Beware "Reality" in the Classroom

Generally when it comes to reality television viewing, I'm all for showing any and everything that normal folks wouldn't usually get see. Ice Road Truckers, Deadliest Catch, Ax Men, and even Jon and Kate generally have some value in that the viewing public gets to see another side of lives that we'd otherwise know nothing about. In this vein, I momentarily thought a reality show about schools and teaching would similarly make for some quality viewing.

In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, the Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported Mayor Michael Nutter is backing a new reality show starring Tony Danza in which cameras follow him for a year of teaching in Philadelphia's Northeast High school. After initially liking the idea, it now seems to me there is a huge potential for this show to simply turn into another piece of reform propaganda that calls itself "reality," but in practice is actually quite controlled and looks nothing like what first year teachers in big cities encounter.

Anyone who has ever taught in a high needs school can tell you there are literally hundreds of different variables that go into forming a new teacher's first year experience. From getting classes veteran teachers don't want to navigating the different layers of administrative support (or lack thereof), these teachers go through a gauntlet of issues that force many out of the profession before they've ever really been given a fair chance. Yet in this situation with the Mayor's Office, a television network, and a former television star involved, I get the impression that very little will be left to chance.

That is, there's no way they show him getting into situations he can't handle, or with "regular students" behaving as they would if they weren't on TV. I also assure you the first time there's a disciplinary issue, Tony Danza will get through to the office, and an AP will promptly be on the case. If not, the city retains the right to edit out any and all content they don't approve of, and you can bet that nothing truly objectionable will ever come across the screen.

I can see the season unfolding right now. Tony Danza goes into a classroom knowing nothing, but he's given a group of hand selected kids who will act up enough to make the show interesting, but are actually all pretty good students. He then learns something about "teaching," and turns the class around in a typical feel good Hollywood story. The only thing we'll be missing is the reality.

Teaching in big city schools is hard work, and most new teachers who do it don't have a guardian mayor or network on their shoulders helping them out. Now I know Mayor Nutter as a politician and I respect him, but I hope there are some serious disclaimers put on this show about how much reality is actually going on. If that doesn't happen, the public will be left with yet another white-washed example of urban public schooling that doesn't address the enormous complexities and variables at play for incoming teachers.

It just seems like everyone is going to win here except the schools as a whole. Danza gets exposure he hasn't had since the 80's and people saying "wow, he's such a great teacher!" The mayor and schools get to show a national audience how reform is working in Philadelphia. And A&E gets to say they are showing what city schools are really like. Meanwhile, the public sees a situation where city schools don't look all that bad, and the incentive to continue quality reform is diluted. Even worse, people might decide to become teachers without realizing the classroom they see Tony Danza succeeding in is only slightly more "real" than Michelle Pfeiffer's in Dangerous Minds, and that many of the victories they are seeing are merely a new form of fiction.

Who knows though? Maybe it's just like this in other reality shows, but I just don't pick up on it up because I don't know anything about deep sea fishing, trucking, or having sextuplets. I do know about teaching though, and I've seen way too many "great teachers" helped by a littany of unseen factors succeed, while the completely competent teacher next door fails simply because of a lack of connections within the school's bureaucracy. I fear the same thing will happen here, and I hope Tony Danza, Michael Nutter, and A&E remember this and act as responsibly as possible in portraying the real classroom experience.

An Open Letter to Bill Maher

Dear Mr. Maher,

As a fan of your show, I have heard you take exception in the last year with a couple of different ideas/groups. The first is the power of teachers unions, and the stranglehold they have on educational policy. I've been a public school teacher for seven years, and I completely agree with you on this point. Additionally, I largely support the Obama Administration's support of charter schools, which treat teachers as independent professionals, rather than interchangeable factory parts. Secondly, you have spoke a number of times about America's need to constantly grow its economy in order for companies to make money. You usually say something along the lines of "why do we need to grow? Can't we just have enough?" Again, I completely agree with this sentiment as well. I think the nexus between these two seemingly unconnected issues is a perfect topic for you to address on Real Time because they are completely ignored by both the democrats and the republicans in terms of current educational policy.

Nowhere in the mainstream media is there any sort of dialogue about the why both parties endorse the core ideas behind NCLB. Now most teachers oppose NCLB because of the demands it places on both teachers and students. I oppose NCLB because it assumes that our country should be a place where 100% of all students are on grade level by 2014. This is an idea as "the talking snake," but it is taken as gospel by virtually all of our elected leaders.

Now I understand there are important racial concerns addressed in NCLB geared towards eliminating the achievement gap. This is an important consideration and should not be cast aside lightly. However, with the virtual elimination of vocational education nationwide, policy makers are producing a large generation of students of all races who will leave high school completely unable to operate in higher education, nor have vocational work skills that would allow them to earn a middle class incomes straight out of high school.

Additionally, I find NCLB to be an fairly racist law because it seeks to promote high quality education for poor students of color, yet it reality it actually leaves minorities from poorer neighborhoods with fewer options. For example, since graduating from law school seven years ago I have taught in the South Bronx, West Philadelphia, and rural Tennessee. Throughout my tour, I have been amazed at how schools make kids feel stupid because some of them cannot pass grade level tests. However, while a portion of children of all races will always have trouble with school, and thus not go on to become doctors and lawyers, white children from suburbs and the rual areas are generally more likely to learn vocational skills through family and community connections. For example, virtually everyone of my kids in Tennessee's dad is a contractor of some sort, and my kids who have trouble in school will undoubtedly learn a useful trade whether it is taught in school or not.

In contrast, this is very different for the kids I taught in cities who are not assured of learning something useful before they turn 18. While many kids from the cities are extremely bright in school, and should have every opportunity to move through quality schools and into elite colleges, some portion of these children will always struggle in school, yet because of a lack of opportunities in their communities for vocational training like kids in the suburbs and rural areas get, they will in effect be penalized twice for going to schools that require "all children to learn," or some other catchword nonsense, and live in communities where not as many vocational skills are floating around. As a society, we then lose more money when students who barely graduate from high school take out federal loans to go to tech colleges when they could have been learning those same skills in high school had we not been obsessed with leaving no child behind and sending all students on to college.

And speaking of nonsense, as we get closer to 2014 when all students will supposedly be on grade level, there is more and more pressure on schools leaders at all levels to change tests so that it appears as though progress is being made. Because we do not have any sort of national standardized test to let us know how students are doing in separates parts of the country, the fifty individual states are under tremendous pressure to show that their kids are making progress or else they risk losing federal funding. So whenever you see that test scores are up in Tennessee, Pennsylvania, or wherever, you might want to remember that those cash strapped states have a tremendous incentive to say that their kids are learning because they are doing better on the tests that the states themselves wrote and paid Princeton Review and McGraw Hill to administer. I mean really, do you think any governor is going to let those scores slip when all it takes it a little tweaking in the test to show just how much smarter kids are this year than they were last?

The time has come to de-stigmatize students who don't go to college so that we can actually start teaching skills that low performing students can use to become happy, productive, tax paying citizens, instead of angry and dysfunctional adults. Forget the absurd specifics of getting there... even the idea that we'd want to live in a society where 100% of our children go on to advanced degrees is stupid. People always say there is value in all work, yet we refuse to make that a part of our educational thinking. We will always need mechanics, and HVAC technicians, nurses aids, and bus drivers, so why not actually plan for this and let kids who struggle enjoy school rather than constantly reminding them through assessment how much they can't do and how they are letting their whole community down if they can't master pre-calculus or whatever college prep lunacy we use to torture the kids whose gifts lie outside of the academy.

Our economy demands that we have work ready graduates from high school, and our schools are drastically failing in this respect. And other than calling for more charter schools, President Obama has done nothing to make the situation better. He is just following President Bush's failed lead at throwing money at schools for all the wrong purposes, and graduating more students who are not capable of doing much at all. The sensible thing to do would be to create a national standardized test to find out where our kids actually rank, and admit that all students are not supposed to become rocket scientists and brain surgeons. Second, we need to make sure students everywhere have access to schools that treat their individual progress as important, and not just their value as a test score to their respective community. Kids from the ghetto who score really well need to go to schools with other highly performing peers. Kids who struggle constantly need to have options to make school time an important place for learning marketable skills. It's time to make schools important again, and the only way that will happen is if we drop the charade of high standards for all and actually teach useful things. Only then can we claim that no child has been left behind.

As Jon Stewart has remarked on more than one occassion, it's sad that our society's best reporting seems to be coming from comedians. But you are one of the best, and your courage in challenging assumed conventions is vitally important in our society. I hope you'll bring this issue and these thoughts to light on Real Time so that our children and our country can finally start to move forward after what has amounted to a lost decade in educational policy.

Sincerely,

Stephen Lentz

The Least Respected Profession

I apologize to my half dozen or so loyal readers for the long hiatus, but apparently going on summer break with a one-year-old at home is not conducive to blogging.  I guess it's just as well though, as one of the best parts about being a teacher is having a clear break between years to reflect on what I've done and what I hope to accomplish in the coming year.  However, as the summer comes to a close and I start to think about the new school year, I hope that the complaining nature of this post will not be a sign of things to come in either my school or classroom.

I was having a drink with a friend the other day and I started talking about the lack of respect that teachers garner in a professional capacity.  Now when I have this conversation with teachers, they usually just nod in agreement.  However, when I raise the topic with non-teachers they are always quick to point out that teachers hold an incredible amount of esteem within their communities.  "Oh you teach?  That's great!  You must love your job!" is what he always hears when teaching comes up as a topic.  And I hear that too.  But the problem is that people often say that in the same way that people usually talk about citizens who volunteer to do things.  As in "you teach the homeless to read?  That's wonderful!"  or "you're a foster parent from abused animals?  That's amazing!  I'd like to do something like that!"

These comments in and of themselves are both flattering and show the potentially high value that our society places on teaching.  However, there is another side.  Of course there is the meager pay.  In a society that places numerical value next to its most vaunted professions, it's hard to take one seriously where the pay is so awful.  But that's actually not my point in this article, and I'll allow it to go by the wayside for now.  My main concern about the lack of respect for teachers comes from the bi-partisan attitude that teachers as a professional group are increasingly unable to control education policy.

Think about it for a minute.  Who are the "reformers" in education today?  Most are people with very few experiences actually doing the work of teaching, but are instead politically connected and subscribe to the dogma that all children can and will learn at high levels no matter what else is going on in their lives.  I happen to agree with this premise as well when it taken on in an open an honest forum about child development, community involvement, and social conditions.  But when those other factors are just thrown by the wayside as "excuses" and teachers and schools bear the full responsibility for healing all of our society's excesses, I simply have trouble respecting this regurgitated educational dogma.

In no other profession do we blame the people doing the lion's share of the work for the situations they encounter and how their work is judged.  No one ever blames the police because crime is on the rise.  They say that there are other social forces at work, and that they listen to what the police have to say about how to fix the situation.  No one ever blames the armed forces for not achieving objectives in a war.  Rather, the entire framework for the war is reexamined with professional soldiers advising civilian leaders on how to right the ship.  Same with doctors... and lawyers... and even with business institutions.  But with teachers, public leaders legislate standards based on no input from professional teachers, and they increasingly blame the profession of teaching for situations that both teachers and schools did not create but are expected to amemd.

We have children in our society who don't succeed largely because our economy is based on large numbers of people not succeeding, and it is shocking to me that both the democrats and republicans are only presenting the American public with the same limited answers for reforming a system that is so much larger than the schools.  They are advocating some advancements to be sure: moving towards national standards is a good idea, as is increasing teacher pay, going to year round schooling, and increasingly using community-based charter schools in chronically failing districts.  But the focus on high-stakes testing, lengthening the school day, and cutting funding for large numbers of extra curricular activities both in and out of the classroom is simply not productive, and the teaching profession has been saying so for years.

It simply comes down to this.  Educating a child is a highly complex set of endeavors on the part of many different responsible adults, yet in recent years more of these responsibilities have fallen on the shoulders of educators, while at the same time the ability of teachers to comment on, and govern their own profession has slipped dramatically.  Education reform is serious business, and ought to be taken seriously.  But it is maddening to see NCLB flag wavers spend so much of their time talking about how to get rid of "bad teachers" (try raising pay... it works everywhere else) when there really are more pressing issues to discuss about how we can create a society that actually creates options for children rather than limit their chances to become happy and productive members of society.  Perhaps if the people who know children best were taken more seriously, the answers might actually present themselves.

The Problem with Brooks' Analysis of the HCZ

Between applying for administrative positions and finishing up my last weeks of the school year, I haven't had a chance to post recently. However, while I have not been writing, I've certainly been keeping up with the educational acumen of New York Times columnist David Brooks and the firestorm of blogger criticisms he's drawn.

Between Robert Pondiscio and Corey Bower's respective roasts of Brook's piece on the successes of schooling within the Harlem Children's Zone, I really don't have anything to add. While I wrestled with a tiller in Corey's nascent backyard garden, he explained that he too thinks the Promise Academy's success is stunning, and that it should be replicated wherever possible if it is in fact responsible for the marked gains. Corey noted, however, that the massive infusion of money and resources into both the academy and the Children's Zone makes it ridiculous for Brooks to claim academic achievement came merely from a "No Excuses Culture." Agreed.

The Benefits of Teacher's Unions

So in typical Stephen Lentz fashion, I am going to turn around and argue a seemingly opposite point from what I've previously written.

In my May 1st posting, I made a case against the waste that comes from big city teacher's unions. However, I realize large cities and their complex bureaucracies often create highly political situations that unfairly penalize teachers for failures they are not responsible for.

For example, we'll consider a hypothetical. A veteran teacher at an underperforming school gets a new principal. Let's also assume this principal works for a Joel Klein or Michelle Rhee type-reformer who wants immediate and quantifiable results. In this situation, the principal won't spend a whole lot of time evaluating her talent at the beginning of the year. Instead, she starts laying plans for which teachers she can give "unsatisfactory" ratings in order to create openings for the following year. The principal has to do this, because in a traditional union setting if she don't start this process early, she will be stuck with teachers for a longer period of time.

The problem here, and with similar examples, is principals often start this hostile process without honestly evaluating their talent and identifying the problems within their schools. Not only does this wipe out any institutional memory among the faculty, it also distracts the school from its core mission of raising achievement. Now the critic of unions would claim here that the principal should have the power to remove "bad" teachers, and the union only stands in the way.

However, in our current big cities principals have both tremendous power as well as tremendous responsibilities. Principals are expected to continually make progress and/or clean house in order to keep their jobs. When the year begins, principals honestly don't know whether their scores will go up, but they certainly want to bring some of their own people in to lay a groundwork for a successful school. Therefore, by starting the process of firing teachers early in the year, they ensure they will have something to show their bosses in June. For example, "these scores didn't go up, but I got rid of these four teachers."

Now I have no problem getting rid of unproductive teachers. But in a system where everything from hiring and transfers, to pensions and salary ladders is controlled by a large impersonal bureaucracy with a politically active leadership, teachers have really no choice but to form into unions. Because there is no way for teachers to independently leave one school within a district and go and work down the street, teachers are forced to maintain a level of militancy against the administration. And this is really an awful system for everyone.

It's terrible for teachers because they lose their professional autonomy by locking into rigid work rules and pay scales; it's terrible for administrators because they cannot get rid of people they don't want to work with; and most of all, it's terrible for students because they have to attend schools full of teachers who may or may not share their administration's vision of the school, but don't have a whole lot of say in where they work.

So even thought I think we should transition to a system where teacher's unions are not necessary, they certainly remain vital in our present structure of failing big city schools. Good or bad, without these unions, way too many good teachers would be fired for reasons that are purely politically expedient for their principals. Moreover, once they are forced out of their schools, they are simultaneously out of the entire district until the end of eternity.

This is not fair to teachers, and it's certainly not fair to the students they serve. A new system of managing teachers and principals is certainly needed. But in the meantime, this teacher will tolerate the union.

Reconciling the Achievement Gap with a Living Wage in the Workplace

Deborah Meier in her Education Week blog posting Bridging Differences. April 30, 2009.

"The magical effect on our economy of higher test scores depends on the existence of enough jobs that pay better; jobs that "require" better-educated people and that can't be outsourced more cheaply. And scores that don't rank! Their calculations are unbelievably naïve—at best. It's as though if everyone's scores went up, then everyone's wages would, too. Who will make the hospital beds, sweep the floors, and mow the lawns? And why shouldn't they be well-paid, too?"

In discussing her opposition to the McKinsey & Company's report on the economic costs of America's achievement gap, Meier brings up a great point that I have long shared about the problem with expecting all students to succeed in a purely academic environment. It's incredibly unfair because it sets up a situation where students who simply do not thrive in the classroom are made to feel inferior because they know they are not advancing like their peers.

Now in most of the world's other industrialized nations, this is not a problem because vocational education is not looked down upon in anyway, and students are taught to cultivate talents that they are actually good at and can earn a living from later on. Now I'm not naive enough to think we can ever have as mono racial of a past as Sweden or Germany, but there is something to be said for countries that understand some students will have to do society's heavy lifting later on in life in order for the nation to be productive.

Therein lies the nexus between the twin reform goals of 1) erasing the achievement gap and 2) providing a living wage to all members of our society. This seemingly consistent line of progressive thinking is particularly vexing to me because the two goals are mutually exclusive given the confines of current educational reform dogma.

I believe that in many a reformer's thinking, there is a slighting of the "dignity in all work" half of their brain by the more well developed and socially acceptable "no child left behind" lobe. That part of the mind focuses all its attention on making sure that 100% of our nation's children are prepared to graduated from college and enter a world where unemployment stands at zero percent and no one ever has to clean a toilet, fix a car, or mow a lawn.

Now don't get me wrong, the number one goal of our educational policy makers should be to eliminate the achievement gap, and the needs of every single child in our public schools should be met.

However, someone needs to tell Chancellor Klein and the good Reverend Sharpton that even after the achievement gap is erased and children of color no longer fail at a disproportionate rate, there still will be some who fail, just as a portion of white students will also continue to disappoint our visions of economic perfection envisioned in the McKinsey report.

The sad fact is, our market-based economy depends on some people to fail, because we need them to fill our low wage jobs. What I don't understand, is why in 21st Century America we still tolerate anyone working in any profession without the benefit of a legitimate living wage?

It should be the goal of educators to make sure all students have a path to productivity even if twelve years of academic education turns out to have not been a match. Similarly, our leaders should also enact living wage legislation.

And ultimately, we all should strive to eliminate the negative stigma in educational circles which leads us to believe that all children who don't become bond traders or doctors have in some way been left behind. Before we make them suffer through thirteen years of mostly useless schooling, there needs to be a stigma-free way to teach legitimate trade and citizenship skills so that all can be successful in the jobs that cannot be outsourced, and should not be looked down upon.

Just as we need people of all races leading our society, we also need people of all races running our society. And the people who do our toughest jobs need to know from a young age that all work is valued, and that they will be able to earn a living wage and the respect of their peers even if school was hard and a trip to college never came.

Possible Mayoral Takeover in Nashville

For the last few weeks there has been an intermintant march of stories in the local media about a possible takeover of the Metro schools by first term mayor Karl Dean.  It's been a strange situation to follow, as a number perplexing changes are simultaneously taking place within the school district.

For starters, the district has been placed in some form of corrective action by the Tennessee State Department of Education.  What exactly is going on is hard to tell, but it seems the state took over the decision making process of Metro last summer by firing, reassigning, and demoting a bunch of administrators, only to reshuffle many again in the fall.  Simultaneously, the elected school board hired a new director of schools after a protracted search, but I believe his power has been limited due to the continuing buzz surrounding a possible takeover by the mayor.

As of now, the mayor is in a bit of a holding pattern pending the release of this year's TCAP test results measuring the district's progress.  Seeing as large segments of the Metro schools have failed to make AYP for the past five years,  I have the distinct impression this year will be no different, and the mayor will continue with his plan.

Previously, I have stated my strong support for not only creating more charter schools, but for also completely scrapping public schools altogether and moving to a purely charter system.  Along those same lines, a mayoral takeover could only be an improvement over the general mayhem that I've witnessed in only two years of following this district.  The mayor has repeatedly stated that the district's mere three charter schools are not enough for its 75,000 student population, and one would think this number would increase with a takeover as it did in New York and other cities.

Additionally, there is presently no clear district leadership structure, nor does there seem be any attempts at bringing in new talent to its administrative core; in two years, I've never seen an single administrative job posted, other than the Direct of Schools vacancy.  The introduction of TFA and TNTP's Teaching Fellows program is a major step forward, but as far as I can tell, this happened largely at the Mayor Dean's urging, rather than any sort of independent initiative of the board.

So hopefully this will go through, and the Metro schools can start marching towards reform in the same way that other large districts have nationally.  I fully recognize that within an era of severe budgetary limits on education, the possibility for real change is limited by most systems of governance.  But in the case of Metro Nashville and its dearth of clear and competent leadership, it seems to me that having the mayor in charge of schools could only be an improvement.