October 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Character Lessons

Paul Tough’s book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, is a wake-up call for all of us in the education reform movement: We have to be even more clear-eyed about what we expect from an individual teacher and how we create a community (thank you, Hillary Clinton and happy birthday!) that inspires scholarship and great judgment.

It takes more than the Three Rs to turn children into full, participating members of our society. Reading, ’riting and ’rithmatic are important, but they may not be the most important thing teachers teach students who will succeed over the long term.

Educators have understood this need to help children build character for many years. And they do it every day in big ways and small.

Here’s what Tough had to say about character development in a Valerie Strauss column on WashingtonPost.com:

“As for the question of how helping kids develop grit and optimism might help them learn how to read Homer or learn geometry: I don’t go into this too deeply in the book, but I do think there’s pretty strong evidence in the psychological literature that if we can help young people improve their sense of self-efficacy – if we can help them develop what the psychologist Carol Dweck calls a growth mindset – they do better not just in the long run, but right away, in class. Dweck’s data shows that students who believe that they can improve their own abilities deal better with setbacks and apply themselves more energetically to difficult tasks – all of which would be very useful to a student about to tackle Homer or the Pythagorean Theorem.”

Thanks to journalist Paul Tough, the concept of helping students develop “grit”–the character traits they need to persevere when life gets difficult–has burst upon the public consciousness.

This national dialogue comes at a fortuitous time for VIVA Teachers. We are in the midst of a VIVA Teachers Idea Exchange in New Jersey that asks teachers about how they teach character to their students. The goal is that teachers across New Jersey (and elsewhere) will benefit from
the classroom expertise of their fellow professional educators, some of whom teach in schools with an explicit mission to help students become self-sufficient and grow up to be good decision- makers. New Jersey is firmly committed to a student-centered education system and is making lots of changes to achieve that goal. We partnered with the University of Pennsylvania, the source of some of the cutting-edge research on grit, to undertake this work. We are eager to hear from teachers across New Jersey about what a school as a whole can do to support instruction and instill the wider-ranging skills so students are equipped for wise choices and self-sufficiency. Please share the link http://bit.ly/vivanj with any you know!

Filed Under: Current Events & Policy News Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
October 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

What is a Good Teacher?

So much of the chatter in education policy these days is shaped by the goal of getting rid of bad teachers. While that is something we certainly should do, shouldn’t we spend a lot more time thinking about getting as many good teachers as possible into our nation’s classrooms? What about thinking about how to help good teachers become great, rather than the myopic focus on punishing lousy teachers?

The key, of course, is knowing what a good teacher is. I’ve been catching up on my reading lately and came across two recent(ish) studies that will help us make that shift to think about effective teaching.

In “Transforming Teaching: Connecting Professional Responsibility with Student Learning,” the National Education Association (click to download) published the work of its Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching. The report lays out an exciting vision for a teacher-driven public school system. It contains a clear call to elevate teachers’ professional leadership and responsibility and lists specific characteristics of effective teachers.

There’s a lot of food for thought in this report and we ought to spend a lot of time thinking about how we tap into the professional skills and judgment of classroom teachers–not just in their classrooms but in shaping our approach to public education.

Source: National Archives and Records Administration

In The Hangover: Thinking about the unintended Consequences of the Nation’s Teacher Evaluation Binge, the American Enterprise Institute tackles the incredible pace of change in our thinking about teacher evaluation. More than 20 states have put new teacher evaluation laws on their books in the last three years. And, the rhetoric around most of these legislative changes has been pretty dismal. The authors caution that there’s a lot of connecting the dots to be done to make these laws work well and actually have an impact on teaching practices.

Engaging Teachers

At VIVA Teachers, we think the more we engage classroom teachers in these conversations about what a effective teacher looks like, and how you actually measure effective teaching, the more likely our children are to have a good (or better) teacher in front of their classroom.

VIVA Teachers in New York and Minnesota have made some of the same points as the authors of these reports: that teachers’ professional judgment needs to be part of the calculus on effective teaching. That data is indispensable to evaluating effective teaching. In two detailed reports, these teachers outline a clear action plan for professional evaluation of teachers and principals that will help all of us understand what effective teaching looks like.

Filed Under: Current Events & Policy News, Doable, Not Perfect Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
September 16, 2012 By 1 Comment

The Complex Alchemy of Helping Students Learn

When I first started working on K-12 policy, about 10 years ago in the charter school movement, my favorite activity was visiting schools.  As a non-educator, I found it intimidating yet exhilarating to go into a school building and see what was going on.  Making a school hum is such a complex task and I loved the way the school administrators and teachers would break it down for me.

Empty classroom photo from Wiki CommonsI still don’t pretend to be an expert on the complex alchemy of teaching students. But now when I walk into a school, I pretty quickly get an idea of what I am going to find.

There are schools that have the culture of scholarship lurking in every corner of the building. It’s clear that students “get” the reason they are there.  In other schools, that energy and focus is found inside classrooms but not in the halls, cafeteria or other common spaces.  Same goes for the administrative space—some just give a visitor a 110% vibe of love of learning and clarity of purpose.  Others are well run, efficient but lack that zing.

Rarely have I visited a school in real crisis or chaos (they don’t let outsiders into those buildings, do they?)  so I’m not suggesting that any of the schools I visit are that painful 5% of truly awful schools.  But, what makes the difference between a school that soars and a school that plugs along?

Believing in the Wisdom of Teachers

I launched VIVA Teachers because I know the answer to these questions lies in the wisdom and work of classroom teachers.  It’s the sum of each teacher’s work in each class they teach that adds up to a school.  And somewhere between the syllabus for each class, the mix of classes a student takes, and the instruction that happens in every room every day is the DNA of how that school grabs its students and helps them tackle the work of scholarship.

But, students bring a lot to the table too.  Without a doubt their homes, their neighborhoods and their family resources are a big part of what they bring. There’s something else too—their spirit, their perspective, their yearnings, their ability to see long and short term, to sit down, to wrestle with a problem or an issue until they “get it.”

How do you describe this set of traits in students? How do you measure their use of those skills and “social intelligence” in the work of being in school and learning? It’s a topic that fascinates me and is increasingly grabbing academic attention and the headlines.

VIVA NJ Charter Teachers Idea Exchange

I’m so proud that VIVA Teachers is partnering with The New Jersey Charter Schools Association to give New Jersey charter school teachers a chance to explore these questions and bring their hard-earned experience from their classrooms to the fore via the VIVA NJ Charter Teachers Idea Exchange, which launches Sept. 17.

I can’t wait to hear what these committed teachers say and how they think we can translate those truths into a better understanding of what makes a school succeed.  I’m especially excited that we have the nation’s foremost researchers from The University of Pennsylvania in on the discussion.  Talk about bringing research into your classroom work!

Thank you for taking up the important work of educating New Jersey’s children and thank you for sharing your knowledge with the rest of us so we can make sure every single child in NJ has a truly equal opportunity to learn.

Filed Under: Idea Exchanges Tagged With: , , , ,
September 12, 2012 By 1 Comment

Where Will We Find the Trust Our Students Deserve?

Today’s blog topic: Trust.

It’s a tall order in short supply, particularly at this point in our political calendar. The presidential candidates spend far too much of their time attempting to undermine our trust in their opponent and not nearly enough time shoring up our trust in them.

Likewise, when teachers’ unions and school districts play their respective roles in the important work of running our nation’s public schools, they display precious little trust in the public. Worse, when the two sides head to the negotiating table to figure out how to work together in the interests of our children, they display even less trust in one another.

If we are going to achieve our national goals of ensuring that every student has a real opportunity to succeed, we have to be able to trust one another enough to speak the truth. About money. About what we need our children to know and how we can tell if they get it. About the definition of a great teacher. About how to get rid of the not-so-great teachers.

These aren’t easy conversations. But they are issues that great teachers–the teachers who have participated in our VIVA Teachers online conversations in Chicago, Arizona, Massachusetts, New York and Minnesota–have talked about openly and honestly.

VIVA Teachers exists to give teachers a place to talk amongst themselves and build the trust to speak the truth. To collaborate with peers and bring their experience to bear on the administration of public education, not just the delivery of material in the classroom. To grapple with the hard issues and come up with pragmatic, workable solutions. Maybe not the ideal for them, maybe not the ideal for their students, but solid, defensible actions that will deliver on our promise to children and not undermine their profession.

And, VIVA Teachers has caught the ear of some important listeners, including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton. Even Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel–not generally the Jeopardy answer to “The best listener among America’s politicians”- -was willing to listen deeply to what teachers had to say.

I’ve seen the results of those conversations in policy steps each of these public officials has taken. It’s electrifying to know that a bunch of hardworking classroom teachers have spoken truth to power and been heard.

But, we’ve only just now celebrated our first year (happy birthday to us) and those conversations between teachers and leaders are still far too few. The depressing fact is the vast majority of what passes for dialogue in the public sphere still consists of shouting past each other, sometimes literally!

So let’s stop arguing about personal values and personality issues and start talking, respectfully, about how we deliver on our promise of a great education for every American child who wants it, regardless of their household income, their ZIP code or their roots.

All it takes is a little trust.

What would make you give an extra dose of trust to a public official or leader?

Filed Under: Doable, Not Perfect Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
September 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Whither the Truthiness? A Civics Lesson, Thanks to Stephen Colbert!

via Wikimedia Commons

Photo: David Shankbone

Stephen Colbert tickles my funnybone. A lot. He has his finger on the zeitgeist of America. These days, my good pal Stephen often talks about “truthiness.” As always, he’s spot on: We’ve got a whole lotta truthiness going around in our country these days. What we’re lacking is truth. Especially when it comes to the public discourse about education reform.

I believe public education is a harbinger of our national spirit. The way we approach public education sends strong signals–to America’s students about our faith in their talents, their dreams and their ambitions, and to all of us who believe excellence in education and ample investment in public schools is a common good.

Of late, there’s been a strong, positive move in our country’s public education policy away from truthiness. We are starting to look at the truth—often hard truth—about what we’re giving our children–all of them, regardless of the color of their skin or the size of their family income.

The move to a Common Core is essentially a public discussion of what we want our kids to know. Federal programs such as Race To The Top and the in need of refreshing No Child Left Behind legislation are geared toward excellence and demands that we have high expectations for every American student The US Department of Education’s push for a concerted effort to turn around our country’s 5,000 worst public schools, those that are producing an outsized percentage of students who dropout or fail to develop the skills to succeed after high school are positive.

Of course, there still is enough truthiness around to fill many hours of Colbert’s show. VIVA Teachers believes the antidote lies in listening to classroom teachers. Classroom teachers bear the brunt of the crazy consequences of policy wrought from truthiness rather than truth.

It’s simply time to let classroom teachers speak for themselves and for public officials and public administrators to listen before acting. If we keep engaging in the dance of truthiness, our children will continue to suffer with subpar educational environments, a low bar on what we call “knowledge” and the scourge of dramatic inequality. More importantly, we’ll all suffer
from the erosion of our government, a lack of ability to have a reasoned public discussion about anything and more of the name calling and mud slinging from our public officials that does nothing to move our country forward.

Filed Under: Doable, Not Perfect Tagged With: , , ,
August 30, 2012 By 1 Comment

More Money Matters

It is a blogger’s dream to write something that generates a lot of interest, even when the interest
isn’t positive. I got a lot of feedback from my last post about money and pay for teachers. Every bit of
reaction was virulently opposed to what I said in that post. It tells me I did not do a good job of making
my point.

A few points I’d like to clarify:

1. Teachers are working too hard for the level of recognition and respect they get. I am deeply troubled by the inclination to “blame the teacher” or worse. The bashing must stop.

2. I’m not an academic and I don’t even play one on TV. What intrigued me about this University of Chicago study was the nugget of information about human behavior: paying teachers a bonus up front seems to have resulted in high performance for their students over the course of that school year.

3. I was not suggesting that pay should be tied to standardized tests. I am vehemently opposed to high-stakes testing and I think there are and should be many ways to measure the performance of both teachers and students. Using one test to do that is not only wrong, it’s counter-productive.

4. I believe that all teachers should make more money; a teacher’s starting salary should be $100,000 or more.

Yes. This is a touchy topic and I stirred up some real resentment with my first foray into these roiling waters.

But the bottom line is: Pay matters. Money is the way our society recognizes and rewards excellence. We have to find a way to talk about it productively. I hope I got the conversation started. We invite you to send us your own opinions. This space should be a dialogue. You can leave a comment below or, better yet, write your own blog and send it to eevans@vivalistens.org.

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August 28, 2012 By 2 Comments

Money Matters

We all want to make more money. Right? I know I do. And most likely you do too. So do teachers…at least until that new money gets labeled “merit pay.” Then teachers suddenly are offended because it says they teach for the money rather than for the love of their students.

Isn’t it time we stopped all of this nonsense and admitted that we all want more money? Once we do that, we also have to admit that, under our capitalist system, we can only get more money if we are worth more money. Among teachers, that means increased student learning.

So it was with great interest that I read the Chicago Sun-Times story from education reporter Rosalind Rossi called, “Cash upfront the way to get teachers to rack up better student test scores, study finds.” The article talks about a new study by behavioral economist John List of the University of chiago that shows “merit pay” does motivate teachers to improve their performance–provided the merit pay system is set up the correct way.

The researchers compared three sets of teachers in a south  suburban Chicago school district. One group got a $4,000 bonus at the start of the school year and were told that if they turned in higher student scores, the bonus would be doubled at the end of the year. If not, they would have to give the money back. A second group was promised $8,000 at the end of the school year if scores rose. A third group was promised nothing and received nothing.

The results were stunning  The group who got the up-front bonus worked hard to keep from losing the money. Their students’ math scores rose 2 ½ to 3 ½ times the gains reported for students being taught by those who were promised year-end bonuses.

The moral of this story? Money matters. Even to teachers. Teachers may have chosen their profession because they wanted to impact the lives of children, but they also want to pay the mortgage and live comfortably.

Isn’t it time we stopped taking offense at the very notion of rewarding excellence with money and started talking about how to use money in way that celebrates teachers’ passion for their job and those whose students soar?

Filed Under: Doable, Not Perfect Tagged With: , , , , ,
July 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment

It’s Time for Parents to Take Control of Education Conversation

New York Times columnist Joe Nocera tells us in his Sunday column, “Addressing Poverty in Schools,” that poverty is the elephant in the public education room   I agree that the name of the elephant in the room begins with a P. But it’s not poverty, it’s parents.

Almost all of our public discussions about how well our government is serving its citizens happen in a weird closed loop of “insiders” or “stakeholders.”  Over time, they develop their own language, their own set of fixes and a pattern to their debates.

This dynamic has permeated every crevice of public education — our policy discussions focus on whether you are “for” or “against” reform; administrators use terms like “best practice,” “multiple measures,” and “value added growth” that sound good but are not what they seem.  Add in a testing system that isn’t designed to do what we want  it to do (give us a legitimate picture of student learning) and isn’t clearly explained (or explained at all), and we’ve got an insiders’ mess on our hands.

It’s time for parents and guardians to take back control of the conversation. We parents—and our children—are the only real education insiders. It’s time for us to step into this conversation in a meaningful way. How? By partnering with teachers who are empowered to be the official translators and ambassadors to the public.

With parents, guardians and teachers as a united front, we will get much closer to the goal of giving each and every child a chance to learn, those who languish in poverty and those who languish in mediocre schools.

Absolutely we have to talk about the plague of poverty—and its effect on every facet of our society, from housing to health care. Yes, education too.

But we cannot make education policy solely through the prism of poverty, which inevitably leads to blame and questions of moral judgment that don’t lead us to solutions.

Instead, we must talk about public education in terms of opportunities and skills development so we can bring a greater focus to the business of public education: Giving young people the skills they need to be productive citizens.

When we talk only about poverty, we let lots of people off the hook. And it becomes a conversation about “those kids” rather than our kids. And make no mistake: They are all our kids.

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July 23, 2012 By 1 Comment

Why Education Reform Needs Data

Public education is a fragile yet critical resource and we have to do more to strengthen our public schools.  People are willing to acknowledge that too many students are in schools that don’t give them an adequate chance to learn.  Teachers know what it takes to be effective and administrators are working hard to get the necessary resources into their schools.

And yet. And yet.

There’s real concern about whether we can deliver to all students. I’ve been thinking a lot about this gulf between our effort and the nagging doubts about the ability to deliver success.

Why is it there? I think it’s because we’re afraid of the numbers. I can understand the inclination.  I was never big on numbers. In third grade, 8 X 2 frustrated and defeated me.

Nationally, numbers have gotten a bad name in education. Rather than seeing them as helpful, we see them as punitive.

Data, even standardized test data, is an important tool for teachers.But, the numbers hold the key to translating our aspiration for public schools into a success story. The numbers can tell us which concepts our students have mastered and which ones need more work. Teachers need to know that. Parents need to know that and, yes, the taxpayers who fund schools need to know that too.

So let’s have an honest conversation about assessments, tests and all. Rather than an all or nothing question of to test or not to test, let’s start talking about how various measures can be put together to give us a multi-faceted picture of the complex work of teaching and learning.  We need to be bold enough to be honest about what tests measure, what they can’t measure and what other data we can use to fill the gaps.

At VIVA Teachers, we know that teachers can drive this conversation. Put away the anti-testing rhetoric and the blame-the-teachers vitriol. And let the numbers help us find the right answer.

What’s a good example of how to use test data effectively?

Filed Under: Hope Tagged With: , ,
July 18, 2012 By 2 Comments

A Democracy Needs Authenticity

Where is the authenticity in American government?

As I indulged in my weekly obsession—Sunday morning news talk shows—I was struck by the lack of candor spewing forth. These media-trained, on-message politicians and political commentators told us next to nothing that could be considered authentic information about our country, the campaign or the future. I turned off the television in dismay.

Photo: Yana Paskova for The New York Times

Demanding pre-approval

I shouldn’t have been surprised, really. After all, the New York Times on Monday bared its journalistic soul with a story called “Last Word on the Trail? I Take It Back.” The story, which caused quite an uproar among non-Beltway journalists, revealed that high-level politicians now demand to approve their quotes before they can be used in print.  The writer, Jeremy W. Peters, blamed it on “a millisecond Twitter news cycle and an unforgiving, gaffe-obsessed media culture.”

Whatever the reason, I don’t think this can be good for our society, our government or our future.

Authentic Teacher Voices
That’s why I am so proud of the VIVA Teachers who share their time, their ideas and their authentic voice with us as part of our VIVA Idea Exchanges. And glad that American government still has at least a few public  leaders who believe in leadership that requires them to workable solutions not just shouting louder and more dogmatically.

Being authentic comes with risk. At the top political levels, they risk taking a hit during one ever-shortening news cycle. At the classroom, school and district level, our teachers sometimes risk their very jobs by speaking out.

We do our best to protect them from scrutiny. The VIVA Idea Exchange displays only their first name, last initial and (usually) what they teach. But there’s always the risk of an unusual name combined with a teaching specialty and a motivated person could figure out who is talking.

Worth the risk
At a recent national meeting of nonprofits helping teachers find their own public voice,  some of the bold teachers who have volunteered their time and talent with other organizations shared the risks they take—bloggers who get “flamed” on the Internet, policy agitators who have had their pay docked for attending meetings, teachers who speak out and are spurned by colleagues or punished by public administrators.  Yet, each of those teachers raised their authentic voice because they believed it was in the best interests of their students and their profession.

That’s the kind of passion our country needs. That’s the kind of courage that is required of a leader. That’s the authentic voice that can make a difference.

If a classroom teacher can do it, shouldn’t we expect the same from the people who lead this country?

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