Recently I did an experiment. The Census Dept of the federal government was looking for people to work on the 2010 census. They encouraged people to apply and take a timed test as part of the process. I was curious about the content of the test and so I participated in the process. I was surprised and pleased to see that the test was fairly rigorous for the pay level they were offering for the jobs ($11/hour). It had sections on math (no calculators allowed), vocabulary, interpreting fairly complex coding systems, following directions, interpreting the meaning of sentences, etc. My overall impression was that the average high school graduate would have some difficulty with the test and the pass rate overall would be low. For example, multiplying three digit numbers by three digit numbers by hand (with pesky imbedded decimal points) would have been virtually impossible for kids who are introduced to calculators very early in elementary school because educators believe that teaching math mastery is a waste of time.
This experience made me wonder how other government civil service tests looked. While I didn’t go take a sample of them myself I did search on-line for the myriad prep services available. That material makes me believe that those tests are longer and more rigorous than the census test even for the lowest level jobs.
This experience reinforces the disconnect between the soft world of K-12 education and the real world of work and competition. The low expectations educators, as the self-ordained education experts, have put in place certainly make life easier during school for both students and educators. However, they set the kids up for a rude shock when they are faced with the real world. This problem is apparent from top to bottom in achievement. At the higher levels it is manifested in the approximately 30% of high school graduates who attend 2 or 4 year colleges needing remediation in at least one subject but often two or more. At the lower levels of achievement, it manifests in ‘graduates’ not being adequately prepared for even the lowest level jobs in our society. While there is some activity ‘talking’ about this problem (CDE meetings with business people around the state over the last two years) expecting truly positive change including the much higher standards required to fix the problem is a pipedream. I hope it happens but even if some tightening of standards is put in place based on past experience they will be of the too little, too late variety.
Below is an editorial describing the problem from the business perspective.
Jan. 29, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
EDITORIAL: Real world ramifications
Local businesses struggle with products of school district
In the third installment of a series reporting results of a poll of nearly 70 Southern Nevada business owners and managers, published in Tuesday's Review-Journal, 43 percent of respondents said local schools and colleges are "not at all effective" in preparing students for the workplace.
A startling 0 percent -- not a one -- found the schools “very effective" at that task.
The largest plurality -- 37 percent -- said the solution is stricter accountability for teachers and administrators. Seventeen percent said the answer is greater focus on teaching hard skills for basic employment. Only a slim 9 percent said the answer was throwing more money at the schools as currently organized.
Dan Connell, chief executive officer of San Jose Test Engineering in Las Vegas, reported in a follow-up interview he's especially noticed an "appalling lack of critical thinking skills among local graduates." This forces executives to recruit outside the valley for talent, running up bigger recruiting and relocation costs, he said. "Our educational system is for the birds," agreed Lincoln Spoor, chief executive officer of Westward Dough Operating Co., which runs 13 Krispy Kreme Doughnut franchises in five states. "We have spent trillions of dollars on education since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program and our schools are worse than ever. The kids graduating today have significantly fewer skills in math and English than they had in the 1960s. The federal government is primarily to blame for this. The system is corrupt and there is no accountability."
"Our public schools are shameful," wrote commercial real estate appraiser Charles Jack. "How do 90 percent of the kids in our high schools fail an algebra-competency exam? What the heck is going on?"
"Most of the resumes we get don't even get candidates to the interview point because they're loaded with typographical errors and grammatical problems," adds Brian Rouff, managing partner of Henderson-based Imagine Marketing of Nevada. "And I'll talk to some applicants on the phone, and most of them are not up to the standards we're looking for."
These comments bear out anecdotal observations of the level of literacy common among local letter-writers of high school and college age. It would be bad enough if the main problem were that these young scholars can't spell simple words, don't know when to capitalize, how to form plurals, or the importance of agreement in number and tense within a sentence -- skills once taught in the primary grades.
What's far worse is that they seem blissfully unaware of what they don't know; they make no apparent effort to proofread job application letters which could be among the most important they ever write; and when their errors are pointed out to them they grow hostile and aggressive, acting as though they're being criticized for some niggling details of no importance.
Yes, there are many district graduates who are fully prepared for college or the work force. But a significant number are obviously not, and that should raise a host of red flags.
Some poll respondents suggested grouping students by mastery level, rather than promoting based on age. Mr. Spoor and others said school choice and voucher programs that could effectively remove students and tax dollars from failing schools might add a necessary element of competition.
"Nothing makes you better than knowing someone is right up your tailpipe," Mr. Spoor observed. "It keeps you sharp, motivated and hungry. If you don't have competition, you're not going to innovate, you're not going to step up, you're not going to push. ... The school system has not really ever had any competition."
“By taking time from their busy schedules to speak frankly of the quality of local graduates they're seeing in the marketplace -- helping explain why many of these young people are not finding their locally generated high school and college degrees the "tickets to good jobs" they imagined them to be -- these business leaders help put a human face on the colorless columns of disappointing test scores to which taxpayers and parents long ago grew inured.”
It is obvious that the kids are being poorly served by our education system. I am reminded of the scene in the church from the movie The Untouchables where Kevin Costner (Ness) tells Sean Connery (Malone) that he wants to get Capone. Malone asks him, “What are you prepared to do?” That is the question isn’t it? It is easier for us to keep deluding ourselves that the schools are doing OK than to face the reality that they are not serving the kids nearly well enough in a time when the global competition is continuing to increase rapidly. We are sending most of our kids into the global competition totally unprepared. So the choice is between the easy, ‘ignore it and maybe it will go away’ current approach or an activist approach that demands better for the kids and takes more of our time. Talking without follow-up action has been tried. It doesn’t work.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Lei yiu mut yeh low see
I will tell you later what the title means. I want to talk about the power groups in education today.
• Education Schools—These schools wield enormous power in shaping attitudes of their students in all categories; teachers, leaders/administrators, researchers. Yet as discussed in the 01/29/09 post the history of the education schools has been an unbending adherence to the progressive principles laid down by Dewey and his colleagues. Socializing students as early as possible before they are impacted negatively by their parents is the priority, not teaching content. Every time in the intervening century public pressure has caused any move away from those founding principles, as soon as public attention fades they rename the old stuff, new and improved, and foist it again on the education system. That is, the ed schools have shown themselves to be totally unwilling and unable to change even if for better service to the kids.
• Teachers Unions—The unions as much as they claim otherwise, do not advocate for the kids, they advocate for their members. No surprise there. You only need to look at the lengths they go to protect poor teachers who are harming kids to understand the truth. They will argue that they only want to ensure due process. The fact that the leadership competence in education is so poor allows them to use that to increase their power. The argument is, “do you want that idiot judging whether you are doing a good job?”
• Administration Groups—these groups at national and state level advocate for paying administrators more especially based on ed school “advanced degrees.” They hope the public never realizes that Arthur Levine in 2005 after looking at all ed school leadership programs in the country, said they confer masters on those who display anything but mastery and doctorates in name only. Yet, because the admin groups have been so effective, the key to getting a fat pay raise is to pay for some seat time in one of the ed school programs getting one of those “of no value” degrees that Levine criticizes. While you may say this can’t be true, you only have to look at the results turned in by the graduates to realize they don’t have a clue on how to lead the massive changes required if our kids are finally to be served well by the education system.
• School Board Associations—they train their members to be compliant with the administrators who are the “experts.” Don’t ask hard questions about curricula that are obviously not working. Don’t rock the boat. Be far more interested in re-election than in advocating for the kids. Always be civil. That translates to never show passion for fixing problems. Don’t dig for the truth. Let sleeping dogs lie. Be a cheerleader for the district ignoring problems you know are there. These conclusions are based on attending many, many school board meetings.
• Politicians—Of course, these people have the ultimate control. They use education as an issue for political advantage and the majority party at any point in time basically calls the shots. Because education is a complex mess to say the least, they call for expert input from, you guessed it, the education insider power groups. Is it any wonder that nothing ever changes even though the situation is steadily getting worse? When you ask people with a vested interest in protecting their place at the public trough what changes should be made to address a problem, you get answers that eliminate any changes that might threaten the current status of the power groups. Of course, the power groups are a huge source of campaign finance funds for getting compliant politicians elected. The second huge problem of the politicians is that they enact legislation that is very directive and narrowly defined. This approach has more in common with Soviet-style central planning than it does with a process that would allow creativity and efficiency in solving problems.
This all has worked together to prevent problems like the achievement gap being solved. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report lamented that while we have been “working” (flailing, not working seriously) on the gap for decades the situation is demonstrably worse than it was when Robert Kennedy, over a third of a century ago, called it a stain on our nation’s honor. This, in spite of spending billions on the problem only enriching the power groups.
That is the price we pay to preserve the power group supremacy and financial rewards. Our society and especially the gap kids pay a very high price for us listening to education experts who are expert at preserving their pay and benefits but not at providing the education that our poor and minority kids desperately need. And in reality we need to do far better for all of the kids not just the minority and the poor ones.
That brings me to the title of this blog, Lei yiu mut yeh low see. I read this in an article a few years ago. It is a phonetic phrase in Chinese. It means, “How may I serve you master?” The writer was asserting that since we couldn’t bear to force the changes needed to educate our children to compete we at least should prepare them for their fate because the adults have been unable/unwilling to change for the benefit of the kids. You may think that is ridiculous because America is the super power in the world. Yes, but we have been very busy digging ourselves into a mountain of debt which will increasingly give the debt holders increasing leverage over us. Who holds a lot of that debt? Asians. Who is teaching their kids to a much higher level than we are? Asians. Who is telling their kids they must work hard to compete? Asians
The current worldwide economic problems have caused a pause in the fast growth of the Asian economies but they are still growing at a much higher rate than ours. And our response to the crisis is to throw money at it indiscriminately. Money that will have to be borrowed from the Asians predominately. They have already indicated that they are less interested in buying our government bonds (loaning us the money) than they were in the past.
Now, the real point, everyone in the education system has a power group to protect their interests but the KIDS. The electorate should have a majority who aren’t part of the power groups who can see clearly that the kids are our future and deserve to have this abysmal situation finally dealt with positively. If we fail to meet this challenge we need to prepare for steadily declining standards of living as Tom Friedman predicts in his “The World is Flat.” Following are some quotes from his book.
We don’t have any time to waste in addressing the “dirty little secrets” of our education system.
The sense of entitlement, the sense that because we once dominated global commerce and geopolitics—and Olympic basketball—we always will, the sense that delayed gratification is a punishment worse than a spanking, the sense that our kids have to be swaddled in cotton wool so that nothing bad or disappointing or stressful ever happens to them at school is quite simply, a growing cancer on American society. And if we don’t start to reverse it, our kids are going to be in for a huge and socially disruptive shock from the flat world.
But what can happen is a decline in our standard of living, if more Americans are not empowered and educated to participate in a world where all the knowledge centers are being connected. “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”
. . . no country today can afford to be anything less than brutally honest with itself.
China does not want to get rich. It wants to get powerful.
So, do we continue to delude ourselves that the education power groups will do the right thing for the kids against their self interest or do we (the adult electorate) get up off our posteriors and demand that the kids get first priority. This is the only way we can drive the positive changes so badly needed for the benefit of the kids. We do not have time to waste. Any time to waste has already passed over the last several decades. We may already be too late but we must try. By the way, don’t fall for the assertion that more money must be spent to fix the education problems. The waste in education already is enormous. Less money will do the job very well if it is spent on productive things. Remember the gap commission’s admission that billions had been spent on “fixing” the gap problem but the performance had only gotten worse. More money to waste is not the answer.
• Education Schools—These schools wield enormous power in shaping attitudes of their students in all categories; teachers, leaders/administrators, researchers. Yet as discussed in the 01/29/09 post the history of the education schools has been an unbending adherence to the progressive principles laid down by Dewey and his colleagues. Socializing students as early as possible before they are impacted negatively by their parents is the priority, not teaching content. Every time in the intervening century public pressure has caused any move away from those founding principles, as soon as public attention fades they rename the old stuff, new and improved, and foist it again on the education system. That is, the ed schools have shown themselves to be totally unwilling and unable to change even if for better service to the kids.
• Teachers Unions—The unions as much as they claim otherwise, do not advocate for the kids, they advocate for their members. No surprise there. You only need to look at the lengths they go to protect poor teachers who are harming kids to understand the truth. They will argue that they only want to ensure due process. The fact that the leadership competence in education is so poor allows them to use that to increase their power. The argument is, “do you want that idiot judging whether you are doing a good job?”
• Administration Groups—these groups at national and state level advocate for paying administrators more especially based on ed school “advanced degrees.” They hope the public never realizes that Arthur Levine in 2005 after looking at all ed school leadership programs in the country, said they confer masters on those who display anything but mastery and doctorates in name only. Yet, because the admin groups have been so effective, the key to getting a fat pay raise is to pay for some seat time in one of the ed school programs getting one of those “of no value” degrees that Levine criticizes. While you may say this can’t be true, you only have to look at the results turned in by the graduates to realize they don’t have a clue on how to lead the massive changes required if our kids are finally to be served well by the education system.
• School Board Associations—they train their members to be compliant with the administrators who are the “experts.” Don’t ask hard questions about curricula that are obviously not working. Don’t rock the boat. Be far more interested in re-election than in advocating for the kids. Always be civil. That translates to never show passion for fixing problems. Don’t dig for the truth. Let sleeping dogs lie. Be a cheerleader for the district ignoring problems you know are there. These conclusions are based on attending many, many school board meetings.
• Politicians—Of course, these people have the ultimate control. They use education as an issue for political advantage and the majority party at any point in time basically calls the shots. Because education is a complex mess to say the least, they call for expert input from, you guessed it, the education insider power groups. Is it any wonder that nothing ever changes even though the situation is steadily getting worse? When you ask people with a vested interest in protecting their place at the public trough what changes should be made to address a problem, you get answers that eliminate any changes that might threaten the current status of the power groups. Of course, the power groups are a huge source of campaign finance funds for getting compliant politicians elected. The second huge problem of the politicians is that they enact legislation that is very directive and narrowly defined. This approach has more in common with Soviet-style central planning than it does with a process that would allow creativity and efficiency in solving problems.
This all has worked together to prevent problems like the achievement gap being solved. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report lamented that while we have been “working” (flailing, not working seriously) on the gap for decades the situation is demonstrably worse than it was when Robert Kennedy, over a third of a century ago, called it a stain on our nation’s honor. This, in spite of spending billions on the problem only enriching the power groups.
That is the price we pay to preserve the power group supremacy and financial rewards. Our society and especially the gap kids pay a very high price for us listening to education experts who are expert at preserving their pay and benefits but not at providing the education that our poor and minority kids desperately need. And in reality we need to do far better for all of the kids not just the minority and the poor ones.
That brings me to the title of this blog, Lei yiu mut yeh low see. I read this in an article a few years ago. It is a phonetic phrase in Chinese. It means, “How may I serve you master?” The writer was asserting that since we couldn’t bear to force the changes needed to educate our children to compete we at least should prepare them for their fate because the adults have been unable/unwilling to change for the benefit of the kids. You may think that is ridiculous because America is the super power in the world. Yes, but we have been very busy digging ourselves into a mountain of debt which will increasingly give the debt holders increasing leverage over us. Who holds a lot of that debt? Asians. Who is teaching their kids to a much higher level than we are? Asians. Who is telling their kids they must work hard to compete? Asians
The current worldwide economic problems have caused a pause in the fast growth of the Asian economies but they are still growing at a much higher rate than ours. And our response to the crisis is to throw money at it indiscriminately. Money that will have to be borrowed from the Asians predominately. They have already indicated that they are less interested in buying our government bonds (loaning us the money) than they were in the past.
Now, the real point, everyone in the education system has a power group to protect their interests but the KIDS. The electorate should have a majority who aren’t part of the power groups who can see clearly that the kids are our future and deserve to have this abysmal situation finally dealt with positively. If we fail to meet this challenge we need to prepare for steadily declining standards of living as Tom Friedman predicts in his “The World is Flat.” Following are some quotes from his book.
We don’t have any time to waste in addressing the “dirty little secrets” of our education system.
The sense of entitlement, the sense that because we once dominated global commerce and geopolitics—and Olympic basketball—we always will, the sense that delayed gratification is a punishment worse than a spanking, the sense that our kids have to be swaddled in cotton wool so that nothing bad or disappointing or stressful ever happens to them at school is quite simply, a growing cancer on American society. And if we don’t start to reverse it, our kids are going to be in for a huge and socially disruptive shock from the flat world.
But what can happen is a decline in our standard of living, if more Americans are not empowered and educated to participate in a world where all the knowledge centers are being connected. “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”
. . . no country today can afford to be anything less than brutally honest with itself.
China does not want to get rich. It wants to get powerful.
So, do we continue to delude ourselves that the education power groups will do the right thing for the kids against their self interest or do we (the adult electorate) get up off our posteriors and demand that the kids get first priority. This is the only way we can drive the positive changes so badly needed for the benefit of the kids. We do not have time to waste. Any time to waste has already passed over the last several decades. We may already be too late but we must try. By the way, don’t fall for the assertion that more money must be spent to fix the education problems. The waste in education already is enormous. Less money will do the job very well if it is spent on productive things. Remember the gap commission’s admission that billions had been spent on “fixing” the gap problem but the performance had only gotten worse. More money to waste is not the answer.
Friday, February 6, 2009
States are not doing what it takes to keep good teachers and remove bad ones
Report: States doing poor job of teacher evaluation
Libby Quaid - Associated Press Writer - 1/29/2009 8:40:00
“States are not doing what it takes to keep good teachers and remove bad ones, a national study found. Results from our related poll, how would you grade your state when it comes to retaining public school teachers who are competent and removing those who are not? 80.2% of the 8498 responders gave their state a FAIL rating. 19.8% gave their state a PASS rating.”
“Only Iowa and New Mexico require any evidence that public school teachers are effective before granting them tenure, according to the review released Thursday by the National Council on Teacher Quality. "States can help districts do much more to ensure that the right teachers stay and the right teachers leave," said Kate Walsh, president of the Washington-based nonpartisan group.”
“Hiring and firing teachers is done locally in more than 14,000 school districts nationwide. But state law governs virtually every aspect of teaching, including how and when teachers obtain tenure, which protects teachers from being fired. Tenure is not a job guarantee. But it is a significant safeguard, preventing teachers from being fired without just cause or due process. Nearly every state lets public school teachers earn tenure in three years or less, the group said. In all but Iowa and New Mexico, tenure is virtually automatic, the study said.”
It is not a surprise to see this problem float to the surface. It has been a huge problem for a long time. You might ask if that is true why hasn’t anything been done to solve it? Ah, that is the question isn’t it. You can look for the simple answer; the education leaders don’t have the skill to manage behavior modification properly because they haven’t been trained in how to do it. However, while that is probably the biggest part of the problem there are other issues to be faced as well.
States have prioritized the adults working in education far ahead of the kids’ educational needs. That is, when it comes to a choice between firing a poor teacher and better serving the needs of kids, the rules are slanted to favor the adult (harming the kids).
Union contracts add more restrictions to the state regulations for firing a teacher. In some cases it can add huge costs and longer periods of time which reinforces the feeling that it isn’t worth pursuing in the minds of weak education leaders.
School boards want to keep things positive and non-controversial. This desire on their part trumps any effort to take corrective action that might cause publicity, a union complaint or lawsuit. So the kids subject to poor teaching continue to be harmed.
Superintendents are birds of a feather with the school boards and definitely don’t want to “rock the boat.”
Due to the tenure laws and union “protection” the process, even if an education leader has the skill and desire to address a problem of poor performance, can take more than a year with ease. This causes a stressful situation that most want to avoid even if the payoff is removing a poor teacher whose presence damages kids. It is easier to ignore the harm to kids than to face an angry teacher everyday for a year or more. Question: Do we pay education leaders so much because it should be an easy, stress-free job?
Teachers, even poor ones, are adept at soliciting support from their students’ parents adding to the pressure to just ignore performance problems.
The political correctness regime practiced in education makes it difficult to state the objective truth of performance. This applies to all school staff not just teachers.
Simply, the kids don’t vote and only have a voice through the adults in their lives. If those adults don’t look out for them but abdicate that responsibility, they are of little concern to the education system. This is especially true if serving them better harms the jobs or clout of any of the many too powerful education constituencies.
Now make no mistake, I am not saying that firing a poor teacher is a walk in the park. It is darned tough, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be done if the teacher’s performance is limiting the kids’ learning opportunities. In spite of the impediments to resolving these problems there are significant numbers of concerned education leaders who are motivated to solve these problems. Many are working hard to address the problem against the odds. One bit of evidence of that is the success that Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer, has had training education leaders across the nation in her SUCCEED method of addressing the problem of firing poor teachers. Her process is one that makes sure the teacher in question is “leveled with” in writing that their performance is unacceptable. Then a plan of improvement is crafted for that teacher with tight control and feedback on progress or lack of progress. An important part of the process is the complete documentation of each step. The benefit is that if the person doesn’t improve their performance and a firing occurs the likelihood of a lawsuit is minimized and the likelihood of a successful one (district loses) is extremely small. Many districts across the country have provided this training for key leaders. The trainer of a group in another state told them that they had found in working with the districts nationwide that on average a district had 17% of the teaching staff that were doing an unacceptable job. Would Colorado have a lower number? I doubt it. This is a huge problem short-circuiting the future of far too many of our kids. It must be faced and fixed.
One concern though is that even though many districts spend large sums on the training for the SUCCEED method there appears to be little action taken because of it. That is, even if you train people how to do it, it is a distasteful job to them and therefore doesn’t get done unless the board and superintendent make sure it does. But “signing up for the process” is something that ed leaders can say they have done to prove they are addressing the problem. Of course, results are what counts and those don’t change without follow through to really use the process. Perhaps the underlying biggest fallacy among ed leaders is that they have never learned that effective leadership is not a popularity contest.
Is this an acceptable situation? Absolutely not!! But until the public tells the state education bureaucracy and school districts that they won’t tolerate it, the problem will continue. And we can’t in conscience tolerate it because it harms kids, large numbers of kids. Only a groundswell of public outrage will break through the ability of educators to ignore bad news. That is, we have to make the path of least resistance the one we want them to take not the current “go along, get along” status quo.
Libby Quaid - Associated Press Writer - 1/29/2009 8:40:00
“States are not doing what it takes to keep good teachers and remove bad ones, a national study found. Results from our related poll, how would you grade your state when it comes to retaining public school teachers who are competent and removing those who are not? 80.2% of the 8498 responders gave their state a FAIL rating. 19.8% gave their state a PASS rating.”
“Only Iowa and New Mexico require any evidence that public school teachers are effective before granting them tenure, according to the review released Thursday by the National Council on Teacher Quality. "States can help districts do much more to ensure that the right teachers stay and the right teachers leave," said Kate Walsh, president of the Washington-based nonpartisan group.”
“Hiring and firing teachers is done locally in more than 14,000 school districts nationwide. But state law governs virtually every aspect of teaching, including how and when teachers obtain tenure, which protects teachers from being fired. Tenure is not a job guarantee. But it is a significant safeguard, preventing teachers from being fired without just cause or due process. Nearly every state lets public school teachers earn tenure in three years or less, the group said. In all but Iowa and New Mexico, tenure is virtually automatic, the study said.”
It is not a surprise to see this problem float to the surface. It has been a huge problem for a long time. You might ask if that is true why hasn’t anything been done to solve it? Ah, that is the question isn’t it. You can look for the simple answer; the education leaders don’t have the skill to manage behavior modification properly because they haven’t been trained in how to do it. However, while that is probably the biggest part of the problem there are other issues to be faced as well.
States have prioritized the adults working in education far ahead of the kids’ educational needs. That is, when it comes to a choice between firing a poor teacher and better serving the needs of kids, the rules are slanted to favor the adult (harming the kids).
Union contracts add more restrictions to the state regulations for firing a teacher. In some cases it can add huge costs and longer periods of time which reinforces the feeling that it isn’t worth pursuing in the minds of weak education leaders.
School boards want to keep things positive and non-controversial. This desire on their part trumps any effort to take corrective action that might cause publicity, a union complaint or lawsuit. So the kids subject to poor teaching continue to be harmed.
Superintendents are birds of a feather with the school boards and definitely don’t want to “rock the boat.”
Due to the tenure laws and union “protection” the process, even if an education leader has the skill and desire to address a problem of poor performance, can take more than a year with ease. This causes a stressful situation that most want to avoid even if the payoff is removing a poor teacher whose presence damages kids. It is easier to ignore the harm to kids than to face an angry teacher everyday for a year or more. Question: Do we pay education leaders so much because it should be an easy, stress-free job?
Teachers, even poor ones, are adept at soliciting support from their students’ parents adding to the pressure to just ignore performance problems.
The political correctness regime practiced in education makes it difficult to state the objective truth of performance. This applies to all school staff not just teachers.
Simply, the kids don’t vote and only have a voice through the adults in their lives. If those adults don’t look out for them but abdicate that responsibility, they are of little concern to the education system. This is especially true if serving them better harms the jobs or clout of any of the many too powerful education constituencies.
Now make no mistake, I am not saying that firing a poor teacher is a walk in the park. It is darned tough, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be done if the teacher’s performance is limiting the kids’ learning opportunities. In spite of the impediments to resolving these problems there are significant numbers of concerned education leaders who are motivated to solve these problems. Many are working hard to address the problem against the odds. One bit of evidence of that is the success that Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer, has had training education leaders across the nation in her SUCCEED method of addressing the problem of firing poor teachers. Her process is one that makes sure the teacher in question is “leveled with” in writing that their performance is unacceptable. Then a plan of improvement is crafted for that teacher with tight control and feedback on progress or lack of progress. An important part of the process is the complete documentation of each step. The benefit is that if the person doesn’t improve their performance and a firing occurs the likelihood of a lawsuit is minimized and the likelihood of a successful one (district loses) is extremely small. Many districts across the country have provided this training for key leaders. The trainer of a group in another state told them that they had found in working with the districts nationwide that on average a district had 17% of the teaching staff that were doing an unacceptable job. Would Colorado have a lower number? I doubt it. This is a huge problem short-circuiting the future of far too many of our kids. It must be faced and fixed.
One concern though is that even though many districts spend large sums on the training for the SUCCEED method there appears to be little action taken because of it. That is, even if you train people how to do it, it is a distasteful job to them and therefore doesn’t get done unless the board and superintendent make sure it does. But “signing up for the process” is something that ed leaders can say they have done to prove they are addressing the problem. Of course, results are what counts and those don’t change without follow through to really use the process. Perhaps the underlying biggest fallacy among ed leaders is that they have never learned that effective leadership is not a popularity contest.
Is this an acceptable situation? Absolutely not!! But until the public tells the state education bureaucracy and school districts that they won’t tolerate it, the problem will continue. And we can’t in conscience tolerate it because it harms kids, large numbers of kids. Only a groundswell of public outrage will break through the ability of educators to ignore bad news. That is, we have to make the path of least resistance the one we want them to take not the current “go along, get along” status quo.
Monday, February 2, 2009
The Clean Sheet of Paper Exercise
Thanks to all of you who have responded to the blog, The Band Aid Curtain. The main question has been, “What are you asking us to participate in?” I will try to explain. I used the “clean sheet of paper” process successfully several times in my management career in the private sector. The process goes like this. You start with the assumption that you have no process for educating kids in place at the current time. Thus, you are free to design an optimal system going forward. In the exercise you are not constrained because it would be too big a change from where we are now. That will be dealt with later. I know you are thinking what is the use? We do have an entrenched, dysfunctional system in place and it resists change at every turn. It turns out that the pay-off for this sort of exercise is that it provides a standard against which all future decisions can be measured. Is each decision getting us closer to or further away from getting to the desired ideal system we have designed?
I am proposing a series of questions (not meant to be exhaustive) to help you think about the exercise.
• Funding considerations
o Federal
o State
o Local, property taxes, etc.
• Educator Performance Management System
o Merit Pay vs. the current Step Pay system
o Tenure?
o Ability to discipline poor performers?
• Education leadership
o Merit pay system?
o How to train?
o Responsibilities?
o Ability to discipline poor performers?
• Legislative/Bureaucratic Control
o Performance incentives vs. process specification leaving no room for creativity and fostering a one-size-fits-all approach?
o Results oriented?
o Grant process?
• Curriculum/Standards
o Wide & shallow?
o Narrow and focused?
o Foundational to higher learning
o Foundational to trades type jobs such as plumber, auto mech,
electrician, IT tech, etc.
• Learning systems
o Technology use?
o Discovery learning?
o Direct instruction?
• Extra-curricular priority
o First?
o Last?
• Certifications
o Require rigorous subject knowledge test to begin teaching?
o Ed school based?
o Performance based?
o Needed?
o Not needed?
• Funding higher ed for those working in education
o Give tuition reimbursement, no automatic raise on completion, pay
related to performance which should improve if the education experience
was worthwhile
o No tuition reimbursement but automatic pay raise upon completion of
advance degree
• Discipline
o Rigorous?
o Weak?
o Focused on learning and creating the learning environment?
• Collaboration
o Everywhere?
o Only with education “insiders?”
• Management Style
o Team oriented?
o Laissez Faire?
o Values intellectual honesty? i.e. facing truth of own performance and fixing it
As I said, this is not an exhaustive list but should help you understand the type of issues I would like your input and discussions about.
I am proposing a series of questions (not meant to be exhaustive) to help you think about the exercise.
• Funding considerations
o Federal
o State
o Local, property taxes, etc.
• Educator Performance Management System
o Merit Pay vs. the current Step Pay system
o Tenure?
o Ability to discipline poor performers?
• Education leadership
o Merit pay system?
o How to train?
o Responsibilities?
o Ability to discipline poor performers?
• Legislative/Bureaucratic Control
o Performance incentives vs. process specification leaving no room for creativity and fostering a one-size-fits-all approach?
o Results oriented?
o Grant process?
• Curriculum/Standards
o Wide & shallow?
o Narrow and focused?
o Foundational to higher learning
o Foundational to trades type jobs such as plumber, auto mech,
electrician, IT tech, etc.
• Learning systems
o Technology use?
o Discovery learning?
o Direct instruction?
• Extra-curricular priority
o First?
o Last?
• Certifications
o Require rigorous subject knowledge test to begin teaching?
o Ed school based?
o Performance based?
o Needed?
o Not needed?
• Funding higher ed for those working in education
o Give tuition reimbursement, no automatic raise on completion, pay
related to performance which should improve if the education experience
was worthwhile
o No tuition reimbursement but automatic pay raise upon completion of
advance degree
• Discipline
o Rigorous?
o Weak?
o Focused on learning and creating the learning environment?
• Collaboration
o Everywhere?
o Only with education “insiders?”
• Management Style
o Team oriented?
o Laissez Faire?
o Values intellectual honesty? i.e. facing truth of own performance and fixing it
As I said, this is not an exhaustive list but should help you understand the type of issues I would like your input and discussions about.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
