The Value of Education

This is no heart-felt plea for respect.  No rhymed verse poetic “Ode to the Teacher”. It isn’t even a slam poet’s version of why teachers make a difference (no offense, Taylor Mali).  Instead it is some truth, packaged in the form of a few notes from Linda Darling-Hammond’s The Flat World and Education.  For many years my parents have told me and taught me the value of education.  But, I’m one of the minority in this department, I believe.  Many students, past and present, do not realize the importance that a good education has, or the power that comes with having one.  They aren’t the only ones.  Many of their parents don’t see the connection as well.  But, the buck doesn’t stop their either.  Alas, the focus of this entry will be about groups that don’t value education as much as they should, or don’t show that they value it to a level that is commensurate with other highly-achieving nations.

We’ll start from the top, looking at why it is more socially acceptable to spend money on prisons than it is on educating the same persons who may soon be filling those beds and solitary cells.  Ours is a nation that apparently only sees how education affects those who can afford it, or those who would have used it no matter how they received it.  Darling-Hammond focuses on another clientele as she notes the disparities between what we say we value, and what actually gets done.  It’s the difference between an espoused platform and a platform in use, to borrow a phrase.  Darling-Hammond points out that from 1987 to 2007 spending on corrections grew by 127% in the U.S., while education spending saw gains of only 21% (2010).  What these, and other similar numbers, scream is our willingness to be a reactive society, instead of a proactive one.  This business model always fails.  And let’s be frank, that’s largely what today’s public school system is set up to resemble:  a business.  But it’s a business that is slow to produce measureable results, at least in the eyes of politicians who promote, sign off on, and legislate these expenditures.  Instead of policy-makers funneling more money towards schools that teach would-be leaders, continuing learners, and valuable members of economies, they prefer to react to the consequences of failing to do the former.  Nations that value education invest in its possibilities, while our nation’s slighting of its potential as a salvation for some pretty serious social and economic issues shows what we really value. 

If we want to continue this numbers game, we can.  Darling-Hammond factors out what those on the fringe of education cost our society.  $200 billion dollars a year.  Not providing valuable educational processes, experienced, trained, professional teachers, and adequate facilities that have access to technology both in and out of the classroom costs our country that much money in lost wages and taxes, social services costs, and of course, crime due to school dropouts (Darling-Hammond, 2010).  These are students that either see education as a waste, or have been taught that it is a waste – through cultural, social, or other means.  It seems as easy solution to me to funnel that $200 billion – or a marginal portion of it at least – towards facilities, teachers, curriculum upgrades, and technology and see where that leaves our prisons, juvenile justice system, and social services offices.  The hope is (just like all good business models, because, say it with me, that’s realistically what schools are anyway…) that the return on investing in the educational futures of these students would be measureable in not just standardized test scores, but in economic and social fashions.  Surely, this sounds good to those politicians discussed earlier, right?  How could it not.

But saying we need to invest this money elsewhere is too short-sighted, too vague.  How about a portion of it for teacher’s professional development/education, just like they do in other highly-achieving nations?  This idea would help to clarify just how to invest some of those poorly allocated monies.  Darling-Hammond points to a number of eye-popping ways in which other countries educate, train, and develop teachers that could, if implemented correctly, help to accomplish some of those aforementioned ROI’s.  For example, increasing the expectations of teacher education programs to include more clinical training and coursework, all funded at government expense (now there’s a way to show how much education is valued…).  Mentoring programs for all beginning teachers, and not just the one hour lunch meetings that I was a part of.  Instead, how about expert teachers leading the focused sessions, with reduced teaching loads and shared planning?  Or, my personal favorite, embedded professional learning communities in schools.  15 to 25 hours a week of shared planning, action research, time for attending conferences and institutes, and participating in retreats would surely show dividends in quality of teacher development and expertise in the classroom.  To be even less “greedy”, I’d settle for 2.5 hours a week to help my department as we consider how to align our current curriculum with the Common Core Standards that our state has adapted.  Most in the department would love to truly devote some time to going through this process, but with various other obligations on top of our regular teaching loads it is nearly impossible to conceive, let alone accomplish.

The burden of valuing education can be shared by many different entities.  Policy-makers need to show a commitment to changing the cultural value of education.  Teachers and administrators need to raise professional standards of accountability and commitment.  And in so doing a cultural understanding about the value of education needs to come to the forefront, as a true option for those who otherwise would not see it as one.  These changes are all possible – just look at other highly-achieving nations who have passed us by, thanks to their focus on the value of education.

Changing Viewpoints

A brief confession:  had I known about Diane Ravitch's role in one of the most ludicrous educational mandates in our nation's history, I most likely would not have given her ideas nearly as much credence as I found myself doing.  I read a few of her pieces linked on the Washington Post's education blog, “The Answer Sheet”, last week.  Then, in a quest for more of her work, I stumbled across another recent post about a review of the update she added to the new paperback edition of her best-selling book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System.  My eyes seemed almost to scan right past the mention of her role as assistant secretary of education in the administration of George H.W. Bush, and how she was a "prominent supporter of No Child Left Behind when it was implemented by Bush's son" during his presidency.  At once my heart sank.  Here was a woman who had written all the right words about school reform - at least in my limited reading of them.  About how charter schools are viewed through a rose-colored lens.  About how merit pay for teachers is both largely uneffective and doomed to fail.  And, of course, about how standardized testing has driven our nation towards a narrowed curriculum of teaching to the clearly-biased tests.  How could the same set of views be produced out of the same mind?  How could such a sublimely interesting and relevant book come from such divergent schools of thought?

Such a dichotomy of beliefs comes from change, obviously.  Ravitch’s opinions of the tenants of NCLB changed with time, and an influx of negative information surrounding the implications of the policy.  She gained perspective and that perspective pushed her towards a search for answers in the face of a growing sense of dread about our nation’s educational policies, its teachers, its social understanding of schooling, and its failure to address many of these problems.  My confidence was renewed, if it ever really left.  I feel like Ravitch’s book is a great example for our students as well as our politicians and state governing bodies.  Changing your mind is okay – especially when you do so in the face of new or further information.  Isn’t this along the lines of the scientific method?  In my freshman and sophomore English classes I have an open revision policy, meaning if a student turns a paper in on time and doesn’t get the grade he/she wants they can revise it for a better score (pending a brief conference with me before initiating the process.)  I want my students to learn from their mistakes and better themselves – mostly as writers but the lesson sometimes goes further than that.

The review of Ravitch’s book goes on to talk about how the author gets grief for pointing out problems but not offering solutions.  It then quotes a lengthy passage from her book about what makes a school successful – concluding with the idea that if reforming schools was easy, it would already be done.  There are many factors that go into a high performing school – culture, personalities, curriculum, etc. – but most likely high performing schools are combination of many things.  In other words, there is no black and white answer to reform.  We know this.  And yet we continue to focus on black and white answers to the problem.  We want our students to be critical thinkers, and yet our means of school reform continue to focus on teachers and tests.  This is the irony of an educational reform movement that wants answers packed tightly into a fill-in-the-proper-oval format.  It cannot work that way.  We must understand that a change of opinions is a good thing, one that can open up a dialogue to a new understanding.  Much like we want our students to do on a daily basis in our classrooms.

We’ve recently begun critically analyzing op-ed articles in my sophomore English class.  Students have read various articles from doing away with extraneous personal items to whether or not legalizing drugs could solve the border war issue that plagues many cities in the southwest.  At first my students tried to recite back to me the facts of the article, questioning only what they knew they could readily answer based on the text’s given opinions.  However, over the course of the last few weeks, many of them have begun to challenge the text, and see that there is more than one way to propose a solution to problems.  They are also seeing, I hope, that just because they don’t agree with another’s viewpoint, it doesn’t mean that they should hear it out.  And this week, I shared with them my most recent example of recantation.  I told them about Ravitch and her changing perspective, and how their ideas may do similar things over time.  I know that mine certainly has as well, and I view that as a good change.

Won't Someone Collaborate with Me?

I play well with others.  At least, that's what I've been told.  Maybe that's why Linda Darling-Hammond's assertion that in order to effectively train and evaluate teachers they should be allowed and encouraged to collaborate makes perfect sense to me.  Darling-Hammond (who has yet to write anything I don't find absolutely interesting, by the way) and other educators briefed politicians in Washington, D.C. last month about the most effective ways to evaluate teachers.  She, and her team, found flaws in the value-added methods (VAM) that are increasingly being touted as the right way to evaluate teachers.  Among their alternative measures to helping creating effective teachers was the focus on collaboration.  First, however, a brief digression into the VAM.  VAM seem a positive alternative to continuing to turn our backs on the trainwreck that is NCLB.  But they, like other evaluation measures, need to be taken with a grain of salt...apparently in somewhat frequent doses throughout the school year.  Perhaps the most interesting piece of the VAM puzzle is the way that students' scores are seemingly effected by (get this) students.  This is interesting because most legislators, it seems, think students live in a bubble, effected only by the quality of the teacher (lots of parents feel this way as well).  However Darling-Hammond's research suggests that the actual students - that is their backgrounds, home-life, peer culture, health, and attendance - amazingly impact there own education.

Okay, enough sarcasm.  You know this already.  I know this, and I think that when we actually question legislators, they might admit it as well.  So what to do?  Evaluate, train, monitor, and collaborate.  Rinse and repeat. This means thinking about evaluation in a different way.  This does not mean that adding values to students shouldn't be a portion of the measure to teacher evaluation.  Nor is it saying that in order to be a good teacher you need to play well with others and collaborate all time.  Instead, I'm asserting that both of these methods share value when it comes to evaluating teachers.  So too is proper training, and continued monitoring of both novice and experienced teachers.  All four pieces carry significant importance when it comes to gauging the effectiveness of teachers and wht it is that students are taking from their experiences with their teachers.

As far as collaboration though, I tend to agree with Darling-Hammond, et. al., that playing nice with others carries with it extreme value in the context of educating students.  The idea of a teacher working (and teaching) in a vaccum is no longer feasible in an era of technological innovation, high stakes testing, accountability, and nationwide standards.  Closed doors are closed minds.  My first teaching experience, I was lucky enough to have the same sophomore English prep as another first year teacher, and a second year teacher who had taught at the district the year before.  The three of us worked together to align curriculum, develop lessons, and, if need be, let off steam, at least once a week.  This period of collaboration helped to save my already-taxed first-year teacher mind from overload.  It was a necessary element of my survival.  So too was my role in a mentoring program that required an experienced mentor teacher to sit in on my classroom once a week.  We would then meet about what went on during the observed lesson later on in the week. I enjoyed the opportunity to pick specific areas to improve upon every week, and my mentor's feedback was invaluable to my improvement as a teacher.  Both instances of collaboration benefitted me greatly, and both would still benefit me, even as a more experienced educator.

Collaboration is benefitting other experienced teachers as well.  I read recently that other educationally progressive countries actually build collaborative time into their teachers' weekly schedules, sometimes up to five hours a week.  The increased collaboration leads to teacher's evaluating other teachers in their classes, reflection on lesson planning and outcomes, and perhaps most importantly, students showing growth in the classroom.  I would love to do something similar on a weekly basis with teachers in my department - whether it was aligning curriculum, planning, sharing resources, or doing more reflective practice by observing one another for both evaluative (formative) and learning (novice teacher views experienced teacher) purposes.  This sort of colloborative effort could end up being another measure of a teacher's worth in an educational landscape of accountability.

The Irony of Charlotte Danielson's Framework

Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching is aptly named.  It's easy to see that in retrospect.  If you missed the title, re-read it.  You didn't blink and omit it.  The en vouge framework for teacher evaulation, soon to be used in districts across the country (including my own), didn't start and wasn't conceived out of spite for bad teachers.  Instead, Danielson began the framework as a rubric for what makes up the practice of teaching - mostly what constitutes "the standards of practice for regular teachers".  I find it extremely ironic then that this assessment for teaching is now going to be used to assess teaching.

This is no rant on what teachers do and do not deserve.  Instead it is a reaction to a conversation Danielson had with Education Week blogger Rick Hess in June, an ironic conversation that shed new light on many other conversations I've been involved in, and surrounded by over the course of the last school year.

I was introduced to Danielson's Framework, and told the implications of her model during a district wide articulation session last September.  Teachers from my high school district, as well the grade school district in our community watched in terror as representatives from our state teacher's association rambled through the new form of assessment soon to be used to evaluate a teacher's performance.  Blood was in the water that fall day - in the form of percieved big shots, from a big association, giving big edicts.  But in reality, the writing had been on the wall for awhile.  The idea of teacher evaluation being (somewhat) tied to student performance and systematic observation is as un-suprising as the recent e-mail I recieved that told of how No Child Left Behind has been found to fundamental errors.  This is like telling audience members not to watch, that in fact Charlie Brown will not get to kick the football.  This is not new information.  Yet, teachers from mine and the other districts figuratively stormed the stage with questions and accusations, refusing to believe that an organization that was supposed to have their best (bargaining) interests at heart would turn their back on them in their time of need. 

But, ironically, what Charlotte Danielson had in mind when she created her framework was the needs of teachers.  More specifically, it seems as if she thought teachers needed to see that although there may not be one correct way to teach a student, there certainly is a "continuum of performance" on which all teaching falls.  Why not reveal these insights through a framework to benefit the profession, instead of letting the practice of "what works for me is mine, and I might share it if I see fit" continue?  Why not try to lead those teachers whose practices, for whatever reason, fall low on the continuum?  This seems like what we want for our students who struggle, why not ask the same of our "struggling" teachers?

This idea of a "continuum of performance" really strikes a chord with me.  I started out as a television reporter, and after failing to secure the ever-illusive second job, I began to rethink my life and career goals.  Moving home to consider alternatives, I discovered that what I missed the most from the profession was something that I could do everyday (to a different, perhaps more exciting extent) in the classroom.  I loved to read.  I reveled in writing and wordplay.  But my real passion was in the performance.  The rush of a red button above a camera pointed squarely at my head sent the shivers of excitement down my back.  Just they way every bell does now that I'm a secondary English teacher.  The performance was the thing.  And while it might not be the thing for all teachers, it is certainly one of my favorite aspects of my job.  My comfort in saying this reveals how I feel about being judged by the Danielson Framework...I'm really not.  Part of that is my confidence in my abilities of managing a classroom, keeping my students engaged and involved, and feeling comfortable in front of that audience.  But part of it stems from knowing that there is always improvement to make and being on a continuum grounds me in that knowledge.

I also know that I will have to be evaluated by a trained professional - who has been specifically, and intensively trained in the Danielson model.  This training assures me that no grudges or feuds will ultimately lead to my ouster, if that does indeed happen as a result of a poor set of evaluations.  To my understanding, the model is intensive, which theoretically would lead to a more involved evaluation, which theoretically would lead to more pertinent and useful commentary on the performance continuum.  I know that others will not welcome this scrutinity, but if we look at it as Danielson originally intended it to be used, then the model should help much more than it hurts, right?