harvard, and the political scientist Robert Putnam, who has looked at the consequences for children and their horizon of opportunity if they have the misfortune to be born to a family on the lower end of the economic scale. Much of the Brooks article relentlessly catalogs the findings of the Putnam group.

College educated parents spend on average an hour more a day with their children than do their lower income counterparts. Lest we be in danger of suspecting some superiority on the part of more affluent parents, we are reminded that the changing mores of American society have left many in low income circumstances as single parents, who scramble to put bread on the table in an economy that rewards skill and education, and so are left with less time to spend with children. This was less so of lower income families, with both parents intact, as little as forty years ago, when the amount of time low income parents spent with their kids was only slightly less than time spent by more affluent parents.

More affluent parents now spend substantially more on tutoring and enrichment activities for their kids, by comparison with low income families, including sports and a variety of extracurricular options. Here again the gap used to be significantly less forty years ago.

It should not be surprising, then, that lower income youngsters have become “more pessimistic and detached” by comparison with their wealthier school mates.

As a consequence, we already know that test scores and progress in school lag for low income kids, and are a chief group whose progress on No Child Left Behind measures has proven most resistive to change.

All this is very depressing news, so I am pleased to be able to report good news on the low income educational opportunity front locally in my own high school, as derived from the College Bound Scholars initiative mentioned above.

Beginning in the 2007-08 school year, low income students in eighth grade were invited by the Washington legislature to sign up for the College Bound Scholars program, which promised that anyone so registered and who met other criteria would have all tuition paid at Washington State public universities and colleges. Tuition was promised to Washington State private colleges and universities to the limit of the corresponding public tuition. Beneficiaries would still need to qualify as low income after graduation from high school in or after June, 2012, maintain a cumulative 2.0 grade point average in high school, be accepted into a Washington university or college, and not have a felony conviction.

A heck of a deal, and an intervention aimed squarely at stagnating low income youth.

Low income students in my school, at least, seem to have responded resoundingly. I assume when full figures are released by the state program itself (if they have not already), the results will be confirmed more broadly. Though the numbers below are the efforts of an amateur statistician (me), I have confidence they reflect the underlying results fairly accurately.

87% of the original College Bound (80 of 92) who remained with us graduated in June of this year. By comparison, the overall class graduation rate, based on the number who entered in ninth grade, was 73%, which is also the approximate overall graduation rate nationally. Nationally, the graduation rate of low income students appears to be a little above 50%, by a quick internet search of reliable web sites.

71% of the original College Bound group applied to college or university this spring. This in a school where the official overall application rate is around 40%.

Other statistics are also intriguing. Ten of fourteen African American students enrolled in the program, or 71%, graduated. Fourteen of twenty-two Hispanics/Latinos, or 64%, graduated. (Nationally, according to US News and World Report, approximately 57% of both African Americans and Hispanic/Latinos graduated on time, but another important comparison would be the statistical history in our particular school, which I do not have.)

Finally, slightly more young men than young women among the College Bound group graduated, which suggests that under-motivated males, a chronic problem in our culture, appears to have been addressed in part by the opportunity inherent in the College Bound Scholar program.

It is hard to escape the lesson here – show low income students the door with a payoff on the other side, and they will walk through it.

Parenthetically, student response in the College Bound Scholar program is reminiscent of several schools played up in the media over the last ten to fifteen years or more. Wealthy person offers free college tuition to elementary students who graduate from high school and move on to college; the normal number of years later the promise is met for significantly more students than would have been expected in a similar school that lacked the same incentive.

As numbers enrolled in the College Bound Scholar program go up, we expect the success rate will go down, as happens in any larger sample. Graduation from high school and acceptance in college does not guarantee success on the higher level, particularly since little in the numbers cited address skill levels of the students we are talking about, but they do suggest perseverance and a goal oriented behavior that is correlated with college success.

Finally, there is the issue of money. If I understand correctly, part of the College Bound Scholar program only repackages federal and state financial aid that has already existed, but more state monies were committed by the legislature. This class in my high school has 92 College Bound Scholars. That number will burgeon to over two hundred in the class after next; I assume similar increases will happen all over our state. Will the exchequer still be able to provide?

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

Money, that recurring topic, as encapsulated in the College Bound Scholar story. As innovative as we can make our programs, as efficiently as we design our systems, as hard as we can work, we also need deepened student access to mentors who care about their progress, particularly for at risk kids. Bottom line, relationships make a difference; relationships mean more teachers; more people in the school house cost more money; the realities of tight economic times do not change that equation. The story of the College Bound Scholar program only highlights the fiscal imperative from a different direction, which is the elephant in our collective room.

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Schools and Bureaucracy: Reflections on Survival and Other Personal Idiosyncrasies: Part C

Posted on July 16, 2012 by schooldog

Summary: Being the last installment of a series of reflections on long term survival in the belly of the educational beast.…..

Despite the relentless bureaucratic monolith, pockets of encouragement and support for individual vision occur, which have helped my longevity. I wrote some months back, for example, of a math teacher grown program that sought to foster the grasp of mathematics for those students whose understanding had stagnated.

Four years ago I began a set of groups for African American males and Latinos, both groups badly underrepresented in educational success statistics. I hesitated because of the potential questions about a white man, maybe particularly an older guy, intervening in such a way with young men of color. There appeared to be no one around willing to take the challenge on, so my understanding of the need impelled me forward. I will not soon forget my principal’s take when I brought the proposal to him, together with my misgivings. Said he in paraphrase, “it’s clear we have a problem with graduation rates with these groups, so there’s the justification – we would be addressing a clear need.” His support never wavered, and my fears of criticism never materialized, at least not to my face.

There have been other times that my sense of what should be done aligned with the wishes coming down from on high. Frankly, in these happy coincidences I feel I have done some of my best work, motivated beyond a paycheck and the requirements of a boss.

Despite such interludes, in the broader scheme of things, life in schools can be more like death of the spirit from a thousand small blows. One learns that survival means biting one’s tongue, because fighting a battle, particularly a relatively small one, draws on energies that must be otherwise husbanded, and because too often in a bureaucracy, which is a mechanism of control above all, the powers that be feel the need to reinforce control of the recalcitrant parts, whether because they are taught in administrator school that they need to do so, or because they too insufficiently find the balance between a legitimate need to be in charge, and the strength to not only tolerate dissent, but encourage it as a means of dialogue to a better product.

Those who fight back in such a context have a way of becoming former employees. The lesson is not lost on others in the ranks. Shut up and just do your job. As have others who have lasted a long time, I have learned to do just that when necessary among my repertoire of skills.

I recognize that much of what flows down hill is not meant personally, but stems from massive system dysfunction, in which control is at a premium, and in which ideas are devalued the further down the hierarchy they emerge. Information flows top to bottom, feds to state to district to superintendent to principal to teacher, and seldom effectively the other way. When my principal has let down his guard when he passes on a commandment, I sometimes see his heart is not in it, that he is as squeezed silent in some ways much as I am. Sometimes, I can be rational and recognize not to take it personally. This conceit helps, sometimes.

In the end, some of staying the course in teaching for a career is sheer dumb survival, albeit abetted ably by the tradeoffs I have offered from my own experience. Resilience needed, and a capacity for emotional jiujitsu, or do not apply.

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Schools and Bureaucracy: Reflections on Survival and Other Personal Indiosyncrasies — Part B

Posted on July 8, 2012 by schooldog

Summary: Continuing reflections on survival during a career in schools.

Another benefit of working in schools snuck up on me, and was particularly accentuated by a growing love of mountaineering and the birth of my children. School vacations are rather extensive, and they are enjoyed not only by students, but also by the adults who work with them. Mostly we hear that teachers feel they need vacation to regenerate energy for the renewed campaign in the fall, but I say, “think closely how you want to live your life – work until you drop, or enjoy life along the way?” (Well, since you put it that like that……)

As much as educator types lament the diminished pay scale in the context of the difficulty of the work, let’s face it, there are trade offs. How many people in the work force get approximately three months of the year for vacation? Generally the independent wealthy and the part time aged. Though others make easily enough money to take more time off, for the most part the well recompensed are so tethered to their jobs that such generous time off is either not in the cards or not in the genes.

Though it is arguably a liability for our students in the USA to have so much vacation, and periodically there are cries to ramp up the days of the school year, for good reason, the flip side is that teachers who have strong avocations have more time than most to pursue them.

Moreover, the parents among the teacher cadre find they are on vacation frequently when their kids are also out of school. Other employed types are not so blessed, struggle to land day care during school vacation weeks or months, and are liable to spend less time with their kids.

As I made the transition from graduate student life to life as teacher, a familiarity with the outdoors morphed first into day hikes and back packing, then longer mountain treks, and finally into a discovery of the high country of the Pacific Northwest. Hooked, I was.

After a period of teaching high school English in Boston, I had returned to graduate school in clinical psychology in San Francisco, and later found myself as a community mental health therapist in the Seattle area. When our first child was on the way, I needed to bring in more income than that of a community mental health therapist. Serendipitously, a counseling position opened in a high school within easy commute of our home. Though teacher pay scale is regarded as a disincentive to entering the profession, by comparison with my community mental health salary, I immediately began earning 50% more than I had just previously, and added two more months of vacation a year.

Modest pay still, but now I had ample time to explore the mountains and be a father to my kids, and a partner to my wife. My father had made career decisions that left him less successful in his banking career, but allowed him to be the father his own had never been. Being a present father, and having time with my kids was high on my personal list of priorities.

The time involved in parenthood, the pursuit of avocation, the enjoyment of kids and the embedment in a constellation of human relationships oriented around a purpose greater than oneself – all these seem to me to be powerful inducements to a career in schools, whether as teacher, or counselor, or administrator.

Yes, this is an advertisement.

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