Mapping Teacher Leadership

Comments from 60+ teachers when asked, "What does teacher leadership mean to you?" The words "teacher" and "leadership" were removed before the word cloud was created. Check out Wordle for a fun word cloud tool.

Everything's amazing and nobody's happy

Over at Education Week, my buddy Patrick Ledesma posts an insightful article about the use of technology, a sense of immediacy, and the implications for [public] education.  The idea is that public access to privatized messages from teachers can increase an individual teachers' wealth.

The video, Everything's amazing and nobody's happy, is pretty funny, and Patrick infers that creative teachers can wrangle technology for personal gain.  Perhaps.

I appreciate Patrick's insightful perspective -- and I never really liked all those zeros (watch the video). But why is it that we sometimes align the maximization of individual liberty ('...a level of voice...") with economic prowess ("... financial security...")?

I like money, but I want democracy AND sustainable wealth. If we privatize, what mechanisms are left in place to sustain the public democracy AND sustain wealth?

Teacher Professionalism and Leadership

In a recent USA Today article, Wendy Kopp (CEO of Teach for America) and Dennis Van Roekel (President of the National Education Association),  recommend “3 steps improve the USA’s teachers.”   

Of course everyone wants to improve, but it would be helpful to determine what the specific problems are before we create policy guidelines.  Once the problems are identified, teachers should be directly involved in creating, implementing and evaluating the solutions.

Specifically, Kopp and Van Roekel suggest that we:

• Use data to improve teacher preparation.
• Bring new talent to the teaching profession.
• Give teachers opportunities for continuous professional development.

Of course teachers are life-long learners and we are, therefore, interested in continuous improvement.  However, when it comes to student learning, the focus on teachers is incomplete.  We should also consider the students' readiness to learn when they arrive at school.  

In order to learn, students need to be well-rested, well-fed, safe, and curious when they arrive at school.  If that's not the case, then we need to look to the social and economic context in which the children live outside of school.  And yes, teachers do have some perspective on that context.

An over-emphasis on teacher quality is a distraction from what truly ails us: students' and teachers' diminished ability to make informed (and careful) decisions about their learning.   

Over-emphasis on teacher quality as the "...single biggest factor in student success..." implies that if students are not succeeding, or learning, then teachers should be held accountable.  Yet research from the Center for Teaching Quality has shown that teachers are less effective when they have poor working conditions.

The onus is on teachers to advocate for effective working conditions, among other things.  Teachers should be involved in the design and implementation of curriculum, instruction, assessment AND policy -- all aspects of our working conditions. This emphasis on teacher leadership ties in very well with the US Department of Education's Blueprint for Reform that emphasizes teacher professionalism.

Within the article, it is not clear if  Kopp and Roekel are referring to worthwhile assessments of "student learning" -- or simple measurements of "student success."  Poorly-designed standardized tests CANNOT be used to correlate the quality of teacher training programs.  

Why use bad data to create wishy-washy (or worse) policy?

Big Money In Education Reform

I know a lot of extraordinary teachers, so please consider applying for this award below :). 

A Major New Award for Extraordinary Teaching

Amazing teachers deserve more attention. That’s the idea behind the Fishman Prize for Superlative Classroom Practice, a new award that honors extraordinary teachers with $25,000 and the opportunity to share their expertise with educators nationwide.  Offered by TNTP, a nonprofit organization [led by Michelle Rhee for its first 10 years] led working to ensure that more students learn from excellent teachers, the prize will be given to up to five teachers each year.  Any full-time teacher working in a high-poverty public school, including charter schools, may apply. The deadline for applications is Friday, February 3, 2012. Learn more and apply online at www.tntp.org/fishmanprize.

[COMMENTARY]  There is some big money behind some types of education reform.  Not all of that money is designed to sustain democratic public education.  

When Michelle Rhee, or others, say that "...the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents’ income — it is the quality of their teacher...," more questions are raised than answered.  On the surface, one might think that teacher quality would imply that teachers should somehow be involved in creating the schools (and policies) that influence their effectiveness.  Yet many reformers -- conservative, neo-liberal or heavy-handed Marxist -- often overlook teachers as the experts in the room.  Quite undemocratic.  

Some messy questions to consider:

• If students are not doing well (on standardized tests), does this imply that teachers are merely "ordinary" or just plain lousy at their jobs?
• If teachers are not as effective as they could be, are there other in-school variables that influence student learning?  What does it mean when we isolate the teachers as a single variable and ignore the other variables that could affect student learning?  What if smart teachers are saddled with stultifying working conditions, dangerous hallways or classrooms, or children arrive at school hungry, tired and/or stressed?
• If you take an effective teacher and move her/him from 5th grade to 3rd, and then to 4th, will her/his effectiveness be compromised year to year?
• Why is it that under-performing schools often have higher teacher turn-over and higher rates of newer teachers?  

[/COMMENTARY]

PA Charter Schools and Democratic Accountability

The School District of Philadelphia has decided to close 9 schools in an attempt to reduce the excess capacity by 14,000 seats.  Since 2000, the District has lost over 50,000 students.  And since PA approved charter legislation in 1997, over 48,000 students have enrolled in charter schools.

There is a clear connection between the loss of students to charters and the disinvestment in traditional public education, i.e. the closing of schools.

But charter schools can co-exist with traditional public school districts, provided that the state-level charter legislation is more teacher-friendly.  By involving more teachers in democratic educational reform, we are more likely to benfit from their professionalism, creativity and expertise.

Charter legislation in Pennsylvania is presently not that teacher-friendly in that it marginalizes teachers (and local unions) from the innovative charter school process: teachers who work at the school can't serve on the board of a charter school. Nor can they be members of the local bargaining unit. These two provisions exclude two important groups that could actually sustain worthwhile educational reform.

It could get worse.

According the the Education Law Center, PA state Senate Bill 904 and House Bill 1348 are designed to change charter school legislation so that there is actually less democratic accountability: 10-year renewals rather than 5, conversion of any school to a charter, and a state-level commission to directly approve charter schools.

If we're gong to revise charter school legislation, we can do better:

1. Charge the PA State Commission with explicitly helping LEAs, parents, teachers and unions study, modify and/or adopt effective innovations within the charter school networks.
2. Modify the oversight of individual charters to require teacher representation. If the argument has been that teachers have had little influence over the direction of traditional public schools, then teachers should be able to effectively influence public education through charters, if necessary.
3. Allow PA charter employees to opt-in to (or cooperate with) the membership of the local union's collective-bargaining unit. This will help the employees within a charter ensure due process. As for "seniority" that is associated with unions, charters should be explicitly permitted to retain site-based hiring (a provision that already exists within traditional public schools). Charters should also be required to design their budgets that do not penalize (or discourage) experienced teacher applicants due to their higher salary expectations.
4. Allow/encourage local unions (or their partners) to open and supervise charter schools. If the argument is that the LEA and it's policies hinder teacher effectiveness, then local unions should be able to manage charters effectively while maintaining union membership within the LEA.
5. Require that charter schools provide opportunities for teacher leadership through teacher-led professional development, peer evaluation, common planning time, and engagement-oriented (rather than compliance-oriented) administrative supervision.
6. The legislation should also be explicit about using "multiple measures of teachers' effectiveness" in determining faculty retention, teacher salaries, etc. Assessing teachers' effectiveness on high-stakes standardized tests is an incomplete and ineffective strategy. The use of multiple measures to determine teachers' effectiveness is in alignment with position statements by the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers and the US Department of Education's Blueprint for Reform - Reauthorizing ESEA.

It's time for more democratic accountability -- in all aspects of educational reform.

What do well-funded schools look like?

Below are a few things we could do to create well-funded, dynamic and engaging schools.  What would you add, take away or modify?

• Create smaller class size; I don't care what the research says, I just know I can be more effective when I can know fewer students more deeply.  Right now, I have 125-145 students, depending on the day.  When I taught at an independent school, I had about 60-80 students/day. 
• Build and maintain beautiful school facilities with a fully funded library, computer centers (or 1:1 laptops as needed), resplendent arts studios and athletic programs, well-funded class trips, and access to green space.  These sorts of things already happens in some schools, but it sometimes means we create privilege rather than cultivate democracy.
• Have healthy, sustainable and tasty lunch programs - free to all, including faculty and staff.
• Foster flexible teacher leadership so that individuals can have one foot firmly in the classroom (with benefits) and another foot in research-world (for policy, curriculum studies, or professional development).  Each school would formally have at least 1 such teacher leadership position for every 10 teachers, and the capacity for other positions to be created.

Education for Democracy is Patriotic

The more-than-adequate financial support of public education is an expression of democracy.  Unfortunately, public education is under-funded.  Teachers need to balance defense (how can we manage budget cuts?) with advocacy: the full funding of public education (smaller class size, for starters*).

What can we do to help advance the idea of public education as a foundation for our democracy (assuming we agree)?

CLICK ON THE GRAPHIC below for an clearer image that helps me visualize the relationship between democracy and education.  Comments/suggestions welcome.

* What are some features of adequately-funded democratic education?  See subsequent post.