When it Comes to Education Issues, It’s Crickets for the Donkeys and Elephants

Posted on January 25, 2016 by tcadmin

The presidential election is still ten months away and field is still broad. There are currently 1507 individuals registered as candidates for president, including both Yoda and Darth Vader. There have already been ten debates held among front runners of the Democratic and Republican parties with at least another ten expected to be scheduled before we cast our ballots.

Issues of immigration, national security and climate change have made the stage in both red and blue debates and candidates continue to throw jabs across the party lines on issues of abortion, Wall Street reform, gun control and health care. While there has been brief mention of college tuition and the future of the Common Core, education and education reform has been absent this debate season.

Former US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan recently called for candidates to address a five-year plan to address universal pre-school, high school and college graduation rates and college readiness. There are an estimated 3.12 million teachers employed in US public school. How is it that this collective voice has not been leveraged to demand that candidates address issues central to the support and development of a robust education system in our country? Capitalizing on fear and threats is nothing new to the political landscape. We are wired to attend to what we perceive as threats and candidates are hoping their promises to alleviate imminent danger will drive us to the polls. Fear-driven and angry rhetoric stimulates the emergency system of our brains and can lead us to minimize issues that are important but don’t feel as imminent.

The last child of a US president to attend a public school was Amy Carter who attended DC public Schools through the family’s four years in office. What happens when teachers don’t see themselves reflected in the political landscape? When education is not a part of the national discourse? Teachers often cite a lack of public support for their work as a key factor in burnout, coupled with a sense that things are not going to get any better. Without a clear legislative plan for how to adequately fund education, it’s likely we will continue to see numbers of talented teachers decline.

Arne Duncan is calling for presidential hopefuls to provide details on a five year plan to address education issues. Imagine the impact of 3 million people submitting demands to the hosts of upcoming presidential debates that Mr. Duncan’s questions be addressed. You can see a listing of the currently scheduled Republican and Democratic debates and their hosts here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/debates/schedule/

The February 6^th Republican candidate debate is being co-hosted by ABC and the Independent Journal Review. Questions for candidates can be submitted to storyideas@wmur.com Be sure to specify in the subject like that you are submitting questions for the Republican Debate.

PBS News Hour will be hosting a Democratic candidate debate on February 11^th. Nick Massella is the Director of Audience Engagement and Communications at News Hour and can be reached at nmassella@newshour.org.

Treating Violence as a Symptom is Only a Band-Aid

Posted on November 16, 2015 by tcadmin

If you go to your physician you will generally get give to ten minutes to present your symptoms, which are then treated to ease your discomfort. With some physicians you may get a more thorough evaluation that looks at the underlying causes of your illness. Rarely however do you get a full work up that looks at all the various influences for your health and a proactive model to present future illness.

The same dynamic may be true in our schools. Few violence prevention efforts include a comprehensive view of organizational health or a systems level focus targeting the root causes of different types of violence in schools. When the health of schools is ignored school culture is adversely impacted, giving way to greater potential for violence.

If we want to help our schools become healthier and safer, there are certain things we need to look at to accomplish this goal.

Nationally, the focus for education is becoming more outcome focused. Less attention and time is spent on the how of teaching in favor of outputs of test scores. Teachers are pressured to deliver more content in shorter amounts of time, leaving them fewer opportunities for forming individual relationships with children and developing ways to meet diverse learning needs.
Resources for schools become scarce and lead to increased competition.
The increase of social media allows for adults and children to have anonymous interactions, resulting in a decrease in personal accountability and increased sense of entitlement to a single position or opinion. ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ thinking leads to increased ostracism of those who are ‘different’. Children and adults have fewer opportunities for developing empathy.
As children’s needs become more complex, increase it becomes more difficult to know how to meet them. Time and resources continue to decrease so children’s behaviors become more challenging to address.
Most strategies for dealing with disruptive behavior focus on the child without taking into account the pressures of the larger school and community systems, leading to increased polarity and greater divisions between students and staff.
Teachers and educators are themselves under tremendous stress. Studies show a greater than 20% decline in teacher job satisfaction and a 50% increase in teacher stress. Add to this the ongoing cuts in benefits and salary it is difficult to see how a teacher might have the mental health and wellness level to face these stressors.

The most crucial skill being left out of our children’s education is how to navigate differences. Without this skill, we don’t deal well with conflict, we lost the ability to get our needs met, and we are at a disadvantage with negotiating. Overall, we are less potent and more prone to acting aggressively to get our needs met. This concept is called constructive differencing. Next week’s blog will explain this concept and how it can be used to create learning environments that maximize children’s emotional safety.

Families Don’t Accept the Way the Cookie Crumbles When it Comes to Teacher Cuts

Posted on October 24, 2015 by tcadmin

A recent protest in Seattle called attention to the increasing trend of viewing teachers as expendable resources that can be cut any time the budget gets tight. The Half-Baked Bake Sale was a tounge-in-cheek way to point out the absurdity of expecting to fund basic education through car washes and bake sales. Treats like Bum Deal Brownies and Chopping Block Chocolate Chip Cookies were priced at 0.5 FTE. Cupcakes were sold at $18 a piece, the equivalent of one hour of an instructional aide.

While the situation is bad in Washington State (currently the state is paying $100,000.00 a day in court fines for failing to adequately fund basic education needs), teacher cuts, cramped classrooms and limited resources plague districts around the country. These cuts have devastating effects on children and the community. As parent Shawna Murphy, one of the bake sale organizers, said, “Teachers are children’s lifeline and path out of poverty”.

Teachers suffer at a personal level in this climate as well. Fellow bake sale organizer Carolyn Leith points out that ‘the humanity of our teachers and their students is stripped away’ when funding decisions favor bottom line, test result-driven funding decisions. When teachers feel their self-worth devalued, when they internalize the belief that they are replaceable resources, it is difficult to form the kinds of relationships with children that research shows is necessary to connect with children and inspire them to learn.

The tendency, when resources are scarce, is to isolate and protect one’s self. Teachers stay in their classrooms, ‘just do their jobs’ and hope to stay off the radars for the next wave of cuts. When teachers lose the human connection to their work, they are at risk of burnout, depression and stress related illnesses. Increased absences and complaints, a lack of enthusiasm at work and a resistance to sharing and collaborating might be signs that you or a colleague is approaching dangerous levels of stress at work.

Parents know that their children’s well-being depends on the health of their teachers. Well teachers teach well. The Seattle protest highlights the need for teachers and parents to join together to demand that teachers be recognized as more than deliverers of content but as creators of connections between children and their world. Please visit our website here to learn more about how maintain wholeness in a system that is becoming increasingly fractured.

A final note about Seattle’s bake sale. Parents raised a grand total of $329 which they split among three high-needs schools and a Special Education PTA. The proposed cuts are still being made.

Why I am Refusing the PARCC

Posted on February 28, 2015 by tcadmin

An Open Letter to Teacher Coach

Next week the middle school students at my son’s school will be taking the PARCC. He will not be one of them. He will be sitting for two hours in the auditorium with a book and possibly a folder of some work he needs to make up from this marking period if he takes the initiative to collect it. I have officially ‘refused’ the PARCC.

This is our first year in middle school and so far, it has been a wonderful experience. The teachers are committed to student success. They are quick to respond to any questions or concerns I have and work with my son to help him make the transition from elementary school. He has been more excited about his classes than he ever was in elementary school. My journey to this decision was not an easy one. Like many of my friends, I began the year with the intent to have my son test, despite his pleas for me to ‘get him out of this’. He actually tends to enjoy standardized testing and doesn’t get anxious about the scores or grades.

However, as I began to read more about the PARCC and follow the debate, I became less willing to quietly sit by and let the drive for standardization eclipse the incredible creativity and dedicated teaching that makes my son’s school so special. A grass-roots movement of families interested in refusing the PARCC has led to spirited and mostly respectful discussions amongst my parent friends and I am grateful to for the questions being raised by friends who will be allowing their children to test next week, as they help me consider my decision to refuse.

They wouldn’t be using this test if it wasn’t a good measurement.

The lack of transparency about the creation and intended scoring and use of this test has been a concern of mine. Fewer than half of the original 24 states originally signed up for PARCC are still planning to use it. These states have dropped out citing serious concerns about the test. The development and implementation of this test has been funded by technology and testing companies, not educators and there has been no study of test validity (how well the test measures what it says it measures) for this test. States are paying, and paying big, to be the test group for PARCC.

Critics of the format of the test cite problems with the question format and complexity of the test. Specifically, some researchers have found that the Lexile measure of the test questions is 2 grade levels above the grade Lexile levels, leading some to argue that the test is deliberately intended to show failure.

I took those tests as a kid. They weren’t that disruptive.

This is not your mother’s Iowa Basic Skills class. I remember coloring in those oval bubbles too. The only ‘test prep’ we had back then was to eat a good breakfast and get a good night’s sleep. And the test was not given to every grade, every year.

While the reported ‘total in-chair time’ for taking the PARCC is estimated at 13-15 hours (longer than it takes to complete the bar exam!), schools are commonly referring to the test taking season lasting from March through June. At my child’s school, the test will span only 5 days but since we share the library with the high school, it will be closed for two full weeks and the block schedule which has allowed for extended time for hands-on projects and in-depth exploration of content, has been condensed for 5 weeks to allow for time to train the children in how to take the test and for the actual administration of it. During these five weeks, each class is only 30 minutes long.

Districts are reporting less of a focus on subjects not tested by PARCC. At one local meeting, a science teacher told parents that her administrator told her to stop teaching science and teach math that would be on the test, and to then use the math grades as those for her science course.

Finally, I believe the test is financially disruptive. While schools have fired nurses, principals and school counselors, and teachers are paying out of pocket for basic supplies for their students, billions of dollars have been spent on these tests, and that’s not counting the money spent on computers required to take the test. That is money I feel could better be spent on resources and staffing and services.

Teachers need to know how kids are doing. I have a right to know if my child is learning.

Absolutely. And I know teachers don’t always have the time or perhaps the resources or knowledge to fully assess every student’s ability or progress. However, the information that will be returned to teachers, if it is even returned to the teachers before the end of the school year, is not broken down in a way that provides them with diagnostic or instructional information. Teachers, students nor their families will be allowed to see the tests to find out what students got wrong or why. And yet, the results will inevitably be used to determine teacher and school effectiveness.

I will also say that every teacher I have contacted about my son’s progress since the fourth grade has been able to show me examples of his work and clearly communicate to me where he excels and where he is struggling in meaningful ways that allow me to partner with them and help him improve his grades.

An act of civil disobedience.

I understand my fellow parents’ concerns. There is fear that children who do not take the test will be penalized. Some parents have resigned themselves to the fact that this test will eventually be required for high school graduation so they might as well let the kids get used to taking them as early as possible. Others feel they need to teach their children to follow state mandates. These were all things I considered before sending in my letter of refusal.

Legally, it is the schools who are required to administer the exam in my state. Children are not legally mandated to take it. This is an important distinction I shared with my son when I explained he would not be testing with his classmates. Additionally, I wanted him to understand that standardization of education does not accommodate differences in student ability, interests or experience. My child would be fine taking a test. My child’s in-school education is also supplemented by classes and extra-curricular activities I can afford to enroll him in, experiences that no doubt contribute to his ability to master information and perform better on tests. This is not true for all students and I believe high-stakes testing deliberately undermines and punishes under-resourced areas and disproportionately affects students of color and students with special needs.

I don’t imagine that my refusal is going to do much to change the test and standardization climate in this country and I’m not terribly optimistic that the PARCC will go away. But the attention it is drawing is bringing people together to focus on education in this country, and for that I am glad. I have been fortunate that my son has had a series of dedicated, interested teachers who seem to still love the art of teaching and I hope that my small act of refusal sends the message to them and my state that I deeply value and appreciate what they bring to school every day.