How many tests are too many?

How many tests are too many?

How many tests did you take through your school years?

How many chapter tests did you take in your 9th grade math class? How many quizzes? How many spelling tests in second grade? How many pop quizzes in 10th grade science? How long were your midterm and final exams?

I don't know how many class periods I spent just taking a test in high school. I don't know how many times I spent part of the period taking a test. I don't remember how many of the classes had midterms, and how many had formal sit down final exams. I think I know how many AP exams I took, a half day each. I took the SATs twice, a full day each time (I think). I took the PSATs, and I think that was much shorter than the SATs.  My state had POS and SRA tests, mostly before high school. I think the POS tests were annual, but I don't remember how long it took to take them. I think the SRAs were every few years, but I do not remember how often or how long they were. And there were the Achievement tests, too. There were three of those, and they took one hour each.

I am sure that I had to take the "Minimum Competency Test" in 11th grade, and that although my friends and I literally raced through that to see who could finish first, we did not return to our regular classes when we finished. And I do not remember how long was allocated to that test.

If I had grown up in New York, I might have had fewer final exams, but I would probably remember how many Regents exams I took, at a half day, each.

I don't know how much time I spent taking tests, exams and quizzes in school, not even in high school. Was it two full weeks? Was it four weeks? More?

I do remember some tests that I thought were unfair, even ones that I did well on. I remember some teachers loved trick questions. I remember one final exam for math class that everyone thought covered what the class covered, and even people who did poorly on it thought it was a fair test. I also remember a final exam for a math class that had nothing to do with what we covered in class, and no one thought that was fair. I still remember a particular question I got wrong on a standardized test because my AP Chemistry teacher did not think that that one thing was important enough to teach us -- it was about permanganate ions, MnO4-. But other than that, I do not think I ever had a good idea of how well what my teachers taught me matched what they were supposed to teach me.

I don't know the right amount of school time for students to spend taking tests, exams and quizzes. Though I know the strengths and weaknesses of teacher-made assessments, of high quality standardized tests and of low quality standardized tests, I do not know the right ratios of teacher-made tests, locally made tests and commercially created standardized tests.

Do you?

Understanding Teacher Strikes

Teacher strikes are horrendous. They are a challenge for families, who have to scramble for childcare. They can be a nightmare for families who cannot afford to pay for additional childcare. They can be disruptive to students, and life disruptions can seriously impair student learning. They cost teachers paychecks -- at least in the short term. And almost all teachers actually love children  -- else they could not bear to work them with all day every day -- and striking is not nearly as psychically rewarding as teaching. 

So, why do teachers strike? Why don't school boards do what they need to do to prevent strikes?

Well, it is quite complicated, and often needs to be examined on a case-by-case basis. But there are some big historical and/or ongoing issues that you need to understand in order to understand the individual context. 

* Teacher union contracts are not imposed on school districts. They are negotiated between the two parties and agreed to by both parties. 

* The compensation model and teacher tenure predate collective bargaining rights for teachers and union contracts by decades.

* An enormous amount of what is covered in union contracts is a product of neither the union nor the central office trusting principals. This has always been true. Today's decentralizing movement should not hide the fact that districts have historically pushed just as hard as unions to tie principals’ hands and deny them discretion over policy and procedure in their own schools. 

* There has been a problem all across the country with principals failing to observe and evaluate their teachers according to the procedures laid out in the contracts -- even when it takes less than three hours and occurs less often than every year. This failure of evaluation and documentation is what makes it take so long to remove teachers. This does not simply fall on principals, as they are held responsible for so much, are so poorly trained and so poorly supported that it is no surprise that they can have trouble finding time to do this work. And when a new principal comes to a school, s/he may inherit a situation where his/her predecessor failed to observe and evaluate teachers for years. 

(When I work with principals closely, I always ask them if they personally have ever been unable to remove a teacher they needed out of their building. They tell stories about their peers, but I've yet to speak to a principal who admits to being unable to do so him/herself. Not a single one, yet, in scores of conversations.)

* The recent "accountability" movement looks to place blame for student performance on teachers, schools and principals. However, it rarely -- never? -- gives them the discretion over how to accomplish those goals that was originally promised. It certainly fails to provide the capacity that makes those goals even possible -- thus violating Richard Elmore's Principle of Reciprocity. The centralizing tendencies of those who like the idea of "accountability" runs counter to requirements of accountability. For example, if Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the CPS system want to hold principals "accountable" for test scores, as they say, they need to give principals control over their budgets and over staffing. They claim that they that are fighting to give them control over staffing. However, they want to tie the principals' hands when it comes to evaluating their own teachers.

* Most individual teachers get raises above and beyond those highlighted in media coverage of teacher contract disputes. They get raises for advancing in their careers, as defined in the salary schedules in the contracts. Whether you agree or disagree with that approach, there are raises in there. The public disputes are about shifting that entire salary schedule -- to adjust for inflation, to make the profession more attractive, and to pay teachers closer to that a professional salary. If you believe that teachers are underpaid or that starting teacher salaries need to be higher -- as most do -- then you should be in favor of these overall shifts. On the other hand, teachers should not claim that their individual raises depend entirely upon these shifts.

* We all know that teaching is hard, hard work. Working in front of dozens of children everyday, being minutely observed by them and trying to act like a role model every minute is incredibly draining. After classes are over, teachers have papers to grade, lesson plans to write or revise, meetings to attend, phone calls to make (e.g. to parents), classrooms to clean and the next day's lessons/activities to set up. Teachers work long after the children leave school.

* Teachers do not have three months off every year. They generally have 10-month contracts, yes. Some teachers -- especially well-experienced teachers -- do not have to spend their summers planning curricula, learning more about their subjects, attending training and professional development. But many teachers do. Furthermore, many, many teachers (most?) try to get back to school before they are supposed to, to begin setting up their classrooms --which may have moved -- or prepare for their new classes and grade-levels. Most teachers need multiple weeks before the students arrive at the start of the year to get ready, and they are only paid for one.

* All professionals need insightful feedback to build on their strengths and to address their weakness. And yet, it is an entirely human reaction to resist criticism. Amid the traditional close your door and do your own thing culture of schooling, there can be even more resistance to evaluation. (To be honest, I was quite resistant to the obviously stupid criticism I received as a teacher.) But there are legitimate reasons to want to compare teacher performance, even across schools (e.g. targeting professional development, identifying model teachers, etc.).

* Student test scores do not measure school quality. However, there are efforts to use statistical techniques to combine test scores and other data to get closer to teachers and school quality. Yet these products -- called "value-added analysis" (VAA) -- are not even close to being ready for primetime. To take two disparate examples, VAA does not account for the presence of known disruptive students or for HVAC issues in a particular classroom -- both of which can significantly impact student learning. Until far more of the known relevant factors are accounted for, VAA systems simply do not achieve their goal. (Though, given valid tests that appropriately sample from the content domain, fuller models, and sufficient data, VAA can be an incredibly useful tool.)

* Despite the rhetoric, the United States has never led in the international comparisons of student performance. PISA and TIMMS studies have consistently shown that US to be in the middle of the pack of industrialized nations -- for their entire histories. More recent research has show that when you control poverty levels, however, the US is today first in the world on these tests. We have not declined, but we have social problems that impact student performance. 

Many (most? all? nearly all? including myself) believe that our schools need to do better. Certainly, we want our students to come out of school better prepared for citizenship, their future careers and their lives as adults. Many parents need to learn how to better support their children's' education. Societally, we need to value education and scholarship more. We need better teachers and better teaching. We need better leadership of our schools. We need better leadership of our school districts. The visions have been lacking. The support for those in schools has been poor. The necessities of creating engines of continuous improvement have not been met -- either for students or for educators. 

When reading or thinking about the Chicago Teachers Union strike, keep all of this in mind. The next time you hear about a teacher contract negotiation, keep all of this in mind. And if you care to know more any any of these points, there is a ton of good work out there to learn from.

Putting Children First

Obviously, when it comes to education policy, we need to put children first. That is why when we are faced with the potential of teacher layoffs, we need to make sure that we abolish seniority as a criterion. Because we value children and education so much, we must make sure that the least “effective” teachers are laid off first, not the least senior. After all, children first.

Or so say an enormous number of people, relatively few of whom actually work in classrooms every day.

Most of the arguments against this line of argument address the question of teacher effectiveness and how we might recognize it. And there are a lot of good objections there. But I want to address the ridiculous idea of putting the needs of students ahead of the needs of adults. I want to question this idea of children first.

Over at Gotham Schools, I challenged commenters to come up with a workable alternative to seniority for layoff decision-making. That meant an alternative that would cover all teachers, would not be subject to easy manipulation (e.g. from favoritism or backlash), and would produce to unambiguous priorities in layoffs. The only response was a Bad Attendance First Out (BAFO) plan.

As I wrote over there, BAFO is legally unworkable. It could run afoul of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act Family and Medical Leave Act, the federal Uniformed Servicemembers Employment and Re-Employment Rights Act and the New York Human Rights Law. That's a problem. But in my view, that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the children first thinking behind this proposal.

Should teachers be allowed to take sick days? Should they be allowed to take their own children to doctor's appointments? Should they be allowed take a day off to attend a funeral? What about their parent's funeral? What about -- god forbid -- their own child's funeral? Or, should they suffer the punishment of being higher on the layoff list if they do any of these things?

What about being stuck on a train that has had mechanical problems? What about their car being broadsided by a car that ran a red light? What about having a heart attack and therefore being hospitalized? Should these teachers  be held responsible for the time they miss and be put higher on the layoff list?

If you want to suggest that teachers get too many vacation days in addition to the scheduled school vacations, I might agree with you. But sometimes, teachers need personal days. Sometimes they really need sick days.

The children first thinking of so many non-teachers is premised on the idea that teachers should have less rights than any other workers in this country, because -- after all -- children first. Unlike other workers, they should not be able to take vacation. Unlike others, they should not be allowed to get sick. Unlike others, they should not be allowed to go to funerals. Unlike others, nothing in their own personal lives should ever be more important than their jobs. They should take pay cuts, give up the pensions they were promised, suffer arbitrary (and often capricious) judgments at the hands of their undertrained and undersupported supervisors. Unlike others, they should give up their lunch hours and work beyond any reasonable number of “work hours.”

According to non-teachers, the laws that protect all other workers and the rights of all other workers should not apply to teachers. The contracts that schools and districts sign with teachers should not be binding on the schools and districts. The standards for workplaces and treatment of employees that matter in other contexts should not apply to schools and teachers. After all, children first.

I'm sorry, but we cannot always put children first.

Oh, wait......I'm not sorry.

Race, Class & Politics: What is going on at John Jay

There is a lot of sturm und drang about the proposed new school in the John Jay building in the middle of Park Slope. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of substance or thoughtfulness to go with it. We should all understand what is being said and why, rather than fly off the handle in a knee-jerk sort of way, because the issues here appear elsewhere is the city, too. They just do not get this much attention in other neighborhoods.

Racism

I have been most disturbed by the accusations of racism, segregation and even apartheid (?) that are being associated with the proposed school by those who oppose it. These are real issues for the schools in the John Jay building, but they are not products of the proposed new school.

The students at the Secondary Schools for Law, for Research and for Journalism generally do not come from the surrounding neighborhood. Moreover, they do not look like the kids in the surrounding neighborhood either; the building's students are predominantly black and Latino, whereas the neighborhood is predominately white. Having taught at Law, I can tell you that the students are very aware of this issue and that they feel judged and excluded by the neighborhood.

My students told me about how shopkeepers, when it is warmer, will close their doors when they walk by, after school. They are literally shut out. And I have seen this happen myself. Of course, the kids think it is racism. Of course, there is some kernel of truth in that, but it is not the whole story -- or even most of it. The fact is that adolescents and teenagers are loud and boisterous when they get out of school in the afternoon. When they leave school by the hundreds at the same time, the shouting, yelling, profanity, professions of love and all the rest are, well, loud. Really loud. So, the shopkeepers want to keep the noise out.

But that is not everything. I've made a point of talking to the shopkeepers about this, from the jewelry stores to the cupcake truck. They talk about the noise, but they also talk about the behavior. The kids do not act respectfully, in their eyes. And they are right. Too many of them drop their trash on the ground and some are even are little destructive with the shops' wares. Of course, this is the students’ own ego-defense from a neighborhood that they feel excludes them, and it is not many of them. But it does happen.

So, yes, the shopkeepers close their doors, and some even lock them from 2:45pm to 3:45pm. That ain't cool. But it also ain't racist, mostly. More importantly, this is an issue about the neighborhood that has nothing to do with the proposed new school.

Even if the implied accusation that the new school is just for white kids were true, it would not be any more “racist” or “segregated” than the status quo. Having a “white school” elsewhere would be just as segregated. Actually, it would be less segregated if the school were in their building. The kids at the three schools already mix to some degree. They would certainly get to know each other better in the same building than spread blocks or miles apart.

The accusations of “apartheid” being associated with the new school are even more ridiculous, and I would hope that schools focused on law, research and journalism would be more clear on this. Perhaps there already is a form of apartheid in the schools, with largely white administrations and faculties in charge of a much larger largely black student body. But the new school has nothing to do with this common dynamic.

To be fair, there are idiots in the community, yes. Allison Perrnell, who last night assured us on the 11 o'clock news, "Not that we're necessarily racist," has likened the existing schools to the plague and worried about how they could "ghettify" her children. However, even she has a point about how the new school is actually good for the students already there. If they get more resources or a renovated building, that is a good thing. And she is really addressing – however inartfully – SES differences, rather than racial difference.

When Kanye West accused George W. Bush of not caring about black people, he was wrong. Bush had no problem with black people; it was poor people that he did not care about.

Class

Park Slope is one of the wealthiest neighborhood in Brooklyn, with ridiculous property values and high levels of educational attainment. However you measure SES (i.e. socio-economic status), the neighborhood in which the school is located has more of it than the neighborhoods in which the students live. Class is a big issue here.

The fact is that the former principals were charged with changing the building's reputation to attract more families from the neighborhood eight years ago. I know this because one of them told me this himself. This proposed new school is aimed at attracting the families in Park Slope and other high-SES neighborhoods, but so were the existing schools in the building.

We need good public schools for students of all backgrounds. We need schools that leverage the time and effort that many parents put into preparing their kids for reading, for school and for their work in schools. We also need schools that can educate children from families who do such things less often or not at all. We need good schools for high-SES families and for good schools for moderate- and low-SES families.

All of these schools should be rigorous. All of these schools should be welcoming to families and supportive of their children. Students should feel valued, respected and that they belong at every one of them.

The problem is that too many schools serving lower-SES families are of low quality. Be it issues with their own leadership, issues with their faculties or issues with support from the DOE, they are not serving their students well. I have taught in such schools myself, and that experience drove me to education policy so that I could work on finding systemic answers to address these issues. These kids deserve far better.

But they are not the only ones who deserve better. There are no public schools that higher-SES families find attractive in this part of Brooklyn. These families look at the low quality of schools (i.e. low academic performance, low attendance rates, discipline problems, etc.) and then look further to find something better for their children. This is not about rejecting the students at these schools; it is about rejecting the educators.

Politics

None of the students at these schools are being threatened by the new school. Their schools are not closing down. They get to keep their schools and their classmates and all the rest. Even though these schools might lose their middle grades (i.e. 6-8), the kids who are already there will continue there.

Unfortunately (in my view), these schools are not community schools. The local community is not invested in these schools. The local political and business leaders are not threatened by the proposed new school, either.

On the other hand, the employees of these schools are threatened by this action. Some teachers will lose their jobs and administrators will surely lose headcount and money from their budgets. This is an assault on them and their status. My own experience, however, shows me that it has been a long time coming. While I taught there, I was told by my principal not to teach critical and analytical thinking to my students, and told by my assistant principal not to teach my 11th grade students -- who would be taking the Regents exam in the spring -- how to write essays. Months after I had left, another principal in the building sent me letters at home warning me that if I continued to work late in my classroom that my pay would be docked.

The faculties that these principals have hired remain in the building, and most of the administrators are the same as when I left. All of them are threatened by this new school. And their students are crying "racism." I wonder how that could happen.

Solutions, Not Grievances

We should all be perfectly willing to acknowledge that the building has been neglected. I do not believe that the families whom the current schools in the John Jay building has served in the past have been well served. There have been real issues with the leadership in the building and support from the DOE.

But what is the problem with adding a new school if we look forward? We can agree that the building should have been fixed up long ago. I should not have had to deal with a broken window in my classroom for the entire time that I worked there. I should not have had to paint my classroom myself. The students and teachers who are still there should not have had to put up with the decaying of the building around them.

But if the new school comes with new funds to fix up the building, why is that something to complain about? Complain about the past but embrace this solution! It is good for the kids.

Furthermore, I know that the leadership of the new school (disclosure: I know Principal Gioe well and have spoken with her at length about this proposed new school) has a track record of supporting students who traditionally have struggled in conventional schools, and applied those lessons to the rest of her programs. This proposed new school would be an additional option for the families who have traditionally sent their kids to the Secondary Schools for Law, for Research and for Journalism. The research, from Coleman in the 1960's all the way through the more recent work of Kahlenberg and others, shows that mixing students from lower-SES families with those from higher-SES families can help the former without hurting the latter. The proposed new school would give priority to Brooklyn students, without giving preference to any particular Brooklyn neighborhood.

The final vote on the proposed new school is tonight. What are we arguing about here?

What is Tenure?

In this country, most of us can be fired from our jobs for virtually any reason – however dumb, inane or counterproductive. We can be fired because of our taste in music, because we made a bad joke, because we are too good at our jobs, or because someone just doesn’t like us. If you do not have a contract, you can even be fired for no reason at all. You boss can fire you simply because s/he feels like it.

If you do not have a contract, there is a short list of reasons why you cannot be fired (e.g., gender, race, age, disability and in some places sexual orientation) but an infinitely long list of reasons why you can be fired.

It makes some sense that private employers should be able to set their own standards for employment, and that such organization’s supervisors be empowered to make all kind of decisions. That is kind of what it means to be a private business.

However, public organizations have a different moral calculus. They operate for the public good and serve as a sort of trust on behalf of the public. We empower their management to make decisions in the furtherance of those public goals, but those managers do not own the organizations, divisions, departments or work groups. There are any number of reasons that might be acceptable for a private organization to fire someone that are inappropriate for a public organization.

The only acceptable reason for a public organization to fire someone is that they are unable in some way to serve the public goals of the organization. Obviously, such inability could take many forms, but fundamentally that’s it. (A chairman of the EEOC in Washington DC who does not believe that that law should be used to combat discrimination against minorities is one such (purely) hypothetical example. A meat inspector for the USDA who is both color blind and has a poor sense of small probably could not support the USDA’s mission. And school workers who cannot handle children or fulfill their roles in supporting the educational process also should be removed.)

Tenure for K-12 public school teachers is not a guarantee of lifetime employment, despite what many would have you believe. Rather, it is a right to contest termination in some kind of formal and binding way (i.e. due process). It is certainly not as complicated as a death penalty trial, but it is more detailed than merely begging your boss to reconsider his/her decision.

Tenure means that if a principal or a district wants to terminate a teacher, the teacher gets to challenge them on the reasons. It forces the district to make the case – to present evidence and make the argument – that this teacher cannot do the job. Because tenure is only granted after multiple years of positive job reviews, there is a certain level of presumption in favor of the teacher. After all, the district is claiming that something has changed, something that their own managers and records said was fine in the past.

That is all tenure is. It is an earned right for experienced teachers to say, “If I have years of good evaluations, why are they firing me now?” and to have an impartial judge (i.e. a mutually agreed upon arbiter) weigh the evidence.

Does that seem unfair to you? Or does it seem like something that every worker should be able to earn?

I come not to bury Cathie Black...well...ummm...maybe I do

Ms. Black's supporters have suggested there are many non-educational/non-pedagogical aspects to the Chancellor's responsibilities. Rhetoric and hyperbole aside, what does New York City need from the Chancellor of its public school system? Are there things that we can agree on? Truly evaluating her fitness for the position requires us all to consider what those might be.

1. The Chancellor is a very public figure in New York City, just as superintendents and chancellors in other districts are. This means that the Chancellor must be adept at dealing with the public in various ways. S/he must be able to deal with being an object of scrutiny by the media, and at using the media effectively to communicate with the public, both to inform and to persuade. S/he really is the chief spokesman for the public schools, like it or not. S/he must also be adept at dealing with politics, through the various layers of elected and appointed officials who think that they should have some say on educational matters. We have community boards, individual city council members, the collective city council and the mayor himself. We have the Board of Regents, the Governor and our State Assembly and Senate. That is a lot of groups in which the public invests some level of responsibility (at the very least moral responsibility) for our schools.
2. The Chancellor must run the largest school system in the country, an enormous bureaucracy with tens of thousands of employees, over a million "customers" to be served daily, and over 1500 branches. Its sheer size means that there are a surprisingly large array of kinds of services and departments that s/he must oversee.
3. The Chancellor must continually prepare the system for declining revenues, and then manage the system once they have declined. There is nothing that s/he can do to reverse that decline, and the causes of that declining revenue happen also to pull in more "customers," without bringing in more revenue. Furthermore, there is no level or quality of service that will attract more revenue. In fact, delivering higher quality service will likely attract more customers -- again without attracting more revenue!!
4. No one is satisfied with the quality of the service that the organization provides. There is universal agreement that we want the organization to do better, even if there is disagreement about the current level of quality or the ultimate causes of issues. We all want better schools, and the new Chancellor will be charged with delivering them. However, as noted above, increases in quality will NOT lead to more revenue, despite attracting more customers, and there will not be additional funds to pay for new programs.
5. The Chancellor must lead a system that is responsible for educating EVERY child. There have been historical problems with meeting the needs of certain groups (i.e. special needs students, English language learners, minorities, the poor, (children of) immigrants), and the last decade has focused on uncovering the extent of those problems (e.g. with subgroup reporting of NCLB AYP scores). The next decade, no doubt, will be focused on addressing them.
6. Though it appears that the federal government will be backing off the pressure it has applied to schools in recent years, the reauthorization of the ESEA (i.e. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, dubbed NCLB by President Bush) is said to focus on the bottom 5% of schools, a group that will consist primarily of those serving poor, urban and minority populations. Far more than 5% of the Chancellor's schools will be in that group, meaning that federally inspired pressures on schools will be far greater than anything than her predecessors had to deal with -- with just the exception of her most immediate predecessor.
7. The Chancellor must deal with a largely unionized work force of professionals, but one that has been under severe public and political pressure to change long standing practices. Those changes will require changes to union contracts and to state law, if they are to go through. Perhaps uniquely, her 1500 branch managers -- many of whom manage over 100 workers -- are all unionized as well. Those branch managers -- the principals -- are as much a part of the system as the teachers, and the kind of improvement that people call for requires changes to their practices as well.
8. There are calls for increasing the role of computer technology in education, especially from the reform crowd that Cathie Black might represent (i.e. that of the Bloomberg & Gates types). Be it the School of One, greater use of the Internet, distance learning, slate/tablet computing or anything else, many want new computer and communications technology to entirely transform schools, students' experiences and education itself.

Does the new Chancellor need to know about pedagogy or curriculum to deal with these basic challenges? It's not obvious to me that s/he does. Or rather, I do not think that this is an open and shut case. Perhaps s/he does not. But I happen to think that understanding the core work of the organization IS important. I happen to think that it is impossible to manage a system for improvement or excellence without knowing deeply about the product or service that organization provides.

But let us assume for a moment that s/he does not need to know about pedagogy or curriculum. Is Cathie Black otherwise prepared for the basic challenges of the job of New York City Schools Chancellor?

1. Cathie Black has never worked in government or public service. She has run media outlets, rather than been the object of interest of so many media outlets. She has never been responsible to elected officials, let alone multiple layers of officials with overlapping jurisdictions. She has never had to sell the entire public on the appropriateness or quality of her organization's product or services.
2. She has never run an organization even remotely as large and complex as the New York City Department of Education. By orders of magnitude, there are more employees, more branches and more kinds of issues to be dealt with.
3. Cathie Black has always worked in the for profit sector. She could close down money-losing outlets or operations without having to serve their former customers (i.e. subscribers) in some other fashion. She has been able to justify money spent on new products or outlets with the greater return in increased revenue they would bring. One of her goals in the private sector was to increase revenue, something that would be entirely outside her control as Chancellor. She has absolutely no experience leading an organization in such a circumstance.
4. I do not know enough about Hearst Magazines to be sure, but I have not read anything about Black leading a remarkable increase in the quality of its publications. Yes, she launched some very successful magazines, but did she actually improve the quality of any pre-existing titles? Is the overall quality of the journalism, the writing and/or the photography notably better than it was before she got there? Did US increase in journalistic quality during her tenure? Has the quality of her organizations' publications improved under her leadership?
5. In the private sector, Black's organizations identified target markets in which they could be successful (i.e. make a profit). They could close down a publication, if they could not be successful with it -- without any obligation to provide a new and better title to meet its former readers' needs. She has never been morally and legally obliged to meet the needs of all potential customers. She has always been able to -- to at least some degree -- simply walk away from the most challenging problems her companies might face. I do not mean to imply that she did anything that was not right or appropriate for those organizations. However, she is entirely unprepared for the kind of challenge that she faces in leading an organization that must educate every student.
6. Having worked in business since the Reagan era, Black has worked during a period of deregulation of private industry. Having worked in print publishing, her organizations have been subject to the extraordinary protections of the First Amendment. As we can see in her nomination process, there are serious state regulations that impact the Chancellor, in addition to the recently expanded federal role. She has absolutely no experience working in such an industry.
7. Black euphemistically told the press, "I've had limited exposure to unions." There is no reason to believe that knows how to work with union leadership as a partner. She certainly has no clue as to how to work with a union to help it modernize and give it cover to challenge some of its own members.
8. Clearly, the publication industry is in a state of flux -- one far greater than that of schools. Print might not be dying, but its dominance is long since over. The iPhone, other app phones, the Kindle, the Nook and iPad together present a serious new challenge to all newspapers and magazines -- even as they are still struggling with how to remain successful while the Internet provides alternatives that undermine print's basic business models. Hearst Magazines has not figured out how to use any of these new platforms, despite the fact that we are at least three years into this new mobile computing age. In fact, Hearst seems more focused on selling print subscriptions over the Internet than on figuring out how to be successful delivering content to customers over the Internet. Rather than embracing the Internet as a transformative force, her organization has marginalized it.

Clearly, even if the Chancellor does not need to know about pedagogy, curriculum, school or education, Ms. Black is entirely unprepared for the challenges she would face in that role. The issue with Ms. Black, therefore, is NOT her lack of educational sector experience or her lack of personal experience with public school. Rather, the issue is that Ms. Black is not otherwise qualified or prepared to New York City’s Department of Education, and No Chief Education Officer can make up for that.

Ms. Black's prior background and experience required her to seek a waiver of the legal requirements for qualification for the position. However, that waiver was only supposed to be granted if her experience had given her some substantial equivalent to those prerequisites. Overruling the advisory panel, State Education Commissioner David Steiner has granted her that waiver. I would like to know why. She clearly is unprepared for any aspect of the job.

What is "The Gold Standard"?

Did you hear about the big report that came out this week? You know, the one that "shows" that NYC charter schools are better than traditional non-charter public schools? It has gotten a ton of attention, probably because it uses "'the gold standard' method[ology]." The report is not subtle about this. It is right there in the very first sentence of the executive summary, "The distinctive feature of this study is that charter schools' effects on achievement are estimated by the best available, "gold standard" method: lotteries." It even uses the term "gold standard" four more times throughout the report.

Everyone wants to follow The Gold Standard -- or at least be able to say that they do. Of course! I mean, who wouldn't? But I do not think that we actually have a gold standard in education research. In fact, I am quite sure that we do not, and appropriating biomedical research's gold standard does not make it appropriate for us.

However, if we are going to borrow their standard, can we not at least get it right?

The biomedical standard uses double-blind experimental studies with random assignment. That means that some research participants get the experimental treatment and some get a placebo, and both are assigned randomly. It also means that neither the researchers nor the participants know who is getting which treatment. After all, expectations are important, and the mind can set us up for all kinds of things.

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One of the latest ideas about The Gold Standard in educational research concerns charter schools.

We all want to know whether charter schools are better than traditional non-charter public schools. On one level, we certainly do want to know about individual schools. But on the policy level, we want to know about the average charter school, because we want to figure out if "charterness" helps a school be better. If it does, then we want more charter schools. If it does not, then we want fewer or none. And if we cannot be sure, we want to keep checking.

Let me say this quite clearly: Some charter schools are better than most non-charter public schools, and some are worse. And some non-charter public schools are better than most charters, and some are worse.

The Gold Standard crowd have a favorite method for comparing charter schools to non-charter public schools, one of which they are quite proud, but one that is so full of problems that I am shocked that they keep using it.

They rightly want to control for self-selection bias among charter school students. We know that children and families that apply to charter schools are different from those who do not, even if we do not know what all those differences are. This seems like the perfect time to do a randomized assignment, because that is the best method to make sure that these differences cancel out between groups. Luckily, we have some randomized assignments. Oversubscribed charter schools are virtually always supposed to accept students using a random lottery. This allows researchers to compare the outcomes of those were were randomly accepted, and those who were not.

Sounds good, right?

Well, it does sound good. But serious issues remain. Some are more obvious than others, and some are correctable by those interested in getting the correct answer, rather than the one that fits their pre-ordained conclusions.

Issue #1: No Placebo

Biomedical research does not just include randomization of treatment. It also is at least single blind. If some patients know that they are getting the new treatment, they might react differently. The mind is a powerful thing. They might be more diligent. Perhaps do their rehab exercises more often. Maybe pay more attention to diet. Who knows? And those who know that they are getting the new treatment might not lose hope.

If a student and/or his family do not get into the school of his/her/their choice, how might they react? I know from my own experience teaching that students who get their choice of schools take a bit more ownership. If they get their second choice, or last choice, or somehow do not get their choice, that's a big hurdle for their teachers and parents to overcome. If parents do not get their choice of schools for their students, are they going to be as supportive of their child's teachers? Of the assignments? Are they going to have the same kind of faith in their child's school? I think that the answer is really quite obvious.

The problem with these studies is that the students and families who "lose" these lotteries are no longer like the students and families who "win" these lotteries. There simply is no basis for thinking that their views of their schools are like those of the lottery "winners." In fact, one could quite simply argue that this method of analysis ensures that the "winning" charter school students are being compared to students who did not want to go to the schools they attend.

Obviously, that's not an even comparison.

Issue #2: Peer Effects

We all know that peer effects matter. Research, experience and common sense back this up. If you put a student in a class with a "better" group of peers, s/he will do better than s/he would have done in a class with a "worse" group of peers. The other kids all do their homework, or their parents were more likely to read to them, or they are somehow smarter, or harder working, or bring more cultural capital to school with them, or however else you think "better students" might be defined.

We also know that charter school students are not, as a group, like non-charter school students. That is how the Gold Standard crowd justifies their approach here. So: trying to control for applicant differences, but not controlling for ongoing peer effects? I don't know if that is just lazy or actually dishonest. The importance of peer effects is so well recognized that I tend to think it is the latter, especially because techniques to control for them are so well established.

Of course, there is another way to look at this. From a personal level, if you have a child, you don't care about controlling for peer effects. Actually, you want the effects to be left in so that you can take advantage of them. If charter schools have "better" students, that's a reason to send your own child to a charter school. However, if this analysis is done for policy purposes, to influence policy-makers, then peer effects do matter. If you are thinking about all students, not just the select few who can get into the "better" school, you need to control for peer effects.

Issue #3: Selection Bias on the School Level

The goal of this lottery-based study design is to avoid self-selection bias in the data. However, those who use it do not acknowledge the additional selection problems they create.

The most important problem is that not all charter schools are oversubscribed, so not all charter schools can be included in these studies. This wouldn't be a problem if we had good reason to believe that a random selection of charter schools were included, but that is obviously not the case. Clearly, the "better" charter schools are far, far, far more likely to be oversubscribed than the "worse" charter schools. This biases the sample rather severely towards better charter schools.

Unfortunately, the sample bias problem doesn't stop there.

A really strong traditional non-charter public school is not going to lose a lot of students to a simply above-average charter school. In order to be oversubscribed, a significant number of students and/or families have got to believe that the charter school option is superior to the non-charter public school option, which suggests a level of dissatisfaction with the local traditional public schools. This biases the sample towards inferior non-charter schools.

Issue #4: Generalizability

The hardest thing in educational research -- and perhaps research overall -- is to be able to generalize one's results to the broader population or wider world. And yet, that is usually the end goal of policy-oriented research.

These kinds of lottery-based studies only include the kinds of students and families that apply to charter schools in the first place. Even if the previous issues could be corrected, how can one know that other sorts of students and families would see the same benefits? The fact is that different populations might benefit less or more from going to a charter school. It is simply impossible to know from this kind of study. Of course, if you are only concerned about benefitting the kids of families who already opt for charter schools, then this is not a problem. But if you aim to help a broader population than that, you need a better methodology.

These generalizability concerns also apply to schools. Oversubscribed charter schools might well be better than average non-charter public schools, and I do not really question whether they are better than their local traditional alternatives. But on a policy level, we need to be concerned with charters more generally than that. If we raise or lift caps on charter schools, or approve new charter schools, we have to expect an average charter school to result, not an exceptional one. But these studies really tell us nothing about the majority of charter schools that are not oversubscribed. Nor do they tell us anything about the relative quality of non-charter public schools that lack charter school alternatives.

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I understand the desire to find a Gold Standard for educational research. But simply grabbing that label because a methodology has some resemblance to biomedical research is not good enough, despite what Prof. Caroline Hoxby may claim. Moreover, the popular press really must do a better job of examining these claims critically, rather than cheerleading for them like this.

This, of course, means that researchers, journalists and the rest of us must be sure to take a more thoughtful stance than has become our habit.

Engagment is not enough

School is starting, in most places either last week or this wee. Like any other sort of new year, it's a time for resolutions, for setting new expectations and resolving to do the right thing.

The president spoke to the nation's children, or tried to, with this in mind. Time to think about hard work, finding your strengths and persevering through the challenges, he said.

Children are not the only ones who begin a new year around labor day. Parents, too, begin a new cycle. They see their children off to school, to a new grade, and know that themselves are beginning a new year. For many of them -- perhaps most and eventually we hope for all of them -- one of their own issues each year is figuring out how to support their children's learning. Buying school supplies is easy. What about the rest?

Obviously, parents can help their children with their homework. They can set aside a quiet place and time for them to study. Is there more?

Well, traditionally, parents would ask their children "How was school, today?" Maybe they'd ask "What did you learn in school today?" Trite questions, to be sure, but powerful nonetheless. How better to signal to their children that they care about education and are invested in their learning than this sort of thing?

Of course, those questions get old. Kids hear them too often, and they don't feel genuine. Parents feel silly asking the same question every day. And engagement in this sort of important conversation fades.

With all of this in mind, Will Richardson has written about the kinds of questions he hopes to ask his children this year, and offer 13 examples. His readers have offered dozens more in the comments. Together, they make an interesting collection.

But I'm not satisfied.

In fact, I am troubled.

I don't have a problem with any of the questions, I don't think. But taken in their totality they seem a bit thoughtful and random. Yes, they are good questions, but so what? What is goal of these questions? What are they meant to accomplish?

You see, I think that one of the great problems with American schooling is the muddle. We do many things, with not real focus on plan on the deeply meaningful long term goals. We do little things to satisfy everyone, but never really focus on what we want to accomplish. Taking a bunch of ideas and throwing them together does not necessarily make for a great combination. Too many cooks can spoil the soup, right?

I think that we see this in technology. Most tech companies design products with lots of features, to meet the needs of a broad swath of the potential market. More features, they seem to believe, leads to broader appeal. But like the big swiss army knife, american schools has gotten unwieldy and hard to use.

Apple has taken a different approach with its products. They often have fewer features, but a much greater sense of cohesiveness and purpose. More integrated, and even thoughtful. Never the only way to do a great product, but almost always a great product.

So, I am not saying that any of Will's questions are poor, or even any from his commenters. But I really do not know what they are seeking to accomplish. These questions have different goals and assumptions behind them. And my real issue with his post and the comments is that they are mindless of these issues, of the goals and assumptions that their questions represent.

What Did You Create Today?

What did you learn about fairness today?

What will you now do tomorrow because of what you did today?

What was the coolest/most interesting question someone else asked today?

These are great questions, as are the others in will's post and the comments. (Really, they are good questions. Go and read them.) I am not challenging that. But they have different goals. When it comes to education, we really do need to be mindful of goals, and make sure that what we do meets the goals we have in mind.

So, if parents goals are merely to have engaging conversations with their children about their school days, any of these questions might do. Switching among them might work, too. Yes, that is a worthy goal. But if parents want to reinforce some aspect of learning or schooling, encourage particular kinds of behaviors or habit of mind, selection from among these questions requires them to be more thoughtful.

And the exercise of uncovering the assumptions and goals of these questions would be a good way for any parent or PTA to get a hold on some of the hardest and most important questions in education.

My Senator Died: What Ted Kennedy Meant to an Educator

My senator died. I think that a lot of educators can say that today. Only a small fraction of us ever voted for him, or have ever lived in Massachusetts, but Ted Kennedy stood for what we stand for.

Sen. Kennedy served for so long -- 47 years -- that from the time I first got a clue about what the senate really was and what senators really were until today, he has been my senator. When I really became politically aware as a teenager, the President did not reflect my views or values. It was important to me to have a national voice that represented me, and Senator Kennedy was that national voice. I only had the chance to vote for him once, but he has always been my senator.

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Looking at the education landscape today, it is easy to conclude the NCLB has a stronger impact on schools than any other federal legislation. It is easy to say that Sen. Kennedy got rolled when it came to NLCB. He thought that the money it authorized would actually be budgeted and spent, but the Bush administration's budgets only called for a fraction of it.

Obviously, there are lots of aspect of NCLB to hold against President Bush, and also against Senator Kennedy (D-MA) and Representative George Miller (D-CA). Without their credibility and their cover, this bill would not have passed.

But we should keep in mind the positive aspects of NCLB, too. Senator Kennedy did not like the whole bill, but he thought that the attention it would bring to urban education was worth its costs. In hindsight, I think he was right.

NCLB has required subgroup reporting of test scores. Though statistical rigor seems to run afoul of moral considerations, this has been a revolutionary change in the way we examine schools. And it is federally mandated!! Every school must examine how its minority students perform, and report it publicly. Every school must report how its low income students perform, and report it publicly. No longer can schools can schools hide poor performances of some groups with superior performances by others. Schools are now have real incentives to pay attention to all of these groups.

Does anyone think that this is going away?

Senator Kennedy was right, I think. We are paying more attention to the performance of minority and low income students than ever before. That is no small thing. The federal spending on education is at an all time high, and its hard to imagine that being possible with NCLB. That's no small thing.

Furthermore, for all the problems with NLCB's "highly qualified teacher" provision, the fact that we are even having a debate about it is enormous progress.

There is a lot of stuff to dislike about NCLB. But it has prompted some revolutionary shifts in how we, as a nation, talk about students in schools. And that has been wonderful.

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However, Senator Kennedy was not my senator because of NLCB. He was my senator long before NCLB, and I spent years thinking quite a bit less of him for NCLB. He was my senator because he stood for things that I believed in. Most fundamentally, he stood for fighting for those unlike himself, less fortunate than himself, and doing so simply because it was the right thing to do.

I think that all educators understand devoting our lives to helping others. In fact, educators understand working to help those with less power and privilege than we do. Children inherently have less power than adults, and helping them does not help us to get ahead. None of us expect the favors to be repaid, even if the love and compassion is. We do it because it feels like the right thing to do, because it means more to us than maximizing our own power and position.

Senator Kennedy did not have to be the senator he was. He stood forward to fight for what he believed in, making himself a target for criticism and mockery -- when he knew that he had major personal failings to be mocked. He took unpopular stands because they were right, not because they would help him or his career. Most teachers know about fighting to do the right thing for their students, even when it makes their lives harder.

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Last, I want to address Senator Kennedy's longevity.

He was in it for the long fight. There were some tremendous victories along the way, but they came after a lot of work. He was not looking for silver bullets or miracles, and he knew that that each legislative victory was but a single step in a very long road.

NCLB was an important step, but just a step. If we had him in Senate for the rest of his term, we would see him address its strengths and and its weaknesses.

We need to remember this. The big problems that Senator Kennedy worked his whole career to address -- education, poverty, the rights of the disempowered -- are not solved easily, or perhaps even ever. Rather, they are addressed as best we can today, so that we can address them even better tomorrow.

Perhaps this is an easier lesson for those of us who work in education than outside of it. We know that the our students' educational journeys last much longer than our own time with them. I hope that those who do not work in schools can learn this, too. Especially when trying to address education.

Incentives and TED

Do you know about TED?

TED is this annual conference where people make these really great 20 minutes presentations. They come from all walks of life, but they are all smart. The presentations are intended for a small general audience, not a group of experts. TED's tagline is "Ideas Worth Spreadings," and they generally are.

Fortunately, the folks who run the conference have posted all of the talks online. For free, and going back years!! What's not to love?

TED is certainly more thoughtful than 99% of what you'll find out there on the Interwebs. High quality speakers with high quality content.

While I was thinking about my previous post, I came across a TED talk on the same subject (i.e. incentives and performance). Of course, it is better than anything I could write. So, go watch it.