Parents for Educating Texas

Change the System? Change Our Thoughts First

Several essays and prominent pieces of journalism have emerged in the last few days regarding what one researcher has called the "parent involvement puzzle." Since we've already discussed how we parents can approach our schools and teachers differently, let's take a look at what experts have to say about the two pieces of the parent involvement puzzle - the parent and the teacher - to learn what it takes to make a good fit.

From the teachers 

Educator Ron Clark's piece on CNN.com - "What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents" - hits home for parents and teachers. At the top of the essay, he quotes an award-winning administrator friend, who, upon quitting, said, '"Look, if I get an offer to lead a school system of orphans, I will be all over it, but I just can't deal with parents anymore; they are killing us."' Instead of being resentful and full of contempt for teachers "whining" (as many of the parent-commenters noted at the end of the article), I think parents should drop back for a moment, and perhaps consider a comment like this a red flag. As a group, are we becoming so difficult to deal with that teachers are actually looking to drop our children like hot potatoes and do something else? According to Clark, yes - the average life-span of a teaching career in this country is 4.5 years. While that onus is not entirely on us, we should acknowledge our part in how schools are failing us. If we don't support the teachers in their teaching, how well could we expect the kids to perform?

But supporting our teachers requires that we change our thoughts, at least those thoughts floated to us in politics and the media, about the American teacher. How they have a cushy life; they have summers off and the country's strongest union to hide behind; how they should just be "good" teachers when many go without any support, without supplies, enrichment, or development; how they should be required to "earn" our respect without first gaining the respect of the students. How would you feel if you were treated that way in your job? How excited would you be to get up each morning and go to work?

Clark says, "...we are educators, not nannies. We are educated professionals who work with kids every day and often see your child in a different light than you do. If we give you advice, don't fight it. Take it, and digest it in the same way you would consider advice from a doctor or lawyer." He also asks parents to "to trust us, support us and work with the system, not against it. We need you to have our backs, and we need you to give us the respect we deserve. Lift us up and make us feel appreciated, and we will work even harder to give your child the best education possible." 

I think this is salient and pertinent advice. Ultimately, parents and teachers are partners; if we were smart parents, we would listen. 

For the parents

For a practical outline on increasing parent and community involvement at school, take a look at an interview with author and Senior Consultant at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform Anne T. Henderson, "Solving the Parent Involvement Puzzle."  Henderson says that teachers are ill-prepared in their educations and student teaching for dealing with parents and encouraging them to get involved. She notes, "When I ask educators how many have had good preparation for working with families while they were training to become a teacher, I might get one or two hands in a room of 100 people." This should be changed; dealing with parents and families is the bedside manner of the teaching profession, and colleges and schools should respond accordingly. 

Henderson cites a study by Tony Byrk published last year that found five essential ingredients for the improvement in certain Chicago public schools. While all ingredients were important, those schools that had strong "family and community ties," regardless of anything else, were four times more likely to improve in reading and up to ten times more likely to improve in math.

But while parent involvement appears to be the golden ticket, achieving it can be easier said than done.

Henderson suggests home visits by the teacher in order to get to know the parents and build a one-on-one relationship; she counsels teachers to start with something positive and don't let the visit become an information dump on the student. (She also believes teachers get paid for these visits.) Instead, the visit should start with how the parent thinks the child is doing and end with exchanging phone numbers and email addresses. She also includes information on how to include immigrant families in engagement and how to address the needs of students from poor and underserved backgrounds. 

Henderson rightly sees the plight of many parents in a world that's no longer, as she calls it, Leave it to Beaver: "Too often when parents don’t show up for events or conferences, we think, “Oh, they must not care about their child’s education.” But if their child is bused in from a distant neighborhood, how can the parents get there for a conference? Send buses for school events. Also, arrange for child care. If there’s no child care, how can a hardworking single parent come in with two or three small children on Back to School Night? Never assume the worst."

 

Both parents and teachers can make strides to improve the bond between them, which then in turn improves the child's education. So before we worry about the large, looming, and complex "American Education Reform," let's try just changing how we think. How can teachers respect parents' time and situations in order to get them involved? And how can parents respect teachers in order to build a healthy relationship? These thoughts, correctly implemented in today's schools, might be the first step toward real education reform.

 

From classroom to courtroom, 'zero tolerance' undermines education

During my son's fourth week of kindergarten at a Dallas public school, my husband and I had to take him out for two days to attend my sister's Nashville wedding, which had been planned a year in advance. I spoke with his teacher two weeks beforehand and she gave me all the work he'd miss, so he could complete it before returning to school. She smiled when I told her he was in the wedding. "You'll be great!" She smiled at him and gave him a hug.

Just to cover my bases, I also called the school office to let them know we'd be taking my son out of school for two days for the wedding. They were not nearly as enthusiastic. "That's an unexcused absence," the school secretary told me.

"No, it's not," I said. "I'm giving you the excuse. He's in his aunt's wedding and we will not miss it."

"No," she maintained, "it's not illness or a doctor's appointment, so it's unexcused and we cannot allow him to attend. Legally speaking."

Legally speaking? I hung up the phone and fumed. I thought to myself, what are they going to do? We had planned the wedding months before we even knew he was attending that school. On top of that, he was five and had no responsibilities at school other than complete his work, which I'd already collected. And, on top of that, he had an excuse, which made it an excused absence. We left for the wedding and I forgot about the entire conversation, until two weeks later when I received a letter from DISD telling me I was to appear in Truancy Court the next week. According to the letter, if I didn't show up, I could be fined and my son could be suspended and/or expelled from school.

It is in this very same vein - one where 'zero tolerance' policies are enforced to the letter regardless of circumstance or shred of common sense - that Texas policeman have been ticketing students as young as fourth grade for classroom disruptions, drinking soda, and other school discipline-type behavior, according to this appalling Washington Post article posted last week. The children, when ticketed, are required to show up with their parents in adult court. Titled "Texas students sent from classroom to courtroom," the article cites Texas statistics that support the absurdity (and inherent racism) of police presence on middle and high school campuses. 

According to the piece, "6 in 10 [Texas] students were suspended or expelled at least once from seventh grade on. After their first suspension, they were nearly three times more likely to be involved in the juvenile justice system the next year, compared with students with no such disciplinary referrals." 

Federal officials have named it the "school to prison pipeline." 

There is no doubt that certain circumstances may require a police presence, but the ticketing of students for school infractions that land them in municipal court  - at an average of $500 a ticket - seems more than a little off the mark. It also reinforces for these students - especially ones whose heinous crimes include pushing another student or demanding to use the bathroom - the incredibly close connection between classroom and jail.

"'Research shows that students who have been arrested or appeared in court are more likely to drop out of high school,' said Gary Sweeten, an Arizona State University criminologist. Dropouts, in turn, are more likely than graduates to be incarcerated or unemployed."

Have zero tolerance policies like ticketing students and sending them to court kept the lowest performing students from achieving? Since ticketing and low test scores especially plague minority students, the outcome might be extrapolated from thinking about the school to prison pipeline.

As for my court appearance, after my school's principal refused to call and cancel for me - "It's the LAW, Ms. Korbey," she hissed when I suggested that Truancy Court for a five-year-old attending a wedding was ridiculous - I went downtown and stood online, filled out all the paperwork. After listening to a brief but serious speech about how we should make our kids go to school, when they broke out the instructional movie, I stood up. 

"My truant son is in kindergarten," I said to the whole room. "We needed to go to my sister's wedding."

The woman running the court smiled grimly and shook her head. "Go on," she said with a thick Texas accent. "You are dismissed." 

The Homework Revolt: Is homework good or bad for the youngest students?

My oldest son H., who just completed second grade, had homework every single school night of this past school year - he also has homework over winter break, and once a week over the summer vacation. Homework is a big part of his life, and we make sure that he always completes it. His teacher openly admits that she is mandated by the state to give nightly homework, otherwise she wouldn't; my son hates it.

He’s a child, and it’s fully understandable for him to dislike homework. But, as a parent, should I? A recent article in The New York Times indiciates that principals are hearing the cries of angry parents, like the ones portrayed in the documentary “Race to Nowhere,” and adjusting what can be grueling homework schedules, especially for the youngest students. School districts in New Jersey and Georgia are cutting way back on homework district-wide for elementary-aged children. 

How much homework is enough for a first or second grader? Should it be banned altogether? Kurt Wootton, Director of Habla: The Center for Language and Culture, a progressive school that teaches young children, says children should focus on play, not worksheets: "Already we ask our youngest children to be in a formal educational setting for several hours a day. Why extend this setting into the home? There is significant evidence that indicates the critical factor of play in the lives of young children. Rather than forcing children to sit at a desk working through worksheets, we need to encourage them to explore interests that are natural to them and help them to develop peer networks where they can set their own rules for play and for building imaginative worlds."

But is homework necessary to learning retention, a way for struggling students to revisit subjects covered during the school day? A 1989 study performed by Harris Cooper at the University of Missouri suggests a homework duality: the results suggest both postive and negative effects of homework. On the postive side, he lists "Better retention of factual knowledge" as well as "Better understanding." Negative aspects include "Loss of interest in academic material" and "Denial of access to leisure time and community activities." 

It is these negative aspects - access to leisure time for the already stressed-out Twenty-First Century family - that parents in the article stress as most important. According to the Times, "After Donna Cushlanis's son kept bursting into tears midway through his second-grade math problems, which one night took over an hour, she told him not to finish his homework." They quote Ms. Cushlanis as saying, "'I have no problem doing homework, but that just put us over the edge.'"

The homework that my son H. responds best to is the Reader Response Log, a weekly 15-question assignment used to make sure students understand what they've read (and for the assignment they can read anything they choose). The questions include "which character would you like to be?" and "which words were new to you?"  - questions which, if you are H. and are reading Harry Potter, can actually be fun to answer. Wootton points out that this is the way homework should be. "Homework, at all levels, needs to be intrinsically motivated -- a natural extension of experiential projects in the classroom. Work might be taken home because the students want to work further in revising or refining a particular project. Most homework we see takes the form of busy work which doesn't reinforce any skills at all. Rather it asks students to numbingly conform to the requirements of the system in order to make it through. If we seek a creative citizenry who can think critically and solve problems, we must move from homework as busy work to homework as a natural part of the learning process."

Where does homework for the very youngest students fit? Is it necessary, or should children be given some precious (and infrequent) time to play, goof around, lie on the couch? I clearly see both sides of the picture, both for stressed-out families, and for teachers.

On taking your own education advice

In Chapter Six of the Brown/Thomas book A New Culture of Learning, "We Know More Than We Can Say," the authors attest that, in order to educate today's youth, we need a new understanding of learning as inquiry."Asking questions is not an act of demonstrating whether knowledge has been transferred. It is instead an act of imagination. Inquiry is the process by which we ask not 'What is it that we know?' but 'What are the things that we don't know and what questions can we ask about them?'"

Using this useful line of thinking on myself, I worry about the Texas state budget and their lack of resources, and therefore respect, for public school children/parents/teachers even less. Instead, the great act of courage in our own parental education is to begin asking the right questions - the questions about the things we don't know. 

How do we persuade Texas public school parents to vote in their own interest? - not by merely upending the status quo but through support of qualified candidates who support the ideal of public education?

What are the factors that make the 'failure factories' continue to fail?

Why aren't the 'reforms' of accountability and testing working? 

Do parents play a large or small role - in presence or absence - in a failing school? 

How might we reach parents who might not otherwise get involved at school? And, can we cross school lines to help each other? 

How does the 'new culture of learning' help us in reforming public schools? Is it applicable? How could a parent use it to help her school?

What can we do about poverty? Why does it affect the lowest performing students to such a great extent?

"The old culture of learning is no longer suited for a world of constant change," the authors continue, "current efforts are geared toward trying to fix the system by refining and perfecting it. A leaky bucket, however, will not begin to hold water if all we do is change the size and shape of the hole."

 What are your questions? Where might they lead us?

 

Does the 'parent trigger' give parents the power they deserve?

Just as I don't believe in the Clinton Body Count or that GWB planned the tragic events of 9/11, I don't believe that our national public school system is a conspiracy, led by powerful people, against children. I have read a lot recently about public schools holding "the largest monopoly" and teachers' unions caring only for preserving their powerful positions. I believe that, overall, teachers and administrators and local politicians are not happy to watch students fall behind their global counterparts, and want to help. 

However, I do believe that parents feel left out of the decision-making process regarding what happens inside their schools, while bureaucrats in powerful places legislate downward while little (if any) progress takes place. These two factors - the belief that a conspiracy against children exists within the walls of administration and teachers' unions, and the belief that parents are grossly left out of the equation - make the effectiveness of the new 'parent trigger' laws popping up in California, New York, here in Texas, and 13 other states a confusing question. If passed, a parent trigger will give parents the power to sign a petition to have their school closed, half the staff fired, or have their school taken over by a charter school. (NCLB already makes these same provisions for a failing school, but the parent trigger can override a district who refuses to comply or takes too long in making the changes.) But do we know that any of these methods would really work in changing the school? The answers remain unclear.

The idea of the parent trigger was created by Ben Austin, a policy consultant for Green Dot Public Schools, a California charter school organization. According to a quote he provided in a recent Time article, "The way I saw it, if education was going to change, parents had to have a seat at the table where they could make real decisions about real reforms for their kids." He began the group Parent Revolution, which was funded by the Green Dot organization until 2010 (it now receives most its funds from the Wasserman, Walton and Gates foundations). He hired a staff to go out and find parents to get behind the organization, which of course they did so willingly, because they were so sick of the poor quality of their local schools. So, while the idea appears wonderful - parents who have no choice but to send their child to a failing school finally have a legal way out - I think we parents should be a little skeptical of a 'reform' led by very rich men and a charter school organization looking to expand its reach. After all, the parent trigger was not a grassroots movement started by angry parents; the parent trigger was started by a third party with a vested interest in expanding charter schools (Wasserman, Walton and Gates have also poured millions into subsidies and research for charter schools). 

Is this a bad thing? Depends on how you look at it. Overall, charter schools here in Texas have not outperformed their public school counterparts; in many cases, they have underperformed. That does not mean that charter schools don't fill a need in communities filled with 'failure factory' schools; it does, however, raise questions about the overall effectiveness of charter schools to solve our nation's public school problems. 

In addition - and this goes back to the conspiracy theory that ham-fisted bureaucrats and teachers' unions are out to use the public schools for their own power and gain - why are we turning away from professional educators in trying to find solutions to what ails our schools? Wouldn't experts in the field know more about public ed and its relation to parents than Bill Gates and Sam Walton, laudable businessmen with no experience in education, both educated in private schools? I find the parent trigger, while certainly valuable and useful to those with children in the worst schools, in close relation to recent bills in several states that would fine and punish parents for children not showing up to school, not doing their homework, etc. 

Parents absolutely have a right to change what's happening in their schools, especially when the schools are dangerous and/or low performing. But I wonder if a more holistic approach to healing schools from the inside out might work better than continuing the million-dollar blame game. What if we

• changed the PTA? Why are the meetings during weekday evenings, the busiest time of the week? The PTAs should innovate ways to get more parents involved in the day to day activity of their school. Also, successful PTAs could mentor flagging PTAs at other schools, giving them ideas to draw more parents to their programs as well.
• addressed teacher quality? A large portion - over 13,000 - of recent teaching graduates have received their certification from for-profit 'alternative certfication' programs, not traditional teaching programs in colleges and universities.
• looked at how children are learning in our modern times? A New Culture of Learning should be read by every parent, teacher and administrator in this country. Until we begin thinking about how to change the learning culture within schools, it doesn't matter what we do. 
• addressed poverty and cultural issues at the school level? One of my favorite explanations of this solution was written by a teacher, Joanne Yatvin, who suggests turning neighborhood public schools into something that resembles a community center, with seminars, meals, and activities planned for the whole families of public school children.

What do you think about the usefulness of the parent trigger? 

Required reading for parents, teachers, and all members of the human race

The realization we came to is that it isn’t our schools that are failing: it is our theory of learning that is failing. - Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, Forbes interview

When I found this book, A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, accidentally, from the best culture website in the whole world, and once I ordered it rush from Amazon and tore the box to shreds trying to get at it, I grasped it tightly in my hands. On the cover, there's a photo-illustration - multicolored and possessing the Deep Space Nine feel of a Mark Grotjahn painting - that makes you feel at once like the world's falling apart and coming together to save itself just in time. Inside, the sentences are short and profound and make complete and perfect sense: in order to change education, we must change our entire attitude toward learning. 

Many of the ideas in this book we've already discussed on a very surface level - the constant upheavals (social, technological, cultural) of our modern world don't jive with our nineteenth century-style education method, which is why we are complaining that our schools are broken. But until we embrace this new world - a world where a student can Google the answer to absolutely anything at any moment - we cannot change our schools. It is only a shift in focus, a shift in our own imaginations, that will launch schools into the bright future.

The authors wisely note that "The trick is to figure out how to harness these new resources, which make play, questioning, and the imagination the bedrocks of our new culture of learning. The question is: In the twenty-first century, how do we cultivate the imagination?"

I strongly encourage you to also order a copy of this book for yourself (the grasping, gushing, and tearing cardboard to shreds are entirely optional). Look for more about this book in upcoming posts!

What do public school parents want?

"We're stuck in a mode where we're using old systems of understanding learning to try to understand these new forms, and part of the disjoint means that we're missing some really important and valuable data." ~ Douglas Thomas, A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change

It's a confusing time to be a public school parent. Politicians and interest groups are under the impression that we're desperately looking to place blame, and are waving their hands at us like we're driving past a bad car accident, trying to get us to pull off the road and survey the damage. The distrct blames the state, the state blames the federal government, and the federal government, as it appears to me, blames the teachers. Most parents I know don't feel this way, we love (most of) our teachers and, at the end of the day, don't really care if it's charter schools, paying teachers more, top-down corporate-style reform, private money, or a combo of all the above that will do the trick. Let me say this again: most parents don't care which answer is correct, they just want their schools to improve. Maybe that's because deep down, we know that none of these quasi-"solutions" will do the trick. Deep down, parents who care already understand we know what will, but are afraid to say it. We are afraid to sound like we're asking too much; maybe we are.

We parents want to bring our public school kids into the 21st Century. What we desperately want is not a scapegoat, but public school 2.0, and this doesn't necessarily mean in the realm of technology - although it could certainly be a component. In order to create public school 2.0, we must have a tsunami of innovation in curriculum and instruction. I say tsunami because the innovation has to be vast and has to level a lot of what has been erected in the past. We are now living in a mix-all, mash-up society that blends information and knowledge better than a Cuisinart, and our kids can get this high-intensity blend of information, culture and entertainment anywhere - absolutely anywhere in the whole world - but inside a classroom. Our kids must have a curriculum that looks like the Common Core but feels like Facebook. The modes and methods used now in many of our classrooms are like using a record player to surf the internet; they no longer fit the times in which we live.

We want our kids to have fun. Scientific studies show that children do better in school when they get to have recess.  When I was a second-grader, the age my oldest son is now, I had two recesses a day, gym five days a week, and playtime before school. Due to the increased pressure put on children to succeed and move forward at all times, no matter what, so much of the social playtime that makes school fun has gone away. My son doesn't even eat lunch many days, because it cuts into his precious 15-minute recess time. As soon as school is out, he opens his lunch in the car and devours his wilted sandwich and carrots.

The system we've got has diabolically morphed from making sure all children get an equal opportunity to insisting all their outcomes be identical. We parents realize this is doing all children a grave disservice. The reformers' strong desire that all children have exactly the same outcomes each year of schooling, with no wiggle room, makes learning a terrific chore. Children are tracked from the moment they enter school, not having a chance to make mistakes, fail, and have the opportunity to try again. Teachers are required to teach the test, not what they know. If teachers were allowed to experiment with methods and subjects that will help the children achieve knowledge and fluency, perhaps outcomes would be different. Work being done at experimental schools like Habla: The Center for Language and Culture show that when teachers get to be creative and use their instincts, students learn - like the nine-year-old girl who could not read or write well in English or Spanish who was taught to read fluently in both by a teacher creative enough to teach the girl literacy through the her own artistic talent.

It is these three things - a tsunami of innovation in curriculum and instruction, built-in fun time, and a more creative environment for both teachers and students - that might have a shot at bringing us the public school 2.0 that we desperately need. But until we parents stand up for these very specific changes, the politicians and unions and reformers will continue the blame game. 

How can we make them stop?

We need to take a look at ourselves. We cannot have it both ways; for far too long, we've wanted high quality education in the public system, but are not willing to pay for it with our time, our effort, or our tax dollars. In order to bring the kind of thoughtful, highly complex instruction that must exist in public school 2.0, we must be willing to pay. Lisa Belkin of The New York Times points out that parental involvement is a key factor in successful schools, but instead of allowing our legislatures to punish parents who aren't involved enough, we parents need to think of ways to get more parents involved. Whether it's holding PTA meetings on Saturday morning instead of during the week, or successful PTAs mentoring weak/nonexistent PTAs, surely we can encourage parent involvement instead of punishing its lack. (I'd love to hear any thoughts or ideas on the subject, so let me know.)

In order to have the system we want, we must demand that schools be properly funded and class sizes stay small. Without the money for good teachers and a proper learning environment, even the best curriculum and innovation will lose its power. We must stand up to our legislatures and demand that they stop talking and start doing. 

You are a public school parent. What do you want? 

 

 

THE LANGUAGE POLICE and the lack of epic meaning for students, part I

 

I am now reading Diane Ravitch's book from 2003, The Language Police, about how interest groups from both left and right seek to censor what our kids are reading in the most insidious ways. (Language Police will be an upcoming Book Club pick, in case you're interested.) These groups seek to tease out pieces of great works of science, literature and history for different reasons, many of them purely political and baldly ideological - and we know plenty about this here in Texas, where the ideological argument over what goes into our science and history textbooks has made the national stage. Curriculum understanding and reform is a top priority here at PFET; Texas is highly influential when it comes to what's included in national textbooks due to our burgeoning student population.

But, before we get into why it's deplorable to allow appointed politicians to edit and, in some cases, create student curriculum, I want you to watch Jane McGonigal's TED Talk (above) on how video gaming can make a better world. Pay special attention to why she believes young people are so hooked on gaming. Although I am unsure whether or not I agree completely that video games could solve problems like hunger and climate change, she makes an excellent point about why kids faze out on modern education -how boring it is, how lacking in meaning for students.

If you have time, watch the entire video, then we'll discuss how The Language Police and the concept of a curriculum lacking in epic meaning correlate in tomorrow's post, part II.

 

What can we do for the American teacher?

KERA radio reported this morning that over 200 DISD employees received pink slips on Friday, while close to 700 teachers, nurses, and teachers' aids will be let go this week in Tarrant County. I can't help but ask myself, what are we doing?  It's difficult to remember the citizens of Texas elected those to the statehouse who seek to slash our education budgets and rip the rug right out from underneath our most precious assets. They promised to do this to us, and we elected them anyway. Now we will pay the price.

It's time to turn the tide away from those who want to hoard the emergency fund (for a "real emergency"), enlarge classroom sizes, pour millions into new standardized tests - ones that promise to actually be difficult enough to assess student achievement - and fire hundreds, if not thousands, of teachers across the state. How will we react to what the politicians are feeding us? 

We must continue to fight. We must continue to hound our state and national representatives, sign petitions, organize at our schools, and inform ourselves of the alternatives. But most of all, until we recognize as a people how valuable education is to everything - the civic, economic and cultural fabric of Texas itself - we will continue to fall nearly last in the nation.

Wake up, Texas. 

Here is an op-ed from yesterday's New York Times by Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegeri printed in full. Read it and think. This is no time to give up on our public education system. 

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries

By DAVE EGGERS and NÍNIVE CLEMENTS CALEGARI

WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.

And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.

Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.

We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we’re serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates. This will take some doing.

At the moment, the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years. The average starting salary is $39,000; the average ending salary — after 25 years in the profession — is $67,000. This prices teachers out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas, and makes raising a family on one salary near impossible.

So how do teachers cope? Sixty-two percent work outside the classroom to make ends meet. For Erik Benner, an award-winning history teacher in Keller, Tex., money has been a constant struggle. He has two children, and for 15 years has been unable to support them on his salary. Every weekday, he goes directly from Trinity Springs Middle School to drive a forklift at Floor and Décor. He works until 11 every night, then gets up and starts all over again. Does this look like “A Plan,” either on the state or federal level?

We’ve been working with public school teachers for 10 years; every spring, we see many of the best teachers leave the profession. They’re mowed down by the long hours, low pay, the lack of support and respect.

Imagine a novice teacher, thrown into an urban school, told to teach five classes a day, with up to 40 students each. At the year’s end, if test scores haven’t risen enough, he or she is called a bad teacher. For college graduates who have other options, this kind of pressure, for such low pay, doesn’t make much sense. So every year 20 percent of teachers in urban districts quit. Nationwide, 46 percent of teachers quit before their fifth year. The turnover costs the United States $7.34 billion yearly. The effect within schools — especially those in urban communities where turnover is highest — is devastating.

But we can reverse course. In the next 10 years, over half of the nation’s nearly 3.2 million public school teachers will become eligible for retirement. Who will replace them? How do we attract and keep the best minds in the profession?

People talk about accountability, measurements, tenure, test scores and pay for performance. These questions are worthy of debate, but are secondary to recruiting and training teachers and treating them fairly. There is no silver bullet that will fix every last school in America, but until we solve the problem of teacher turnover, we don’t have a chance.

Can we do better? Can we generate “A Plan”? Of course.

The consulting firm McKinsey recently examined how we might attract and retain a talented teaching force. The study compared the treatment of teachers here and in the three countries that perform best on standardized tests: Finland, Singapore and South Korea.

Turns out these countries have an entirely different approach to the profession. First, the governments in these countries recruit top graduates to the profession. (We don’t.) In Finland and Singapore they pay for training. (We don’t.) In terms of purchasing power, South Korea pays teachers on average 250 percent of what we do.

And most of all, they trust their teachers. They are rightly seen as the solution, not the problem, and when improvement is needed, the school receives support and development, not punishment. Accordingly, turnover in these countries is startlingly low: In South Korea, it’s 1 percent per year. In Finland, it’s 2 percent. In Singapore, 3 percent.

McKinsey polled 900 top-tier American college students and found that 68 percent would consider teaching if salaries started at $65,000 and rose to a maximum of $150,000. Could we do this? If we’re committed to “winning the future,” we should. If any administration is capable of tackling this, it’s the current one. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan understand the centrality of teachers and have said that improving our education system begins and ends with great teachers. But world-class education costs money.

For those who say, “How do we pay for this?” — well, how are we paying for three concurrent wars? How did we pay for the interstate highway system? Or the bailout of the savings and loans in 1989 and that of the investment banks in 2008? How did we pay for the equally ambitious project of sending Americans to the moon? We had the vision and we had the will and we found a way.

Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari are founders of the 826 National tutoring centers and producers of the documentary “American Teacher.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 1, 2011

 

An earlier version of this article misstated one finding from a McKinsey poll of 900 top-tier American college students. The poll found that 68 percent would consider teaching if salaries started at $65,000 and rose to a maximum — not a minimum — of $150,000.

 

PFET Book Club: Instead of top down, think bottom up

Twitter is taking over my brain. I follow my favorite education writers, publications and thinkers and get so many ideas in a day my head is spinning. (Go here to find out who I'm following!) So, I'd like to make a connection between what we were reading in The Death and Life of the Great American School System this week and the blog post of a public school teacher named Joanne Yatvin I picked up on Twitter via the Washington Post education blog, because they are closely linked. Got that? Good. While Ravitch unearths the problems in this week's reading, eventually realizing she no longer supports the federal and state mandates of testing, accountability and choice, Ms. Yatvin, a classroom veteran, offers up some solutions that are fresh and positive and altogether good for everyone involved, parents and students and teachers and principals.

Both women have come to the conclusion that a bottom-up approach to schools has a chance to save the day.

If you read this week's chapters, Lessons from San Diego, The Business Model in New York City, and NCLB: Measure and Punish, Ms. Ravitch explains in great detail why the top-down accountability approach just doesn't work, using the two examples of San Diego and New York City. She does a great job of pointing out the unintended consequences of rewards and sanctions. Here are the ones I found most interesting:

1. Why are we hiring business leaders with no education experience to run school districts? We have come to assume, with help from the media, that those leading our schools are incapable and that a school system full of children should operate the same as a business. But, as Ms. Ravitch points out, changing a management style from the very top level - a hardnosed business leader, like Alan Bersin, who was hired from the private sector to overhaul the San Diego school system - can have the unintended consequences of alienating the teachers, who have to implement all the changes. As the American Institutes for Research concluded when they evaluated the San Diego sytem, "Teacher buy-in is critical for the success of school reform efforts... teachers who perceived decision making as top-down tended to resist schoolwide reform efforts." Perhaps it is best, then, to fill our education administrations with education experts who are well-versed in schools and learning (and working with teachers), not bottom lines. This could also go for the Texas State Board of Ed, who, last time I checked, was altering curriculum and rewriting history books at the insistence of a dentist and a realtor.
2. Due to the proliferation of NCLB testing, the children of Texas are actually getting a worse education. The first half of the chapter on NCLB is about Texas explicitly. Ravitch shows that, while Texas showed children doing great on the state test, "the gains were not reflected on other measures of academic performance, such as the SAT and NAEP (National Assessment of Education Progress)." And "as teachers spent more time preparing students to take standardized tests, the curriculum was narrowed: Such subjects as science, social studies, and the arts were pushed aside to make time for test preparation."
3. The choice (vouchers) intended to help students get out of failing schools isn't working - although the reasons are unclear. "When offered a chance to leave their failing school and to attend a supposedly better school in another part of town, less than 5 percent - and in some cases, less than 1 percent - of students actually sought to transfer."

The top-down approach is not working - now what to do about it? (That's why you're here, isn't it?) I think we parents are feeling these effects in our classrooms, and the test scores aren't getting any better for it - Texas has actually dropped 10 places in the national average since NCLB has been enacted. I know this is a long post, but bear with me: the article from the Washington Post below deserves a thoughtful read. Let me know what you think about Ms. Yatvin's proposals - I like their creativity, their simplicity, and most of all, they're - according to her - cheap.

This post was written by Joanne Yatvin, a vet­eran public school educator, author and past president of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is now teaching part-time at Portland State University.

By Joanne Yatvin
Having complained long and loud about the misguided school reform schemes that rule the day, I think it’s time for me to step up and offer my own ideas for making schools work. Be warned that my proposals are not only unorthodox, but also teacher-biased, and cheap. Well, at least cheaper than the test-drenched plans now in place and on the horizon.

My version of school reform is based on two premises: (1) poverty and its accoutrements are the major causes of students’ poor academic performance (2) the principals and teachers who live their professional lives in schools are best qualified to make decisions for schools and to implement them.

Convert schools in high-poverty areas to full-time community centers.

By moving as many community services as possible into school buildings and making them available in the evenings and on weekends year round, schools could provide existing social supports to poor families more efficiently and economically and add recreational and self-improvement activities now in short supply.

In restructuring building use, the only adjustment to the daytime program would be the addition of basic health and dental care for students. During evening and weekend hours, however, libraries, gyms and computer labs would be open to all, offering a variety of classes, clubs, arts, and sports. In addition, inexpensive and nutritious family meals could be served in the school lunchroom, financially supported by local charities and food banks.

Turn over the management of high-poverty schools to professional educators.

We need to lure the best principals and teachers into struggling schools by offering them incentives of autonomy, professional advancement, and higher salaries. Under the leadership of a dynamic principal, chosen by the school staff and parents, schools would be empowered to create their own structures, including a principal’s cabinet and grade level instructional teams. Within each team, roles and salaries would be differentiated according to teachers’ expertise, experience, and willingness to take on additional responsibilities.

Evaluate teachers on their own performance, not those of students

I argue that too many factors beyond a teacher’s control affect students’ test scores, even when the school uses a “value added” system. What a student learns—both good and bad—comes as much from home, the street, the state of his or her health, and personal interactions as from the classroom. And each student makes choices about what to work hard at and what to ignore.

Although principals’ views of teachers’ competence are not perfect, having a wise and alert administrator considering what teachers do to help students learn is the only rational way to evaluate them. Not only formal observations should count, but also finding a teacher in the library helping some kids with research, noticing how often a teacher volunteers to do something extra for the school, seeing a teacher eating lunch at her desk while she reads student essays, or catching him on the phone talking to a parent.

Offer early retirement to burned-out teachers and incentives for ineffective younger teachers to resign or transfer to non-teaching positions.

At present, removing an unsuccessful teacher is a long and expensive process. But the problem is not teacher tenure. It is the lack of evidence of failure that makes attempting to remove a teacher look arbitrary or vengeful. The first step is to insure systematic evaluations of all teachers with prompt feedback and offers of assistance. Ultimately, any teacher marked for dismissal should be provided with counseling, a dignified resignation process, and monetary incentives. For both older teachers and their districts the incentives would be financially advantageous, with teachers getting a portion of their retirement benefits and the district getting the chance to hire a new teacher at a much lower salary.

Cut reliance on expensive commercial materials for students while increasing teachers’ professional development opportunities to increase their expertise.

Rather than depending on slick commercial programs and their disposable materials (i.e. workbooks), schools would do better to invest in high quality literature, technology, and reference books for students; and professional books and journals, presentations from local innovators, and university courses for teachers. At the same time, schools could purchase small numbers of a variety of commercial programs in which teachers might find good ideas they could modify and expand upon to fit their students’ needs.

Provide poor children with the background knowledge and support they may have missed at home and in their community.

What makes school difficult for most poor children is not lack of ability but meagerness of social, cultural and literary experiences. What many have missed out on is being read to, having substantive conversations with adults, visiting museums, parks, forests, and beaches, and being members of a civil society. To learn academic content and skills successfully, poor children need a school environment that is not only welcoming and supportive, but also rich in books, hands-on activities, cooperative learning, and exposure to the world outside their home community.

Reduce the number of standardized tests and the time devoted to test preparation

Not only is standardized testing expensive, it also allows tested subjects to crowd out other subjects, and test preparation to become almost a subject in itself. Furthermore, tests influence teaching style, making it shallow and formulaic to fit the limitations of a multiple choice format. Both students and schools would be better served ifstandardized tests were given only every few years and classroom teachers wrote yearly tests that demanded student analysis, judgment, and the synthesis of ideas.

Although I could add more change proposals to my list, these are the basics. I chose to highlight ideas that run counter to much of what is being proposed for school reform today. Since I never know whether to laugh or cry when pundits and policy makers call for more testing, standardization, charter schools, academic rigor (mortis?), ending teacher tenure, and implementing merit pay, I stuck to describing the major features of the good schools I have known and the great ones I still dream of.