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.
Friday, February 6, 2009
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.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The Band-Aid Curtain: To renovate or demolish and start over.
Makeovers run out of gas eventually. In this post I want to cover some education history as a basis for considering whether we should continue efforts to “remodel” or whether it would be best to “demolish and rebuild” our education system. The first question to ask is, will a remodel suffice in the future? To answer that we must look carefully at the roots of our current education system and judge whether “tweaks” to the edifice built in the early twentieth century will “fix” the problems adequately.
The most succinct discussion of our education history I have found is in David Klein’s, A Brief History of American K-12 Mathematics Education in the 20th Century. (2003) If interested the same information is discussed in many other places. I am using the Klein work as it is most comprehensive in the shortest form. While Klein’s focus is on math, the same problems are there for other subjects as well.
“With roots going back to Jean Jacques Rousseau and with the guidance of John Dewey, progressive education has dominated American schools since the early years of the 20th century. That is not to say that progressive education has gone unchallenged. Challenges increased in intensity starting in the 1950s, waxed and waned, and in the 1990s gained unprecedented strength. A consequence of the domination of progressivism during the first half of the 20th century was a predictable and remarkably steady decrease of academic content in public schools. “
“Reflecting mainstream views of progressive education, Kilpatrick [Dewey protégé and Columbia Teacher’s College professor] rejected the notion that the study of mathematics contributed to mental discipline. His view was that subjects should be taught to students based on their direct practical value, or if students independently wanted to learn those subjects. This point of view toward education comported well with the pedagogical methods endorsed by progressive education. Limiting education primarily to utilitarian skills sharply limited academic content, and this helped to justify the slow pace of student centered, discovery learning, the centerpiece of progressivism. Kilpatrick proposed that the study of algebra and geometry in high school be discontinued ‘except as an intellectual luxury.’ According to Kilpatrick, mathematics is ‘harmful rather than helpful to the kind of thinking necessary for ordinary living.’"
“In the 1930s the education journals, textbooks, and courses for administrators and teachers advocated the major themes of progressivism. The school curriculum would be determined by the needs and interests of children, as determined by professional educators, and not by academic subjects. It became a cliché in the 1930s, just as in the 1990s, for educators to say, "We teach children, not subject matter." The Activity Movement of the 1930s promoted the integration of subjects in elementary school, and argued against separate instruction in mathematics and other subjects.
“’...those who make up the staffs of the schools and colleges of education, and the administrators and teachers whom they train to run the system, have a truly amazing uniformity of opinion regarding the aims, the content, and the methods of education. They constitute a cohesive body of believers with a clearly formulated set of dogmas and doctrines, and they are perpetuating the faith by seeing to it through state laws and the rules of state departments of education, that only those teachers and administrators are certified who have been trained in the correct dogma.’ From Madly They Teach, Mortimer Smith.”
“One of the signal events of 1999 was the release of Liping Ma's book, Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics. Ma compared answers to elementary school math questions by 23 U.S. elementary school teachers to those by 72 Chinese elementary school math teachers. Of the U.S. teachers, 12 were participating in an NSF sponsored program whose "goal was to prepare excellent classroom mathematics teachers to be in-service leaders in their own school districts or regions." The remaining U.S. teachers were interns, each with one year experience teaching. The interns were to receive Masters Degrees at the end of the summer during which interviews took place. By contrast, most Chinese teachers had only 11 or 12 years of formal education, completing only the ninth grade in high school followed by two or three years of normal school. In spite of their fewer years of formal education, the Chinese teachers demonstrated much greater understanding of fundamental mathematics than did their U.S. counterparts. Ma masterfully explained the interrelationships of pedagogy and content at the elementary school level and drew important lessons from her investigations.”
While Klein’s article is (47) 8.5X11 pages long I think the quotes above give you the picture. The progressive principles were put in place and are still strongly defended by educators. They have built the defensive walls strongly and that is what has led to a “fiefdom” mentality; defensive, delusional, insular and inbred. I call it the Band-Aid curtain because so many Band-Aids have been applied over the decades to try to improve education performance that you can’t see the unyielding fortifications underneath. The conclusion is clear, until the fiefdom walls are breached so that truth and reality can enter, no positive change can happen. The educators have been kept in the dark for over a century and protected by the fiefdom walls (and the dogma mentioned in the Madly They Teach quote) from having to face the truth of their performance. The fiefdom is an immovable entity with the only motivation for strong action being “is our place at the public trough safe or not.”
Thus, the important question to consider is “will the current progressive design of our education system prepare our children for the intensifying global meritocracy they face in futures where content knowledge is vital?” Many commentators have observed that the motivation of the progressives in their education design was to “socialize” children not to really teach them subject matter. My conclusion is that the lack of content taught by the current system puts our kids far behind their best global competition. The fact that Liping Ma found the Chinese elementary math teachers much more competent in math foundational knowledge even though they had much less “education” than the American participants in her study is telling. The American teachers were selected from the best to be in a program to prepare to become in service leaders for their schools in math education and from masters candidates who would receive their degrees at the end of the summer when the interviews took place. This reinforces the conclusion that the discovery learning principles put in place by the progressives prevent in-depth understanding of subjects. This lack of ability to train effective content teachers inevitably results in students who will not learn the foundational concepts they need to succeed at higher and higher levels of education.
The answer to the question of renovate (more Band-Aids) or demolish and rebuild is to rebuild. The renovate approach has been tried without success for many decades now and has not been successful. Any improvements have come at a glacial pace while our competitors are moving swiftly to improve their educational performance. Thus we are falling farther and farther behind.
Now, as to the design of the new education edifice, what should it look like? I don’t have all of the answers there but do have definite opinions on some of the elements. I would like to solicit input from readers via the blog comment facility to get ideas you have regarding an optimum design for the 21st century and beyond. This is what is called a "clean sheet of paper" exercise. If we had no education system now but needed one, how would we design a new one. An example might be technology use. Would it differ from our usage in the current system? These could take both positive and negative form. That is, it should or should not include ___________. I am looking forward to your ideas.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
One Plant Says to Another Plant. . .
One plant says to another plant, “The nerve of that botanist know it all. He isn’t a plant, how can he know anything about what we really are or the difficulties we face?” This is the problem isn’t it? The insiders (plants) have no respect for the opinion of the outsiders (botanists). Yet, the botanist has a much more complete picture of the plant world than any plant can ever have. This is because the botanist has studied the plant kingdom in its full breadth and depth providing a context that the individual plants or even families of plants cannot match. Each plant has a narrow experience of its own environment and has adapted itself to that reality without willingly considering if changing its position with respect to the environment might improve its lot or the yield of its fruits.
You knew since this is an education blog that I would relate this little example to education. You are right. I often hear that I would have more credibility with educators if I were one. And I will concede readily that it should be true. However, I want to discuss whether it would be true and with an example that shows that even if I were an insider it wouldn’t be true. My assertion is that I have a much more accurate view of what is going on in education than educators do. They work in an environment that suppresses the truth through ubiquitous use of political correctness and Group Think. I have studied the education empire intensely for over 5 years across multiple states. Because my motive has been to understand where the opportunities to improve the service our kids and society get from the education empire I have a much more objective view of the problems and possible solutions than any educator I have met or read.
Now to the example I promised about “insider” input being ignored, criticized or both; consider Arthur Levine. Dr. Levine could have been considered the ultimate insider as the President of Columbia Teachers College. Teachers College is what E.D. Hirsch Jr. called the “parent organism” of education schools. He asserts that the other education schools are basically clones of Teachers College. Arthur worked for a group of foundations to report on education school efforts in three key areas; Educating Leaders, Teachers, and Researchers. The first report came out in March 2005, Educating School Leaders. It was very critical based on his several year study of every education school degree granting institution in the country. His conclusions were many and they were not positive. He used such terms as “they are in a race to the bottom” and “they confer masters on those who display anything but mastery and doctorates in name only” and “engage superintendents and principals in studies irrelevant to their jobs.” The report is over a hundred pages in letter size format. It is well worth reading. Did it have the kind of impact that criticism from an insider should have had? NO! It has been totally ignored except perhaps causing the education schools to dig their ruts a little deeper. The conclusion to draw is that it isn’t whether you are an insider or outsider but whether you are criticizing or praising the education system. There is no interest at all among education school deans and faculties to reform to provide a quality product. They are raking in huge sums of money with the diploma mill approach they have taken. Because the larger universities they are part of use this excess money from the education schools for other “more worthy” projects they would be in trouble if they did anything that might reduce that flow of money. Thus, the low and falling admission and graduation standards, the reduction in time to degree, etc. all are an effort to stay ahead of the competition in Levine’s observed race to the bottom.
It is not whether criticism comes from an insider or outsider, educators will not listen and especially will not admit to themselves that they are doing anything less than a great job. While many educators are well-meaning and some even know the truth and are frustrated by its suppression, they work in an environment where political correctness disallows saying anything critical out loud. Those exceptions who do speak out usually find they are informed that their contract will not be renewed for the coming year. New educators are indoctrinated from the beginning of their careers, starting in the education schools.
E.D. Hirsch Jr. in The Knowledge Deficit defines the problem well. “The reason for this state of affairs – tragic for millions of students as well as for the nation – is that an army of American educators and reading experts are fundamentally wrong in their ideas about education. . . At the beginning of the twentieth century, the parent organism, Teachers College at Columbia University, exported professors and the romantic principles…resulting in an intellectual sameness across the nation’s education schools. Naturalism and Formalism are the two principles that constitute a kind of theology that is drilled into prospective teachers like a catechism. American education expertise (which is not the same as educational expertise in nations that perform better than we do) has a monolithic character in which dissent is stifled.”
So what can be done to break through the walls of insularity and delusion that keep the truth from penetrating the consciousness of educators?
• Competition is perhaps the best way. And that is why the education power groups fight the idea of vouchers and charter schools with a passion because they don’t want the competition which might force them to face reality and change.
• Demand that a rigorous program of retooling education leadership skill for current leaders is implemented immediately. It is the key to better performance and without it the future performance will mirror that of the past. This must not be something done by the education schools. They have proven they don’t know how to do it.
• Voting against every request for more money for educators to spend is another. They are clever at couching the argument that a vote against the money is voting against the kids but in reality it is the opposite. Voting against added money is a vote FOR the kids because it increases the pressure for better performance and reduced waste by the schools in serving our kids. Giving them more money allows them to continue ignoring the problems that must be addressed if performance is to improve.
• Voting out “rubber stamp” school boards and voting in board members who see the truth and are dedicated to making positive change in spite of the resistance.
• Using our votes to demand that the legislators specify results not process, putting in place rewards for positive results and penalties for poor results. As long as the practitioners are ethical and within the law, who cares what process they use to get improved results.
• Decouple certification from education school degrees and training, forcing the ed schools to reform or wither away.
• Of course, merit pay for educators would be great too but it can only happen well if the leaders are trained to lead more effectively. If implemented now it would be done poorly and add to the arguments against it.
Copyright © Paul Richardson 2009
You knew since this is an education blog that I would relate this little example to education. You are right. I often hear that I would have more credibility with educators if I were one. And I will concede readily that it should be true. However, I want to discuss whether it would be true and with an example that shows that even if I were an insider it wouldn’t be true. My assertion is that I have a much more accurate view of what is going on in education than educators do. They work in an environment that suppresses the truth through ubiquitous use of political correctness and Group Think. I have studied the education empire intensely for over 5 years across multiple states. Because my motive has been to understand where the opportunities to improve the service our kids and society get from the education empire I have a much more objective view of the problems and possible solutions than any educator I have met or read.
Now to the example I promised about “insider” input being ignored, criticized or both; consider Arthur Levine. Dr. Levine could have been considered the ultimate insider as the President of Columbia Teachers College. Teachers College is what E.D. Hirsch Jr. called the “parent organism” of education schools. He asserts that the other education schools are basically clones of Teachers College. Arthur worked for a group of foundations to report on education school efforts in three key areas; Educating Leaders, Teachers, and Researchers. The first report came out in March 2005, Educating School Leaders. It was very critical based on his several year study of every education school degree granting institution in the country. His conclusions were many and they were not positive. He used such terms as “they are in a race to the bottom” and “they confer masters on those who display anything but mastery and doctorates in name only” and “engage superintendents and principals in studies irrelevant to their jobs.” The report is over a hundred pages in letter size format. It is well worth reading. Did it have the kind of impact that criticism from an insider should have had? NO! It has been totally ignored except perhaps causing the education schools to dig their ruts a little deeper. The conclusion to draw is that it isn’t whether you are an insider or outsider but whether you are criticizing or praising the education system. There is no interest at all among education school deans and faculties to reform to provide a quality product. They are raking in huge sums of money with the diploma mill approach they have taken. Because the larger universities they are part of use this excess money from the education schools for other “more worthy” projects they would be in trouble if they did anything that might reduce that flow of money. Thus, the low and falling admission and graduation standards, the reduction in time to degree, etc. all are an effort to stay ahead of the competition in Levine’s observed race to the bottom.
It is not whether criticism comes from an insider or outsider, educators will not listen and especially will not admit to themselves that they are doing anything less than a great job. While many educators are well-meaning and some even know the truth and are frustrated by its suppression, they work in an environment where political correctness disallows saying anything critical out loud. Those exceptions who do speak out usually find they are informed that their contract will not be renewed for the coming year. New educators are indoctrinated from the beginning of their careers, starting in the education schools.
E.D. Hirsch Jr. in The Knowledge Deficit defines the problem well. “The reason for this state of affairs – tragic for millions of students as well as for the nation – is that an army of American educators and reading experts are fundamentally wrong in their ideas about education. . . At the beginning of the twentieth century, the parent organism, Teachers College at Columbia University, exported professors and the romantic principles…resulting in an intellectual sameness across the nation’s education schools. Naturalism and Formalism are the two principles that constitute a kind of theology that is drilled into prospective teachers like a catechism. American education expertise (which is not the same as educational expertise in nations that perform better than we do) has a monolithic character in which dissent is stifled.”
So what can be done to break through the walls of insularity and delusion that keep the truth from penetrating the consciousness of educators?
• Competition is perhaps the best way. And that is why the education power groups fight the idea of vouchers and charter schools with a passion because they don’t want the competition which might force them to face reality and change.
• Demand that a rigorous program of retooling education leadership skill for current leaders is implemented immediately. It is the key to better performance and without it the future performance will mirror that of the past. This must not be something done by the education schools. They have proven they don’t know how to do it.
• Voting against every request for more money for educators to spend is another. They are clever at couching the argument that a vote against the money is voting against the kids but in reality it is the opposite. Voting against added money is a vote FOR the kids because it increases the pressure for better performance and reduced waste by the schools in serving our kids. Giving them more money allows them to continue ignoring the problems that must be addressed if performance is to improve.
• Voting out “rubber stamp” school boards and voting in board members who see the truth and are dedicated to making positive change in spite of the resistance.
• Using our votes to demand that the legislators specify results not process, putting in place rewards for positive results and penalties for poor results. As long as the practitioners are ethical and within the law, who cares what process they use to get improved results.
• Decouple certification from education school degrees and training, forcing the ed schools to reform or wither away.
• Of course, merit pay for educators would be great too but it can only happen well if the leaders are trained to lead more effectively. If implemented now it would be done poorly and add to the arguments against it.
Copyright © Paul Richardson 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
The Biggest Roadblocks Preventing the Education Improvement We Must Have
In the last blog post I outlined several problems with our education system. How do we change the education system to lay the foundation for the improved performance that we desperately need? It boils down to two basic changes in how we manage our education empire. The two changes are to retool our education leaders to be competent change leaders and to retool the way legislators and the bureaucracy they create specify the education process. I am convinced that with great leadership from a “retooled” leadership cadre much improvement can be made. Greatly improved leadership ability would allow the education system to take the initial improvement steps that can be done without other facilitating changes. Greatly improved leadership will also lay the foundation to take advantage of the changes I propose in how the legislators and education bureaucracy manage our education process. Removing these two roadblocks to improved performance would facilitate our attempt to leapfrog the global competition effectively preparing our kids to compete well in the “real world.”
We differ from most of our competitor nations in that they tend to have education “ministries” in the central government that call the shots on curricula, standards, etc. without much outside interference. For our strongest competitors there is a large commitment to improving performance at a rapid pace because they realize that educating their children well is a competitive factor in the global arena. They decide what to do and implement it quickly. We talk problems to death so that ideas are often obsolete before our extremely ponderous process gets around to doing anything. The current “triple jeopardy” approach to managing and funding our education endeavors creates a straightjacket that greatly limits the freedom of educators to address their own unique situations and to prioritize their efforts accordingly. The Federal government, State government and the local School Boards all have to get their two cents into the equation. And oh, the time it takes and the convoluted approaches that result. The laws and the regulations written by the bureaucracy are a danger to the future of our kids. I find it ridiculous that on the one hand we say to educators, for example, “You must fix the achievement gap problem” and then specify a process so tightly that they have no freedom to make the changes required to meet that demand. It is like telling a man wearing leg irons that he needs to win the Olympic hundred meter dash or be penalized severely. Of course in the “soft management” environment of our education system the penalty for the educators is akin to 50 lashes with a wet noodle. However, the penalty paid by the kids who are not educated to their potential is a huge due bill that is a blight on our society.
The hubris involved in legislators (advised by “experts” from the education power groups all with vested interests to protect) believing they can specify a top down process that will work effectively and efficiently in all situations is ludicrous. This cobbled together, top down approach hasn’t worked for anything but continuing the status quo with glacial changes for the past many decades. The idea that you can specify and control the education process before hand adequately to provide for all of the myriad impediments that arise and cause the need for a detour from the original plan is idiotic. William Oncken Jr., the famous management writer and trainer, observed that you can only control performance when and where it is happening. That is, you need competent leaders free to act to achieve the desired result. Yet, whenever pressure builds to “solve the education problem” the players all revert to the same failed process that virtually guarantees that no real progress will be made. Thus, they form task groups, take testimony, hold meetings around the state to get public input and then the legislature specifies more tight processes which won’t work in the real world. Einstein’s quote about doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result being insane comes to mind.
If we would think about it with objectivity, the laws need to specify results not process. You see, it is the results that matter, not the processes by which they were obtained as long as they are ethical and legal. It is very likely that any number of processes can work to meet the goals. The advantage of specifying results is that you unleash the organizations to use creativity to develop new processes some of which will be far superior to those “dictated in the past by the legislators and their bureaucratic minions.” This, if the laws specified the desired results coupled with appropriate performance incentives would free the system to make very large improvements quickly. Most organizations will gravitate quickly to the best processes developed by the “creative winners” because the penalties for not performing well will demand it. This is a much cleaner approach from an organizational hygiene perspective as well. That is, people freed to really perform well instead of being in a “robot, do this, do that” rut will have much higher morale and also more fun in doing their jobs. This transformation of education workplaces from “sociological zoos” to productive and fun places to work and succeed is vital to serving the mission of educating our kids to their potential.
This type of improved process development is impossible within the time-honored “we’ll set up a blue-ribbon panel to study the problem and recommend a solution” approach that has been tried unsuccessfully over many decades. Competition among practitioners in the real world will develop superior methods to achieve the desired results much more quickly. This is our big opportunity to finally develop the methods to start beating the competition because we could tap into the vast creative resource that is currently ignored and suppressed. While our global competitors have a focused top down process that is more effective than our current diffuse top down process, they will not be able to compete with an education system that is free to develop positive alternatives in thousands of different organizations across the land where competent change leaders manage the teams required to make the improvements we desire.
Therefore, it is imperative that we demand that the legislators move to a results orientation in the education laws they pass instead of the process approach they have been using ubiquitously. Also, because the retooling of education leaders to implant the skills and coaching needed to be truly effective change leaders is a prerequisite to leading that development of positive alternatives it must be done immediately as well. This two-pronged approach could make our education performance improve very quickly to the great benefit of the kids and our society.
Copyright ©Paul Richardson 2008
We differ from most of our competitor nations in that they tend to have education “ministries” in the central government that call the shots on curricula, standards, etc. without much outside interference. For our strongest competitors there is a large commitment to improving performance at a rapid pace because they realize that educating their children well is a competitive factor in the global arena. They decide what to do and implement it quickly. We talk problems to death so that ideas are often obsolete before our extremely ponderous process gets around to doing anything. The current “triple jeopardy” approach to managing and funding our education endeavors creates a straightjacket that greatly limits the freedom of educators to address their own unique situations and to prioritize their efforts accordingly. The Federal government, State government and the local School Boards all have to get their two cents into the equation. And oh, the time it takes and the convoluted approaches that result. The laws and the regulations written by the bureaucracy are a danger to the future of our kids. I find it ridiculous that on the one hand we say to educators, for example, “You must fix the achievement gap problem” and then specify a process so tightly that they have no freedom to make the changes required to meet that demand. It is like telling a man wearing leg irons that he needs to win the Olympic hundred meter dash or be penalized severely. Of course in the “soft management” environment of our education system the penalty for the educators is akin to 50 lashes with a wet noodle. However, the penalty paid by the kids who are not educated to their potential is a huge due bill that is a blight on our society.
The hubris involved in legislators (advised by “experts” from the education power groups all with vested interests to protect) believing they can specify a top down process that will work effectively and efficiently in all situations is ludicrous. This cobbled together, top down approach hasn’t worked for anything but continuing the status quo with glacial changes for the past many decades. The idea that you can specify and control the education process before hand adequately to provide for all of the myriad impediments that arise and cause the need for a detour from the original plan is idiotic. William Oncken Jr., the famous management writer and trainer, observed that you can only control performance when and where it is happening. That is, you need competent leaders free to act to achieve the desired result. Yet, whenever pressure builds to “solve the education problem” the players all revert to the same failed process that virtually guarantees that no real progress will be made. Thus, they form task groups, take testimony, hold meetings around the state to get public input and then the legislature specifies more tight processes which won’t work in the real world. Einstein’s quote about doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result being insane comes to mind.
If we would think about it with objectivity, the laws need to specify results not process. You see, it is the results that matter, not the processes by which they were obtained as long as they are ethical and legal. It is very likely that any number of processes can work to meet the goals. The advantage of specifying results is that you unleash the organizations to use creativity to develop new processes some of which will be far superior to those “dictated in the past by the legislators and their bureaucratic minions.” This, if the laws specified the desired results coupled with appropriate performance incentives would free the system to make very large improvements quickly. Most organizations will gravitate quickly to the best processes developed by the “creative winners” because the penalties for not performing well will demand it. This is a much cleaner approach from an organizational hygiene perspective as well. That is, people freed to really perform well instead of being in a “robot, do this, do that” rut will have much higher morale and also more fun in doing their jobs. This transformation of education workplaces from “sociological zoos” to productive and fun places to work and succeed is vital to serving the mission of educating our kids to their potential.
This type of improved process development is impossible within the time-honored “we’ll set up a blue-ribbon panel to study the problem and recommend a solution” approach that has been tried unsuccessfully over many decades. Competition among practitioners in the real world will develop superior methods to achieve the desired results much more quickly. This is our big opportunity to finally develop the methods to start beating the competition because we could tap into the vast creative resource that is currently ignored and suppressed. While our global competitors have a focused top down process that is more effective than our current diffuse top down process, they will not be able to compete with an education system that is free to develop positive alternatives in thousands of different organizations across the land where competent change leaders manage the teams required to make the improvements we desire.
Therefore, it is imperative that we demand that the legislators move to a results orientation in the education laws they pass instead of the process approach they have been using ubiquitously. Also, because the retooling of education leaders to implant the skills and coaching needed to be truly effective change leaders is a prerequisite to leading that development of positive alternatives it must be done immediately as well. This two-pronged approach could make our education performance improve very quickly to the great benefit of the kids and our society.
Copyright ©Paul Richardson 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
The Education Blizzard
If you are a typical busy person, you are bombarded with a blizzard of data on how our schools and especially the ones in your own neighborhood are performing. Occasionally you will see information on how our students do compared to their global peers, how well they are prepared for college, how our state compares to other states on the national achievement tests (NAEP), how certain curricula are “the answer” because they are “research-based” and on and on. This virtual blizzard of data makes it difficult to see the reality of our education performance unless you have the time and disposition to spend considerable effort working to boil down the mountain of data to information useful for understanding the reality of our education performance. I have been digging for over 5 years in great depth and believe I have a good “feel” for the reality of our education situation. Here are some truths I have uncovered:
• Education insiders virtually always put a positive slant on any information they provide on their performance and a negative slant on anything they use to justify less than stellar performance (their mantra is “we confess it is everyone else’s fault”). The “reports” from the educators contain errors of both commission and omission. That is, positive data are shown with a magnifying glass and negative data are ignored or suppressed.
• The education schools started with a bias emphasizing process or method and basically show very little concern for preparing their graduates to have a competent grasp of the subject matter to be taught. Any subject courses within education schools are so weak that they have little or no value. This has been going on for decades and won’t change as long as teacher certification is predicated on ed school training as the main requirement.
• School districts espouse fancy mission statements, long laundry lists of what they call goals but aren’t because they set no timeline or tight metrics to measure success or failure. These are often posted prominently in board meeting venues and on district websites but are ignored when it comes to acting to bring them about. For example, one local district with lots of “excellent” rated schools in the State Accountability Reports says, “The mission of . . . School District . . . , dedicated to national and international standards of excellence, is to educate every student through a comprehensive and academically challenging curriculum taught in a safe and nurturing environment. We challenge students to pursue dreams, succeed with integrity, and contribute meaningfully to a diverse society.” Being the best in Colorado is not good enough. Does being “among the best of the poor” in international terms fulfill the stated mission? Hardly.
• Colorado CSAP standards are very weak compared to the achievement test standards of many other states. Thus, we use a very short yardstick to measure performance. If you download The Proficiency Illusion, from the Fordham Institute and Assessing the Role of K-12 Academic Standards in States: Workshop Summary from the National Academies Press Online you will get access to information on how poorly Colorado ranks as to the rigor of our state achievement testing.
• Nationally our kids, as mentioned in the previous blog post, Walking in Place, do poorly versus their global competitors. When you couple that with the CSAP low standard you have a huge gap between what Colorado kids need in their education and what they are being provided.
• The State Accountability Reports give Excellent ratings to many schools. This is a “graded on the curve” approach which only says they are in the top tier of schools in Colorado. This says nothing about how they do compared to the “real” global standard our kids face today because that report would not be pleasant to behold and would generate pressure to improve greatly.
• The research-based assertion has to be treated with suspicion. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the What Works Clearinghouse at the US Dept of Education reports on all sorts of problems with education research. The two main categories in their findings are slanted studies to the benefit of the research sponsor (provider of book, curricula, etc.) and poorly done from a statistical rigor point of view. But the biggest problem I see (and one that I have seen no one else talk about) is that most education research starts with a poorly conceived research question which is the foundation upon which any research rests. For example, the constructivist math curricula I wrote about earlier does pass the test of the research question asked, “Do constructivist math curricula for elementary level students train students to be able to do simple math operations (with the help of a calculator) such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division?” The answer is yes, however, the research question that wasn’t asked but should have been is, “Do the constructivist math curricula train students in doing the simple math operations while providing a strong foundation for the further study of higher levels of math, starting with algebra? In other words is the new curriculum an improvement over the one that has been optimized over hundreds of years to provide a seamless transition to higher and higher levels of math study? The answer there is a resounding NO! One thing the constructivist math curricula do though is to mask the lack of math subject knowledge present in too many teachers which makes it a popular choice among the “education professional experts” because it is less demanding of them. Thus, my assertion is that the slant in education research is worst in slanting the research question.
Okay, we have some problems that if not addressed mean our kids will not be able to compete well in the global economy. If it were up to me there are several things I would change immediately. However, it isn’t up to me, but it is up to us. I recommend as a first step that we demand that Colorado set the CSAP standards to the level of the state doing the best on the NAEP tests immediately. We don’t need another time wasting task force to determine what to do. Of course, the whining from the education establishment would be very loud. However, not taking the action because it might inconvenience some educators for the benefit of the kids is not acceptable to me and shouldn’t be to you.
Many other steps should be taken but the above is a good first step and by itself would cause lots of other problems to be faced objectively for the first time.
Copyright ©Paul Richardson 2008
• Education insiders virtually always put a positive slant on any information they provide on their performance and a negative slant on anything they use to justify less than stellar performance (their mantra is “we confess it is everyone else’s fault”). The “reports” from the educators contain errors of both commission and omission. That is, positive data are shown with a magnifying glass and negative data are ignored or suppressed.
• The education schools started with a bias emphasizing process or method and basically show very little concern for preparing their graduates to have a competent grasp of the subject matter to be taught. Any subject courses within education schools are so weak that they have little or no value. This has been going on for decades and won’t change as long as teacher certification is predicated on ed school training as the main requirement.
• School districts espouse fancy mission statements, long laundry lists of what they call goals but aren’t because they set no timeline or tight metrics to measure success or failure. These are often posted prominently in board meeting venues and on district websites but are ignored when it comes to acting to bring them about. For example, one local district with lots of “excellent” rated schools in the State Accountability Reports says, “The mission of . . . School District . . . , dedicated to national and international standards of excellence, is to educate every student through a comprehensive and academically challenging curriculum taught in a safe and nurturing environment. We challenge students to pursue dreams, succeed with integrity, and contribute meaningfully to a diverse society.” Being the best in Colorado is not good enough. Does being “among the best of the poor” in international terms fulfill the stated mission? Hardly.
• Colorado CSAP standards are very weak compared to the achievement test standards of many other states. Thus, we use a very short yardstick to measure performance. If you download The Proficiency Illusion, from the Fordham Institute and Assessing the Role of K-12 Academic Standards in States: Workshop Summary from the National Academies Press Online you will get access to information on how poorly Colorado ranks as to the rigor of our state achievement testing.
• Nationally our kids, as mentioned in the previous blog post, Walking in Place, do poorly versus their global competitors. When you couple that with the CSAP low standard you have a huge gap between what Colorado kids need in their education and what they are being provided.
• The State Accountability Reports give Excellent ratings to many schools. This is a “graded on the curve” approach which only says they are in the top tier of schools in Colorado. This says nothing about how they do compared to the “real” global standard our kids face today because that report would not be pleasant to behold and would generate pressure to improve greatly.
• The research-based assertion has to be treated with suspicion. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the What Works Clearinghouse at the US Dept of Education reports on all sorts of problems with education research. The two main categories in their findings are slanted studies to the benefit of the research sponsor (provider of book, curricula, etc.) and poorly done from a statistical rigor point of view. But the biggest problem I see (and one that I have seen no one else talk about) is that most education research starts with a poorly conceived research question which is the foundation upon which any research rests. For example, the constructivist math curricula I wrote about earlier does pass the test of the research question asked, “Do constructivist math curricula for elementary level students train students to be able to do simple math operations (with the help of a calculator) such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division?” The answer is yes, however, the research question that wasn’t asked but should have been is, “Do the constructivist math curricula train students in doing the simple math operations while providing a strong foundation for the further study of higher levels of math, starting with algebra? In other words is the new curriculum an improvement over the one that has been optimized over hundreds of years to provide a seamless transition to higher and higher levels of math study? The answer there is a resounding NO! One thing the constructivist math curricula do though is to mask the lack of math subject knowledge present in too many teachers which makes it a popular choice among the “education professional experts” because it is less demanding of them. Thus, my assertion is that the slant in education research is worst in slanting the research question.
Okay, we have some problems that if not addressed mean our kids will not be able to compete well in the global economy. If it were up to me there are several things I would change immediately. However, it isn’t up to me, but it is up to us. I recommend as a first step that we demand that Colorado set the CSAP standards to the level of the state doing the best on the NAEP tests immediately. We don’t need another time wasting task force to determine what to do. Of course, the whining from the education establishment would be very loud. However, not taking the action because it might inconvenience some educators for the benefit of the kids is not acceptable to me and shouldn’t be to you.
Many other steps should be taken but the above is a good first step and by itself would cause lots of other problems to be faced objectively for the first time.
Copyright ©Paul Richardson 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Walking in Place
Two reports on our K-12 education performance have come out in the last few days. The first was the report on the latest round of TIMSS testing. That is, the Trends in International Math and Science Study test assesses the performance of students in 4th and 8th grades providing an international comparison allowing us to compare how American children are doing against their peers in 35 other countries that participate. TIMSS classifies student into four categories: advanced, high, intermediate, and low. On the surface the results look good; for 4th grade 10% of our kids scored advanced which is twice the rate for the median, for 8th grade 6 percent of our kids were advanced, our scores were significantly higher than in the last test cycle. Sounds pretty good, right? The other international test of significance is the PISA which includes the OECD countries who are our biggest trading partners and also our biggest competitors. The TIMSS testing includes other countries both at the high end and at the low end. On the high side; Chinese Taipei, Singapore and Hong Kong SAR, but also includes less developed countries like Jordan, Romania, Morocco, and South Africa and only about a dozen of the 30 OECD countries.
What difference do we see between the tests? Our 8th graders scored 508 on TIMSS math versus the average of 500. On the PISA, though, our 15 year-olds were 24 points below the OECD average math score. Thus, the overall competition in the OECD countries (those that matter most if we are to compete effectively) is tougher. A couple more stats to round out the picture include that the 90th percentile of 23 of the 30 countries is higher than for our kids. Also, only 1.3% of U.S. students were in the highest proficiency level in 2006 PISA math (the last time it was given). This was half the OECD average, in the same range as Greece, Mexico, Portugal and Turkey.
Mark Schneider of the American Institute for Research computed effect sizes for some of the education performance of different entities. Effect size as he uses it is the “standardized difference” between the means of the distributions of different groups. It is expressed in standard deviation terms. Thus, when he reports an effect size of 1.1 for U.S. versus Hong Kong for 4th grade math he means that the mean of Hong Kong 4th grade math scores is 1.1 standard deviations above the mean of the U.S. students. This is a huge difference meaning that 86.4% of Hong Kong students score above the mean U.S. score. Other comparisons for 4th grade he gives are the effect size for Massachusetts vs. Mississippi of 0.8 based on the NAEP, effect size for U.S. public schools with lowest levels of poverty vs. U.S. schools with the highest levels of poverty is 1.5 based on TIMSS data. This means that in the lowest poverty schools 93.3% of kids would score above the mean score for those in the highest poverty schools. He gives other examples for 4th and 8th grade students but you get the picture. We have a huge amount of improvement to make to prepare our kids to compete with their global peers.
The second big report coming out this week was the college remediation report from The Colorado Commission on Higher Education. The title of the press release, “College remediation rates stuck at 30 percent” well summarizes the report's finding that remediation levels are not improving. This report gives lots of data from both 2 year and 4 year colleges. “At two-year schools, 53 percent of students had to take at least one remedial course. The overall rate was about 21 percent at four-year schools. The biggest remediation required is for math although reading and writing have significant levels as well. The report also tabulates remediation rates by where students went to high school. The lowest rate was 5.6 percent at Jefferson County’s D’Evelyn High School; the highest was 80.8 percent at Denver’s West High. Also, remember that the report probably doesn’t capture the full extent of the remediation problem. The document notes “the data do not include recent graduates who enrolled in an out-of-state college, delayed entry into higher education for at least one year after completing high school, were not assessed [for remedial needs],” or for whom data was missing.”
For more data on your own school district and high schools you can download the full report “2008 LEGISLATIVE REPORT ON REMEDIAL EDUCATION December 11, 2008” The best performing high schools in the Pikes Peak Region appear to be in the 15% range for remediation while the rest range significantly higher.
Should we be satisfied with either the international testing results or the remediation results? NO! It is difficult to sort through the School Accountability Report "excellent" ratings for some local schools and realize that the criteria are weak compared to the "real world" that our kids face when they get out of school. But it is clear that until the public demands better the huge inertia in the education establishment will make any improvements at a walking pace which might barely maintain our poor place in the global education comparisons. We will need to make our pace of change much faster if we hope to gain on the competition. The current ostrich mentality of “maybe if we ignore it, the problem will go away” isn’t working.
What difference do we see between the tests? Our 8th graders scored 508 on TIMSS math versus the average of 500. On the PISA, though, our 15 year-olds were 24 points below the OECD average math score. Thus, the overall competition in the OECD countries (those that matter most if we are to compete effectively) is tougher. A couple more stats to round out the picture include that the 90th percentile of 23 of the 30 countries is higher than for our kids. Also, only 1.3% of U.S. students were in the highest proficiency level in 2006 PISA math (the last time it was given). This was half the OECD average, in the same range as Greece, Mexico, Portugal and Turkey.
Mark Schneider of the American Institute for Research computed effect sizes for some of the education performance of different entities. Effect size as he uses it is the “standardized difference” between the means of the distributions of different groups. It is expressed in standard deviation terms. Thus, when he reports an effect size of 1.1 for U.S. versus Hong Kong for 4th grade math he means that the mean of Hong Kong 4th grade math scores is 1.1 standard deviations above the mean of the U.S. students. This is a huge difference meaning that 86.4% of Hong Kong students score above the mean U.S. score. Other comparisons for 4th grade he gives are the effect size for Massachusetts vs. Mississippi of 0.8 based on the NAEP, effect size for U.S. public schools with lowest levels of poverty vs. U.S. schools with the highest levels of poverty is 1.5 based on TIMSS data. This means that in the lowest poverty schools 93.3% of kids would score above the mean score for those in the highest poverty schools. He gives other examples for 4th and 8th grade students but you get the picture. We have a huge amount of improvement to make to prepare our kids to compete with their global peers.
The second big report coming out this week was the college remediation report from The Colorado Commission on Higher Education. The title of the press release, “College remediation rates stuck at 30 percent” well summarizes the report's finding that remediation levels are not improving. This report gives lots of data from both 2 year and 4 year colleges. “At two-year schools, 53 percent of students had to take at least one remedial course. The overall rate was about 21 percent at four-year schools. The biggest remediation required is for math although reading and writing have significant levels as well. The report also tabulates remediation rates by where students went to high school. The lowest rate was 5.6 percent at Jefferson County’s D’Evelyn High School; the highest was 80.8 percent at Denver’s West High. Also, remember that the report probably doesn’t capture the full extent of the remediation problem. The document notes “the data do not include recent graduates who enrolled in an out-of-state college, delayed entry into higher education for at least one year after completing high school, were not assessed [for remedial needs],” or for whom data was missing.”
For more data on your own school district and high schools you can download the full report “2008 LEGISLATIVE REPORT ON REMEDIAL EDUCATION December 11, 2008” The best performing high schools in the Pikes Peak Region appear to be in the 15% range for remediation while the rest range significantly higher.
Should we be satisfied with either the international testing results or the remediation results? NO! It is difficult to sort through the School Accountability Report "excellent" ratings for some local schools and realize that the criteria are weak compared to the "real world" that our kids face when they get out of school. But it is clear that until the public demands better the huge inertia in the education establishment will make any improvements at a walking pace which might barely maintain our poor place in the global education comparisons. We will need to make our pace of change much faster if we hope to gain on the competition. The current ostrich mentality of “maybe if we ignore it, the problem will go away” isn’t working.
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