I see two ways towards improvements. Firstly, central offices take take up our proposals like the Toledo Plan, and we can negotiate better ways of evaluating and mentoring teachers, and more efficient methods of terminating bad teachers. We also need more efficient methods of terminating bad principals. But we need to approach this with open eyes. No matter how many teachers and principals we terminate, we won’t be able to replace them in high poverty neighborhood schools until we improve their school climate.

Secondly, we need to look at evaluation of principals. In scxhools like mine, even the best are so overwhelmed that they go weeks at a time without having a chance for classroom instruction to enter their minds. The biggest reason, by far, is the lack of alternative schools that allow for a credible assessment of disciplinary consequences. Principals who are always chasing their tails do to our “catch and release” disciplinary policies. They spend the majority of their time cajoling and bluffing students who are chronically disruptive.

Outsiders should keep this in mind when they read about the occassional high poverty, high performing school. They have plenty of alternative slots; those alternative slots are called neighborhood schools. When a student at our KIPP School threatens a teacher, how long does it take for the offender to be bounced into my school, Centennial? The principal at the lower poverty school next to mine school has a catchy saying for the students, “You want to be ghetto. Fine. We’ll send you back to Centennial.”

Which gets us back to ineffective teachers. The termination process is not that hard. But why should a principal who is already working more than 90 hours a week take on a new task when he probably won’t be able to find a competent replacement? In my experience, principals would be happy to take up the union’s offer to negotiate more efficient termination processes. Its the central offices, that tend to be divorced from reality, that do not want to give up control.

Regardless, the Toledo Plan would efficiently allow us to terminate, or counsel out of the profession, the worst 10%, and keep the worst 10% of new teachers from becoming tenured. Getting rid of the worst of any group would give you the biggest bang for the buck. After taking that relatively easy first step, we could then move on to the more complicated steps.

But I’ve got to say that I get a weird feeling when addressing those issues because they are so far away from my personal experience. I have never seen a union rep who tries to save bad teachers or defends teachers who resist reforms. We’ve made a conscious decision to minmize our legal costs by investing in relationship-building and problem-solving. I see union leaders who are trying to persuade the rank-in-file to be more collaborative. Building reps are continually encouraged to build cooperative relationships with principals, to be a source of honest expertise, and to help the union fight for kids. Building Reps aren’t all perfect, but my union does everything it can to be collaborative.

In every school, I’d have a Union Building Rep and the Principal take a daily tour of the building. They would identify problems and then take practical steps to improve.
___________________________
What are the chances that the union rep would, for example, point to union teachers and say that they were the problem?

Lyelle Palmer, SMART K-3 program
Minnesota Learning Resource Center,
Minneapolis

If I had my druthers, I take all of the theories and flush them down a toilet. In every school, I’d have a Union Building Rep and the Principal take a daily tour of the building. They would identify problems and then take practical steps to improve.

Its not a viable political approach, but it is an interesting “thought experiment.”

I’m glad we’re up approaching $8000. I’ve been focusing on local and national issues and didn’t even notice that we were denied a raise this year in an oil producing state. Before NCLB, we spent about $5,500 per student. If you think historically, and add up the effect of the annual shortfall and its effects over the generations, then you get a reminder the extent of our problems. If we have been shortchanging students by several thousands of dollars a year over the decades, those children are now the parents and grandparents of today’s students.

Your offer is a reasonable one, though, and I will be glad to take it. We will always have limited resources, and I confess to frustration with those whose first priority seems not to be to improve the efficacy of our current level of spending.

-ML

And in Oklahoma we don’t get anywhere near $10,000 per kid; its more like $7000. Which gets back to the problem of national solutions imposed on the variety of economic situations.

I’ll promise to check out your data on FRL and I think I can read it with an open mind. But in return, let’s not disparage the 60 distinguished signers.

I don’t believe that flucatuations in the economy have anywhere near the influence on NAEP scores that you seem to posit. The problem has been that they are flat despite higher spending, not that they wildly gyrate.

I view the Bigger Bolder agenda as a Bigger Bolder Cop Out that makes a false claim, which is that we can’t make much progress absent adopting their larger social agenda.

When Free and Reduced lunch Hispanic kids are outscoring the statewide averages of states with lots of social welfare spending like California, and coming within easy striking distance of lilly-white, wealthy and progressive states like Oregon, its time to emulate those reforms. Instead, the That 70s Show crew pines for the White Knight of Social Welfarism to save the day for schooling.

We are either serious about getting value for the $10,000 per year per child that we put into public education, or we are not. I am bewildered by the notion that we shouldn’t expect a 4th grader to be able to read at a basic level after investing somewhere between $40k to $50k in the early grades in their education.

If the That 70s Crowd says “we can’t do better until you put in even more money” it displays nothing more than a lack of serious committment to education reform. Society has a number of other competing priorities, including higher education, health care, social welfare, transportation and criminal justice.

After decades of failing to spend our way out of our education problems, the Bigger Bolder crowd wants yet more of the same. There is nothing the least bit serious or admirable about this.

-ML

And honestly I don’t blame NCLB for the drop in 2002 or 2003. OVERNIGHT January 2002, all of our school’s problems increased in intensity. As the Economists are deciding whether to label a downturn, families are getting hit, and kids bring the trauma to school.

And I agree that 8th grade is hard. But that’s my point. Schools alone haven’t shown any indication that they can solve it.

Economic and education correlations are tough because we are dividing into two economies. While many were prospering in the 1980s, Oklahoma was closer to a depression than a recession. Along with West Virginia, we lost 10% of our jobs in 1983 and 6% in 1991. If all those empty warehouses in my school’s attendance areas were still open and employing people, our challenge would be much more managable. Average stats may be up because society gave billions to corporations to subsidize their relocation to the exurbs.

But again here’s my point. Given the qualifications that we have both made in regard to our arguments here, why can’t we agree to disgree on measurable accountability. We could unite on the Bigger Bolder Broader agenda, and then debate accountability. And like I said, I’d love allies in helping us terminate ineefective teachers and administrators, and to create conditions where we can have safe and orderly schools.

8th grade has been a tough nut to crack for all states, but there has been progress since 1998 in Florida. Not as much as you and I would like to see, but progress none the less.

NAEP’s national scores have been mostly flat since the late 1960s, despite variations in the economy and a great deal more spending.

When your Free and Reduced lunch Hispanic kids are outscoring multiple statewide averages, and your African-American kids are outscoring two statewide averages (LA and MS) after a decade of strong progress on 4th grade reading, you are making progress.

-ML