State Superintendent Tom Torlakson, Sacramento Convention Center, 1/20/12 (photo by the author)

As for the event itself, it has taken me more than a week to regroup, catch up, and find the time for some follow-up on our experience.  But I’m glad to say I’ve pulled it all together here, and I hope this review will spark some renewed interest in the work, and some further dialogue.

The kick-off of the event was State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announcing the formation of an Educator Excellence Task Force.  What’s encouraging about Torlakson’s intention is that the task force, to be led by Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond and Long Beach Unified Superintendent Chris Steinhauser, will focus on bringing coherence to the full continuum of the teaching profession, from training and certification, to induction to evaluation, and to ongoing professional growth and expanded options for teacher leadership.

From there, we went into three short presentations about various aspects of strengthening the teaching profession.  (If you’re interested in the bios of speakers, or links to materials, use this link as your one-stop-shop).  The first presentation came from our colleagues Anna Martin and Sherene Judeh, a pair of early-career teachers who helped the Bay Area New Millennium Initiative to produce their report on modernizing the teaching profession.  They were joined by Barnett Berry, who founded and directs the Center for Teaching Quality.  We began here to focus on the broad picture of what teachers want and need in order to be more effective as career educators.  Their presentation emphasized the importance of providing a wider range of leadership possibilities for excellent teachers.  Right now, Martin and Judeh experience pressure to leave the classroom if they wish to translate their teaching success and leadership ideas into broader changes in education at any level.  Teaching has a unique divide that keeps too many excellent practitioners either entirely in or entirely out of classrooms.  They argue that some hybrid positions would improve both teaching and education leadership, first by keeping experienced and talented teachers in regular contact with students, and secondly by keeping administrative and professional development efforts more grounded in the classroom.  Not only would the people doing the work remain informed by their classroom practice, but they would also benefit from increased credibility with their peers.  Ask any teacher about the average quality of professional development programs led by non-teachers or former teachers, compared to professional develompment led by current teachers.  I don’t mean that as a criticism of anyone in particular, but I think most teacher and former teacher participants in this discussion would admit that there’s a sort of half-life on your classroom credibility once you leave teaching.  (Bill Ferriter pondered this question in an article for NSDC (2007): “How can teachers extend their ‘shelf-life,’ holding on to a legitimate understanding of what it means to be a classroom teacher after stepping into leadership roles beyond the classroom? What actions can accomplished educators take to remain master practitioners when they are no longer practicing?”).

David B. Cohen, Anthony Cody, Sandy Dean (l-r)

The second presentation was the one that I participated in, along with Anthony Cody.  Our focus was on the ACT teacher evaluation report, which includes several important principles upon which to build an imtproved teacher evaluation system.  But if our audience took away any one idea from our presentation, I would hope that they understood the importance of designing evaluation systems that focus on continual growth and development for every teacher, rather than focusing on compliance and minimal levels of quality control.  A more robust system will serve to provide the guidance and feedback that many teachers find lacking in the predominant models now in use.  At the same time, I’d expect that such a system could effectively identify teachers who, for whatever reason, are not making progress and need either stronger intervention or a dismissal.  As much as we hoped to focus on the positives of evaluations that truly focus on quality teaching and evidence of student learning, we couldn’t ignore the major political issue in teacher evaluation – the suggestion that student test scores should be part of the evaluation.  We state our firm opposition to that idea.  Our position is consistent with the best research in the field, and consistent with all of the leading professional associations that set the standards for educational research and measurement.  However, I won’t rehash all of the evidence and arguments here.  Interested readers can look at our report, or any of these blog posts, each of which has numerous citations and links.

The first segment of the morning presentations ended with researchers Dan Humphrey and Julia Koppich describing their findings regarding the efficacy of peer evaluation in two California school districts – Poway Unified, and San Juan Unified.  In short, they found that teacher evaluators, pulled out of the classroom and given the time and training to focus on evaluation, provided much more feedback than administrators, more specific and relevant feedback, and more of their time to coach and guide teachers who needed that support.  As an additional benefit, Humphrey and Koppich note that labor-management relations in these districts are more positive, more professional and collegial.  The common misconception or fear around peer evaluation is that the system would not be rigrorous and substantive, but decades’ worth of evidence in these districts demonstrates the opposite.

In a follow-up discussion panel, the seven of us who had made these presentations fielded questions from moderator John Fensterwald, and from the audience.  I was particularly glad that this portion of the event gave me an opportunity to mention something I’d intended to include earlier.  ACT is close to publishing a follow-up report to our evaluation report, in which we will share the perspectives of teacher leaders from around the state who have good ideas about how to modernize compensation and career pathways for teachers.  One question for the panel concerned actual models that might guide the work of California policy makers, and due to my work on the next ACT report I was able to point people to New Mexico, which has created a three-tier teacher licensure system, giving the average “tenured” teacher something higher to shoot for, something meaningful to their professional practice, and something that includes higher pay for a broader array of responsibilities.

Richard Carranza, Shannan Brown

A subsequent panel offered four education leaders an opportunity to respond to the ideas contained in the earlier presentations.  Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes began the process by sharing a little bit about how he came to be interested in education policy, though he did not go into details about his teacher evaluation reform bill (AB5), introduced in the Assembly last year, and still working its way towards a potential floor vote.  Fuentes was followed by Deputy Superintendent Richard Carranza of San Francisco Unified School District.  His remarks focused on the importance of working for equity in California schools, a cause he has helped advance in San Francisco by promoting teaching quality through National Board Certification, and other efforts to support good teaching.  Shannan Brown, current president of the San Juan Teachers Association and a 2011 California Teacher of the Year, offered a simple yet powerful condemnation of the wasteful and non-professional practices that currently deny teachers their professional prerogratives to exercise their judgment about student needs and student learning.  Essentially, she asked, “Why are outsiders telling me about my students, or my needs as a professional?”  Her criticism of this state of the profession did not absolve teachers of all blame: “We were asleep at the wheel,” Brown argued, when we let non-educators take control of our work and our workplace.  The final panelist was Eric Heins, Vice-President of the California Teachers Association.  Heins has spent considerable time working on evaluation for CTA, and elaborated on some important ideas relating to the culture in a school or district that can make evaluation either function well, for purposes of growth and improvement, or function poorly, in an atmosphere of enforcement and fear.

Linda Darling-Hammond, Sacramento Convention Center, 1/20/12 (photo by the author)

And finally, Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, whose work includes serving as Co-Director of SCOPE, offered concluding remarks for the event.  With an exhaustive knowledge of teacher training and evaluation, plus years of recent research in international education policy, she was able to put our situation into a broader context.  Here’s what I took away from her talk (and to some extent these reflections are influenced by the fact that I heard her speak again several hours later, along with Diane Ravitch, at the Sacramento Convention Center).

The “single story” of American education most frequently told in the press, in politics, community forums and business roundtables seems to suggest that our schools, teachers, and students are falling behind the rest of the world, and if we look at averages and broad brush strokes, it can be difficult to argue otherwise.  It turns out, however, that American students and schools in low-poverty communities are more than holding their own in international comparisons.  Students attending high-poverty schools are not being served equitably and are not performing well on assessments used for international comparisons.  The good news?  There are many strategies that U.S. and California policy makers could adopt to improve learning and teaching at all schools.  International comparisons suggest we could raise the skill level of teachers and the stability of the school as a workplace by putting in place more selective admissions policies and more generous fiscal policies.  Then, an emphasis on teacher learning – studying, analyzing, collaborating and reflecting – can dramatically improve the quality of education in a school or school system.  The solutions are not complicated, but they do cost money.  Given the tremendous importance of public education, it’s an urgent, essential investment.  The return on the investment will come through better education, a stronger workforce, less waste on the high costs of teacher turnover, fewer dropouts and grade retentions, less crime, and fewer prisoners.

Many policy makers and notable thinkers in the field of education will say all the right things about valuing teachers, respecting teachers, and our need to retain the best teachers.  On January 20, 2012, we offered a vision and a set of examples that we believe argue persuasively for putting teachers and teacher voice at the center of the conversation about improved teaching and learning.  We know our students, our schools, and our professional needs.  When we have the resources and authority necessary to do the job expected of us, when policymakers and voters understand that they, too, are accountable for student outcomes, the potential for systemic improvement can be realized.

(Once again, if you’re interested in the bios of speakers, or links to materials, use this link for all).

In the first clip, I picked up in the middle of a larger segment of the speech in which Ravitch points out that union detractors might have more credibility if they had greater success in areas where they have more influence.  Yet, Washington D.C. showed no gains from Michelle Rhee’s brief superintendency, nor do charter schools outperform traditional public schools – especially when student selectivity and attrition are figured into the equation.

In the second clip, Ravitch offers extended remarks about the misuses of standardized tests.  In the opening moments, she is addressing the idea of merit pay.  It is an idea grounded in 19th and 20th century thinking about how incentivize workers to do low-skilled repetitive work.  Teaching is neither, and research studies show consistently that attaching simplistic merit pay to work like teaching has a variety of negative effects, including decreased rather than increased motivation.  The idea of basing teacher evaluation on standardized test scores further taints the tests and the profession.  Even with “value-added” measures (VAM) applied, the scores are unstable, unreliable, and invalid for evaluative purposes.  Some economists have gone yet another step in the wrong direction by using studies of VAM to argue in favor of firing more teachers; such an approach, even if it were conceptually sound, would ignore basic realities about the labor supply.

For additional posts about this event, see blog posts by Alice Mercer, Larry Ferlazzo, and Anthony Cody.  I’ll add video clips from Linda Darling-Hammond’s speech in the near future.

UPDATE: Audio only versions of the speech: Part One; Part Two.

What follows is my attempt to capture his comments and the information he provided, with occasional interjections of my own thoughts or questions in parentheses and italics.

The big theme for 2012 education funding is uncertainty, as so much depends on the fate of tax-increases going before the voters in November.  If the measure sponsored by Governor Jerry Brown passes, then funding for state education may increase by about $5 billion – but none of it will reach the classroom.  Governor Brown has proposed using any additional funding to pay down deferrals already in place in K-12.  The legislature has managed to balance budgets in past years by keeping certain programs rather than cutting them, but funding them with deferrals, a promise to pay later.  Current deferrals are in the neighborhood of 20% of the education budget.  So if the budget allows for any increased spending this year, it will probably go to “pay down the wall of debt” (Simitian attributes that phrase to Governor Brown).  It’s time to start catching up on our obligations.

The tax measure we’ll be voting on in November results from California’s two-thirds requirement on votes for new taxes.  Though the state legislature and Governor’s office are controlled by Democratic majorities, they are unable to come up with the two-thirds vote to raise taxes and bring in additional revenues.  Polling indicates that the voters are likely to support Brown’s plan, but it remains to be seen if there will be competing ballot measures with the same goal.  History and conventional wisdom suggest that competing tax measures will cancel each other out.  One of the noteworthy efforts underway is spearheaded by Kathleen Munger.   Brown’s proposal for temporary tax increases:

• 0.5 cent sales tax (4 years)
• 1% income tax increase for earners over $250,000
• 1.5% income tax increase for earners over $300,000
• 3% income tax increase for earners over $500K

Without this measure, the budget will stay on the path of further deferrals, plus a 5-6% cut.  Proposition 98 was supposed to provide a guaranteed minimum for education budgets, but when budget cuts are enacted, education takes a hit from other funding streams that do go to schools but are not covered by the proposition.  Has the proposition outlived its usefulness?  It has been around for more than a decade and is becoming less relevant.  The legislature has suspended it twice in the past several years by two-thirds vote, and the formulas are a little too flexible to provide a true guarantee.

How should districts plan their budgets in these circumstances?  After all, budgets are planned in the spring, passed in the summer, and the election is in November.  Simitian expects that will vary from district to district, with some choosing a worst-case-scenario approach to planning and others taking a chance.

Brown has also suggested simplifying the state’s school funding formula, phasing in a new approach over five years.  We have many different categorical funds, which Brown would reduce, though there would still be a weighted student formula.  There are two types of school districts in the state:  basic aid, and revenue limit.  Basic aid districts, which fund education almost entirely out of local property taxes, are likely to see significant cuts under this plan, because if categorical funds are eliminated, these districts receive almost no money from the state.  (Basic aid districts do not receive a per-pupil allocation).  Revenue limit districts may or may not benefit, depending on the profile or demographics of their student body.  If they have many students in poverty or many English language-learners, they’re likely to benefit from this approach.  If they have few, then Brown’s plan will reduce funding for them.  The goal is to stop sending as much categorical funding to places where it’s less needed.

Simitian also described plans to eliminate or suspend certain mandates from the state in order to increase district flexibility.  The state will save money by not requiring and so many mandates it can only partially fund, but the state will fully fund those state mandates that districts choose to abide by.  Special education funding and mandates are not among those being considered optional or flexible.

Senator Simitian mentioned that constituents have asked about the possibility of weighting the formula for cost of living.  Employee pay and overall cost of living varies significantly across regions, but the state formula has no allowances for those differences, and apparently will not in the foreseeable future.

Education budgets will also be affected by the elimination of redevelopment agencies (happening next month), as revenues that previously went to these agencies will in part reach school districts.  For some revenue limit districts, this will be slightly good news – not a larger budget, but less of it deferred.  For some revenue limit districts, this change will push them into basic aid status.  For basic aid districts, there may be a slight increase in funding as a portion of the money that was sent to the redevelopment agency will now go the districts.

Then Simitian brought up the topic of charter schools, though he joked that “This is the part of the meeting where I’d like to say ‘Thanks for coming!’”  Governor Brown had direct personal experience in starting and providing some direction for two charter schools when he was the mayor of Oakland, which means that he brings a bit more first-hand knowledge of the challenges in public education.  (Brown’s recent State of the State speech reflected some practical wisdom, according to Anthony Cody and Diane Ravitch).  Simitian finds the contentious debate around charters quite “disheartening.”  He is not surprised by the friction, however.  When the laws changed in the late 1990′s, the number of charter applications jumped, and right at a time when school funding was being cut due to declining enrollment, followed shortly by economic decline.  Simitian’s view: “I would like to make all charters work for all schools in all districts.”  Simitian and Assemblymember Julia Brownley proposed bills around charter management and governance last year, and managed to build some consensus around them (including the California Charter School Association).  Simitian’s bill held charters to certain academic standards.  Brownley’s bill applied the Brown Act (state law requiring open meetings) to charter schools.  Governor Brown did not support the bills.  Simitian describes Brown as someone who is hard to classify, who knows his own mind and has a wide variety of experience.  As a first year governor (again), he’s not in a rush to tackle issues in the same way as Brownley and Simitian (both termed out this year).  (I may have missed something in Simitian’s comments, but it appears these charter school bills were held over and should head back throught the legislature this year).

School transportation costs – right now, most school transportation programs have been cut or are in jeopardy due to budget cuts.  Simitian says there will be interest in revisiting this issue in legislature.

Transitional kindergarten – Simitian sponsored a law that passed in 2010, requiring incoming kindergarten students to be five years old by September 1, replacing the Dec. 2 cutoff.  In researching and proposing the law, Simitian was convinced that arguably one-quarter of students in kindergarten are too young, and as a result, we have disproportionate number of grade retentions and special education referrals for those students.  So it’s economically and educationally wise to defer their entry into school.  (With 6 million students in the state, that means 1.5 million students started too soon).  A sudden shift would mean a $700 million savings for each year that the smaller cohort moves through the system, and the state could put the money into transitional kindergarten.  In 13 years, we’ll face a question of how to fund transitional kindergarten without the undersized cohort moving through the system.  At least, that was the idea.  Governor Brown is proposing cutting funding for transitional kindergarten in order to offset other liabilities.  Simitian’s position is that the law will not change even if the funding does, and even if Brown is proposing defunding the program, it is law and it cannot be “line-item vetoed.”  He hopes Brown’s proposal will disappear soon, because the administration has not been clear enough about what they intend, and he doesn’t think they’ll be able to go through with it.  We’ll end up with months’ worth of unnecessary stress and debates. (The situation has caused some serious disruptions in districts – including San Francisco Unified; you can read more on the issue at TOP-Ed).

Question from audience: revenue limit districts suffer more from deferrals than basic aid districts; isn’t that inequitable and illegal?  Simitian says yes it’s inequitable, and probably not illegal.  The Governor’s proposal is intended to address those deferrals – but again, only if the tax plan passes.

Question from the audience: Brown’s tax proposal is not for education, but for general funds.  Can he make an appeal for education voters if the money won’t really help enough for education?  Simitian says Brown’s response would probably be that without this measure the situation will be worse.

Regarding Brown’s State of the State speech and its comments on reducing testing in the school system, Simitian agrees with Brown that we need timely access to testing data so that we get it to teachers, parents, and students at a time when it can be used.  (Nevermind the quality of the test?  As a teacher and as a parent, I have no use for the current crop of state tests.  I can see where they might provide districts, counties, or the state with some minimally useful information).  This is a governor who is “skeptical at best” about the value of data.  Simitian thinks data is essential to inform good policy.  (I think they’re talking about different uses of tests, with Brown picking up on the limitations of the tests at the school, classroom, or student level, and Simitian possibly more interested in the state level).  Simitian relates a couple of his conversations with Brown that revealed a difference of opinions on data.  Simitian points out that this attitude about data has played a role in this administration’s disinterest so far in Race to the Top, and NCLB waivers.  (And I say, “bravo!” Both programs reflect the worst type of federal meddling, coercing our compliance with ill-conceived policies in exchange for an amount of money that sounds dramatic but will have very little benefit for schools or students.  States that won Race to the Top grants have not reaped great benefits, and Tennessee has demonstrated the pitfalls of a hasty alignment with lousy federal directives).

Question from audience: why can’t all schools have the flexibility that charters have?  Simitian notes there is increased interest from the state in expanding local control – not coincidentally, because of the shortage of funding.  The key will be to hold on to control when funding improves.

Question about Common Core Standards implementation: Simitian reports no legislative activity around Common Core. The action will be at State Board of Education and California Department of Education.

Pension reform: Simitian is on the conference committee on that issue.  Simitian has opposed “pension-spiking” practices and has tried to eliminate or reform them, but his efforts have ended up linked to other issues in legislation, and have therefore been slowed.  Reform should be fair, affordable and sustainable, because if we reach a crisis then the solution will be hasty and with less attention to those characteristics.

Other tax reforms: Prop 13 split roll?  Oil-severance?  Simitian predicts that these types of measures will crop up if Brown’s measure fails.

Looking further ahead, Simitian has reached his Senate term limits.  Someone in the audience wants to know about the outlook for the future as we lose an influential advocate for education.  Simitian says that he thinks the state’s voters and legislators are increasingly aware of the urgency of reinvesting in California’s educational system.  It’s important for advocates to fight through the fatigue and carry on.  Especially in a term-limit environment, there are always new legislators to whom the case needs to be made, and whose own learning we must contribute to.

I hope you’ll share your reactions and thoughts to these video clips here on InterACT – agree or disagree.

In this first clip, Ravitch considers the unfortunate idea behind NCLB – that eventually, every American public school would be labeled a failure.  She also considers “parent trigger” laws, and suggests that public schools are a public institution, not established and maintained for the sole benefit of the current students, but for the good of society overall and all of the students yet to come.  Why then, should a majority of current (and soon-to-be) parent community have the right to make a decision about potentially drastic changes to an institution that belongs to all of us?

In the second clip, Ravitch looks at the deprofessionalization of education – the sadly popular notion that TFA interns or other alternative-route teachers are good enough to be the classroom teacher of record with so little training, and that principals and superintendents need not have a background in teaching in order to lead effectively in a teaching organization.  When teachers protest these ideas, especially through their unions, the unions themselves are subject to attack for obstructing progress – nevermind that the leading states and nations all have strong teachers unions, while the lowest performing states, generally, are non-union or have weaker unions.

Additional clips from Ravitch’s speech are embedded in this follow-up blog post.

UPDATE: Audio only versions of the speech: Part One; Part Two.

State Capitol Building (photo by the author)

Today in Sacramento (beginning at 9:30 a.m.), Accomplished California Teachers (ACT) will co-present “Teaching Quality and California’s Future” – an event sponsored by the Stuart Foundation and organized by ACT, the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ), and Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy Equity (SCOPE).  We are excited to see months of planning culminating in what we hope will be an informative and useful event for our audience.

I’ll try to post short, timely updates on some of the highlights and takeaways of the day, with more of the materials available online soon, here, or at the ACT website.

You can keep apprised of the event and catch some ideas and links by using Twitter.  The main event hashtag will be #CAteaching.  Tweets from the event will come from the following accounts (that we know of):

@AcmpCA_Teachers 

@scope_stanford

@alicemercer

You might also want to follow event participants as indicated below in the event overview.

Event highlights will include:

State Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Torlakson will make an announcement and offer opening remarks.

The Bay Area New Millennium Initiative (a project of the Center for Teaching Quality) will present their work on early -career teachers looking at reforms to the profession that would help retain teachers and offer greater variety of roles and responsibilities for teacher leaders.

Anthony Cody (@anthonycody)and I will present ACT’s teacher evaluation report, and argue for a new way of thinking about teacher evaluation – as a robust, ongoing and growth-oriented process that improves all teachers, rather than a bureaucratic procedure focused on compliance and baseline quality control.

Julia E. Koppich and Daniel Humphrey will present their research on peer evaluation in two California school districts.  Their findings indicate that evaluation of teachers by teachers produces some important benefits in both the quality and quantity of the evaluative feedback, and even in the quality of the labor-management relationships between local teachers associations and district administrations.

John Fensterwald (@jfenster)will moderate some discussion and Q&A with the presenters above.  Then, our expert discussant panel will take the stage to react and respond to the presentations.  The participants in this panel are Shannan Brown (2011 CA Teacher of the Year and president of the San Juan Teachers Association), Richard Carranza (Deputy Superintendent, SFUSD), Assemblymember Felipe Fuentes (author of teacher evaluation legislation, AB-5 from last year), and Eric Heins (@ericheins, Vice-President of the California Teachers Association).

Linda Darling-Hammond (photo by the author)

Linda Darling-Hammond will wrap up the event with some final thoughts and reflections on the teaching profession in California.

with Diane Ravitch at the SOS March, July 2011, Washington, D.C.

And then, to cap off the day, several hours later many of the same cast will attend a speech by Diane Ravitch at the Sacramento Convention Center.  All in all, it promises to be a dynamic day for education policy discussion and advocacy in California’s capitol.  (Sorry there aren’t many links in this post – stay tuned for updates, though!)

• The Gates Foundation-funded Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project continues to update its research findings, and continues to argue that standardized tests and value-added measurement would be useful in teacher evaluations.  (Washington Post article).
• A study by Harvard and Columbia researchers uses value-added measures to quantify the effects of good teaching in various outcomes for students, well into adulthood. (NY Times article)

A friend of mine sent a Facebook message this morning to ask what I thought of the latter study, but let me say a bit about each of them.  In both cases, I remain skeptical regarding the use of standardized tests to suggest so much about students and teachers.  In the MET project, I actually like much of what I’ve seen reported and summarized regarding their work.  We should definitely pursue ongoing rather than intermittent evaluations, the involvement of multiple evaluators, and try to find ways to include student feedback.  If reformers and politicians would compromise on the use of standardized tests, we would overcome the main policy obstacle in teacher evaluation reform efforts and find much to agree on.  I share Randi Weingarten’s concern, however, that as long as we see anyone coming to this debate with a mindset about ferreting out the bad teachers instead of supporting all teachers, we have work to do to shift that frame.  Her written statement was quoted as follows in the Washington Post (article linked above):  “Until we make a commitment to develop evaluation systems that are first and foremost about continuous improvement and professional growth, we will continue to struggle in our efforts to provide every child with a high-quality education.”

As for the economic analysis of “high value-added teachers” and “low value-added teachers” – yawn.  Did we need another study suggesting that kids who perform better in some measure of academic skills end up earning more money?  Did we need a study to show that some teachers’ students produce better test scores than others and that better test scores correlate with higher earnings, etc.?  These analyses offer little if any guidance for what to do with actual teachers in actual schools.  They try to make their findings sound more significant by multiplying out the variations over decades.  Having that “high value-added teacher” helps a student earn $9,000 more in their working years, so… $9,000 divided by forty-plus years of work, divided by forty-something working weeks in a year, divided by five days per week… we’re talking about loose coins here if we work the math in the opposite direction.  But no – the authors then multiply the effect by all the students in the class and make it look really huge.  Hey, let’s assume retirement age goes up in the future and just throw in another 5 or 10 % on top of that, while we’re at it.

Sadly, if you read the NY Times article, you see the predictable call to make it easier or quicker to fire the weak teachers.  Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of fantasizing about terminations, some fiscal conservatives out there saw these types of studies and said, “You know, if we spent a little more money right now trying to improve the quality of teaching for every teacher, in every classroom, we’d be multiplying these effects by millions of teachers and hundreds of millions of students over the next several decades and we’d be adding billions of dollars in value!  Let’s do it!”

(Note: My reactions to the NY Times article were shaped in part by seeing the reactions of Sarah Goldrick-Rab, Liam Goldrick, Bruce Baker, and Cedar Reiner earlier this morning – so, credit where it’s due!).

photo by the author

• The most exciting part of my edublogging year was probably the Save Our Students March and Call to Action in Washington, D.C.  I was able to be in Washington that week because of the 2011 conference for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, but I managed to divide my time a little bit.  I composed Sending Out an S.O.S. more quickly than anything I’ve ever written of similar length, and posted it within minutes of leaving my hotel room to take in the rally.  I concluded that post as follows:

President Obama and Secretary Duncan have failed as educational leaders.  I’ll offer credit where its due on some initiatives relating to technology, community colleges, and preserving teacher jobs during a difficult economy, but I refuse to lower my expectations for our students and our public education system as a whole.

Gentlemen, we have assessed your education priorities and policies for over two years, and found your efforts are below proficient.  There is a higher standard, and the stakes are high.  Considering that you have the power in this situation, and the pulpit from which to demand the changes we really need, the buck stops with you, but you refuse to engage in an honest evaluation of your failures and correct your course of action.  I understand that; you’re politicians.  That is why people are sending out an S.O.S.  The improvement of public education depends on applying political pressure against you, because dialogue has proven fruitless.

See you on the Ellipse.

•  Another stroke of good fortune in 2011 was being invited to address a meeting of the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission, which convened in San Jose on April 21st.  My remarks to the commission were not composed for the purpose of the blog, but I ended up with enough material for two blog posts: Equity and Excellence, Part One, and Part Two.

•  A blog post I’m particularly proud of came in response to a thoroughly misguided policy in a pair of Orange County high schools that used color-coded identification cards and a variety of incentives and shamings to try to motivate students to score well on state tests.  Eugenic Legacies Still Influence Education was the longest and most thoroughly researched blog post I’ve ever composed, and it generated the most comments as well.  I almost didn’t write it:

“I’d have thought the policies were so obviously wrong, so insensitive, so counterproductive and so poorly aligned with what we know about motivation and performance, that it would almost be unnecessary to write a blog post about the incident.  I’m glad that Anthony Cody did, but I didn’t think I’d have much more to contribute.  Until I mentioned eugenics – first on Anthony’s blog, then on Twitter.  In a series of exchanges with someone I respect, I was repeatedly challenged on my claim that this policy had connections to eugenics.  So here we go.”

•  The most read InterACT post of 2011 was Common Core Confusion: ASCD Edition – which received a nice boost in readership from ASCD Smartbrief.  However, months later, I see that post and its predecessor, Common Core Confusion, still showing up in our daily and weekly blog traffic.  I attribute that fact entirely to interest in the topic rather than any particular insights I’ve offered.  Common Core standards, implementation, and assessment will also be the subject of my first blog post in 2012, I anticipate, when I have the time to synthesize a wealth of information and opinions that arose in an education policy summit I attended a couple weeks ago.

• Another significant education policy issue this year was NCLB waivers, which prompted me to write Duncan Seeks Cheap Conversions – “In recent news, we learn that Duncan may be willing to waive NCLB provisions and penalties, in return for states’ compliance with his favored policies.  I thought Race to the Top was an overreach, but this time, Duncan’s move brought quick criticism from wider quarters.”  

• Federal policy relating to school turnarounds did some damage here in California, which I discussed in The Illogic of School Turnaround Models – “San Francisco will implement an unsanctioned approach to an illogical policy that replaces most local decision making to conform to inflexible federal policies.  It makes little sense educationally, but this policy couldn’t be any more politicized.  It might appeal to some of President Obama’s supporters in the so-called education reform camp, but it didn’t please civil rights leaders and organizations, and I doubt it’s going to win over many voters who are just wondering why the their kids’ principals and teachers had to be replaced in an arbitrary manner.”

• The political and economic climate around the country put unions in the news quite a bit this year, leading me to address the topic twice.  First, I recalled my great-uncle Phil and wrote Union Proud, and then I joined in EduSolidarity with some other bloggers and wrote Why Teachers Like Me Support Unions.

• In What’s Missing in Discussions of Children’s Interests? I wrote: “Another simplification I hear and read often is that school reform must be carried out with the interests of children placed ahead of the interests of adults.  Most recently, I found it (and commented on it) in a blog post by John Merrow.  What a beautiful sentiment!  You can’t argue against that, can you?  Well… I’m going to.”  

• Maybe 2012 will see some improvement in education reporting.  I was not in a charitable mood regarding education journalists when I wrote Appeal to Education Writers: Evaluate Opinions – “It’s been said that everyone is entitled to their opinion, and you’re entitled to report it.  But they’re not entitled to their own facts, and it would help if you would report which side has an opinion backed by facts.”

• Back in 2010, I found myself repeatedly writing about the application of business and management principles in education; I guess 2011 was the year I dabbled in law a bit.  First, I imagined a court case tackling the issue of value-added measurements used in teacher evaluations, and wrote the cross-examination I would love to hear some day: Turning the Tables: VAM on Trial.  Then I read through portions of the judge’s ruling in the case of Lobato v. Colorado, and hoped that the implications of that ruling for similar cases in California might finally mean that it’s Time to Throw Money at the Problem of debilitating education budgets.

• On a lighter note, I put out a small wager to Checker Finn this year, responding to his Half-Baked Teaching Analogy, I but never heard back from him.  No deadline, so I’ll repeat the offer and anyone interested can click on the link for details: “Mr. Finn, I feel a little bad for critiquing your analogy so thoroughly, so here’s an offer in case I’m off-base: if you can find a classroom teacher who will send me a guest blog post preferring your analogy of teaching and learning over mine, then lunch is on me next time you’re at Stanford, and I’ll have learned a culinary lesson.”

Thanks for reading, and come on back in 2012!  Happy New Year!

Kelly Kovacic

Continuing to wrap up 2011 at InterACT, today I highlight a few of the great posts that Kelly Kovacic contributed this year.  (Prior installments include best guest posts and best posts by Martha Infante).  As a result of her time as a California Teacher of the Year, Kelly has kept quite busy not only here in California, but also participating in national, and even international events.  While the pace of InterACT posts has understandably dropped off, it’s always a pleasure to see what Kelly has to offer, whether as a result of her leadership and travels, or just from her perspective as a classroom teacher.

Let’s start off with one of those posts that offer Kelly’s insights relating to her Teacher of the Year experience.  The title is “Learning After You Know It All” – and the topic…

[It] was quite remarkable to attend the recent International Summit on the Teaching Profession in New York City where a global collection of ministers of education, labor organization representatives, and teachers sat side-by-side to listen, discuss, and learn. This was the first time such a summit had been held in the United States.  Delegations from Belgium, Brazil, Canada, The People’s Republic of China, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Slovenia, and United Kingdom joined our home-grown delegation to explore four main topics: Teacher Recruitment and Preparation; Development, Support and Retention of Teachers, Teacher Evaluation and Compensation; and Teacher Engagement in Education.

Kelly’s most read post of the year was “Open Letter to the Public Education Budget Cutters” – which, surprisingly generated no comments for all of those page views. (It’s not too late to comment, by the way).  Perhaps that’s just a blog idiosyncrasy, but I prefer to think that Kelly’s post was just so clear and articulate that there wasn’t much left to say.  It’s important to note that Kelly works at a charter school that has produced some wonderful results for English language learners, students living in poverty, and first generation to attend college.  However, she doesn’t hold up her school’s success as a way to beat up on other schools that haven’t been able to produce similar results.  She writes:

We definitely need more vision and innovative programs to improve those schools that are in trouble.  The success of the students at my school, who all live below the poverty line, is proof that such vision and innovation can and do make a difference.  Schools in trouble deserve immediate, bold, and surgically precise help.  But, it is time to tone down the largely uninformed noise about a complete education system that is “broken.”  It is time to stress and build on the positive; to recognize the excellence that is taking place in most classrooms throughout our nation.  It is time to start treating teachers like valued professional partners, not targets.  It is time to take a courageous stand against rumors, innuendo, and rhetoric.  It is time to support, not attack, public education.

I’m also glad that Kelly took the time to explore an important topic in forward-looking education discussions, in the post, “My teacher… the computer?”  The adoption and implementation will certainly change the way we educate our students and ourselves.  I have no doubt that in another fifteen or twenty years we’ll look back at a system that will seem excessively rigid, linear, and homogeneous; however, Kelly’s conclusion is spot-on:

As we envision schools for the 21^st Century, technology will undoubtedly play an important and integral role.  But, it will be the 21^st Century teacher in the classroom – providing guidance, a passion for learning, an understanding of what is necessary to move a student to the next level of inquiry and excellence, and an unwavering belief in each student’s potential – that will continue to make the ultimate difference.

Martha Infante preparing to speak to the USDOE Equity and Excellence Commission, ( San Jose, CA; 4/21/11)

I’m going to take some liberties in putting together an end-of-year page for Martha Infante, because I think the most significant blogging she did on InterACT was a series of posts that started in 2010 and ran well into 2011 before concluding.  Back in the fall of 2010, Martha’s school was slapped with a label and declared a “failing school.”  Such labels are gross over-simplifications, and as I wrote about earlier this year, when the term “failure” is linked to adequate yearly progress (AYP) under No Child Left Behind, it’s becoming an increasingly useless distinction.  Martha’s posts on this topic have allowed readers to see behind the label, to look at the school, the students, teachers, and community, and to see so much of what everyone should understand about the situation.  They are not failing.  The high-stakes and extra pressure are counter-productive.  The result of the whole process was to waste thousands of hours of work that could have been dedicated to purposes closer to the classroom.  The label was removed a year later, leaving people cynical and demoralized.  I hope you’ll take some time to look back at this important series of blog posts by Martha Infante.

• Month One as a Failing School
• Month Three as a Failing School: The Hatchet Drops 
• Month Five as a Failing School
• Month Nine as a Failing School
• Failing School No Longer (But Were We Ever?)

But as significant as these posts were, I’d also be remiss in my duties if I failed to note that Martha’s most read blog post of the year was Not Insulted, in which she takes Arne Duncan to task for trying speak for teachers – and against Diane Ravitch.

You can view all of Martha’s blog posts by using the index in the right-side column of this page – or just click here.

Martha is also an active Twitter user – why not follow her?

Today, the Colorado State Board of Education voted 4-3 to appeal that ruling.  One of the “no” votes came from Elaine Gantz Berman, who wrote about her perspective on the case for Education News Colorado.  In her guest post on their blog, I think she shows a common sense reaction to the ruling.  She writes,

I cannot come up with any reasonable rationale to defend the status quo of how we fund schools, and I believe the students of Colorado deserve a first class education system. Today, we do not have a first class education system in our state.

It’s my hope that this ruling will force the legislature and the governor to come up with a solution now – and not delay the important discussion. Since the solution must not harm other important existing programs – such as Medicaid, higher education, prisons and transportation – I can see no way around the fact that we need additional revenue to address our antiquated school funding model.

I encourage you to read the rest of her post, and hope that here in California, we’ll see similar leadership as our own education funding and equity cases move through the courts.  As I said in my prior post, it’s not that I like the idea of litigating these matters, but the state’s citizens and politicians don’t yet seem inclined to face up to the enormity of the problems and solve them.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper approved of the board’s decision to appeal the case, and issued a statement about the appeal and the ruling, raising issues of practicality and possible conflicts with other portions of the state constitution.