I’ll begin this with a letter to the editor I submitted to the Northfield News, which I think is self-explanatory:
On Feb 9 the Northfield School Board entertained two options for next year’s school calendar. Both involve having a one hour late-start EVERY MONDAY of the year, so that teachers can have the time to meet in professional learning communities. These meetings would replace the four days that have traditionally been scheduled with 2 hours either late start or early release. Parents have one month to comment on the proposed calendar. (continued)
I strongly object to this change.First, it will further reduce instructional time for each student. We already have fewer instructional days (173) than other areas of the country (e.g., the Northeast, which has about 180); now we are chipping away at those fewer days. We are reminded each year by building principals that every minute of instruction counts. If true, then reduction in instructional time is a very big issue.
Second, this calendar, while perhaps convenient and congenial to teachers and principals, is problematic for working parents of elementary students. Working parents are unlikely to be able to stay home until 9 or 9:30 every week with their young children. They will now have to pay extra to have supervision for their young elementary children (or else leave them unsupervised). The plan is not “cost-neutral” as claimed by the district, but a new cost imposed unilaterally on parents.
My third objection is that the only options on the table contain this late-start provision. Parents had no voice in formulating these options, or discussing with the committee what effects this change would have on them.
Lastly, the justification given for this change is that “research” has “shown” that professional learning communities are beneficial for education. I find this statement vague and possibly misleading. Our teachers have been in PLCs for at least some time already, and our performance as a school district is heading down, not up. What exactly is the evidence, IN NORTHFIELD, that PLC’s are improving student experience?
My experience as a parent is that the Northfield school district is a very staff-centric one. We do (and fail to do) far too much to suit the convenience and preferences of teachers and administrators, instead of centering efforts, energies, and resources on students. Parental concerns are ignored far too often. It’s time for this focus to change.
I urge other concerned parents to make their views known to school board members, and to do so soon.
I haven’t yet heard back from the News—usually they publish my letters though sometimes it takes a few weeks. They also limit letters to 400 words, so there is not a lot of room for expansion.
But as I wrote the letter, and as I phoned and emailed school board members about the issue before writing the letter, I became increasingly clear about how I felt about a larger issue: The Northfield School district has become increasingly staff-centric, and that compromises the overall educational quality delivered to its students.
I don’t deny that having teachers be in professional learning communities has value. I question the relative value of those meetings against instructional time for kids. I also question why these meetings can’t take place after school or before school (in the case of Bridgewater, which already has a very late start). I suspect the answer has something to do with the large proportion of teachers who coach. But that raises the question, why is coaching more important a priority than teaching. And, coaching aside, I question why the burden of holding these meetings should fall upon families with both parents working outside the home, or single parents who work outside the home (like me).
For more information, see the ISD 659 website has PDF of background information and Frequently Asked Questions.
Arlen (199): Thanks for the feedback. It sounds as if your teacher friends didn’t have first-hand experience with PLC’s. Maybe we should put them in touch with Ray Coudret or others who have, just so they can see a fresh perspective.
The fact is, there is a lot of anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-public school sentiment out there among some Republicans. Teachers’ unions represent a group some Republicans feel they can’t win with, so there’s nothing they’d like better than to turn all public schools into charter schools, possibly run by for-profit corporations (why see all that taxpayer money go to teachers and sometimes floundering schools, when you could have profits go to corporations and CEOs who might be Republican donors?). Or turn it all into vouchers to take more money away from public schools; in this way, you’d put public schools on a starvation diet. Like Rush Limbaugh wishing Obama would fail, there are Republicans who would not mind chasing all the best teachers out of public schools so that they’d become so dysfunctional, they’d have to be put out of their misery. Like Grover Norquist, who wants to reduce taxes so far that you could take what’s left of the government and drown it in a bathtub (that’s patriotism for you).
If you’re not aware of it, putting one’s head on the sand won’t make it go away.
Arlen, you really have to get out more. There’s politics all around, and if you’re not aware of the political angles, political players will find ways to use you, without your intending it….
There’s a saying that goes something to the effect of,
“those who are most political are those who claim they’re not being political.”
Kathie, in # 200, you wrote,
Sure. Sounds as if they’re thinking of that.
You continue,
Sure, get it right. But if you’re realistic, I think you’d have to admit that some parents are not interested in following such issues (too busy, other interests, not a priority, whatever), and some may simply trust the administration, teachers and the school board; considering how badly the survey went, this may be a sign of generosity, but not necessarily insanity. The teachers who believe PLC’s may do well may florish more in a context of trust than of mistrust.
So now that you feel compelled, are you planning on attending any school board meetings, or have you still given up hope on the system with the assumption that it’s rigged, as you said earlier?
You write,
I thought this was fairly obvious. If you have it after school and keep the classroom time the same, then for one thing, some teachers will not be able to attend their PLC’s because they have coaching and extracurricular supervision work. If you’re looking for a way to make sure PLC’s would fail, scheduling them after school would be a sure way to achieve that goal. For a second thing, if you’re asking teachers to all make a committment of more work hours on PLC’s, it’s not fair to ask something of them without offering something in return.
Even Ray Cox must pay his employees if they work overtime. (Ray, do you expect something extra for nothing, or do you offer some kind of fair compensation?) Maybe Ray doesn’t pay overtime pay, but at least the regular hourly rate. If they’re not on an hourly wage, but during certain months, end up working a lot of overtime, I would think he’d offer a bonus, or something, or he might have a few complaints; employees would complain, and have a right to: “Hey boss, you sure have a lot of business, and I’m sure profits are up, but why are we toiling extra hours for the same old pay?” This would be a valid question.
Kathie, you continue,
Prove you wrong? So you hope, but you assume otherwise? I guess that’s not quite as bad as Rush Limbaugh saying, “I hope he fails.” But you have to admit, it sounds as if you’re at least half way there.
But a little hope can be a good thing, and can go a long way. I hope they prove you wrong too.
You end,
The teacher in me (college English, but still teacher) thanks you. I see many things I would like improved in public schools and the whole approach we take to education in the US, and I think it’s important for parents to be engaged with teachers, administrators and school boards when they have complaints or suggestions. Letters to the editor or blogs like this can be another way for parents to express their concerns.
If a blog discussion like this elicits such a strong response, and so many complaints from at least the handful here, maybe it’s a sign of a few things: On the one hand, it might be a sign that there was not sufficient resolution to past complaints, and some bad feelings linger. The district should sit up and take note.
On the other hand, as I mentioned earlier, there are many hardworking teachers who have their lists of frustrations with parents. Some of them spend more time, five days a week, with some of our area children than their parents do. Many of them feel unable to join discussions like this, but feel offended when the sharks smell blood and shift into feeding frenzy mode. Contrary to certain stereotypes, some teachers I know are among the most caring, intelligent, creative, wise and fun people you could meet. (And I’m not only talking about my wife.) If you were in their shoes and glimpsed the feeding frenzy, you might imagine how they could take offense.
And some of them could have sought bigger salaries than the one they get for teaching, but for this? Maybe some of them could have been pushing sub-prime and NINA loans, or dreaming up derivative contracts for AIG and getting million dollar bonuses, living in a big house, taking more exotic vacations, driving newer cars.
Instead, they decided to have an ethical backbone and a social conscience, all for this? To be the whipping boys and girls of society’s frustrations about education? Often regarding elements (like the design of a survey) over which they have little control?
If we’re going to have them watch over and teach our kids, perhaps we can find better and more constructive, focused ways to voice our complaints when we have them.
Oops, Kathie, I confused you with Kathleen V when I listed those quotes. All it took was a page shift to distract my small mind and confuse me. Sorry.
Paul, to your comments regarding pay, as I said many posts ago (too many to recall), no feebies expected; educators should be appropriately compensated.
Finally, as a parent of a Spec Ed student, I am very concerned about the loss of instructional time and want PLCs to succeed. As I stated, we only get one chance to get it right.
Bottomline, no hidden messages implied. I just want to make certain appropriate accountability is put in place so that this doesn’t become a lose-lose.
I meant “freebies”; not “feebies”. Sorry. Time to call it a day…
Sorry Paul, but the above rant is not productive and just more political grand standing.
The facts are (and even Obama agrees with me here) that our public schools are failing..period.
It is also true that in the past we have thrown billions in to system. The result is we are still failing.
The irony is here, that those who have gotten us to this point are putting their heads in the sand, and are not willing to listen to alternatives..other then “We need more money”.
In the meantime we are losing children in the current system and falling further behind by the day.
I do trust the individual teacher, but I am not blind to the failing system. If it wouldn’t be for some of the dedicated ones things would we a lot worse.
Like I have said earlier..Obama has correctly identified the issue. Unfortunately his remedies are more of the same….”we need more money”.
There is a growing consensus that money alone will not solve the problem.
Too many teachers complain about the non involvement of parents. I don’t think there is a lack of involvement.
In my opinion there is a lack of discipline in the school. Teachers are either too scared (or being scared)to enforce basic discipline, all in the name of political correctness.
I ask some of the older posters here…How many of you knew, that if you didn’t turn in your homework you had to answer to the teacher. Further how many of you did it because you were afraid of it?
My daughter had a phase were she decided not to turn in her homework in a specific class. Her grades dropped dramatically because of it.
I never heard from the teacher on this?? Tell me what’s wrong with instilling some good old fashion discipline and respect??
Peter- You said, “…In my opinion there is a lack of discipline in the school. Teachers are either too scared (or being scared)to enforce basic discipline, all in the name of political correctness…” I generally agree with this assesment. Having three daughters and a daughter-in-law that have all taught/are teaching in public schools, there are other sides to this observation. There is some fear on the teachers’ parts, but it is not based in political correctness. It is based in two main things: opposition of parents and apathetic administrations. My kids have had to deal with both these things. One daughter was threatened with physical retribution by the parent of a failing student if she did not pass the student. Fortunately, the administration backed her and dealt with the threatening parent. Another one had an administrator that would not back her in a similar situation with a parent. My daughter was able to find different employment. Another daughter had a student who wasn’t performing in class. When she contacted the parents, they became involved with the student, and by the end of the semester, that student was one of the best in her class. It seems that we need consistent cooperation amongst teachers, parents & administration. Unfortunately, this is something that cannot be purchased with money. It involves all the parties having the same goal in the matter and being able to communicate with one another. There are probably as many different reasons this does not happen as there are different people, but in general, the movement away from personal responsibility to an attitude of entitlement is, I believe, at the root of some of these problems.
Paul F., I’m agreeing with Peter’s comments about your rant(s). Good, quality public education is something that all political parties support as far as I can tell. I speak from the experience of 15 years on the Northfield school board and 4 years in the Minnesota House. Good public education does not ‘belong’ to the Democrats and the Republicans are not trying to ‘tear it down’. If you look at our education problems from partisan eyes then you are missing large components.
Just to point out a couple of recent issues that go completely contrary to what you are saying, in Minnesota we now have a Republican Governor aggressively advocating for and promoting an increase in public k-12 school funding in the state budget, while the Democrats are proposing and advocating just as aggressively for massive ($980 million)reductions in public school funding. And President Obama is advocating for merit pay for teachers, more charter schools, and longer school calendars with more rigor.
I believe that the vast majority of our political leaders truly care about keeping public schools strong and functioning well. There are some differences on how to go about that, but by and large the goal of a well educated population is shared by all.
Ray, then why your bad-faith comments, assuming teachers might turn PLC’s into another coffee break? Why, in our conversations about campaign signs you posted at businesses in aparent violation of MN statues, did you comment that you assume union-member teachers are using school time to pass around DLF literature in campaign season? You stereotype. You say you’re pro-education, but you’re anything but pro-teacher’s unions.
I share some of the interests in merit-pay; I’d advocate a longer waiting period before teachers get tenure, just to be sure. I’m in favor of charter schools, and an “all-choice programs” approach to public schools. There’s awareness all around that there is a need for reform.
But these reforms won’t happen in a vacuum. Countries that have better education results than the US are often countries with better safety nets, higher wages, higher taxes on the wealthy, and lower CEO pay.
You advocate strict standards for evaluating whether PLC’s work, or help improve education. But to the extent that parents are “full partners” in their children’s education, shall we have strict standards for evaluating parents’ contribution, or lack thereof? If the parents are living in poverty, and themselves nearly illiterate, and their children have a hard time succeeding, or come to school hungry, or without proper clothing for outdoor winter recess, shall we take it out on the teachers’ unions?
Republican politics, more than not, gets in the way of good education instead of helping it along, and it does this in part because it favors low taxes and a plutocracy, whether it says so explictly or not. Schools won’t get ahead without funding, and without progress on other social issues affecting families, period. Republicans just want to moan about welfare, complain about taxes, ignore the very expensive military-industrial complex, and tell poor folks they’ll feel better abou themselves if they just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (you’ve been known to pass this bootstrap line along a fair share of times, Ray).
(This is not to say that Democrats are always right; as Will Rogers said, “I don’t belong to an organized political party; I’m a Democrat”).
Kathleen V (#200): You had said near the end of your comments the following:
- “I hope the loss of instructional time is outweighed by the gain of weekly PLCs.”
I had assumed that you were correct about the loss of instructional time, and that PLC time was simply being subtracted from instructional time.
I may have been mistaken: A teacher in the district told me that the number of school days is being expanded by a day, and that the number of teacher workshops reduced, to allow for the PLC’s. I don’t know that actual hour-count for how the year will end up, but if there is a loss in classroom hours, it may be minimal, or offset somewhat, by the added day and the subtraction of teacher workshop time.
This means that instead of a lot of workshop time before school starts, there will be more regular PLC time, which makes sense, and may have stronger benefits than an early dose, and then a “You’re on your own” approach (to simplify, of course; in reality, I know it’s often more complex and rich than that).
do you think it is time to look outside of education for educators? I really do.
Paul,
In (193) you say
One point: you are misreading the data, I think. If the charter schools were selectively draining all the high achievers, their scores would be uniformly higher than the district schools. They aren’t. Look again.
For READING– percent (out of 100) proficient at grade level
Sibley 74?
GVP 79 (GVP = Greenvale)?
BW 79 (BW = Bridgewater)?
PC 91 (PC = Prairie Creek)
NMS 77 (NMS = Middle School)?
NHS 83 (NHS = High School)?
AT 69 (AT = Art Tech)
For Math -- percent (out of 100) proficient at grade level
Sibley 79?
GVP 73?
BW 73
PC 64
NMS 72?
NHS not available?
AT 56
I am in agreement with Kathleen, Ray, and others about the need for REAL, not superficial FEEL GOOD accountability.
Test scores, like them or not, are here to stay. And, for the most part, I like them. I have seen literacy instruction improve--vastly-- over the past 10 years in Northfield elementary schools. I remember sometime in 1995 or so attending a school board meeting where the then curriculum director PROUDLY announced that about 50% of Northfield 3rd graders were proficient in reading. And when I asked (in those days you were allowed to speak and ask questions at school board meetings) if this didn’t mean that 50% WERE NOT proficient, I got dirty looks, and I was labelled a “glass half empty” person.
Testing here has improved our overall level of elementary literacy by about 25%. Kindergarten teachers are now teaching more literacy skills. Kids are learning, and with no visible loss of emotional development (as was direly predicted by the kindergarten teachers who didn’t welcome the testing or its implications). First and second graders are reading and SPELLING and we’re back to proven methods of reading instruction instead of educational fads.
Now, 75% to 79% proficient in reading is BETTER than 50%, and by a lot. But, is it where we should be? No. And if PLC time is going to be spent to make further improvements, bring them on.
But DO NOT try to sell PLCs to parents by talking about the “supercharged teaching and learning” that will result and THEN insult us by “measuring” success by how happy teachers feel about PLCs.
I’m not interested in using PLC time to boost teacher morale. That’s not supposed to be the point. PLCs are being billed as a mechanism to improve student learning. Let’s make sure it’s demonstrated by VALID measures, such as test scores that Dr. Richardson and his minions can’t edit or spin.
You can call me a knee-jerk Republican for holding this position if you like (you’ve called me worse--a racist--after all). Sticks and stones. I happen to be an Obama democrat who believes that it is time (FINALLY) to start insisting on greater rigor in schools, to stop protecting underperforming teachers (and yes, we have some of those, even in fabulous Northfield). I believe in funding schools, I believe in paying (effective) teachers higher salaries, but it is time to stop putting up with some of the educational problems that are long-standing in this town. And it is long past time being afraid to voice these concerns over fear that a teacher might be lurking and have their feelings hurt. The rest of us are held accountable in our jobs; teachers should be, too (and are, by some effective principals in town. Unfortunately, we have some principals who just want to be pals of teachers and won’t risk any confrontations).
Again, if PLC time helps us address these problems, great. If not, we need to find a different mechanism to bring about the needed improvements.
I also have to say I agree with Ray Cox that being pro-education is neither Democratic or Republican. I think there are those of every political stripe who care, deeply, and think deeply about the issues. I think it is arrogant and insular to make the repeated assertion that anyone who doesn’t agree with you is having a “knee-jerk” reaction or doesn’t understand a proposal.
I’ve known Ray Cox for many years--going back to when he was on the school board. I’ve disagreed with him more often than I’ve agreed. But, I have to say that he was always willing to listen (which is more than many current board members are), and I never believed that he didn’t care about education. The way he sees issues often differs from the way I do. I’m a lifelong Democrat and he’s a (lifelong, I think) Republican, but I see no need to demonize the man or call him names or make personal attacks. I respect the hard work he’s given his constituents, even when I don’t find myself in agreement over how best to bring about better education.
If there’s one thing I wish WOULD stop on this blog, it’s the personal attacks. Can’t we just stick to the issues and stop the name calling?
People are allowed not to like PLCs and still be good, smart, caring people. People are allowed to worry about instructional time and not be accused of being “anti-education”.
As for the teacher’s union. I grew up in the home of a Democratic legislator, with union guys joining us for meals on a regular basis. I get the union ideals and consider myself pro-labor. But I don’t have to like every action a union takes. If, in fact, the NEA is trying to sneak a deal through the school board without coming clean, then I don’t have to respect that action. I don’t blame the NEA for trying to get the best deal it can for its members, but if, in fact, it is responsible for a proposal to take away time from kids and it won’t own up to the fact that it’s because it won’t bend on a rule about one meeting a week, well, I have a problem with that.
Kathie:
You write, “If the charter schools were selectively draining all the high achievers, their scores would be uniformly higher than the district schools.”
This is a false assumption.
It assumes that the teaching quality and goals, as far as tests are concerned, are uniform, yielding uniform results, but with higher achieving students.
In other words, if in fact higher achieving students go to charter schools, are they getting better education there, and achieving their fullest potential?
The test scores alone don’t give us enough information to assume.
The Prairie Creek students seem to have quite a boost in reading skills. Do you credit all of this to amazing teachers (? or just some of it?), or is some of this that many of the students there come from families that love to read?
Have you been paying attention to the national debate about choice programs and charter schools, and what they tend to do to student populations?
This is not merely a matter of test scores.
And PLC’s adding to teacher morale, alone, was never the point; but if you want to take things badly out of context, go ahead.
Concerning personal attacks, my comments about the effects of choice programs and charter schools, and “country club,” and Republicans, are not all directed at you personally. There are other issues being discussed here. It’s not all about you and Ray.
You seem very ready to attack and tear down, and then very quick to qlaify and add what a big fan you are. Some of these bits of information sometimes seem mutually exclusive.
I don’t know, Kathie. If the shoe fits, wear it.
BTW, thanks for your volunteering for Rock and Roll Revival. That’s a positive thing. I don’t assume you’re always tearing things down, you know…. (0;
LOL!
Kathie (212),
I like this part:
- “If, in fact, the NEA is trying to sneak a deal through the school board without coming clean, then I don’t have to respect that action. I don’t blame the NEA for trying to get the best deal it can for its members, but if, in fact, it is responsible for a proposal to take away time from kids and it won’t own up to the fact that it’s because it won’t bend on a rule about one meeting a week, well, I have a problem with that.”
I enjoy this part because, in one of my classes, students just got done reading Hamlet, which, as you know, is about that Dane who is a wild conspiracy theorist: He thinks his uncle killed his father, and married his mother, so as to take the throne! That Hamlet guy was a nut!
I like conspiracy theorists, and clearly, Kathie, you have a conspiracy theorist inside of you, trying very hard to get out and be heard!
You might not be right on this with PLC’s and the NEA, but you might be right on the next conspiracy. Who knows? Bush and the August 6, 2001 PDB’s? That smelled like rotten eggs.
So don’t let the conspiracy theorist in you totally give up. It’s like baseball. You swing often enough, and eventually you’ll get a hit.
Kathie:
More on this one:
- “If the charter schools were selectively draining all the high achievers, their scores would be uniformly higher than the district schools.”
For example, what if I’m a parent with a very musically, artistically and technically-inclined student, who I think might not like the middle school or high school, but might really enjoy Art-Tech, and might learn very valuable things there, things that might not show up on standardized tests?
What if I’m ok, as a parent, with the possibility that my child’s standardized test scores might not be as high as they would be in the middle school or high school, but I want them to love school, and love learning and teachers, and not have the flaws of certain institutions, which might not be a good “match” for my child, snuff out that love of school, teachers and learning?
Then I might send a very high achieving student to Art-Tech, and he might do very well in learning many things that don’t necessarily show up on standardized tests.
What’s wrong with that? Nothing I can tell.
Some folks will complain that their standardized test scores are not high enough. We won’t talk about whether these will be union members, or charter school teachers or parents, or Republican fans of NCLB.
So I repeat: Your statement above assumes too much.
Kathleen V:
In 190, you wrote, “Parents should be able to attend PLCs when the discussion addresses their student’s needs. A feedback loop should be implemented such that parents concerns are documented and addressed in a timely manner; and, if trends occur, corrective actions taken.”
?! My first response is (as my kids would say), OMG.
My second: What if the school already has processes in place for parent input and concerns?
My third: What if PLC’s are not meant to involve discussion of your particular student, or any particular student for that matter, and you’ve assumed too much about the purpose and goals for PLC’s?
My fourth: What if Professional Learning Communities are for, well, professional teachers, and not meant to be hyjacked so as to become yet another parent-teacher conference?
just do the plc’s in the summer, you have a whole 3 months!
I’m amazed at the mistrust expressed by Ray Cox (“without solid ways to measure performance it could turn into something like MEA days off”), and Kathleen V (insist that parents attend PLC’s when their child is discussed?), and Kathie.
Of course, there should be processes for accountability. But employees tend to work best and do their best in an atmosphere of trust to some extent.
This is not meant as a personal attack, but just commenting on the content of the postings here, I thank God that the district isn’t full of parents whose main ideas about teachers run in this direction of general mistrust. If it did, the community would deserve for all the best teachers in the disrict to flee to other districts, and for the parents of the district to get stuck with the worst teachers in the state, those who could not find teaching jobs elsewhere, and who had such low self-esteem, they figured they deserved to work in a general climate of mistrust.
I’m sure that, with your families and friends, the three of you are among the most trusting (but accoutable!) people, and that this is not some bad habit of yours that is rearing its ugly head here. So of course, this is not a personal attack. Just a comment about the content of your comments, extrapolating about how it might be if all parents thought the way you seem to think in some of your comments.
But as far as “personal attacks” go, gosh, come to think of it, that’s also a classic tactic of misdirection: If someone calls you out on some litle slighly questionable thing you’re doing, instead of dealing with the insight, shift into denial mode by dismissing them, demonizing them, painting them as the bad guy: Just accuse them of “personal attacks.”
Oh, not to attack you, Kathie, as having a personal character that is always prone to such misdirection. That comment is not meant as a personal attack. Just an observation of what it seemed might have been going on in your comment… but correct me, of course, if I got that one wrong…. (0;
I assume you will!
LOL!
BTW, Kathie, why do you place so much trust in David Brooks’ opinions about NCLB and his assumptions about all the many things one might tell from test results?
Are you certain that David Brooks is deserving of more trust than district teachers and the NEA? Maybe David Brooks is part of some Republican conspiracy….!?
LOL!
I like some of David Brooks’ columns, but I’m not sure that things are as simple as he claims. Just as comedians say that a certain audience on a certain night might be a “tough crowd,” some years, teachers get tough groups, many behavior problems, attitude problems, perhaps a certain threatening critical mass of students who may not be particularly interested in learning. Do the test scores always reveal that much about the teacher, or do they reveal quite a bit about the kids too?
I’m not saying that a really poor teacher won’t have students with test scores that are lacking in some way, but I don’t agree with the clip you provided.
Now remember: This is not a personal attack. I’m not saying you’re a Republican, or a Bush-Cheney fan, or a NCLB fan, just because you like that David Brooks quote, or that you didn’t grow up in a union, etc. Or that you’re personally a racist (like me)--heaven forbid!
You know, many of your comments seem to indicate you may think a lot like some Republicans I know. But I’d never assume you’re a Republican, or call you one.
But since the thread drift has lead us away from PLC’s and scheduling to NCLB and David Brooks, what do you think of those bonuses the AIG folks got, eh?
And Credit Default Swaps? Yikes! Don’t get me started!
Shall we see how large we can make the kitchen sink? (0;
LOL!
Paul, another reminder of our Guidelines here. When you disagree with someone, you must address them in the first person by name. You wrote:
Ray’s participating here so you should have instead written:
Make sense?
Paul,
Your above comments are flying agianst reality. The Democrats have pretty much shaped the school agenda since 70′s.
A lot of the current policys and funding meassures are a direct result of that.
You can try to deflect as much as you want , but the truth is 40 years of liberal run education has created the mess we have today.
We got here not due to lack of funding, we got here because of liberals desire to make everybody the same. By removing personal responsibility and try to make everybody feel good. Well at least we can feel good when our children will be cleaning the boots of better educated foreigners. (I am being sarcastic here)
I am a conservative and I care as much about my childrens eduxation than any liberal you can bring forward. But iam sick and tired to see our children falling behind due to some social experiment.
I can’t undertstand that when it comes to health care liberals believe we should follow the Euro model, but won’t apply the same reasoning to education.
Applying the european education model would make a lot more sense, because it has proven to deliver results.
Griff -- Sorry. Thanks for the reminder. It’s a little awkward when you’re addressing more than one person, but I’ll fix it in the next comment.
Kathie & Ray (& sometimes Peter):
There’s a glaring inconsistency that’s bothering me in your comments here.
Sometimes you sing the praises of charter schools, which, as I understand it, are sometimes not held to the same NCLB standards on standardized tests (because they are intended to be laboratories of educational innovation?).
So you think it’s great to have standardized tests as the “objective” yardstick by which PLC’s are judged, and you’re sometimes disappointed and/or hot and bothered about the state of public education outside the charter school system, and back in the unionized older schools.
Ray, you’re suspicious that teachers will just use PLC time as time off. Kathie, the “soft” evaluative forms are not good enough, so you want to use the “hard” facts of the test results.
But Kathie, in post 211, you list test results from Sibley, GVP, BW, PC, and AT.
I’m a fan of AT. I know some teachers there, and some families who were happy to send their kids there.
Ray, when we had the choice programs (LINK and Companeros) at Greenvale, and when the waiting list got long, you were less concerned about test results than in giving the customers what they want: More sections of Companeros and Link, even if that would skew things about the system, or draw away many of the higher achievers and potential active parent volunteers.
So it seems that it’s OK to embrace choice programs and charter schools if the customers (parents and kids) are satisfied?
In your books, it seems it’s OK to wield test scores as a hammer with which to hit the nail of PLC’s.
But look at the math scores at AT and PC. If you’re so quick to insist, NCLB-style, on test scores as the yardstick with which to judge the success of PLC’s, then it would seem you’re being a tad inconsistent by missing the planks in our local community’s eye when it comes to math scores at charter schools.
Now to be clear, I’m a fan of charter schools and choice programs, and as I’ve said before, I wish all public schools were unique choice programs. I’m not a fan of using standardized tests as the only yardstick for judging effectiveness of PLC’s.
But there is this glaring inconsistency. Ray and Kathie, you seem to have a big chip on your shoulder about PLC’s and about the union teachers and NEA, but if test scores were to be the yardstick to determine whether we get our shorts in a ringer about some educational issue, you two should be complaining far less about PLC’s, and more about the low test scores at PC and AT.
Not that I wish such complaints on PC and AT. Not any day of the week. I would rather spare them such stuff as you two (and Peter, yes, you too) have sometimes leveled at the public school system here. But for you to be fair and consistent, it would seem PC and AT math scores deserve your wrath more than some other objects of the inconsistent, buckshot- kitchen-sink approach to criticism often taken here.
Furthermore, Kathie, you sing the praises of Sibley and BW, and you offer a few bits of buckshot criticism for GVP. But consider that GVP has the highest latino population, and also has, like BW, a companeros program. Yet in spite of the English-speaking companeros kids having to learn math in a second language, and in spite of a larger population of Latino kids learning math in a second language, and learning English, THE TEST SCORES IN MATH AND READING FOR GVP ARE THE SAME AT GVP AS AT BW, AND HIGHER IN READING THAN AT SIBLEY.
So I have to say that I appreciate your posting the test scores, Kathie, because it makes me appreciate the hard work and rich accomplishments of the GVP staff even more. They have more challenging demographics in some ways, but they do very well relative to other area schools at that level.
Finally, Kathie, regarding my assumption that choice programs and charter schools often bleed away the higher achieving kids, etc., and your repeated questioning of this assumption: When the LINK program and the Companeros program started at Greenvale, before BW was even built, they worked hard to make the achievement profile of the choice programs look similar to that of other classrooms. This ended due to poor management from the administration, and poor advice from school board members like you, Ray, who simply wanted to expand and let parents have what they wanted. The teachers IN the choice programs were hearing reports from those OUTSIDE the programs. They were observing that the choice programs often had many creative, intelligent students, and teachers outside the choice programs felt they got the academic “leftovers” to some extent. This was not consistent and absolutely uniform, because yes, there were some high achievers outside the choice programs, but this seemed to be the rule. The GVP staff was on top of this, and they compared test scores, and numbers of students with assistance for meal programs (as a sign of poverty), and a variety of other factors. The test scores confirmed their anecdotal evidence and observations.
I’m OK with using test scores in this manner, but not as the only yardstick used to measure success of PLC’s.
I read and hear other reports of this happening in other communities, where the charter schools are perceived as siphoning away the brighter, more creative students, with parents more willing to volunteer in the classroom.
Now in the case of Companeros and LINK, test scores remained fairly high, and were higher than in the other program (traditional/contemporary/vanilla, non-charter schools).
This does not mean that these students will always have high test scores in charter schools. If teaching to the test and living in fear of NCLB is not the focus of a particular charter school, and if parents are happy with what their children are learning, test scores could easily slip, and there may be more important things than these scores.
It’s also possible that some schools get a reputation, not for their high test scores, but as a place where certain students who might not fit in elsewhere may find a welcome, and may blossom. These might not be the highest achievers on test scores, but it’s great to have charter schools develop a strong reputation for serving otherwise underserved parts of the student population.
Kathleen V:
In 204, you write, “As I stated, we only get one chance to get it right.” I can appreciate the attitude that strives to make the most of the present opportunity, but part of me feels that this statement may be more false than true.
It would be true if we were all angels in some medieval theology who had one moment in which to make a choice for all eternity. But part of being human means we have a series of moments that come after other moments, and while we may start life being advised to believe in Santa, the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny, we have many understandings and choices that are temporary and tentative at first, full of uncertainty, confusion, even errors of judgment and mistakes of passion.
Like some comments on blog posts.
But we adapt, we try to do better; sometimes we even admit mistakes and ask forgiveness. In such moments we often place ourselves at the mercy of others and depend on their generosity.
The nature of life is that we have many moments to get it right. When Laertes begins his duel with Hamlet at the end of that play, Laertes refuses Hamlet’s apology and offers no forgiveness; later, when he sees that the King has poisoned the Queen by accident, and that his own poisoned blade has been unknowingly picked up by Hamlet and used to wound him, Laertes has a change of heart, apologizes to Hamlet, and offers his own forgiveness. Laertes, in the space of a brief duel, has more than one chance to get it right, and although it’s a bit late, he gets it right.
I have students (often freshmen and sophomores in college) who, in some cases, were lazy in high school. I have some who were not served well by the school system, and who never learned to write well. I have others who were home-schooled, write amazingly well, but sometimes didn’t learn some of the social skills that other students did.
They have more than one chance to get things right.
Some of these students realize that they didn’t try very hard in high school and middle school, or had inflated grades from teachers who were afraid to offend parents in small towns (like many strong eductation critics here) and risk losing their jobs by giving students the grades they really deserved.
Some of these students buckle down and become very serious about improving their writing; they come for conferences, and they visit the Writing Center regularly.
Others are more interested in college as a moment of liberation from the expectations of their parents, so they’d rather party and drink than study. Some of these do very little to improve their writing.
But it’s clear that, just because they, and their parents, and their teachers and school administrators may have made certain mistakes in their earlier school years, this does not mean they had only one chance. Some know they have a new chance, and take the steps necessary to make the most of the new opportunity.
To read more, click here.
Paul, I understand where the CommonDreams.org is coming from. However, the Gates foundation has also funded work to develop collaborative cultures of learning (and has the money to evaluate its effect)
[http://www.ctl.sri.com/projects displayProject.jsp?Nick=gates][1]
I’d like to address some of the cross-cutting themes that I’ve read in the series of postings, first: the effectiveness of PLCs on student learning. This is not an attempt to push any sort of propaganda but only to cite additional information that may be helpful to those who prefer empirical studies:
Vescio, V. Ross, D., Adams, A. A review of research on the impact of professional learning communities on teaching practice and student learning. Teaching and Teacher Education Volume 24, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 80-91.
The above reference provides a good literature review of vetted, empirical studies that connect PLCs with changes in teaching practices and increases in student learning.
Overall, the studies (referenced in this paper and other studies) indicate that providing the time for the collaborative ,student-centered community is essential but not sufficient…in other words, as with any endeavor there are other criteria to ensure success.
So, to address another cross-cutting blog theme, since the time provided is essential but not the only element required for success -- evaluation both formative (along the way and as a means to help address any other barriers) and summative (which includes high stakes testing when appropriate to the discipline being taught) is vital. I think the district has defined an initial set of instruments that can be used toward this evaluation. If the proposal is approved one of the next steps, I hope, would be to define rigorous targets that address the intended impact of the proposal. In my work evaluating professional development aimed at improving teaching practice, I know that such measures are possible and can be embedded and aggregated so as not to limit collaborative student-centered practice. In sum, I agree that evaluation would be imperative.
Another theme, I wanted to address is what amount of time is necessary and must it take away from student contact time. I don’t have a clear answer. I looked over the data from the 22 districts that our district regularly benchmarks. I also talked to middle school teachers at the 9 districts for the grant I’m involved. Last, I’ve been emailing with the Cannon Falls school board. So far what I’ve found: for districts whose student contact hours range from 6 hours 20 min. (or less) to 6 hours 30 min ., it appears to become more possible for teachers to find time outside of student contact hours for PLCs. However, these districts have also included early release/late start options (and I met one set of teachers who ended up meeting every Sunday for a year as their own solution – not very sustainable). Another example, Red Wing, is going from a 6 hour 30 min day to 6 hour 42 min day next year in order to add additional early release days. Northfield has a 6 hour 55 min. student day. Prior to Carleton, I worked in the industry. As a manager for an IT team in a small start up business I found that it was a constant trade off to balance the intense needs of full days for clients with finding time within the work week for employees to gain consistent professional development to keep up with web/db technology. You could just say that it was the employee’s job to keep up if they wanted to be competitive. However, with that philosophy I found the company lost because new innovative, product development was slow (or employees quit and retraining cost was another issue). That analogy may not resonate with all of you but it helped me frame the challenge. It’s a balance. I think the current 4x2hrs provides some time to focus on the children that really need improvement. However, I’m also interested in ways to make time to focus on the assessment data/new teaching strategies to address a big chunk of our students who do not fall into those demographics.
Finally, the impact of the current (and earlier versions) of the proposal on working families: It’s clear from the range of opinions expressed in emails and in conversations that there is no single solution that meets everyone needs. I regret that this issue may have poisoned the well for some with the district. I think we can do better with understanding, listening, and communication/dissemination.
[1]: http://www.ctl.sri.com/projects displayProject.jsp?Nick=gates
Ellen,
Thank you for the clear response. I appreciate all your effort on this issue. Thanks for taking on the role you have and doing the research to get a grasp of its complexity.
This issue has hurt my respect for the school district, almost entirely due to the fact that Dr. Richardson insisted on using the results of what was a horribly-designed survey. Does the school board honestly not understand how invalid the results of that survey were as a measurement of parent opinion?
Whether the survey was so poorly crafted out of expedience, incompetence or bias doesn’t even matter. What matters to me is that it was still cited at all, and that anyone thought it should carry weight in the decision for or against a schedule change. That Dr. Richardson chose to use the results to support his arguments for the schedule change demonstrates poor judgment or negligence or willful manipulation.
That’s what “poisoned the well” for me. Fortunately, I also know the school district to be home to many great teachers, students and administrators; so, while still poisoned, it is diluted quite a bit.
Thanks again for weighing in here. We can’t all make school board meetings; so it means a lot to know that our comments here are being heard.
Regardless of what position anyone takes on this issue which has become such a ‘firestorm’, I was thoroughly pleased to read Ms. Iverson’s response. ( #225 ). Her response, whether or not everyone is satisfied with the school board, shows that she has thoroughly analyzed the problems of the issue from an experiential, and educated thoughtful position, spent a lot of time on further personal investigation with practitioners, and has not only the principles to state her reasoning to the public here, but the writing skills to make her thoughts clear and available.
I, too, appreciate Ellen Iverson’s (heroic) efforts on this issue. I think we happen to agree on a number of issues--but the point for me right now is that she has actively sought out parents-- to talk with them and to hear their concerns. I believe from talking to her that even on the issues where we may disagree, her positions are carefully thought out, and I respect that. Most importantly, I believe she has tried to see the issue from all sides. I don’t think anyone could ask more of an elected official.
I’m disappointed, however, in the lack of a similar effort from other board members and from the superintendent. Ellen acknowledges the communication problems this issue has brought to light--while other board members are rolling their eyes and poking fun at parent who raise objections--and PRAISING Dr. Richardson for his “excellent” work on this issue. His work on this issue has been TERRIBLE!!!! His attempts to sneak this through under the radar, his not thinking through child care implications, his slanted survey, his phony “accountability” document--all of THESE are actions that ARE poisoning the well.
And, as delighted as I am with Ellen’s posts, Ellen can’t shoulder the burden of getting more transparency and better (two-way) communication alone. And her colleagues are, along with Dr. Richardson, a very big part of the problem.
Kathie,
I cannot pretend to be the only board member or district person seeking input on this issue. I have counted on other board members perspective and their own efforts at seeking input from others. I’ve also appreciated how much time parents and teachers have been willing to give board members in their emails and conversations.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the only big issue that is facing the board (I wish it were) and Locally Grown isn’t the only vehicle for increasing communication and transparency. For example, I know that several of my fellow board members are actively researching and preparing for a League of Women Voters event, “Northfield District Education Update: Where We Are; Where We Should Be”. Whereas, I’ll be wearing my Mom hat that night at Greenvale Park’s arts event (no reflection on the issue or the League as a forum).
While I may be the only board member to “speak” on this blog thread, I know that I am not the only board member concerned with looking at ways to increase communication (both ways). Now, I suppose I’m getting dangerously close to morphing into the other blog thread, “Public leadership, transparency and the world of social media”.
Ellen: Thanks for the information in 225 and 229. You make the good distinction between formative and summative evaluation, but are these PLC-related evaluative efforts you describe directed toward teachers and their methods, or directed toward students and their progress? Or both?
Ellen, your description in 225 addresses Anthony’s suggestion in 217, that they simply be done in summer. If part of the need, and the whole momentum involved in PLC’s involves having a community of teachers discuss aspects of teaching regularly while they are in the middle of a school year, then doing this over the summer would not address the issue.
Kathie, while I still agree that the survey was seriously flawed, I think it’s possible for school board members to draw careful distinctions: If Dr. Richardson did good work on PLC’s, this is one thing, and there’s nothing wrong with thanking him for that aspect of his work.
I don’t defend the survey at all, and I’m reluctant to defend the use of its data.
If the only issues here were consultation/communication about the schedule change once a week (late start or early release, or other options), and if that was the only focus of Richardson’s work, then complaints make sense. Turning this discussion into a free-for-all regarding every possible complaint about public education, and about local non-charter district schools, doesn’t.
Ellen, I’m glad you spoke to the PLC issue. That was the original purpose for the schedule change. I’m glad you also recognize the hard work of other board members. I’m glad that you recognize that this discussion on Locally Grown is not the only one that matters.
Ellen--
I wanted to follow up on an important point of agreement. In (225) you say
Let me just PLEAD here for rigorous evaluation. As opposed to what the district is proposing in the “accountability” document.
Test scores are one rigorous measure, of course, but not the only one. Growth scores are another--looking at changes over time of performance in the same student.
Broader view measures are also possible, but they would have to be developed. One idea would be a NON-BIASED parent survey (do not let district officials design it), that would ask all parents to comment on the year’s educational experience--the strong and the weak points. Such a measure should include a mix of rating items AND open-ended items, and the data would need to be reviewed rigorously as well.
We’ve done so-called “climate surveys” in the past, but only a few selected results have been reported from them. The general public is never told, for example, what the overall level of satisfaction is by building (or by grade level or department within building) and such data would be very useful. For one, responses averaged over lots of parents would dilute the effect of one or two mouthy parents who have idiosyncratic concerns. However, if a general pattern emerged--pointing, say, to problems with a certain department at the middle or high school level, that could provide the leverage needed to start insisting on positive changes. I’d really like to see that.
The problem with any accountability measure, of course, is that those who get the data have to be prepared to act on it. From my own experiences, this varies by building principal. So, for example, based on my own experiences, I’m a lot more willing to believe that Nancy Antoine will act on measures showing problems than I am to be that other principals will (I should qualify this by saying I have no direct experiences with three of the other principals, so I have no particular expectations).
My fear is that, unless we do something about the principals who are too afraid, intimidated, or what have you to confront the problems in their buildings, PLCs won’t be any kind of magic bullet to improve education. As you say, PLCs are a necessary but not sufficient ingredient to bring about change.
Parents, then, need public disclosure of at least some accountability measures to hold the feet of the superintendent and the principals to the fire. We need to insist that they stay focussed on improving student learning in their building. We need to stop putting up with some of their refusal to deal with problems.
Kathie and Ray C.:
If Charter schools are often embraced, celebrated and trusted as laboratories of educational innovation,
and if standardized test scores, in the minds of some, are the only way to guarantee accountability,
then why can’t we attempt to do better in embracing, celebrating and trusting the district’s efforts to try something new with PLC’s?
Otherwise, given some of the low the test scores at some of the local charter schools, Kathie and Ray C., why don’t you go after the charter schools with as much venom and distrust as you do the district’s interest in PLC’s?
Paul,
I’m not sure how/where in #225 I indicated that I thought PLCs should be a summer only venture?
Kathie and Paul (addressing evaluation measure questions in #230 and #231),
My perspective comes from evaluating professional development programs. I consider this implementation of PLCs to be a form of professional development. From the information I have it appears to have several intended impacts: 1) to change (or affirm) a collaborative culture for teachers 2) to support changes in teaching practice based on research-grounded pedagogy and also grounded in student-specific data (with a change in philosophy from what do I teach to what do students learn) 3) to positively impact student achievement. (The order does not imply a priority.) I would think evaluation measures would focus on all 3 impacts and would include formative and summative measurable goals in these areas.
Kathie (#231) I think the idea of getting at how visible the impacts are to parents is interesting. The challenge with K-12 education is getting the most out of any and all evaluation measures. In this case, I think it is critical that there are rigorous evaluation measures that are more than summative high stakes testing.
However, I am also not the evaluator. I have a very different role here. But I hope my experience can be of some use.
A couple of things about a rigorous and comprehensive parent survey are attractive.
1) If there are discernible gains in student learning, and they don’t show up on MCA or MAP tests (as they ought to), one might make the argument that the tests test only a narrow window of competencies (I don’t buy this on a well-designed test like the MAP test, by the way). However—accepting that view for the sake of argument, if there are these undetected-by-tests big learning gains, then for goodness’ sake, they OUGHT to be obvious to parents. Parents have the whole year to assess, and can take into account all domains of learning in rating their child’s educational experience.
2) Parent responses can’t be controlled by the district employees. (However, we’d need safeguards to make sure the district is reporting ALL parental responses, even the negative ones).
3) Parent responses can cover all teachers. One problem with MCA and MAP scores is that they test reading and math (and language usage, in the case of the MAPs)--and those apply mostly to elementary gains and to certain secondary departments (e.g., Language Arts and Math). The application of MCA scores to say, social studies, or science, or world languages, or art or music are indirect (in some cases, very indirect). But parent assessments ought to be able to be applied across the board.
Ellen: Sorry for my lack of clarity. I had said, “Ellen, your description in 225 addresses Anthony’s suggestion in 217, that they simply be done in summer. If part of the need, and the whole momentum involved in PLC’s involves having a community of teachers discuss aspects of teaching regularly while they are in the middle of a school year, then doing this over the summer would not address the issue.”
To clarify:
It was Anthony who had suggested summer as the time for doing PLC’s. In your comment 225, some of the information you provided seemed clearly to head in a different direction from summer workshop-style events:
“Overall, the studies (referenced in this paper and other studies) indicate that providing the time for the collaborative ,student-centered community is essential…(but…qualifications).”
“As a manager for an IT team in a small start up business I found that it was a constant trade off to balance the intense needs of full days for clients with finding time within the work week for employees to gain consistent professional development to keep up with web/db technology.”
You observe that the analogy may not work, and you’re right, it breaks down inasmuch as “finding time within the work week for employees to gain consistent professional development to keep up with web/db technology” is not necessarily the same as a “collaborative, student-centered community” among teachers.
But the part of the analogy that recognizes the need for constant tending of the garden works.
You can hold a summer workshop, but for a professional learning community, community and collaboration implies something ongoing.
As I’ve said before, it would have been great if Richardson had done some PLC PR in advance. There’s still still need for better understanding, although it can’t be done quite as much “in advance” anymore (of the survey and initial steps, anyway).
Posting links from the district web site to a varity of articles, including some down-to-earth stories/testimonials of how PLC’s have worked for some groups of teachers, and the effects these have had on learning, would help.
Such PR might address a “paradigm shift” or “conceptual frame” problem: People like Anthony and others who hear talk of PLC’s may still be thinking in a conceptual frame that brings to mind things like workshops, events where some speaker comes in, and an audience of teachers sits still as a community and listens.
(Anthony, please chime in to clarify if any of this makes sense.)
These folks are perhaps thinking of apples, and PLC folks are thinking oranges, or an exotic vegetable, or something that is not yet on the radar of the people struggling with this paradigm shift.
Another analogy: Let’s say you have a NASCAR team, including not only the driver, but the maintenance crew that has to be ready to fuel the car, change tires, and sometimes swap an engine quickly. They can go to summer workshops, but they also need to have communcation headsets so that they can keep in touch, they need to prep before each race, to evaluate after each race, and they need to practice working together as a team.
Maybe PLC’s are less like the summer workshop for the NASCAR team, and more like the weekly practice, the pre-race prep and post-race evaluation, etc.?
Anthony, I’m not assuming NASCAR is your (or anyone’s) preferred frame of reference, but grasping at alternate analogies to get away from the summer workshop model.
Here’s another baseline/benchmark post, again using data from the State of MN Dept of Ed.
In addition to determining which kids are “proficient” (for grade level) in reading and math, the dept ed now is using a growth model--dividing kids into those who show LOW growth, those who are continuing to grow (I’m guessing this is a MEDIUM amount of growth) and those who show EXCEPTIONAL growth. This is a year-to-year measurement, meaning that kids who just joined a district prior to being tested are (appropriately) excluded.
I like these measures in addition to the overall proficiency measures (which I’ve previously posted (see 211 above) because they give more information about how kids are doing. There may be, for example, kids who don’t quite make proficiency, but who have really made big gains in a year--and districts rightly ought to get credit for this.
So, how do our data look? Well, for each school and for each domain (reading and math) there are 6 numbers (that sum to 100%, or thereabouts--due to rounding and truncating they might not add up exactly). That’s a LOT of data and if you want to see all of it, go to the dept of ed website under school report cards. Here’s the URL: http://education.state.mn.us/ReportCard2005/index.do.
For present purposes, I first present the data, by school, of kids in the Not Proficient-Low Growth sector, for both math and reading. We want these percentages to be a low as possible. These are the kids who are both not reading or doing math at grade level AND who seem to be stagnating.
School Math Reading
Sib 2 5
GVP 8 9
BW 3 1
NMS 6 7
NHS n/a 6
and for comparisons’ sake, the charter schools
PC 6 6
AT 17 15
We want these numbers to go DOWN with PLCs. (Although, if the number is 3 or less, it’s going to be pretty hard to go much farther down).
Now, the other end of the spectrum. (Ellen Iverson noted in an earlier post-222--on the need to focus not only on struggling students--but all of them--and I heartily agree).
So here are the data on the “high-flyers” : those kids who are proficient AND who are making EXCEPTIONAL growth. We want these numbers to be as high as possible.
School Math Reading
Sib 27 32
GVP 19 24
BW 39 38
NMS 25 21
NHS n/a 25
and, for charters
PC 25 44
AT 3 17
We want these numbers to go UP as the PLCs supercharge everyone’s teaching and learning experiences.
Let’s watch…
We all have strong opinions about a variety of topics. The fur flies pretty regularly here at LoGroNo, and I’ve personally been involved in several testy exchanges on a number of occasions, and have been viewed by some (Triumvirate arbiter G Wigley included) as guilty of overstepping the bounds of respectful discourse. However, I’ve become quite disenchanted with the tone of the discourse on this and several other threads recently.
Perhaps we would all benefit from a reminder from the Beneficent Triumvirate. From the LoGroNo “Guidelines” page:
The “respectful” and “avoid sarcasm” guidelines seem to have gone by the boards here and in a number of other recent threads. It’s one thing to respectfully disagree with someone; it’s quite another to say things such as the below, Kathy G.:
Clearly, you do not expect the PLCs to “supercharge everyone’s teaching and learning experiences.” I don’t either. I do, however hold out hope that the PLCs will prove beneficial to our kids, even if they don’t have a “supercharging” effect.
Rather than watching (and hoping?)for failure, why don’t we all do all we can to support high-quality education in Northfield (whether it’s from the traditional public schools, district-sponsored charter schools, private schools, or homeschooling)? By all means, let’s watch, be engaged in positive ways, measure the success of our educational system as best we can (without over-reliance on standardized testing), and continually learn from our successes and failures as we move forward.
Bruce,
Regarding “supercharged” teaching/learning:
Here is what Ray Coudret offered, way back in post 22 (I think)--my adjective “supercharged” comes from that description:
The study goes on to say that “results of the assessments are used to improve individual student performance and also to improve the instructional program”. This is exactly what I have been describing in my posts. A dedicated hour for Professional Learning Communities will increase the ability to collaborate to improve the instructional program for OUR kids.
Is the claim about raising the quality of every student, every minute, in every class overdone?
Maybe. ( happen to think so. But the point is, these are the very claims PLC proponents used to, in my view, rob all kids of instructional time.
If these are the claims made, then we all should watch to see discernible improvements in student learning. I’ve posted two sets of scores--and I’m sorry that you and other teachers and teacher spouses reject testing, but as I’ve said many times, there the only publicly available accountability measures we’ve got.
And, very sincerely, I would be VERY HAPPY if Ray’s seemingly-over-the-top claims can be empirically demonstrated. You’re right--I’m skeptical that they will, but I’m very, very willing to have REAL DATA prove me wrong.
Sorry if that seems sarcastic to you, and sorry if I don’t support every proposal (some) teachers and administrators advocate.
Until proven wrong, my position is that the district manipulated parents, made a staff-centric decision to keep harmony with teachers, and risked our children’s future educational experiences.
I’m confused. Just 5 days after the School Board approves the reduction of instructional time, the April edition of the district’s Sibly Star newsletter, page 3, states:
“Attendance: A Key to Your Student’s Success
Schools are responsible for teaching your child. But schools can’t do their job if your child is absent. Learning builds day by day. A child who misses a day of school misses a day of learning.
Research shows that children who are in school most of the time do better on state tests. Studies also show
that kids who are absent more often score lower on state tests. Being late for school hurts a child’s learning,
too. A student who is 10 minutes late every day will miss 30 hours of instruction during the year.”
With the new calendar, our students will be getting 21-22 fewer hours of instructional time. So, is instructional time important or not? I just don’t get it.
Kathleen,
Your problem is that you are trying to apply common sense and logic to a government institution. Unfortunately the days when those two virtues rulled are over.
Like I have said earlier, the whole issue was never about educating our children, it was all about satisfying the NEA and SOME of their teachers.
Most of us in the pivate sector are being asked to do more with less. These rules don’t apply to government unions and their employees.
Somehow they feel that they are entitled to their perks and their jobs last forever.
This is just one local example of a prevelant attitude throughout government.
Kathleen v. (239): The school board and district made an informed decision in the belief that PLC’s could benefit students, even with a slight reduction in class time. This is one issue.
The push for strong attendance is another. Need families schedule doctor and dentist appointments on days when they’d have to take a child out of class? Or go shopping for an ATV with a child on a school day? Some children, of course, sometimes, will have to miss class, and will have very legitimate reasons for it. But in the context of some of the less-than-convincing reasons for missed days, there is merit to the attendance push, in this context.
The general rule is this: Only miss school days if you have a very good reason. That is the common thread that unites both the PLC adjustment and the emphasis on student attendance.
Is this common thread not apparent to you? Or is your agenda so firmly set against schedule change that you must see these two as necessarily contradictory? It seems you have made your mind up in advance, that PLC’s are not worth the time investment. Other places, you indicate you’re open to PLC’s but strongly against schedule change. Are you changing your tune? You are also contradictory on some of these points, it seems.
Ray and Peter:
Peter, in 240, you wrote, “Like I have said earlier, the whole issue was never about educating our children, it was all about satisfying the NEA and SOME of their teachers.”
Peter, this is a very partisan statement. And just to define the term, “partisan” is often used as a reference to people who are blindly ideologically committed to a political party instead of willing to deal with the pragmatic realities of a situation that might transcend partisan ideology.
But “partisan” is often used in another way by Republicans: If a critic calls a Republican out on the partisan, ideological aspects of one’s position, a Republican will often call the critic “partisan,” when in fact the first partisan shots in the debate were fired by the Republican.
Ray, you do this sometimes. And you often agree with Peter (Peter, you’re often partisan, it seems to me, in the first sense).
Ray, besides agreeing with Peter often here, you’ve speculated that PLC’s would just turn into another MEA (meaning an educational event for teachers that is sometimes not attended, and thus a day off). This is a partisan remark, reflecting typical Republican anti-union thinking.
Ray and Peter: I’m glad to see that the school board (except for the Republican?) was willing to get beyond partisan politics for the schedule change.
Paul,
I understand that as a teacher you need to defend the status quo despite evidence to the contrary.
Minnesota already has one of the lowest class hours in the US. It get’s even worse when compared to the rest of the world.
You are being disingenuous accusing Ray and myself of being partisan, while you defend the establishment. The establishment has a huge incentive to defend the status quo, because anything else would expose their failure in education.
If teachers would be graded like most of us in the public sector, 25 % or more would loss their job. Due to lack of individual performance and due to a failure of delivering on promises made.
Instead we are continuing with the same old ideas and experiments with deteriorating results.
The establishment of unions, teachers and some school boards close ranks and attack (see your comments above) anybody that questions them, using the same old tired phrases.
The reality however makes them look desperate and foolish. We have lost so much brain power in our own country that we have lost our edge in science and innovation.
Most brain trust today has to be imported because we don’t have enough talent “locally grown” (punt intended).
I wonder what it will take for us to wake up. Put the name calling aside come out of the clouds and look for some real solutions.
Kathie: I don’t see how you can be a professor of psychology and cognitive science at Carleton, and be called the “expert” Brendon asks us to believe you are, and stand by your use of statistics in 236.
Science requires controls on experiments: yet the school district, from one year to the next, is always in flux: Teachers retire, new teachers are hired, teachers shift from one position to another sometimes. Students move, or go on extended vacation. The group of students a teacher has one year might have a high combined total of TV-viewing hours and videogame use, while the next may have a slightly higher total hours they read at home, or are read to by parents.
For this reason, scientists use such studies to seek to understand, and sometimes they include various surveys and follow-ups, or they repeat the experiment in a more refined way so as to understand the statistics better.
The only way to begin to justify your use of the statistics in 236, as a hammer against the district and its teachers, would be if we had a time machine: First run the experiment without PLC’s, and then go back in time and run it with the same students, the same teachers, the same family backgrounds, and see if there are slightly different results.
But even this would be flawed: Why are some students “soaring” in their development, and why are some stagnating? You make (again) a false assumption, that the teachers are responsible for this soaring or stagnating, and that, with PLC’s, the results would have to be improved to justify PLC’s.
Yet what if some students are stagnating because their families are dealing with divorce? What if this figure includes special education students (are they included in the statistics?) who might, with the best of teachers and care, still stagnate because of certain limitations? What if some students are “soaring” because those individuals happened to grow and develop physically in new ways, and were ready for an intellectual growth leap somehow? Or what if the “soaring” was not due to the gifted teacher they have this year, but due to a slightly less qualified teacher last year who was holding them back while they were hungry and ready?
Furthermore, what is the learning curve for PLC’s in general, as districts adapt to them and learn to use them to their greatest potential? Can you do them for one year and judge them with such limited results, or does it take three or five years to accelerate from zero to sixty MPH in a new PLC taken right off the showroom floor?
It seems you are speaking here, Kathie, as a parent with a vendetta regarding schedule changes, so you use the statistics as a hammer, and you’re ready to use the district and its teachers as the nail.
Instead, as a curious scientist, you might want to ask: Why is it that some of these students stagnated? Should there be a study at each school, and a strong effort to ask parents to please provide additional information about the family’s partnership in reading and homework? Should there be a study of whether students who stagnate consistently show up in a certain teacher’s class (by chance, or not), and whether those who soar consistently soar in the classroom of certain excellent teachers — or perhaps soar after being held back in the classroom of a less-than-excellent teacher?
A good and curious scientist would want to know all these kinds of things. But you’re doing the hammer and nail thing again.
Peter M (243): I call you and Ray partisan in the post you refer to because it’s a fact. I defend some aspects of the establishment because they’re worth defending from partisan buckshot attacks (too broad, lacking careful aim).
Most teachers inside the establishment see the blemishes as clearly, or more clearly, than amateurs looking in from the outside. They notice when administrators hire new teachers without asking parents and teachers to participate in the interview process, and they notice when teachers who perhaps should never have been hired get tenure. They notice when a colleague is getting burned out. They notice when a colleague asks questions about teaching methods that indicate a lack of knowledge or competence or skill that teachers should be expected to possess.
So my defense of certain elements of this establishment is not of the blind and partisan type that you offer here, Peter. I am much more discerning in my defense; but in your partisan commitments, you don’t see or allow that, so you come out with your guns blazing, with more partisan accusations. It’s not as if you don’t already have a reputation for this, Peter.
Minnesota does not have high enough test scores for certain minorities, or high enough graduation rates. Whether our number of class days is an issue is not the same as other tests of the kind of education students receive in our schools. You have a habit of throwing out claims and statistics without sources, and without context, Peter, and you continue this tradition in your comments in 243.
Now Peter, if you were able to rise above your partisan inclinations, you might sincerely wrestle with some of the statistics that go against the grain of your assumptions: In Japan, CEO’s make about 10 times the pay of the lowest paid workers, and in the US, CEO’s make about 340 times the pay of the lowest paid workers. The sense of the common good in the society and economic factors have some influence on the family setting, on the expectations of students, and on educational performance in standardized tests.
I’ve noted before that, in some eastern countries, at the college level, students do not attend classes, but simply pay private tutors to help them prepare for exams.
You claim that education in the US compares poorly to education in other countries, but you want to view education in a vacuum, excluding these and other aspects of the broader context.
Consevatives champion family values (perhaps you do too, Peter), but they often view education in the US in the most partisan way possible, apart from any consideration of the family as full partners in education. This is a form of hypocrisy.
If we were being fair during the Bush administration, besides having (non-charter?) public schools comply with NCLB testing guidelines, we’d have families comply as well: If you are the parent of a child who is not certified as receiving special education services, and if your child is not doing homework, or stagnating in some way, then government officials (not from Homeland Security, but equally intimidating) would arrive at the family’s door, ready to confiscate the TV and the video games.
And if the family had to work too many jobs for nominal living expenses, similar government officials might arrive at the offices of the parents’ employers, demanding that the parents be given a living wage so that they could be treated less like economic slaves, and have more time to raise their children and assist in their educational needs.
Conservatives sometimes champion personal freedoms: the right to smoke, the right not to wear a seatbelt, the right to watch as much TV or play as many video games as one wishes. But these kinds of choices have consequences, and sometimes the consequences influence educational outcomes.
If conservatives and libertarians are to be champions of personal freedom, then one would think we’d have to give some students the right to fail, and not blame it on the teacher.
But your partisan ideology seems to have no room for such thinking.
A realist or pragmatist might adjust to these many factors and strive to make progress, given all the various realities at hand. But a partisan who is more committed to a certain ideology than to an openness to reality will just ignore any data or facts that don’t conform to the ideology, or will work quickly to find any explanation that may seem to account for some of the facts, while salvaging some sense of the ideology intact.
So I think it’s for this reason that it often appears that you have a kind of partisan tunnel vision, Peter. You usually seem quite partisan in your remarks because you don’t like to attend to the contradictions that are built into the conservative agenda--contradictions between conservative claims and the fuller context of the realities you’re talking about. Your comments usually seem less realist or pragmatist than partisan for these reasons.
This is especially true regarding your remarks on education in this thread, Peter, but as others have noted elsewhere, it seems to be your method on other topics too.
Paul,
This is just more of the same old same old. A weak attempt to make me look stupid and uneducated.
You are right I have not nearly as much schooling as you have and I am probably not as well read as you are.
But I do have common sense and I can see what’s going on around me without somebody having to explain it to me.
The way the school board has implemented this change was inconsidered and selfish and was done for the convinience of the teachers and the board, rather then keeping the needs of families in mind.
This move will have absolutely no effect on improving school and student performance.
In a year from today nothing will change.
Students should have the right to fail and I don’t blame the teachers if they do.
However this doesn’t excuse the lack of discipline in classrooms or the overall dumbing down of education in the name of making everybody feel good. Or does it completely free the teachers from responsibility.
Now that I have you on board with taking personal responsibility, it is really a small step to apply those same rules to other parts of our lives.
Nice to see you here.
http://nces.ed.gov/timss/tables07.asp
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/educatio/barr2f.htm
http://www.worldbank.org/mdf/mdf1/battling.htm
Just for you Paul
It bothers me a lot that, as I understand the whole idea of PLCs, they are about data-driven group inquiries aimed at improving student achievement. There’s a big emphasis on measurement and on focus on what students LEARN (rather than what teachers present).
Yet, as we are about to instantiate this concept in Northfield, we hear from ardent supporters of teachers that ANY existing measurements of student achievement are irrelevant, misleading, AND anyone who talks about them is mean, unscientific, Republican, knee-jerk, oh and academically entrenched.
It seems to me this anti-measurement stance goes completely against the grain of the PLC concept.
Which leads me to believe that, IN NORTHFIELD, PLCs are NOT going to be about data-driven processes to improve student achievement. We are not supposed to look at educational testing data (unless we have a time machine, apparently). There are no other measures available EXCEPT TEACHER PERCEPTIONS. Which are biased measures at best, and do not speak directly to the purpose of PLCs as they were presented to us originally.
Peter, I am coming to agree with you. At first I thought you were even more cynical than me; now I am coming to see things more and more from your viewpoint. This PLC proposal was a mechanism to pacify teachers; this was never intended to REALLY help students. It is unlikely to address the fundamental problems in Northfield district public schools (to wit: lack of holding the few, but destructive, unprofessional teachers accountable for their poor work). More families will leave, seeking better educational options where bad teaching is addressed; budgets will be negatively impacted, and the remaining kids will be even worse off than they are now.
Kathleen,
The out and out resistance to NCLB, especially from the teaching establishment, has always surprised and worried me.
Like I have said before, maybe the NCLB in it’s current form is not what it should be, and I would be certainly open for adjustments to it.
The teaching establishment is not in favor of anything that would hold them to a measurable standard, this has become evident in the discussions around merit based pay as well.
In absence of any alternative to replace the NCLB act, it would be foolish from us parents to let it go away.
It would remove the only clearly understandable (at least for me) measurement.
By giving in, we would be again subjects to “fluff” and educational double talk, rather then objective measurements.
Peter(246):
I’m glad to see we agree on more things.
I don’t think the school board’s deliberation was ill-considered, but I agree that that the district’s preparation for it (the parent survey, the timeline, the lack of a strong PR push to inform parents in advance about PLC’s) was ill-considered.
We agree on the right to fail and the need not to blame teachers.
We don’t agree on this:
“This move will have absolutely no effect on improving school and student performance.
In a year from today nothing will change.”
You can’t assume this in advance unless you have some supernatural ability to read the future. I will allow that you may have that supernatural ability, Peter. I don’t know you well enough to assume you don’t. I’ll grant you that. But I don’t, so I disagree.
Paul,
I think the fact that our education has deterioated consistently over the past 35 years, gives me a reasonable chance to be right, that nothing will change by next years.
This is not a supernatural ability….unless you put common sense and logic in to that category.
Cheers.