If you live in the US and receive public television you might want to watch Making Schools Work tonight (9-11, 8-10 Central). If you do watch it, and want to use the comments below to comment about it, please go ahead.
Update: Well, I’ll get the ball rolling, if possible (though see comment 1 below, which predates this update).
I was at once impressed by the show and irritated by it. Impressed, because the makers seemed to have gone to real trouble to understand the character of the reforms they were describing, and to present the lived experience of going through those reform. I knew a good deal of what was presented, but by no means all, and learned a lot more than is possible from the kind of study I do.
But irritated for two reasons.
First, boringly, I was irritated by the constant refrain of “all children can learn”. Of course, its true, but it is also misleading. The barriers to learning that children who are raised in poverty, and other disadvantageous conditions, face are much, much, more severe than those faced by most other children. Schools can, perhaps, make up for that, but not easily, and not without a complete change in the way we see schools and schooling. And even if they do, that is no excuse for allowing them to grow up in poverty. I didn’t think any of the chanters of this mantra were insincere, and all of them were at least little bit humbling, so this isn’t meant as a criticism of them, but of the program maker for not being more open about those barriers.
Second, and more seriously, I found it frustrating that the program makers were so uncritical of the idea that simply spreading these reforms would make things better for all children (or all disadvantaged children). For some of the reforms that mght be true, but not for all, and we don’t know for sure about any of them. The NY District 2 reforms and Success for All looked as if they might be replicatable across the board. But the KIPP model (the DDD Charter School) couldn’t be.
What’s the difference? Well, the reforms fell into two categories. There were reforms which aimed to enhance the ability of teachers to be more effective, but without imposing on them additional burdens (except the short term burden of developing new skill sets and new ways of working). These reforms are replicatable (in principle) because they don’t require a new set of teachers, and don’t inflict burn out on existing teachers. They improve the teachers’ productivity. Think about Success for All. It offers teachers a script which structures their approach to the students and, apparently, works. The first year this is going to be very demanding. But once the teachers get into the routine they working no harder, or not much harder, than before, and are getting more rewards (if it does work). They’re working better, not harder. The same seemed, at least, to be true of the District 2 approach.
The other kind of reform requires, instead, that teachers to work harder, or require new teachers who are willing to work harder. The KIPP schools extend the school week by 67%. It was hard to tell how many more hours teachers were being expected to work, or how much addiitonal compensation they got, but what was clear was that they expect teachers to be responsive to students calling them at home in the middle of the night for help with homework. At a given wage there is a limited pool of teachers who are willing to do this. Speaking personally, my wife (who teaches in a school with 75% free and reduced school lunch population) already works 50+ hours a week, and has at least one night in which she wakes up regularly thinking of what she needs to do. If she were also fielding student calls during the evening and, god forbid, the night, that would damage her health and logevity, not to mention her relationships with her children and spouse. As long as there are few such schools, and they are led by charismatic principals and supported as special by administrators, they might be able to tap the limited pool of people who are willing to sacrifice their private lives to their work. But if they were the standard model they would have serious problems sustaining the energy of their workers. Similarly, KIPP obviously has arrangements with elite private high schools that allow their most successful students to go onto those schools. I’m not sneering — that’s a good thing. But there is an upper limit to the places available to poor kids in elite private high schools: I don’t know what that upper limit is, but whereas with a small number of schools KIPP can send a good proportion of kids onto such schools, if KIPP were the standard for the 20% of middle schoolers who grow up in poor families, a much smaller proportion of their alumnae could be so favoured.
So, the lumping together of all the kinds of reforms, and the uncritical approach to them, was irritating. Still a jolly good show.
{ 36 comments }
Story Keeper 10.06.05 at 5:53 am
Making schools work…no surprise
Last night’s PBS special Making Schools Work was both triumphant and tragic. First, it was remarkable in demonstrating what those of us in education, particularly those of us who do research in education (read the much-maligned professors of education) already knew: all students can learn in positive, self-fulfilling ways in a classroom. We don’t just know that simple and obvious fact; we also know how it can be accomplished. We know it takes commitment and support at the district level, ongoing professional development for teachers AND administrators, classes of a manageable size, a culture of high expectations, and the support of students as they learn to focus on meeting those expectations. Most of us could have predicted the success of the schools showcased and the difficulties that arose as those schools experienced growing pains, not from getting bigger—but from getting better.
What’s tragic is that no one seems to recognize or care that we know these things, that we have experience and knowledge that could actually serve education in practical ways and make a difference for kids and their futures. Like most of the experts nowadays (engineers who warned of levees, environmentalists who warned of global warming, veterans who smelled the potential quagmire waiting in Iraq) we are dismissed as irrelevant or made irrelevant by state policies that infiltrate our curricula and mandate what and how we education those who have chosen to become teachers or administrators. Indeed, no other academic discipline in higher education is as controlled as are colleges and schools of education. We are lashed to state policies and fragmented curricular goals and blamed when those policies fail. No wonder so many of us retreat or spend time posting blogs….
a 10.06.05 at 6:40 am
“…recieve public television…”
Either schools or spellcheckers should be made to work…
I before e except after c.
Harry 10.06.05 at 8:59 am
Fixed. Its my typing, not my spelling (my spelling is bad, too, but not that bad). I still fester about not being allowed to take typing in school because I wasn’t a girl.
erica 10.06.05 at 11:28 am
It seems that if we (and by “we†I mean educational researchers) want to make a difference in education, we need to take everything we know and tie it together with a pretty red bow, packaged neatly for politicians, administrators, and teachers so they can unwrap and implement for immediate results. However, there are two problems (probably more problems, but I’ll start with two) with this:
(1) Many of us find the idea of scripted curricula offensive to teacher professionalism. Also, questions loom in the wake of choosing to script curricula. Who writes these scripts and what lessons (particularly indirectly as part of the “hidden†curriculum) will be learned if the “wrong†people gain control of them? (Although I must admit that some of the SFA stuff looked pretty good in some respects—it would have to be placed in the context of the rest of the day to be sure.)
(2) With so many changes in administration (principal and superintendent levels) and considering the fact the many new people in these positions feel pressure to ‘make a difference’ in their first year—how will we ever know if reforms help in the long run? When the San Diego school board shifted in leadership the superintendent and the reformer were out—quickly. What if it had been going well before? Easy answer—too bad, on to the next thing. The never-ending search for the magic bullet marches on.
Laura 10.06.05 at 11:31 am
Thanks, Harry. I had seen the show in the TV guide and meant to watch it, but it was up against Lost and, well, I’m shallow.
So thanks, for the update. I hope they reair the show.
Random Kath 10.06.05 at 11:39 am
I watched the program last night. I would be very curious to see how the two kids featured in the KIPP program have fared five years from now. Will what they have learned in the highly regimented KIPP carry them through in school situations that are not as regimented? or where there is much more diversity in socio-economic backgrounds?
I also think that what the high school in Eastern Kentucky did in trying to get all of their students interested in learning really should be replicated. By allowing students to have hands-on experiences that help make the connection that what one is being taught in school has relevance in the outside world is always a big motivator.
It also kind of bothered me that KIPP and Success For All, if widely replicated, might bring about a sort of two-tiered system – a more regimented education for poorer neighborhoods, while higher income neighborhoods would have the luxury of a more “enriched” experience. I may be incorrect in that assessment, but at first glance, that’s what I thought of . . .
I’m not an educator, so if I am way off base I am sure you will let me know. :-)
harry b 10.06.05 at 1:23 pm
Thanks for the link Laura; I’m sure they’ll re-air for the lost fans of Lost :)
kath’s worry is reasonable, but notice that there is already a two tier system; one in which suburban schools get a lot of luxury and poor kids get inexperienced teachers, high turnover, crumbling buildings, poor discipline, etc. The key aspect of SFA seemed to be what it did to the dynamics in the classroom — by focussing all attention on the teacher and giving children manageable collective tasks, it sidelined or engaged troublemakers, and restored the teachers’ ability to get on with teaching.
Look, there is an issue about how researchers can influence policy. I simply don’t know whether we need to tie things up with a bow in a pretty package — but if we do, that’s probably what we should do. Certainly, the obscurity and quasi-theoretical language used by a good number of education academics is not designed to engage the patient attention of busy people who are not trained to read academic work. We (educational researchers) need to learn at least how to communicate with teachers and adminstrators on their own ground, without oversimplifying or trying to pull the wool over their eyes (there are plenty of hucksters out there tryign to do that).
JennyD 10.06.05 at 3:01 pm
Erica, a question. You said this:
“Many of us find the idea of scripted curricula offensive to teacher professionalism.”
Why?
I’m trying to think of a profession without a script. Not medicine. Medicine is professional of scripts, from how to remove a gall bladder to how to control high blood pressure. These scripts are altered based on individual patients, but they are not thrown out the window each time a patient enters a surgical suite.
Lawyers have many scripts. So do professional violinists. And architects. And engineers. And all of these professions enjoy much higher status than teachers.
I think you could argue that the lack of scripts hinders professionalism in teaching. Here’s why: it makes what teachers do look like something anyone can do. To the layperson, teaching looks like, well, whatever. Whatever you want. If it works great, if not, maybe it’s the kid’s fault.
I am an educational researcher, and I might suggest that until the profession can gather around some shared ideas about goals, and procedures that can be replicated and taught to achieve those goals, teaching is going to be thought of as “whatever.”
Tracy W 10.06.05 at 3:45 pm
I think it is important to repeat that “all children can learn”. The meme that socio-economic status determines what you know far more than teaching is pretty common, it’s been referred to on this blog. And to the extent that teachers and other school staff believe it, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. (E.g. Poor Johnnie and Richie Rich have misunderstood the multi-digit multiplication algorithm and when they carry a number over they add it to the next column before multiplying. Teacher sees Poor Johnnie has done badly on the homework and thinks what a terrible thing it is to live in a society where there’s such poverty that children cannot learn. He then sees Richie Rich has done badly on the homework and wonders what’s wrong here, he should be doing well, his parents have degrees, investigates, spots the mistake and corrects Richie Rich the next day.)
And yes, the barriers in learning may be far higher for poor children. That to me means they have to put far more effort in. The barriers to my learning to talk clearly were far higher than for average kids, but now I think the effort my parents and speech therapists put in and made me put in was worth it.
erica 10.06.05 at 3:46 pm
Reply to Jenny—
When I said “many of us” I meant just that… I hear a lot of talk against scripted curricula (and even more talk against it when I was a teacher). Typically, other professions “scripts” are not literally scripts– they do not literally spell out what the professional is supposed to say. Have you seen DI or SFA or Everyday Math in action? That is exactly what they do. I used Everyday Math. There are some good parts to it—and some bad— the point is that forcing a one-size-fits all reform is rarely the solution.
I think the idea that teachers are just haphazardly fumbling through the day doing “whatever†to be insulting. They follow curricula. They design lesson plans. They are constantly evaluating their students. They adjust lessons to meet the needs of individuals in the classroom. They have professional associations. They collaborate with their peers. You’re saying that the lack of a printed page dictating words for them to say is making them less professional(?). I whole-heartedly disagree, as I believe most former teachers would.
This is not to say that scripted is necessarily and without exception bad—I’m just trying to understand both side of the issue. My major contention still stands:
What about the idea of knowledge? Who’s knowledge and ideas control these scripts? What if, according to the script, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Sally likes playing with dolls, Jimmy likes trucks, everyone loves TV, and Rosario, Yoshi, and Karim are nowhere to be found? What then? Should we accept the stereotypes? Many of the textbook companies are run by incredibly conservative folks. I have a problem with that.
pdf23ds 10.06.05 at 3:59 pm
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see the program. (If this was covered in the show, forgive the repetition.) But as long as there’s a thread on this, I wonder what the other readers think of standardized testing. My impression is that, unless very carefully implemented, and used appropriately (which rarely happens), it can be very damaging to the quality of education students receive. It puts lots of burden on the teachers to prepare with the test in mind, and often rewards them for spending time teaching testing strategy that really has no applicability outside of the test itself. It constrains what they’re able to cover during the course.
More importantly, from what I’ve heard, it also encourages the students to learn the subject in a way optimized for testing, and not useful in the real world. By being tested, not only with state assessments, but with quizzes and exams and all sorts of other teacher-written, teacher graded work, the students are left without any critical thinking ability, little observational capacity, and no broad synthesis of the subject matter in relation to the rest of their knowledge.
Are these impressions supported by the facts, or have I been the victim of exposure to hogwash?
Sara G-R 10.06.05 at 5:24 pm
Yes, “all children can learn.” I don’t think any intelligent person was ever saying otherwise. The question is what helps them learn best. Certainly there’s evidence teachers and their techniques matter. But I couldn’t help but think about the Coleman report (and subsequent analyses) throughout. This report (and Ed Trust) seem to put the blame for underachievement among low SES students on teachers and their lack of effort and know-how, rather than on poverty. Blaming poverty and saying we must address segregation and the concentration of poverty is not blaming kids, or saying we’re giving up on them. Yes, some kids do well even in high-poverty neighborhoods (as Kati keeps reminding us), but those numbers are very small, and those promising schools few and far-between. Kati and others see that and say ‘let’s study those schools–those best practices’- I see those small numbers and say we have to do something about poverty and poor neighborhoods. A different take, trying to reach the same goal- the question is which is the most effective route, and who wants to act on it?
JennyD 10.06.05 at 5:37 pm
Two answers:
Erica, the variation in teaching between classrooms in astonishing. One fourth grade teacher is doing one thing, and next door, another is doing something completely different. Imagine two operating rooms, with surgeons doing heart bypass surgery. I can guarantee you that their work will look more similar than different. That’s not true of classrooms.
Why? Why are surgeons okay performing surgeries using identical moves to other surgeons, while teachers find the same thing insulting?
I’ve studied SFA in depth, and what’s most interesting to me is who hates it, and who likes it. New teachers often like it very much because, to be honest, it offers them a powerful platform to be successful at their job on Day One. One teacher we interviewed said she actually rewrote SFA questions about text to be read aloud, and taped inside the chapter book she was reading to her students because the questions were so helpful but she realized she was not adept at managing the class and thinking up good comprehension questions.
Other teachers who like are those who see it as making their lives easier so they can add to it. For example, SFA provides lots of materials for students and teachers. Great, the teachers say, that way we can spend time finding extra materials, or planning additional questions, or improving and building on the script. Teachers are not required to reinvent the wheel each week just to teach 4th grade ELA. I’m sure there are administrators somewhere who frown on teachers doing more than script requires. I haven’t met them, but I’m sure they are out there.
As for testing, pdf, why is assessing students somehow bad? Michigan, for example, has a criterion-referenced state test that is given to students in the fall (testing what was to have been taught the previous year). The point is to both assess the student, assess the success of the previous year’s instruction, and to provide a diagnostic look at a student’s strengths and weaknesses early enough in the school year so the current teachers have a chance to remediate and help kids. What exactly is wrong with that?
harry b 10.06.05 at 6:54 pm
I think the big question is erica’s last question — what if the script is written wrong, or by the wrong people? It will be sometimes.
But I’m with jenny d, not in every detail, and not because I think scripted lessons are the ideal, but because I think that they are often better than the real alternative. Most teachers take a few years to reach the poitn that they are completely comfrotable in the classroom and in command of what they are doing. Many high-poverty schools have very few teachers who have gotten over that hump, because the pattern is for teachers in those schools either to quit in despair or to move on to easier pastures as soon as their seniority and the union contract allows them to. So sripted lessons, with the benefits jenny describes, can be invaluable.
Here’s a quote about Britain’s literacy and numeracy hour (a not-quite scripted program that Labour introduced into elementary schools) from a leading progressive educationalist who opposed its introduction:
“Well, it’s worked very well. I thought it would stifle teachers’ creativity. But what I think happened is that good teachers were already doing enough of what it demanded that they didn’t have to change it, and weaker teachers used it as a structure to pull themselves up. And its introduction got administrators looking for ways to support teachers; and again, showed the weaker administrators what they should be looking at”.
The last comment brings up a point that I should have made initially — principals matter, and what was striking about these schools was that principals were interested in, and knew about, teaching and learning. They really knew about it, not the stupid buzzwords they get from ed schools and business manuals, and wherever else they come from. They were, as we call them in my native land Head Teachers, not pseudo-cops posing as business executives. I bet not one of them started teaching as a gym teacher or football coach, either.
baowms 10.06.05 at 8:51 pm
I’m surprised none of the commentators mentioned
this much talked about article recently published in Harper’s by Kozol. Many of the issues discussed above are addressed: scripts, poverty, race. Excellent article.
pdf23ds 10.06.05 at 10:31 pm
jennyd,
The assessment aspects of the tests are OK. It’s a good thing to be able to know how different students are performing. It’s probably essential so that we can know objectively which teaching methods work and which don’t. It’s the secondary and possibly unintended effects of an educational experience in which testing is such a big component that I’m concerned about, and that I’m asking about. I mentioned some of these effects in my previous post. Many schoolteachers, at least in Texas where I had my primary education, would tell you that they felt stifled and burdened by the state mandated testing (then called TAAS), and I don’t think anyone felt that it helped the students. They said so to their classes. While the unseen benefits of the tests may outweigh their faults, I sure didn’t see that myself.
But I think I have a much bigger problem with teaching styles that put a big emphasis on testing, with one or more tests a week. (State mandated testing probably has a much smaller overall impact on the educational experience, and its larger-scale benefits more apparent.) For one, all these tests are time consuming, and take away from time that could be spent in better instruction or in other activities. For another, the only ways tests could possibly help students to learn material better are giving them feedback as to their mastery of the material covered by the test, and by giving them a motivation to study to prepare for it. I’m not sure that, on inspection, either of these reasons really justifies the reliance on tests that I experienced in my primary education. And the constant rythym of test, test, test, can even be kind of demoralizing for more creative students. Especially if they’re poorly written–and they very often are–it discourages a genuine interest in the subject.
Now, these are all the impressions of someone with no real experience in education, except as a student. So if any of this is really way off, please tell me.
JennyD 10.07.05 at 4:04 am
Pdf, your points are well taken. But consider this: Your conclusions are based on a study with an “n” of one. You are basing your entire view of how testing affects public education in the US on your own experience which probably took place years ago. One of the biggest problems with education and policy is that people think that because they have been to school, they know everything there is to know about education.
ACtually, there are a number of larger-scale studies, many from Texas, that show just the opposite. I believe that Smith and O’Day wrote the most famous of these works, in which they documented a school’s complete turnaround from thinking that student achievement was the fault of the student, to believing that teachers had the power to improve it. It was no mantra. It was accompanied by a massive shift in culture and intensive professional learning on the part of the faculty.
As for the test, test, test, how many tests are given on average, and for how long? Let’s take sixth grade. Of the average of 180 days of school, how many are taken up by tests? Not quizzes and things you took, but the nasty tests that everyone loves to hate? In my kids school, it’s about four days. They don’t do test prep because you can’t since the material was taught the previous year. So we’re talking four days. And this might yield vital information about the success of teaching methods in the prior grade. If you were running a school, and wanted kids to learn, wouldn’t you think that four days was worth learning how well an grade level of teachers were doing the jobs?
Steve LaBonne 10.07.05 at 8:49 am
pdf23ds, we have too many “creative” students who don’t know sh*t. And that’s a much worse fate for poor kids, who don’t have parents and other aspects of a middle-class support system that can help make up the deficits. That’s why we need real assessments equipped with teeth. The whining about “test test test” comes fro adults who are concerned about their own positions and not about the kids.
On another common meme, teachers and school administrators who genuninely believe that they have little influence on student learning would quit if they had any self-respect, since by their own admission they’re collecting their salaries under false pretences.
Thirdly, Kozol is an idiot. Well-menaing idiots are exactly what education doesn’t need more of.
John MacDonald 10.07.05 at 9:12 am
jennyd,
The kind of scripting found in educational programs is very different from the kind of scripting that a surgeon would use during an operation. These educational programs are designed to make any professional education unnecessary. Any person off the street should be able to follow directions and succeed. Experience shouldn’t matter either. Without needing professional education and experience, teachers can be employed more cheaply.
Just as we wouldn’t want to drag a person off the street to follow a script for an operation, would we really want to trust our children to someone who cannot recognize when the script isn’t working and who does not have a repertoire of alternate strategies for dealing with problems that may arise?
For the surgeon, while operations are similar, each case has slightly different components. The surgeon has to be able to make the fine adjustments needed to get the best results. Isn’t that true for teachers educating children? Teachers should be able to make reasonable decisions as to what is best for each child. And think of what your schooling experience would be like if it were twelve years of untrained actors following scripts from which they were not permitted to deviate. I, for one, want my children taught by accomplished teachers that have complex internalized knowledge and understanding, not by novice or pedestrian teachers who follow these teacher-proof curricula.
Harry 10.07.05 at 9:22 am
Ah Steve, you were obviously taught well how to avoid the ad hominem.
Teachers and adminstrators who really believe they cannot do anything for poor kids probably should resign. My worry about the mantra is this — it can do as much to obscure the barriers to learning poor children face as to illuminate those barriers and how to overcome them. It is not the teachers fault or the schools fault that kids come to school sick, not having had a night’s sleep, not being able to see or hear properly, not understanding how to interact with more than one or two other people in a manner that facilitates learning, lacking the sense of self-worth that comes form having a more-or-less stable home life, etc. And it is much, much, harder to teach such students than it is to teach middle class kids. The ‘every child can learn’ mantra is sometimes used (I have seen it used) to beat teachers and schools, as an alternative, rather than as a supplement, to giving them the knowledge and means to overcome those barriers. It is also used as an excuse not to deal with poverty, as erica fears. America has made a collective decision (by default) to have 20% of its kids grow up in poverty, and to have a family policy that prioritises the desires of adults over the needs of children; it doesn’t want to pay for the consequences, and “every child can learn”, althugh true, is a convenient way for many of ignoring the consequences. It also has a school system that concentrates resources on children from the most advantaged backgrounds, and holds them back from those from disadvantaged backgrounds. There’s nothing idiotic about pointing this out.
Well, that’s my rant.
Steve LaBonne 10.07.05 at 9:37 am
There are plenty of examples, KIPP being one of them, that educational achievement of poor kids CAN be greatly improved if sound, proven educational practices are substituted for ed-school bullshit. It’s time to stop accepting excuses. We cannot wait for the utopian future in which we have “dealt with” poverty, especially since the continuance of awfuls schools for poor kids guarantees that can’t happen. Yes it takes money (though some urban districts already spend quote a lot to get awful results) but dumping 3X as much money into the current system is simply a recipe for much more expensive failure.
By the way, international comparisons show that our “top” kids aren’t learning what they should, either, so pay no attention to claims that they are getting some wonderfully creative stuff denied to those kids “regimented” in KIPP; in fact the ed-school bullshit serves the privileged poorly as well. As I already noted, the difference is simply that privileged kids have all sorts of ways of getting around the deficiencies of their schooling; with poor kids, if the schools don’t get it right they’re doomed.
Harry 10.07.05 at 10:00 am
Steve, are you disagreeing with me? Or just trying to prove my point. Yep, spending more money without any reform will not improve things much. And I agree (as should be clear not only from what I’ve written here but from the many posts I’ve had on education at CT) that bold reforms are worth pursuing, not just for disadvantaged kids, but throughout the system. And ed schools could train teacher better (though the blame is shared with State Departments of Instruction and School Districts, which impose/accept silly certification/professional development requirements). And, of course, since America is so committed to maintaining high levels of poverty it would be wicked to abandon the most disadvantaged kids until that changed.
But “all children can learn” does get used to deflect attention from poverty as a cause of educational disadvantage (the “stop making excuses” response is either dishonest, or signals an inability to distinguish causes from excuses), and also gets used as an alternative to actual reform. This is part of my criticism of KIPP; insofar as it makes teachers work harder rather than better, its has limited lifespan and limited replicability. But at least it has some benefits — I’ve seen “all children can learn” used without any supplemntary reform at all.
Harry 10.07.05 at 10:03 am
John — yes, I want my children taught by those teachers too. And they will be, because I am well-off, and live in a nice neighbourhood, so the government makes sure my kid goes to a school which hires such teachers. But too many poor children go to schools which those teachers either won’t teach at, or get out of as soon as they can.
Steve LaBonne 10.07.05 at 10:06 am
I wasn’t intending to argue with you, Harry, just reinforcing some points that I think you largely agree with, but that some of the commenters above don’t seem to get.
JennyD 10.07.05 at 10:40 am
About scripts, teachers, and teacher education:
John, yes the scripts are different. But according to research I’ve done looking a hundreds of classrooms, teachers make decisions that vary wildly, much as a doctor trying to cure appendicitis by cutting off a foot. It varies that much. If teachers were following a script the way doctors, and adjusting for individual differences and needs, I’d be thrilled. But they aren’t doing that. I can prove it.
I also teach in the Ed SChool here, and it’s been eyeopening, unfortunately. Some teacher educators firmly believe that what they can teach future teachers is to have “an educational philosophy” but the work of teachig is something that must spring forth kind of organically from each student teacher. The future teachers are left with few resources and skills. Methods? I wish. There are future elementary teachers who leave without knowing how to hold a picture book when reading to young children in order to get the most effective teaching from it. There is a way to do it, and some future teachers don’t know how. Others come to class and say, I think kids who are really poor might need a different kind of material than the kids who aren’t. But they say this without ever being told that such a stance can lead to poor kids never being offered the chance to do rich, meaty schoolwork.
I think the solution is to improve Ed Schools, a project I’m engaged in. But in the meantime, maybe scripts are a good idea for those already in practice. I’m not worried about the successful teachers. It’s the others that concern me.
John MacDonald 10.07.05 at 12:22 pm
Harry,
You seem to be suggesting that schools in poor neighborhoods will never be able to recruit or hold on to good, thoughtful teachers. If that is so, shouldn’t we be addressing that issue directly? And aren’t these scripted curricula driving thoughtful teachers away from the very schools that need them? Who remembers a class as being terrific because someone gave the teacher a good curriculum to use?
By the way, I think that sending your children to private schools or schools in wealthy suburbs is no guarantee that they will have many thoughtful, capable teachers.
harry b 10.07.05 at 1:10 pm
John its not a matter of “no schools in poor areas can hold onto good teachers” whereas “schools in comfrotable suburbs are guaranteed the best”. Its just that all the incentives work in favour of the suburban schools and against schools with poor children. One of the reforms discussed in the show (I can’t remember which, I think it was the North Carolina example) addressed this partly with incentive payments (about which the administrator looked very sheepish, I noticed).
I think there’s a very unhealthy kind of machismo in the profession, especially among high school teachers, that if you don’t construct your own curriculum from scratch, your not a good teacher. And that if you are struggling it is your fault, and you should be left alone to sort it out. I also think this attitude is picked up in ed school, and that is a worse disservice than anything else they do. There’s nothing at all eccentric about the observations jennyd makes in her second long paragraph of comment 25. Good principals (there were several examples on the show) know this is bullshit, and dangerous bullshit, and they involve themselves in the educational life of the school and the classroom. Good teachers are nothing without a good curriculum, and a good curriculum enables them to become good teachers quicker than otherwise.
Are the scripted curriculums driving good teachers away from the schools that most need them? I watched the show with a good teacher who works in a good high-poverty school (one without scripts, though). She spent her first 4 years of teaching high schools developing her own curriculum without any help at all from anyone. Two of her friends recently retired and destroyed thousands of hours worth of developed curriculums because no-one in authority asked them for it. The waste is staggering. She’d have welcomed a developed curriculum that she could adapt in those first years. Now she’s doing elementary with incredibly difficult kids, she’d welcome a script, as long as she wasn’t completely tied to it (which, as jennyd points out, people almost never are).
steve — I see. I must have seemed very snarky in response, for which I apologise doubly (once for doing it, another time because you didn’t even rise to it!)
Finally, another worry (as if there aren’t enough). All the reformers emphasized the importance of getting good principals (where good encapsulates a lot). I think that’s right. But it makes it very difficult to study reform rigorously. Good reforms attract good principals. But thenit is hard to distinguish the effect of the reform from the effect of the principal. Good principals attract good teachers. But then it is hard to distinguish the effect of the teachers from that of the reform. Etc…..
Steve LaBonne 10.07.05 at 1:22 pm
Hey, I snark all the time, so since I dish it out I have to be able to take it too! ;)
Quite frankly the whole “machismo about constructing your own curriculum” thing is a real problem in higher education too, certainly in the sciences. There is no good reason why the profession shouldn’t be able to arrive at a rough consensus as to what first-year biology or chemistry students in any college ought to know. Yet recently there have been outcries from faculty at state universities here in Ohio about a legislative proposal to insure that credits for lower-division courses in a number of disciplines are transferrable among all state universities and community colleges. I’m not at all sympathetic to the professors on this one. We’re not talking about advanced courses where the individual interests of a professor could more legitimately come into play.
On the good teachers vs. “scripts” argument, there will never be enough really superior teachers to go around. All the more reason to design curricula that maximize the effectiveness of an average teacher. (Bad teachers should be unemployed.)
harry b 10.07.05 at 1:37 pm
Steve — you couldn’t get me reference where I could read more about that dispute could you? I’m under a familial obligation to write something sensible about precisely this issue (for an engineer who is appalled by the lack of standardisation in his own department). It would be a great starting point for my piece… Thanks if you do…
JennyD 10.07.05 at 1:39 pm
Hey, I hear this curriculum creation thing. I’m trying to “create” a whole course, because that’s what we do hear in higher ed. Yikes.
Meanwhile, I have to amend my testing post. While my kids aren’t tested too much, kids in NYC spend about three or four weeks a year doing nothing but taking tests. State tests, city tests, district tests, national tests. Now that IS nuts.
Steve LaBonne 10.07.05 at 1:44 pm
This is the story where I read about it.
pdf23ds 10.07.05 at 2:33 pm
jennyd said:
“You are basing your entire view of how testing affects public education in the US on your own experience which probably took place years ago.”
Class of ’02 or thereabouts. So my impressions are pretty recent, if still horribly subject to small sample sizes and limited exposure to different qualities of schools. I’m not pretending my experiences are a substitute for actually knowing anything about education.
steve labonne said:
“pdf23ds, we have too many “creative†students who don’t know sh*t. And that’s a much worse fate for poor kids, who don’t have parents and other aspects of a middle-class support system that can help make up the deficits. That’s why we need real assessments equipped with teeth.”
I agree with your first two statements. The third is a complete non sequitur, or else completely begging the question, depending on how much slack I give you. I was asking “why”, not “yea or nay”. And I’m very open to the idea that testing is necessary. But if it’s having deleterious effects as practiced, we need to recognize that and and determine as best we can where those effects are coming from, what the ideal role of testing is, and how we can train teachers not to misuse it.
And also, you seem to only be talking about yearly assessments. This is completely ignoring half of my previous post. Thinking about this over the night, I realized that the continuum of tests, from the common form of classwork/homework through pop quizzes and six-weeks/unit tests all the way up to end of year or state exams, are indeed continuous in nature. The one end ends up being very different from the other, but the use made of and the effects of any two points in between are comparable.
john macdonald said:
“The surgeon has to be able to make the fine adjustments needed to get the best results. Isn’t that true for teachers educating children?”
(Echoing jenny d. and steve here)
To some extent. On the other hand, there’s a pitfall in that, to a trained surgeon, the small adjustments may obviously be improvements, while even to a trained teacher the effects of small adjustments to the curriculum have effects that aren’t always as obvious. Oh, and many teachers start out without any curriculum at all, and so have to fabricate the whole thing, which they’re probably not really qualified to do, any more (and probably less) than the average surgeon is qualified to invent completely new procedures. And also that the adjustments routinely made to curriculum are substantial rather than fine.
To really understand how students learn and what the ideal methods of teaching are is probably harder than to understand how to operate on a human body. The only reason teaching requires less qualification is that a poor teacher can still teach some students a little, while a poor surgeon will kill.
So, while I agree with your overall point, we should also be careful in putting *too* much trust in the sensibilities of the teacher, since they’re likely to be wrong often, and we should definitely give them a sensible starting point.
Hootie 10.08.05 at 2:42 pm
Very interesting discussion by people who seem to know a thing or two about teaching.
I’m just an interested observer with a freshman in college and two 9th graders.
I’ve always considered one of the intrinsic theoretical problems with education is that there is no widely recognized “bottom line.”
From a layman’s POV that’s why we have standardized testing. So that we can get our hands around some kind of indication of success.
Also, I think that one weakness of the educational establishment is the trendiness. How many different ways to teach math, for instance, have been promulgated in the last 40 years?
Just a layman’s two cents.
Mike 10.09.05 at 1:24 am
The concern over “regimented” methods seems a bit misplaced. On whether it stifles creativity, artists typically begin by learning the fundamentals of their medium before going beyond them. This is called learning the rules before you break them. There’s a kind of romantic mythology that art and creativity is just unbridled expression freed from repressive control structures, but this is a fiction. Its true that regimentation can be excessive and pathological, but that doesn’t mean it always is, and I think its wrong to write off certain types of educational approaches on the basis that they resemble pathology. Any approach will be harmful when taken to extremes and its probably true that teaching exclusively using highly structured approaches is harmful, but they are still useful for what they do. A more free-form, “creative” approach should be something that builds on those foundations rather than taking their place.
Some people have suggested that regimented approaches are not useful in the real world, but I don’t see how that’s true. Most jobs require consistency over creativity, and though they may be repetitive, boring and unfulfilling, its better than not being able to afford healthcare or put food on the table.
Hube 10.09.05 at 9:10 am
Harry: Hube here, from our [long] past discussion of Glenn Singleton and his “Courageous Conversations.” Great topic you have going here.
I was wondering — just how much of an “incentive” would it take to get better teachers into some of the poorer schools (unions notwithstanding)? How much would it take to pay a teacher what, in effect, is “hazard pay”? $5K? $10K? $20K? I think you may misunderestimate the effect of such “incentives.” Many public school teachers will take a pretty big pay cut — even in much less dangerous non-urban schools — to teach in a more secure and learning-hospitable environment. This situation would only be magnified in the much more dangerous environs of inner-city classrooms.
Tracy W 10.09.05 at 11:09 pm
Comment 20 – “It is not the teachers fault or the schools fault that kids come to school sick, not having had a night’s sleep, not being able to see or hear properly, …”
It is also even less the teachers’ or the schools’ fault that I came to school with a speech disability. Yet, I had the speech disability, and a number of people had to work at teaching me to speak properly. People who were even less to blame for my disability than they were or are for poverty. Sometimes you’re not responsible for causing a problem, but you still can solve it. And, to shift back to schools, if other schools are solving the problem, and a school is taking money but not at least trying to copy successful solutions, then they’re being irresponsible.
And, also, just because you might not be able to teach children from poor backgrounds as much as ones from rich backgrounds doesn’t mean that it’s not worth teaching them at all. I still struggle to learn to speak foreign languages (even European ones that use the same sounds as English use them in different orders and that trips me up), but I do think it’s worthwhile studying them before going to a foreign country as I can read and write and understand a bit of what people are saying to me and they can understand a bit of what I am saying to them. Ditto for poor kids. If they spend far longer learning to read and write than rich kids, the rich kids may learn far more than them, but the poor kids can still gain from learning to read and write.
Plus – how many successful poverty eradication schemes do you know of that don’t involve education?
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