When administrators and government officials look for the top-secret, Core-aligned magic that will somehow enable academically-lower children to catch up in the learning game, we all lose. Academically- and financially-disadvantaged children who have only three-fifths as many vocabulary words at their disposal as the “average” kid cannot catch up using any secret, as-yet-unidentified sorcery disguised as “best practices.” The targets those administrators and officials are trying to hit are not standing still. Kids with bigger vocabularies are simultaneously embarked upon their own learning adventures — and they are learning new material faster due to the greater ease with which they can read and interpret written text.

No academic alchemy can solve the problem created by those vocabulary deficits. Leveling the playing field requires extra instructional time for students who have fallen behind. Those students may need another one or two hours a day in school as well as a longer school year. While exact hours will vary, no substitute exists for instructional time.

Eduhonesty: If we are serious about fixing the educational inequities in America’s educational system, we must find the resources necessary to create those longer days and extra weeks.

I’d like to suggest that readers find “This column’s for all the Charlie Brown kids” by Leonard Pitts Jr. The column has almost nothing to do with education, but it’s a blast of hope for our quiet kids, our awkward, bookish, introverted and shy kids, the kids who, in Pitt’s words, eat lunch alone. Pitts captures those kids marvelously.

Pitt’s column would make great reading for a diversity lesson. Our quiet kids need support. They need to understand that quiet and introverted are perfectly fine, a lesson that can get lost if we push too hard to force class participation. A happily-ever-after story for the right quiet kid might make his or her whole year better.

Eduhonesty: Hope — nothing we offer in the classroom matters more.

(You can put “This column’s for all the Charlie Brown kids” by Leonard Pitts Jr. in the Google bar.)

(For new readers, I am convinced that the only realistic way to pull up our lower-performing districts involves running longer school years and longer school days for students who are performing significantly below grade level. No substitute exists for teaching time. We have been frantically looking for that substitute, that piece of pedagogical magic, and we still are not closing the gap in any meaningful way between our best and worst schools.)

This graph sums up the problem with trying to expand the school year to offer more academic time to those students who have fallen behind. I am very familiar with insolvency. I watched for years as my district begged, borrowed and stole its way to putative solvency. I watched as the state threatened to take us over and told us not to issue bonds that the Board decided to issue anyway. I watched as the state fired the Board and took over. I watched as administrators were arrested. Finances were far from the only district problem the state wanted to address, but finances helped put the district on the radar, largely because we blithely ran in the red, year after year.

As I study the California insolvency graph above and other similar charts, my data crystallizes into one solid realization: We cannot reform school performance without reforming school funding. Too many districts are running near the edge and pulling out their credit card when they can’t pay all the bills. The following examples may be particularly egregious examples of misuses of funds, but my graph above makes clear that insolvency has become far from rare.

ILLINOIS MOVES TO DISBAND TWO LOCAL SCHOOL BOARDS — The Illinois State Board of Education is moving to dissolve two local school boards in historically low-performing districts. East St. Louis School District 189 and North Chicago School District 187 are both slated to have their boards removed due to poor academic performance and corrupt leadership. The East St. Louis district has not made adequate yearly progress in nine years—or for almost as long as that has been a federal requirement—and has a $12.5 million budget deficit. In North Chicago, the federal government charged the local district board’s ex-president with taking more than $800,000 in bribes from bus companies. She is currently serving time in a federal prison for a multi-state Internet fraud conviction. Under Illinois law, the State Board of Education or state superintendent can remove a local board if the district does not make sufficient yearly progress for seven consecutive years. Upon the removal of the boards, the state will appoint a new panel to take over all school matters until academic benchmarks are met. The current local boards may appeal the respective takeover decisions to the State Board of Education. Sources: Belleville News-Democrat (4/21/12), Quincy Journal (4/25/12) (http://www.nasbe.org/uncategorized/headline-review-april-23-27/)

Eduhonesty: This post has not even touched upon the inequities created by property-tax based funding, but that funding system results in large gaps in per pupil spending between districts. Federal and state bureaucracies then try to patch the system with complicated grants and loans. We can do better.

Again, zip code should not be destiny.

If you read the last post, please reread. I spent some time clarifying my issues and connections. The post has changed substantially. Thank you, all of you. The Top Secret Blog of Gloom and Doom now has well over 11,000 subscribers. Go figure. I ought to try to include something funny for a break.

Walking into a classroom today?

BY SEAN ROBINSON
srobinson@thenewstribune.com

Editor’s note: Compiled from reports to Tacoma police. Taken from the Tacoma News Tribune police beat article.

Nov. 9: Spatters of blood covered the principal’s shirt and shoes.

The school resource officer at Oakland Alternative School, answering a panicked radio call, asked what was going on. The principal said he’d just broken up a fight between two students. One had a bloody nose.

The principal said he noticed the two students confronting each other outside and ordered them into the main office. As they walked in, the fight started. One boy, 17, took another boy, 16, to the ground and started throwing punches.

The principal pulled the attacking boy away and stowed the boys in separate rooms.

The officer spoke to the younger, bloody-nosed boy first. The boy didn’t want to say anything at first.

He said he wasn’t a gangster, but his friends were, and so was the older boy. He said the older boy came at him, started talking trash, tried to pick a fight and sucker-punched him.

HE SAID HE WASN’T A GANGSTER, BUT HIS FRIENDS WERE, AND SO WAS THE OLDER BOY. HE SAID THE OLDER BOY CAME AT HIM, STARTED TALKING TRASH, TRIED TO PICK A FIGHT AND SUCKER-PUNCHED HIM.

The boy wouldn’t say anything else. He wouldn’t say what the trash talk was about.

The officer spoke to the other boy, who said even less.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” the boy said.

The officer relayed the story he’d heard. Was that true?

“I don’t know,” the boy said.

Did he throw the first punch?

“Yep.”

The officer told the boy he was under arrest for misdemeanor assault. The boy stayed calm.

The officer spoke to the boy’s mother. She said her son had said a rival gang was after him, believing he was the gunman in a recent shooting in Tacoma’s Salishan area. The mother believed that was the basis for the fight at the school.

The officer booked the boy into Remann Hall, adding a charge of marijuana possession after staffers found a packet of pot in the boy’s shoe.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/crime/article44918637.html#storylink=cpy

A perusal of the same newspaper has other articles about schools. In one, we are told that police are looking for a Foss High School student who apparently pointed a gun at another student on Monday. It’s not clear exactly where the incident happened, but the school went into lockdown.

Eduhonesty: I taught in an alternative high school some years ago. I remember the police dogs coming in. I remember students discussing eating their marijuana. In a pinch, humans can eat dried grass, no problem. This article has so much content that needs exploring but I think I’ll stick with one aspect of the academic crisis referred to in this article, the crisis of gangs and violence in our schools in a time when teacher evaluations are heavily based on student behavior. In particular, I fear a brain-drain that I am watching from the sidelines.

(Click to enlarge pictures.)

Teacher evaluations based on a common rubric like the sample above are inherently unfair. That sample is only a small part of a large rubric that can result in a more than twenty-page evaluation. I have one somewhere. The standard evaluation in Illinois has become huge, so huge that at times its accuracy must be suspect. In an hour, no administrator can observe all 20-some pages worth of behaviors. Admin can put “not observed” but I know that some administrators are “inferring” as they decide to score categories they have not specifically observed.

How does the rubric work? In a system commonly used by districts, a teacher would receive 1 – 4 points in each category in an evaluation, so my snippet above would be worth from 3 – 12 points depending on an observers view of behaviors in the classroom.

Administrators in alternative schools understand an alternative high school is a different animal, so I am not concerned about that alternative school as much as I am concerned about teachers in “feeder” schools. Some schools supply a higher percentage of students expelled for weapons, drugs and other offenses. Some schools contain many more gang members than others, gang members regularly attending classes where they are setting up the marijuana etc. sales that supply the gang with revenue. When expectations for teachers in those schools are the same as they are for teachers in middle class schools with limited or no gang activity, teachers in gang-infested schools end up being trapped and potentially set up to fail.

I’d like to ask readers to pause to consider how heavily the category of student participation might be affected by numbers of gang members in a classroom. Then think about how much better participation might be (on average) in a classroom filled with college-bound students.

In earlier times, when teachers were assessed based on their own efforts and performance, with an understanding of urban challenges, the system worked. Now, student behavior and class performance have become a heavy component of many evaluations and teachers are at a disadvantage when they choose to work in urban or disadvantaged areas. Teachers lose points for student misbehavior or off-task behavior, reducing evaluation scores. How might a teacher manage that problem of detached students? The problem of students who have gone to school mostly to sell drugs?

Here’s my take: If I had started working in these times, I’d have moved out of disadvantaged schools almost immediately and never gone back. When student behavior determines a large percentage of an overall evaluation, the best tactical move is to seek a school with students who intend to go on for further education, a school usually found higher up the socioeconomic ladder. Those schools pay better and now they frequently result in higher evaluations, since college-bound students are more likely to demonstrate the behaviors that give high points on the teacher evaluations.

The category “student participation” only forms part of the picture. Student interest and participation will also affect questions formed and asked. “Discussion techniques” and “quality of questions” will also be affected by class composition. If I have a class that is academically very low, I have to ask simpler questions more often. If nothing else, I will be asking these questions to prime the questioning pump, to get students to begin to answer questions so that I can go on to harder questions once the discussion develops momentum. In a stronger class, I might be able to leap straight into the deep, critical thinking questions, but I know from experience that providing academically-lower classes with a few “wins” before I move into the tougher questions works better than a nonstop stream of complex demands. I risk losing evaluation points now if I start with those simpler questions, though.

I understand the rationale for including student responses in evaluation rubrics. Still, when student responses become a heavy determinant in evaluations, the smart move has to be leaving our academically-weakest schools. The high schools where I live send more than 90% of their students to college. Those classes will contain higher levels of academic motivation overall than classes in gang-heavy neighborhoods where student preoccupations with safety and survival, not to mention drug revenues, may sometimes trump academics.

What’s the effect of student-based performance evaluations on staffing? I talked to a former colleague a few weeks ago.

“Oh, (my still withheld name!),” she said, “they are all new. All of the old teachers are gone. It is lonely.”

My colleague is putting in one more year before she retires. Many colleagues shifted to other teaching jobs last year. They moved socioeconomically up when they could and, if not, to higher paying districts. A number retired earlier than they had intended.

The young, smiling faces in my old school seem quite likable. I went to visit a few weeks ago. But I talked to a younger colleague who mentioned the existence of a problem they keep running into now at the school. An enormous amount of specific knowledge has walked out the door. The people who know the details of giving certain tests and managing certain procedures? In some cases, most or even all of them have left.

When my colleague above finishes her last, lonely year and retires, she will take with her an in-depth understanding of the science standards, equipment, and procedures that no one else possesses. She has also run a horticulture project almost entirely on her own, finding the materials — often paying for them herself — and teaching students how to raise vegetables and household plants. During holiday seasons, students sold what they grew, subsidizing new materials purchases. That project is only peripherally in the curriculum. Many students loved growing flowers and vegetables, but when my friend leaves, those florae are likely to become part of the past. Who will step up for all the unpaid, time-consuming work that project requires? My colleague’s extra work might be worth a couple of “professional responsibility” points on the twenty-page evaluation, but it’s basically a labor of love by a woman who loves to teach and never expected to be rewarded.

My colleague might have stayed longer in a more-supportive environment, an environment that did not include an evaluation system that many older teachers regard as a “gotcha” of sorts. They remember when the feedback they received felt mostly appreciative and positive. Now, they receive page after page of well-meaning suggestions for improvement. Even when a teacher gets a “3,” meaning he or she is proficient, suggestions for improvement may be included in final paperwork.

The rubric referred to above is not national, but affects millions of teachers. Other states have other rubrics. The larger problem lies in the fact that evaluations are now being used primarily as teacher-improvement tools. I suggest that we decouple evaluations and improvement – creating two separate systems, one to be used to improve pedagogy and one to evaluate teachers. Otherwise, smart teachers will head to districts that will provide them with more positive feedback — districts with stronger student participation and more motivated student behavior.

Or they will just quit.

(Please pass this on. This feels like one of the truest posts I’ve written in months.)

Alas, this student did not benefit from divine intervention. He failed. The test did not get him down, though. You can classify this kid as “resilient.” Or you can classify him as “oblivious.” Pass or fail, he always has a great attitude. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, frankly.

I did not write the test. It was written by an East Coast consulting firm. I tried furiously to teach the underlying math, but that math was about three years above that boys academic operating level. It was years above the operating level of every student in that class.

Eduhonesty: I remain genuinely flummoxed. Should this boy feel bad? No! That test was an unfair test. Frankly, any test not specifically taken from appropriate instruction should be considered unfair. No one should ever see unfamiliar material on a classroom test. No teacher should be forced to regularly give tests with unfamiliar material, as I was throughout last year. We did not have the time to cover all that material. You can’t cram three or more years of instruction into weeks or even months. If you could, all of America’s academic problems would have been solved decades ago.

Still, I find that boy’ cheerful lack of concern disquieting. He ought to care. I think. Or should he? If someone kept giving me graduate physics tests that I could not understand, my healthiest response might be to hand my problems to a higher power while psychologically exiting the testing scene.

What, I failed again? Oh. Did you know that (I forget who) actually likes vegetable pizza? Can you believe that?

That was my boy, a master of non sequiturs and subject changes. He always had a smile. In truth, I think discussing pizza preferences after an epic testing fail makes perfect sense. If you ever read this, Skater Boy, I know you will recognize that test. For what it’s worth, I loved having you in class every single day. I am sorry about all those tests. I was not sure if I was ready to quit so I wanted to try to hold on to my job.

I really had no clue what to do. No one was giving me any options. No one was listening to my protests or objections. I tried my hardest anyway. I am sure you know that.

My student’s interpretation of the PARCC test. Fortunately, he is a pretty upbeat kid. Incomprehensible tests don’t bother him much.

(For all U.S. teachers)

I’ve gone over testing in this blog. And over testing. And over testing. If readers are not becoming bored, I certainly am. I am sometimes tempted to drop the blog and start writing zombie romances.

“Urgggg”…. He moaned, unable to tell her that he loved her. His gray arms reached for her in the night.
“Warrrhhhggg,” she groaned, her one eye fixed on his shambling frame. She knew what he meant. They had never needed words.

But I can’t let go of testing yet.

So I will simply lay out exactly what I think we need to do about the Testing Monster. We need to cap total testing days. I can see no reason why a school should need more than a few afternoons at the start of the year and a few afternoons toward the end of the year for testing.

We should use a robust, computerized adaptive test at the start of the school year to get a baseline measurement of student learning. We can repeat that same test near the end of the year to measure academic progress. One short, additional benchmark test might be conducted a few times throughout the year to measure math and reading progress more informally.  Or we could use only the one adaptive test three times a year, at the beginning, middle and end, making that single test both our annual assessment and our benchmark, progress test. Ideally, we will then test for less than a week of the total school year.

Those annual state standardized tests that are not adaptive in character should be eliminated. A significant portion of America’s students are getting annihilated by those tests, as state interactive report cards clearly document. Regularly being demolished by tests cannot be good for those students, especially when worried principals and teachers are practically begging students to do their best. Adults can easily push students too hard, ignoring the stress and confusion they are creating, when merit bonuses, evaluations or even job retention depend on test results.

All state standardized tests used should be adaptive in character. Students should be competing with their own past scores, not other students. If a student received a 210 on the math portion of the MAP^® test in the fall, that student should be trying to push that number up to 220+ in the spring, for example. Goals can be selected based on individual student situations.

A few questions to ponder:

1) What is the purpose of our tests anyway? If the purpose is to know how our students are doing, we do not need to spend multiple weeks of the school year testing them to find that out. We should not need more than one week total, with a possible additional benchmark test midyear.

2) To what extent is current testing driven by financial forces? Just as the tobacco industry has a vested interest in protecting cigarettes, a number of very large publishing companies and educational consortium members have a vested interest in protecting America’s deeply-entrenched testing industry.

3) We keep adding tests. Why? The answer to this question may be directly related to the answer to question number two above.

We are certainly working harder as we try to get ready for all these tests, but until we reclaim at least a few testing weeks for teaching, we cannot be said to be working smarter.

(Tip for new teachers and anyone interested.)

Time for a practical post. According to Erin Brodwin of Business Insider, “research suggests that both the cold air from outdoors as well as the dry air from indoors may play a role in protecting the aerosol droplets we sneeze and cough into the air, allowing them to more easily spread from one sick person to another.

Plus, stuffy, unventilated indoor air could make it easier for colds to spread; a 2011 study of crowded college dorms in China found that in rooms with poorer ventilation, colds were more likely to thrive.”

The wind brought November to Illinois last night, after an afternoon in the sixties. I walked the Chicago Botanic Gardens with a girlfriend yesterday. Today I will be looking for matching gloves.

I strongly recommend a big bottle of hand sanitizer for the classroom. I suggest specifically laying out rules for its use. From past experience, I’d suggest you keep your sanitizer by your desk or toward the front of the room and in sight. Mischievous kids have been known to drop handfuls on seats when I put it in the back of the room. If students are getting up, you want them coming toward you, rather than away from you.

Be sure to smell the sanitizer before you purchase it. Boys will mostly decline to use strong floral or sweet scents. You want a pleasant, clean smell that appeals to the group. If you are feeling generous, you might also lay in some of those little bottles from Bath and Body Works. They tend to be fragrant, often fruity or floral. I share them with girls who ask and they seem to consider those scents a treat.

P.S. I recomment Tdap shots. Pertussis can make an adult or child sick for weeks or even months. If you work in a school, you might ask your doctor about this.

In this time of computer technology, reading instruction can and should be to some extent an individualized program – and NOT one that terminates in elementary school. I have frankly received too many seventh and eighth grade students who were reading at a first to third-grade level despite having been born here or having arrived as a toddler. If these students were in special education, that reading deficit might be more understandable, but any student who began school in the United States should learn to read, absent special education issues.

What is going wrong here?

I’d like to know. Because opening up comments always leads to spam, I am going to offer an alternative option. If you would like to answer this question, try jocelyntheplaid@gmail.com — I hope this works.