Smart People (You and Me) are Stupid

A recent provocative article from the New Yorker begins:

Here’s a simple arithmetic question: A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? The vast majority of people respond quickly and confidently, insisting the ball costs ten cents. This answer is both obvious and wrong. (The correct answer is five cents for the ball and a dollar and five cents for the bat.)

Or try this one:

West and his colleagues began by giving four hundred and eighty-two undergraduates a questionnaire featuring a variety of classic bias problems. Here’s a example: In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? Your first response is probably to take a shortcut, and to divide the final answer by half. That leads you to twenty-four days. But that’s wrong. The correct solution is forty-seven days.

Our first mistake is too assume the human beings are rational. We should start from the premise that human beings are lazy (Yes, I am talking about you, and I am talking about me).

When people face an uncertain situation, they don’t carefully evaluate the information or look up relevant statistics. Instead, their decisions depend on a long list of mental shortcuts, which often lead them to make foolish decisions. These shortcuts aren’t a faster way of doing the math; they’re a way of skipping the math altogether. Asked about the bat and the ball, we forget our arithmetic lessons and instead default to the answer that requires the least mental effort.

My son calls it the “slacker syndrome.” The first step to learning to make good decisions is to humbly acknowledge that deep down we are all slackers. The smarter we are, the more stupidly we decide, like the super-smart guy who thinks everyone else is an idiot, but HE can time the stock market.

...smarter people are more vulnerable to these thinking errors...intelligence seems to make things worse. The scientists gave the students four measures of “cognitive sophistication.” As they report in the paper, all four of the measures showed positive correlations, “indicating that more cognitively sophisticated participants showed larger bias blind spots.”....

Okay, now that I know I am prone to this weakness (maybe the next time a job interviewer asks me about my number one weakness, I should admit that I am stupid....mmm...maybe not), I can use this new-found self awareness to avoid it in the future. Think again.

...“people who were aware of their own biases were not better able to overcome them.”...

Even worse, we all tend to think of ourselves more highly than we ought.

Perhaps our most dangerous bias is that we naturally assume that everyone else is more susceptible to thinking errors, a tendency known as the “bias blind spot.” This “meta-bias” is rooted in our ability to spot systematic mistakes in the decisions of others—we excel at noticing the flaws of friends—and inability to spot those same mistakes in ourselves.

Wow, that sounds like a modern version of old advise from Jesus.

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:4)

Education and self-awareness do not work because the meta-cognition is not available.

The problem with this introspective approach is that the driving forces behind biases—the root causes of our irrationality—are largely unconscious, which means they remain invisible to self-analysis and impermeable to intelligence.

Therefore we are doomed to live in a Zen paradox.

The more we attempt to know ourselves, the less we actually understand.

Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel education and self-awareness of our biases must be better than ignorance. At least, we can learn to be more tolerant and forgiving of others.

Parents In Contempt

As long as schools hold the public (who pays their bills, by the way) and parents in utter contempt, I seriously doubt that they will be able to build the relational trust necessary to academic achievement. Even worse, is the contempt demonstrated toward those parents and members of the public who are education colleagues who might actually have a message worth listening to. I am just going to tell the story. A friend's child brought home a math assignment on perimeter and area. One of the problems was unsolvable as presented. It looked something like this (I do not have the actual diagram since child already turned her homework in):

The problem is unsolvable because there is not enough information. There is no way to know whether the angles that “look” 90 degrees are in fact 90 degrees. There is also no way to know whether the vertical segment that “looks” like it bisects the base in fact does so. The child made these points in class, but the teacher shot her down. So thinking I was being helpful to a young teacher, I sent her an email. After some brief introductory remarks, I wrote,

... the last problem of a recent homework assignment on perimeter and area had insufficient data to solve the problem.  One of the principles of geometric diagrams is that we never go by appearance.  We solve using givens and proven facts.  Since that particular diagram gave no indicators of equivalent length, bisection, 90-degree angles, etc, no conclusions could be drawn regarding the length of the side opposite the one measuring 15 units, or any other non-given length, without making unsubstantiated assumptions.  We are miseducating children if we teach them, even indirectly, bad thinking habits.  One of the purposes of math instruction is the logical and critical thinking skills it cultivates. And if we are as worried about high-stakes tests as we say we are, we will teach students to think properly.  A favorite trick of bubble tests is to lead the students down a primrose path of faulty assumptions. If you would like discuss ways to help students learn to think, please let me know.  I spent a lifetime teaching math, first to junior high and high school, and later, college students.

The teacher sent a reply that seemed quite understanding, but showed that she somehow missed the point. She replied,

I completely understand what you are saying in the email. I also concur with what you said, however, I did verbally tell the students that angles that appear to be right are. ..However, if the student drew it out on the grid paper, then that student could find an area for the figure they drew. We are at an entry level with these problems, and so I looked at how the student drew the problem out, and determined if their area and perimeter matched that drawing.

Then she asked for suggestions for helping students who are well below grade level. Am I the only one who found the reply disturbing? So I wrote back,

Thank you for your reply. "I did verbally tell the students that angles that appear to be right are."  Angles that appear to be right are most decidedly not right just because of appearance.  I really think that if the student's math level is lower, then it is all the more critical to precisely teach thinking skills.  Drawing on grid paper does not really help, because it only pushes students harder to make unwarranted assumptions.

I closed by repeating my offer to help. Then I got this curt dismissal:

Hi again, Thank you for your response, it seems that on this particular problem I did not satisfy your criterion and I am sorry to have let you down. Have a nice day.

Okay, so she really does not want any help, I guess. And apparently she is happy to miseducate kids. I figured I would just move on, until....the school's guidance counselor contacted me, and let me know that she considers my communication with the teacher inappropriate and unprofessional. Seriously? She even challenged my right to have any conversation with the teacher by pretending that I was discussing a student, not a math problem. Now when I was teaching, the only time I passed communications on to administration was if it contained a personal insult of some kind, of course, a very rare occasion. Maybe it is unfair to extrapolate from one experience, but I assure you, schools routinely show contempt for parents, let alone the public, even the education-savvy members of the public. We must be careful that we as teachers refrain from thinking we get to define the terms of parental involvement. I know plenty of teachers who actually resent fully involved parents if those parents dare to challenge the teacher or the school. Then teachers vilify the parent as a "helicopter parent" in an ad hominem attempt to dismiss with contempt the parent's concerns. A lot of schools want to limit parent involvement to conferences and making cupcakes.

It's the Poverty, Stupid: Part 2

This is the second part of a two part series. The first part discusses poverty in general, especially as it applies to the Occupy Movement. The second part relates poverty to the link between academic achievement and the economy.

Let me say this very clearly. The 1% are pretty much irrelevant to the education of (most of) the 99%. There is a motivating myth in our society that hard work will pay off financially. True to human nature, people cannot seem to resist putting everything in pendulum-swinging, either-or terms. Get an education and get rich. Forego an education and be poor. As if 1% of the population is rich and the full 99% are not. The Occupy movement got the Gallup people to wondering, so they melded 61 surveys to come up with a demographic comparison of the 1% and the 99%. What they found is startling.

The official top 1% of American households in 2010 includes those with incomes of at least $516,633, according to data from the Tax Policy Center as reported in The Washington Post.

Unsurprisingly, 49% of the 1% have postgraduate degrees, compared with 16% of the 99%. We have all heard critics of the Occupy activists say that if they stopped occupying and worked as hard as the 1%, they too might have a chance at becoming the 1% (a mathematical impossibility, given the nature of percentages,but never mind).

This is not to say that college degrees guarantee vast wealth. To the contrary, only a small fraction of all Americans who report having a postgraduate education (1.5%) or an undergraduate degree but no postgraduate education (0.8%) fall into the top 1% category. However, the comparable rates are many times smaller -- no greater than 0.3% -- at all other educational levels.

Let's get this straight. Although nearly half of the 1% have postgraduate degrees, only 1.5% of postgraduate degree holders are members of the 1%. In other words, the 1% did not get there by virtue of their education; they were born into the 1%.

Maybe we should look at the median knowing full well that raising the median income will also move the median. There will always be an amount that 50% fall above and 50% fall below. The 2010 median income in the US is $49,445. Instead of obsessing on statistics, we should focus ensuring that all students have a fair shot at reaching their potential. Fact is, poverty dramatically reduces those chances. Fact is, Dad's socioeconomic status is the major predictor of children's socioeconomic attainment. Fact is, worthless either-or polarities aside, education is still the best route out of poverty.

More generally, college education is strongly correlated with household income. Nine percent of Americans earning less than $20,000 per year are college graduates; this rises to majorities of adults in all income groups above $100,000. Similarly, few adults in low-income households have postgraduate education, and this rises only into the teens among middle-income adults. But it sharply increases among those earning $100,000 or more, peaking at 49% among those earning between $250,000 and $499,000, and those earning at least half a million.

What the rich do for their children is put them on a different “trajectory” of wealth.

some high poverty schools that were also high performing. These schools were able to lift student achievement, close gaps, and set their students on a trajectory of success.

The differing trajectory include a differing frames of reference, work approaches and loci of focus. Rich kids “inherit” a different ability to compete and different access to opportunity. Even the family junk mail is different. We could begin by funding all schools equally, ignoring the protests of those who say they do not want their tax money paying for other children, or those who hesitate to donate if they cannot designate which school receives the donation.

In the United States, we actually fund poor schools less than other schools. The highest performing countries do the opposite. More than that, the highest performing countries have less poverty because they invest in infrastructure designed to expand the middle class. In the United States, we are killing the middle class, and our student achievement will pay a dear price.

We could stop pointing to achievement outliers as feasible role models. Just because Abe Lincoln did it does not mean everyone can (and it's your own darn fault if you don't). Every field has outliers. Not every highly talented cellist can be Yo-Yo Ma. Not every great tenor can be Pavorotti. Not every terrific actor can be Meryl Streep. Not every highly skilled computer geek can be Steve Jobs. Most of us do not realistically have a chance at being the 10%, never mind the 1%. If you make more than $138,000, you make more than 90% of the population.

In my experience, success at high poverty and high performing schools is not based on merit pay, high stakes testing, vouchers, bureaucratic personnel evaluations systems, alternative certification, or any other glitzy idea that politicians seem to embrace so easily.

In fact, what American education needs most of all is a blessing high performing schools enjoy on an individual basis, a blessing high performing education systems take as a societal given, relational trust. Another disturbing fact: too many powerful stakeholders in our society are well-satisfied with the education status quo for their own self-interested reasons.

Omnipresent Poverty and US Competitive Advantage

Using test-scores to hold teachers accountable for student education variables not under teacher control is clearly wrong-headed, but for some reason, it makes illogical sense to many education policy-makers. Similarly, using test-scores from international comparisons to hold teachers responsible for the nation's economic health makes even less sense. There are just too many variables outside teacher control.

“Although we cannot predict future economic trends, we do know that test-score rankings are a poor basis upon which to understand these trends or to know what to do about them. The reason is clear: Other variables, such as outsourcing to gain access to lower-wage employees, the climate and incentives for innovation, tax rates, health-care and retirement costs, the extent of government subsidies or partnerships, protectionism, intellectual-property enforcement, natural resources, and exchange rates overwhelm mathematics and science scores in predicting economic competitiveness...

“It is specifically the low-income populations... that are at the most severe disadvantage in competing for jobs in a global economy.”

For example, the children of a local district supervisor did not have to go looking for high school jobs. The shakers and movers CALLED HIM to offer his children great jobs. Nevertheless, "the adverse effects of poverty and concentrations of poverty in schools (affects) student performance in all countries." Even so, if international comparisons favored the US, we would be crowing, not attempting to explain them away.

First, our rhetoric has assumed that test-score rankings are linked to a country’s economic competitiveness, yet the data for industrialized countries consistently show this assumption to be unwarranted. For example, the World Economic Forum’s 2010-2011 global-competitiveness report
ranks the United States fourth, exceeded only by Switzerland, Sweden, and Singapore. Many of the countries that ranked high on test scores rank lower than the United States on competitiveness—for example, South Korea, No. 22, and Finland, No. 7.

The same report shows that the US has actually lost two places in the last year, dropping from No. 2 to No. 4, while Sweden, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands, all in the top ten have each gained two places. What we need to remember is that test-score rankings may be a leading indicator, that is, the significance of the rankings is that they may foreshadow future competitiveness (or lack thereof). The sheer size of the US economy may guarantee its competitiveness, at least in the near term.

Many observers worry about the future competitiveness of the U.S. The reason may be the increasing poverty of US students at a time when US income inequities are increasing at alarming rates.

The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent. One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall...Economists long ago tried to justify the vast inequalities that seemed so troubling in the mid-19th century—inequalities that are but a pale shadow of what we are seeing in America today.

My local newspaper just reported that 50% more people fell below the poverty line this year. Poverty, especially chronic poverty, limits opportunity in ways the public does not fully understand. As a simple illustration, even junk mail is different. The poor get credit card offers, the rich get stock tips.

First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible

For example, a poor child is not going to be able to study violin to a proficiency sufficient to make a decent living. The instrument, lessons, books, sheet music, competitions, concert apparel, etc. all cost too much. Even a talented musician who works really hard to overcome the effects of poverty and persevered by his own tenaciousness may find the poverty disadvantage too overwhelming. Such an academically high achieving musician will likely be compelled to abandon music in favor of a career that will actually pay the bills, and relegate his superlative violin-playing to a “hobby.” Who knows how much talent has been lost?

America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels.

Schools do not lead society; they reflect society's priorities. Education is simply not a priority for US society.

“The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes...But one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way.”

The same could be said for education.

The Lake Wobegone Effect Plagues Parent Surveys

THEN (not so then)

A 2008 poll from Education Next and the Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG) at Harvard University found that Americans are increasingly disappointed with public schools, and that by a 3 to 2 ratio believe that Democrats have a better record on education than Republicans (Q18) and are more likely to improve schools (Q19). The other, a Phi Delta Kappa (PDK)/Gallup poll, found that most Americans believe a President Barack Obama (46%) would be more likely than a President John McCain (29%) to improve public schools.

As with surveys in other fields, respondents rate themselves higher than others.

As other surveys have shown, the public’s evaluations become somewhat more favorable when the subject turns to the public schools in their own communities (see Figure 1)... But teachers offer the schools systematically higher grades than the rest of the public. Thirty-four percent give the schools an A or a B, while only 14 percent give them one of the two lowest grades (Q.1).

The demographic at the losing end of the achievement gap ranked the nation's schools even lower. This group also depends most on public schools.

On the whole, survey respondents offered slightly lower evaluations of the nation’s schools in 2008 than they did in 2007, and some groups posted sharp declines. Twenty-seven percent of African Americans gave the public schools an A or a B in 2007, but in 2008, that figure fell to 20 percent. Meanwhile, the share of African Americans giving schools a D or an F rose from 20 percent to 31 percent. The share of Hispanics awarding schools a similarly poor grade doubled during the period, from 16 to 32 percent.

Although public school teachers (34% A or B) graded public schools significantly higher than the general public (20% A or B), nevertheless teacher opinion implies that a full 66% of teachers believe public schools are performing below expectations. For the education system of the richest, most powerful country in the world, a C or below is simply unacceptable.


40% of teachers gave schools nationally an A or B grade, but 61% gave their local schools an A or B grade. It seems obvious that teachers are essential to school reform, but if all politics is local, and by extension, all education reform is local, education reform must overcome teacher satisfaction and consequent inertia first.

Perhaps surprisingly given union activism on the issue, somewhat more public school teachers (47%) favor the formation of charter schools (Q11) than the general public (42%). On the other hand twice as many public school teachers (33%) oppose charter school compared to the general public (16%).

The survey concluded, among other things, "...while Americans retain an abiding commitment to public education, the grades that they assign the nation’s schools are increasingly mediocre."



AND NOW

The 2011 Gallup/PDK poll found 69% of Americans give high grades to their local teachers.

Perhaps the most significant finding was that more than 70 percent of Americans said that they have trust and confidence in the men and women who are teaching in public schools. The percentage of Americans who would grade their local schools as A’s or B’s continues to be at an all-time high. The percentage was even higher among people under the age of 40...

69 percent of Americans would grade teachers in their communities with an A or B – higher than their principals or school boards. This confidence also exists despite the fact that most Americans said that they hear more bad stories than good stories about teachers in the news media.

As usual, people graded their community schools higher than the nation's schools (page 18 and 19). 51% gave their their own children's schools an A or B, but 81% rated the nation as a whole C or below.

In Lake Wobegone, all children are above average. Most Americans seem to think their children go to Lake Wobegone schools.

The Teachers' Social Security Safety Net

Over at Justin Baeder's blog, there is a lively discussion of Social Security. I suspect I provoked some of it. Please read the original blog entry and its comments for the context of what I am about to write.

Justin says, “...but as a 30-year-old, I'd much rather just pay SS tax and never get anything back (to provide a societal safety net for others) than have additional money taken from me only to be given back later at a very poor rate of return.”

Kudos to you, Justin, if you are really fine with paying in and never getting anything back in order to provide a safety net for others. There are plenty of people who resent Social Security precisely because it is a safety net. They would rather think of it as an investment or an entitlement instead of the insurance program it was designed to be. Before the Baby Boomers came along (don't blame them, blame their parents:), the 1% premium was cheap insurance. In the 1980s, it was raised to 6.2% to save for the Baby Boomers. It would be nice if the premium could drop back once the Baby Boomers are gone, but I do not see this happening for at least three reasons.

1. The Boomer Echo-Baby Boomers had kids, and the Echo Generation is having kids, so the population is permanently higher than without the Baby Boomers.
2. Spoiled Government-The government has gotten used to having the extra funds to borrow for General Fund expenses.
3. Longevity-People are living longer, thus needing the safety net for longer periods of time.

As far as the 12X return is concerned, please remember that one dollar is not the same as another. If I bought, for example, Netflix stock a year ago for around $150 and sold at about $200 recently, those dollars are roughly the same dollars, so the 33% gain is an accurate perception. However, if I bought GE in the early 1970's for $1.00 and sold for $55, close to GE's historic high 30 years later, it appears to be a super impressive 5400% gain. But consider what $1.00 could buy in the 1970's versus what it could buy in 2000. Here is a sample: A $0.05 ice cream cone from Thrifty cost $2.79 now, a 56x or 5480% increase. Here's another: It used to cost $0.25 to go swimming for four hours in the community pool. Now it costs $5.00, a 20x or 3100% increase. I remember these figures because I used to ride my bike to the pool every Saturday and get an ice cream cone on the way home out of my dollar a week allowance.

Consider an index fund that tracks the DOW. From the 1970's to 2000, the index fund would have posted a gain of only 14x or about $1310%. If you retire now, you have had no additional gain due to the “lost decade.” Beloved Thirty-Somethings, this could happen to you. If the index fund is your retirement, regardless of the appearance of being a multi-bagger, it did not keep up and will only lose ground to future inflation during retirement when the typical retiree converts it to a fixed-income stream.

The 12x return on Social Security only has the illusion of being huge. The fact is the 12x increase is potentially sustainable because past dollars, present dollars and future dollars are not the same. Even so, the nominal 12x return on Social Security payments will not even pay the rent.

So Justin is partially right. Individual investors have the potential to get a return great than that of Social Security. The question is whether individual investors can actually achieve such a return, and more importantly, keep it. Statistics say that regardless of what the historical returns of the market may be, the typical individual investor get a 1% return. And to get that paltry return, they have to break the first rule of investing: do not put money at risk you cannot afford to flush down the toilet. Retirement savings surely qualify.

People have learned the hard way they cannot count on their 401(k) plans, not only because of market risk, but also because studies have found that most 401(k) plans are actually pretty low quality. In my mind, maybe the best thing to do is buy a house when the rent vs. buy comparison is in your favor. Even if you end up spending twice the price of the house because you took the full 30 years to pay, you would have paid a similar amount anyway as rent and have nothing to show for the rent after 30 years. At least with a house, after 30 years you have secured a roof over your head. You can keep it for only the cost of the approximately 1% property tax, reducing your total retirement expenses by at least 25%-30%. Then your Social Security benefits, if you need the safety net, can go toward other expenses like food.

Many, many people, even after a lifetime of hard work and doing everything right, are finding themselves looking over the edge of the abyss. Dear Thirty-Somethings, this could be you. And if you are a public school teacher, there are people out there going after your so-called exorbitant pension.

These Wings Don't Fly

The pervasive either-or dichotomy syndrome debilitates constructive debate in nearly every arena of societal concern. Like Dr.Dolittle's push-me-pull-me, framing issues as a choice of either this or that halts progress and hampers solution making. Education is no exception.
Either-or dichotomies are a convenient rhetorical device. Present one choice in positive language, the other in negative language, and let human emotion take over. Very few issues can be analyzed as simple either-or options, least of all, an issue as complex as education with its more than a score of stakeholders, each with their own competing interests.

The main problem with the either/or dichotomy syndrome is that it prevents people from considering alternatives. It pushes otherwise moderate people into wings: right/left, whole language/phonics. vouchers/traditional funding, and so many more. Often alternatives do not even occur to people in the wings. “Thinking outside the box” frequently means nothing more than having the ability to reject either/or frames. Once rejected, the mind is free to conceive alternatives.

As it is, complicated issues in education are dumbed down to a "right" and a "left" side. People end up emotionally offensive or defensive. The false dichotomies serve only as diversions. Each side spends all its time depicting their side as the positive one and the opposing side as negative. Therefore, arguing about dichotomies is counterproductive. The task is not to take sides, but to reject the dichotomies themselves.

The choice is NOT between:
either pro-union or anti-union
either pro-standardized testing or anti-standardized testing
either publics schools or private schools
either pro-charter or anti-charter
either phonics or whole language
either whole class novel/basal reader or individual student choice
either direct instruction or constructivism
either individual answers or choral response
either pro-calculators or anti-calculators
either teacher-directed or student-directed
either competition or cooperation
either lecture or hands-on
either "an autonomous professional entrusted with crafting engaging but occasionally idiosyncratic lessons" or "a standardized, curriculum-centered enterprise,...our practice is in turn videotaped to evaluate our use of the prescribed methods."
either vibrant creativity or stifling rigidity
either rote memorization or googling information
either teachers as professionals or teachers as hired laborers
either complete autonomy or micromanagement
...
At the risk of being cliché, the sooner we start thinking outside box by rejecting either/or formulations, the better.

Cultural Sacred Cows of American Education

As long as comparative studies show so many other countries outperforming American students, there will be those who dismiss the findings because of comparability concerns. The samples from other countries are more academically proficient, or societies in those countries value education more, or those education systems emphasize rote learning or.... The critics pull out the list anytime American students fare poorly, comparatively speaking. American students have been ranking low for a very long time now, so the list is pretty well memorized. The list has been repeated so often without dissent that its points are assumed to be true, whether they are or not.

The fact is there are comparability problems. In 1993, David C. Berliner tackled the topic in an article published by Phi Kappa Phi in their journal, National Forum. Significantly, he subtitled his article, “A False Guide for Reform.” Old stuff can be good stuff. Although Dr. Berliner wrote almost twenty years ago, he could have written yesterday.

To blame school failures on poor teachers, inadequate administrators, inappropriate curriculum, or uncaring parents is misleading. When children are poor, when they lack health care, when they come from dysfunctional families and dysfunctional neighborhoods, schools fail. When public schools do fail, it is because society has failed (bold added by S. Goya)....

International comparisons of achievement always will reveal differences because the economic support for schools in each nation, their curricula, the quality of the teachers, the health of their students, their administrative systems, the support for school by parents in each nation, the value of education in each nation, and job markets each nation prepares its children for all differ. Such variation in the national systems of education leads inexorably to variation in the performance of students in each nation.

In 1994, I wrote a short article, also published in the National Forum, addressing two differences between Japanese and American education that Americans generally accept as true. It is human nature to put superficially true statements through our cultural filters and end up with mistaken conclusions. First, because public schools do most of the educating in America, we automatically credit Japanese public schools for Japanese school achievement. If international studies intend to compare public school outcomes, then researchers will have a difficulty finding a comparable sample in Japan. Virtually every student in Japan has received substantial education from the ubiquitous private after-school schools (juku).

Second, we hear that the Japanese school calendar has 240 days. Our own American schooling leads us to assume Japanese students are “on-task” for 240 days. However, 100 days are only half days for one reason or another. Japanese annual public school instructional time measured in hours is actually quite similar to American instructional time, but because nearly all Japanese students also attend juku, they receive substantially more academic instruction than American students. Furthermore, there are some fundamental unquestioned cultural paradigms that influence the American view of what is possible and what is untouchable when it comes to education reform.

Attention Seeking

In America, there is an axiom that children of all ages crave attention. Therefore, Americans have unconsciously socialized their children to crave attention, similar to the unwitting differential treatment of boys and girls. Adults are generally unaware of the many ways they encourage even middle school and high school students to be attention seekers. Consequently, no one questions that part of every teacher's job is to give attention to every student. In fact, the main argument for reducing class size is smaller class sizes make it easier for teachers to give individual attention in an environment where the misbehavior of children is often interpreted as a bid for more attention from the teacher.

I did not question or even notice the unexamined attention seeking axiom until I taught in a society that does not socialize its children to be attention seekers. Teachers in these societies capably manage much larger classes even in preschool and the early grades. Most primary grades have an average of forty-five students per grade. Even more interesting, students from these societies generally outrank American students in comparative studies. While larger class sizes may not be a positive variable, it is at least not necessarily negative variable either. Of course, interpreting international comparisons is always a problem because of the complex interaction of variables. Even in the US, the research on class size is inconclusive and subject to confirmation bias

For example, some Americans believe that societies with large class sizes post exemplary academic achievement because of an authoritarian school structure. One person wrote to me that they “knew” the Chinese government does not allow students to misbehave. While such a belief may be consoling, it is not true. Japanese education, especially in the elementary grades is very inquiring, active and hands-on. Furthermore, it does not occur to Japanese teachers that misbehaving students are seeking attention. They attribute misbehavior to other factors. If you have not created a room full of attention seekers, you can be a highly effective teacher with many more students in the classroom.

Contempt of High Achievers

American society is of two minds when it comes to high achievers. We say we value academic achievement, but what we say is betrayed by what we do. Our society routinely mocks and marginalizes high achievers. Tamara Fisher asked her gifted students to talk about how they felt about being high achievers. We did not need Ms. Fisher's class to tell us that while they were personally happy, they suffered socially. Nearly every American schoolchild has either been a victim or a perpetrator.

America says that one foundation of its education system is equal opportunity, that is, every child has a right to be educated to the extent of their potential. Then we undermine our grand values by charging high achievers with elitism. What exactly do we mean? That smart people can be smart as long as they hide it, so as not to hurt anybody's self esteem by their mere existence? There is an unresolved conflict between the values of meritocracy and egalitarianism.

Maltreatment of Substitute Teachers

One of the most appalling characteristics of American education is the routine poor treatment of substitute teachers and the commonplace administrative attitude that pranks and misbehavior come with the territory. Since when is it ever okay for students to mistreat another human being for a day. The substitute should be accorded the regard given to special guests for that is what they are. Nuff said.

Faculty Continuity

Everything about the American way encourages faculty longevity and discourages mobility. Teachers are certified at the state level. There are often silly, bureaucratic obstacles to re-certifying in another state. A teacher earning a Masters degree while teaching will receive a pay differential as long as they stay in the same district. Move to a new district and the Masters becomes an impediment to employment. Moving also turns experience into a disadvantage. Administrators are so adverse to paying for experience they will give credit for a maximum of only five years (in most districts). More often administrators simply pass over the experienced applicant in favor of the novice.

In Japan, for example, teachers are not only certified nationally, but they are also required to transfer schools every three years. Japanese administrators believes change keeps the staff fresh. The Japanese do not worry about the stability of school culture as Americans do. In fact, it could be argued that stability of school culture is actually a problem since the flip side of stability is resistance to improvements.

Instead of reflexively trotting out the tired list of reasons why international comparisons are flawed as if doing so somehow magically turns poor performance into acceptable performance, we should should be studying those reasons in detail to see what we can learn. It may be true that other societies value education more. Good for them. The lesson then is not to make an excuse, but to ponder what we could be doing to encourage American society to value education more, not only in word, but in deed.



Some Class Size Research Sources:

Counting Students Can Count http://nccic.acf.hhs.gov/node/28205

The Effect of Class Size on Student Learning http://livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit/31977

Class Size Research (List of Six Publications) http://www.bsd405.org/Default.aspx?tabid=5729

Class Size-Research Brief www.principalspartnership.com/classsize1110.pdf

Smaller Class Sizes: Pros and Cons http://www.publicschoolreview.com/articles/18

Making Enemies of ED Reform Allies

Alienating “ed reform” allies seems to be a counter-intuitive strategy, but one that “common-sense teachers” rely on more and more frequently. Anthony Cody summarizes the platforms of both “parties” in his biased Teacher Common Sense takes on Education "Reform" Nonsense
But it is not like he did not give fair warning of his slant towards the “common sense teachers” party.

The past decade we have seen drastic changes affecting our schools, and many of these changes defy what we know as teachers and parents to be in the best interests of our children. We have allowed technocrats to drive our schools with data. It is high time for teachers and parents and students to challenge the reform nonsense that holds sway.

While he makes many valid points about poverty, teacher experience, tenure, test scores and data, I was hoping for an even-handed summary of the education reform conflict and the myriad ways the teachers' voices are ignored. What I see instead is subtle and not-so-subtle mocking of "ed reform" by using easy-to-demolish phrasing. The article also makes enemies of potential allies by redefining education reform as a political stance.

Plenty of experienced teachers and other stakeholders are passionate about education in America and want to see it reformed. If they make the mistake of calling themselves “education reformers”, by Mr. Cody's lights, they automatically oppose "common sense" teachers. We need to flee these sorts of useless and destructive either-or dichotomies when discussing issues as complicated and with as many self-interested stakeholders as education.

For example, ed reformers do not believe that “Class size does not matter.” It does matter in certain situations, but in most educational contexts, the research has not supported universally smaller classes. In fact, there are countries with normal class sizes of 45, even in the primary grades, where students consistently rank at the top of international standings. Even more telling, their below average students out perform our best students. Before someone rushes to defend American performance by discounting the achievement of these students, we must remember that like so much in education, international comparisons are complex.

It will not do to rely on tired defensive excuses. For example, claiming that our average kids have to compete against their superior kids obfuscates more than it clarifies. There are any number of opposing unexamined cultural assumptions operating within both the American education system and the systems of other countries that make it appear obvious that class size should be important. Appearances are deceiving. I will name just one American education axiom that may not necessarily be true: Children, by definition, seek attention from their teachers.

In another example, the statement "Large amounts of public funds should not be diverted to privately controlled institutions" promotes education partisanship and perpetuates charter school misconceptions. The premise ("So by the measure chosen by the reformers, (charter schools) fail") has merit, The implied conclusion does not follow. Charter schools are not "privately controlled institutions." They are a species of public school subject to most of the education code, and answerable to their public sponsor, generally a district or county education board.

The argument implies that by the "ed reformers" own criteria, charters are no better or worse than traditional public schools. Fair enough. Then let's do something about "bad" charters, instead of using them to excuse "bad" traditional public schools. Let "good" charters flourish alongside "good" traditional public schools. Furthermore, sponsoring public education entities actually profit by charter schools since they retain 15% of the charter's state funding. The charter school must meet its expenses with 85% of the funding. Some charters are cash cows for their public school sponsors, such as Hickman, which has hundreds more students in its charter school than in its sponsoring traditional public school.

We who are passionate about education must do more than reach across the aisle. We must rearrange the furniture, eliminate the aisle, and mingle.

The Agrarian Model Myth

The model of public education is not primarily agrarian, although the needs of a predominately rural population may have influenced the calendar back in the beginning. It is not even predominately industrial, although the way factories were organized strongly influenced the organization of schooling.
The most salient model of public education is the model of the mind we inherited from the Age of Enlightenment.

Without further ado, I give you the animated illustration of an intriguing talk by Sir Ken Robinson.








Education reform is stuck in a rut because society has not confronted its most basic unexamined assumptions. I have often said we need a complete systematic overhaul. I was satisfied to mod the car, but no longer. Sir Ken goes further and says we need a new paradigm. He wants to throw the car out completely. Furthermore, he does not want to buy a new car. He wants to build something a completely different vehicle, perhaps one we have not imagined before.

Teach Tony Danza, Episode 2

In the second episode, Tony gives his first quiz which half the class fails. When he hands back the quiz, a clash of expectations occurs. He expects the students to support their answers to opinion questions. They complain that it is unfair for him to mark them off because opinion questions “do not have a right answer.” I do not blame the kids. Many years of lame critical thinking lessons have taught them that there is no wrong opinion, and that variations of the very popular “I think (fill in the blank) because I think (fill in the blank)” formulation is adequate support for an opinion.

Tony is sure they failed the quiz because they did not read the material; they insist they read it “five or six times.” He says out loud he doesn't believe it. Oops. But he knows they did not read because when he was in high school he did not read. One girl cries. Tony approaches her as if there is not another person in the room. If the class was inattentive before, they are all ears now. Tony has a lot to learn.

I am not impressed with Tony's instructional coach. He seems unwilling to give Tony any affirmations, is somewhat argumentative, and chooses to open emotional wounds, “Have you cried yet, Tony?” he asks. I am not impressed with the needlessly nasty assistant principal. I am not impressed with the overly harsh principal. Although they promised to support Tony, clearly their idea of what constitutes administrative support is far different from what teachers expect. The distinction is important because the number one reason teachers leave is lack of administrative support. “Mary,” a teacher quoted in the Chicago Studies, described what administrative support incarnate looked like.

I appreciate his early morning visibility and constant presence in the hallways every class period. He stands during all three lunches while we sit and enjoy our 30-minute meal. He writes personal notes when you do an excellent job on a project; he is open to suggestions that are results-oriented, and he chides negativity for negativity’s sake.

He keeps to the middle of the road and even if he has favorites, his choices are based on performance, not personality. In staff meetings, he does not preach, he shares. He has a sense of humor and attends most after-school functions.

He always greets you, and when he evaluates your instructional delivery, he stays the full 90 minutes. He actually reads over your plans to check for evidence of quality instruction, multiple tracks of learning, and assessment within your plans.

He learns the students’ names and jokes with them on their way to class or at lunch. At the same time he is firm and does not think twice about taking real troublemakers to our nearby town in handcuffs. He allows for flexibility some times in the teaching schedule to let kids display their talents, even in the midst of teachers complaining about instructional time lost. We are in a rural setting, so he realizes that for some students, school is the center of their total existence when it comes to cultural diversity and showcasing talents.

He reads a lot of different research and shares it with staff; he strives to establish some form of professional learning community in a school that knows very little about how it works. He meets with various groups repeatedly and has a 100% attendance rate except when he is at a workshop.

I have a different attitude about working for this principal because he actually notices how hard I work and lets me know that he sees what I do. He meets with every department to ask, what can I do to help you do a better job? What does your department need? How can we accomplish this or that?

In other words, supportive administrators act more like the teachers' servants than their overlords.

Reality Education: The Teach Tony Danza Show, Episode 1

Tony Danza, TV personality whose most memorable shows were probably Taxi and Who's the Boss, is only a couple years away from qualifying to draw his Social Security benefits. He says he always wanted to be a teacher, but boxing and acting derailed him. Quoting Robert Frost, Tony Danza is finally returning to the road not taken. He has become a 10th grade English teacher in an urban magnet school in Philadelphia. His road is a little different from most first year teachers. His first year is the subject of a reality TV show. He says he is terrified and he looks it.

We all know good and well that most reality shows are not really undirected slices of life. Real life is generally pretty uneventful, and in fact, we are shown less than twenty minutes of one week's class time. Although we abhor stress in our own lives, we love it other people's lives, even if the producers must create the conflict. Thus we have the scene starring the pointlessly nasty assistant principal. None of us knows what is going on “backstage” or what “stage directions” the students who volunteered to be in “Mr. Danza's” class have received.

Most viewers have never experienced the so-called reality of most reality TV. How many viewers have ever attended chef school, much less been stranded on an island? However, everybody has been to school. Everybody possesses a lens of personal experience, a frame of reference when it comes to education. Everybody's an expert. Funny thing is, we all have a different lens, and that makes the comments about Tony Danza's show as interesting as the show itself. Furthermore, most people have a rather limited frame of reference, but that does not stop people from overgeneralizing, like the commenters who claim he should have picked a school more like their school if he really wanted to show what education in America is like. Nevertheless, as the show progresses, the comments should provide an interesting cross-section of society's attitudes toward education gathered together in one place. One thing I have already learned is that the general public does not know the difference between certification and an education degree. Thus what many parents want are graduates with degrees in education regardless of additional state certification.

When it comes to sheer numbers of frames of reference, I have more than most. I have taught in urban schools, suburban schools and rural schools, American schools overseas and in the good ole USA, Japanese schools, public and charter schools, religious schools and boarding schools, elementary, secondary, and post secondary schools. The show and Tony Danza have taken a lot of undeserved heat. I mean students do not usually sit around a cafeteria table and complain that they have not seen their teachers' resumes. Every teacher has a first day, so whining a teacher's lack of experience sounds specious. Students and Tony's colleagues complain about Tony talking too much, as if most classroom are not dominated by teacher talk. When Tony is entertaining, students complain that it is not a teacher's job to entertain them, as if they have never complained about being bored to death by un-entertaining teachers.

Then there are those who resent his teaching without a state credential. A certified teacher sits in the back of the class every day, so it is more like an extended student-teaching placement . Did you know Tony is paying the school $3500/per class for the privilege? Mr. Danza first day was no worse and no better than many, if not most, first year teachers. Many people seem invested in Tony's failure—but spoiler alert, the reviews are out, and his principal has gone on record saying she would hire him for reals in a heartbeat because he proved to be a caring, gifted teacher. Apparently his on-the-job training was at least as effective as the course work for a state credential, maybe because the schools of education major in the theoretical and neglect the practical aspects of teacher training. I not willing to write off Mr. Danza. I am curious to see how he develops. He has the potential to do more for education in this country than all the PhDs put together.

Chancellor Rhee's Rock and Hard Place

When it comes right down to it, a lot of education stakeholders have an interest in preserving the status quo. Witness turf wars like the acrimonious debate about charter schools where one camp accuses the other of willfully intending to destroy public schools. All kinds of band-aid approaches have been tried and abandoned. Fads have come and gone. The window of opportunity for educating young children is quite small, and routinely squandered by partisan reformers. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found that 58% of Americans do not like Democrats and 68% do not like Republicans. Obviously partisanship is a lose-lose proposition. So is framing every issue as an either-or dichotomy.

The public constantly seeks to attach a label even to nonpartisan educators. Those whose views are clearly not partisan, usually because they regularly and alternately offend one side or the other, get painted as wishy-washy wimps. I know because critical emails I receive fall into one of three categories: You Closet Liberal, You Closet Conservative, You Fence-Sitter. Rarely are my positions critiqued on their merits, pro or con.

Education issues are systemic, and systemic overhaul requires someone with knowledge of the interrelationships between system components. Chancellor Michelle Rhee may not have many years experience as a teacher, but she has as much as some principals and administrators. In the partisanship climate of education today, whoever is serious about education will make bitter enemies in one camp or another. Guaranteed. They, like Rhee, will be damned if they do and damned if they don't. They will likely make many mistakes along the way. It is difficult to be your best self in the adversarial climate of education reform. Entrenched interests fight tooth and nail.

I have my own Rhee-like experience. More than ten years ago, in a county where there were serious problems with special education, the county superintendent of education approached me. He wanted to appoint me the county administrator of special education. I described my plan for reforming the county's special education programs. He loved it. Then I warned him to expect a political firestorm because what I was proposing would upset a lot of complacent and comfortable apple carts. I might not only rock a few boats, but capsize them. Unlike Rhee's boss when she similarly warned him, my prospective boss backed down. With an election coming up the next year, he decided he did not want to imperil the chances of his hand-picked successor. His designated successor won the election and decided he did not want to upset apple carts either.

Effective education reform requires a comprehensive overhaul of the system on a foundation of relational trust. Rhee pretty much admits she did not develop sufficient levels of relational trust. Ten years ago, if that superintendent had appointed me, I might have made the same mistake in my good-intentioned zeal to get things done yesterday with a minimum of schmoozing. On one point I do agree with most commentators. Reform should not be something done to teachers. Teachers should be leading reform, but their efforts, and even their access, is blocked every day by administrators and researchers with minimal to zero substantial, in-the-trenches responsibility for the academic achievement of students.

Reform is dangerous stuff. Teachers who drive small-scale reform in individual schools often become targets of not only the students and administrators, but even other teachers. Most schools have one or more teachers who are too busy being under-appreciated great teachers to be politically active. Some of them do not even have the time to write the multiple essays, arrange video-taping of their classes, and take time off to attend interviews in order to compete to be named Teacher of the Year. Teachers of the Year cannot simply be excellent teachers day in and day out and be recognized. I admire Chancellor Rhee for stepping into fray. In the current political climate, it is not possible to be both serious about reform and harmonious with all stakeholders.

Obama's Speech Riles Educators

I read and listened to President Obama's speech to the Urban League defending RTTT. As Master Educator observed in the ensuing comments to an EdWeek blog post, “It is painstakingly clear that extraordinary measures need to be put in place to greatly improve classroom learning, strengthen school infrastructures and increase student achievement.”

The first part of the speech that riled some people is this:

“Part of (RTTT opposition), I believe, reflects a general resistance to change.  We get comfortable with the status quo even when the status quo isn’t good.  We make excuses for why things have to be the way they are.  And when you try to shake things up, some people aren’t happy.”

I have some grave misgivings about RTTT. That being said, when President Obama talks about a general resistance to change and being comfortable with the status quo, he is practically quoting from any Psychology 101 textbook. People do resist change and cling to the status quo, and surely some of those people are teachers. By no means is he indicting all teachers who oppose RTTT. There are legitimate criticisms. What concerns me is that Mr. Duncan, and by extension, the administration, seems to give lip service to listening to teachers, but teachers report that they do not feel heard, never mind agreed with.

After spending several paragraphs on the importance of teachers and the need for societal support and esteem of teachers, Obama said,

So I am 110 percent behind our teachers. But all I’m asking in return -- as a President, as a parent, and as a citizen -- is some measure of accountability. So even as we applaud teachers for their hard work, we’ve got to make sure we’re seeing results in the classroom.  If we’re not seeing results in the classroom, then let’s work with teachers to help them become more effective.  If that doesn’t work, let’s find the right teacher for that classroom.”

Accountability is always a reliable hot button. But as long as accountability is based on student test scores, there will be legitimate opposition, as expressed in the following EdWeek comments:

from Curiousidle:
1) Teachers have no voice in the system as it pertains to curriculum, materials, scheduling, educational philosophy, class size, etc. So, while we might have some "expertise" to bring to the mix, our input is not asked for or required by local, state or federal administrations. It's the ultimate catch22: literally no say in how schools function combined with all political responsibility for the effects of poverty on educational success.

2) The two goals of the education system: education and social engineering can and do conflict with one another at times... that is to say, not every policy decision feeds both priorities equally well. The public system tend to err on the side of social engineering... examples include requiring everyone to meet the same bar and dumbing down the curriculum so it can happen, removing important subject area skills that are necessary building blocks for later instruction so that students that don't have those blocks in place are able to remain at grade level, grade inflation, credit recovery, social promotion and other disreputable practices, heterogeneous grouping during the day for social development remediated by funded homogeneous grouping after school.

3) What happens OUTSIDE of school has a far more pervasive influence on preparation, willingness and academic success than what happens INSIDE the classroom. IF we don't address failure at the root, we're just playing politics and avoiding the really hard conversations.


From DDKona: We just don't agree with his administration's definitions of these ideas. Hold me accountable for planning and implementing lessons that engage students at their different levels. Hold me accountable for what I do as a professional. But the minute you define accountability as how my students do on a standardized test, that is the minute you ignite my opposition.

From MarkAHarris: What I find comical is that people love using the word "accountability" with teaching. Yet, no one uses it the way it should be: you hold teachers responsible for what they do. Testing does not do this.

From CEB: (Obama) dismisses legitimate concerns about his administration’s agenda as resistance to change or defense of the status quo. He is so insultingly wrong. Critics of RttT want to improve education just as much or more as he and the tycoons who pull Duncan’s strings.

Mr. Obama attempts to address testing:

When we talk about testing, parents worry that it means more teaching to the test.  Some worry that tests are culturally biased. Teachers worry that they’ll be evaluated solely on the basis of a single standardized test.  Everybody thinks that’s unfair.  It is unfair.
 
But that’s not what Race to the Top is about.  What Race to the Top says is, there’s nothing wrong with testing -– we just need better tests applied in a way that helps teachers and students, instead of stifling what teachers and students do in the classroom.  Tests that don’t dictate what’s taught, but tell us what has been learned.  Tests that measure how well our children are mastering essential skills and answering complex questions.  And tests that track how well our students are growing academically, so we can catch when they’re falling behind and help them before they just get passed along. 

I am pretty sure that if testing showed that American students were actually outperforming the world, no one would object to testing. A major impetus to RTTT is the poor comparative performance of American students. If students master what I teach as demonstrated by, AMONG OTHER MEASURES, the test scores on tests I write, then I am teaching successfully even in the face of outside influences I do not control. In fact, I have a history of doing just that.

There is quite a small range of quality in the standards of different states. Furthermore, regardless of what individual state standards say, most teachers teach the curriculum as expressed by the textbook, not the state standards. Teachers tend to write their lesson plans based on the textbook, and then code those plans to the state standards. Very few teachers start with state standards and very few teachers use the textbook as just one resource among many. My high quality lessons have sometimes been criticized as too textbook-independent. Students, parents and administrators do not believe that teachers have their own knowledge apart from the textbook.

In Japan, because the national standards drive the curriculum and the textbook material, Japanese teachers do not explicitly teach to the test. Testing and curriculum are automatically aligned. In fact, students' classroom tests are often written by someone other than their teacher. It works like this: There are six tests per subject in a Japanese academic year. The teachers take turns writing the tests. For example, there are three grades in junior high, eighteen math tests will be written in an academic year. If there are ten teachers in a junior high math department, during the year each teacher will write one test for all math sections of a particular grade and most will write two.

The real problem, the one that goes unnamed, is anxiety. The number one reason teachers, many of them good teachers, leave teaching is lack of administrative support. There is simply no relational trust between teachers and administration that would reassure teachers of fair application of policy. Teachers have no reason to believe that

(RTTT's goal) isn’t to fire or admonish teachers; our goal is accountability.  It’s to provide teachers with the support they need to be as effective as they can be, and to create a better environment for teachers and students alike.

I once taught in a private school that was forced to shake things up. In its twenty-five year history, it had never sought accreditation. The headmaster decided to pursue WASC accreditation, but it was up to the teachers to do the boatload of extra work. They groused---loudly. It turned out I was the only one among them who had actually ever been through the WASC process, so I became the de facto leader. The very process of completing the self study forced the teachers to deeply examine themselves and their methods for the first time. Without spending an extra dime (although I think some overpay would have been in order), in less than one year, the teachers transformed the school from the lowest achieving school in the area to on par with the best schools.

Nothing Personal, Just Money and Politics

In an article headlined, A Popular Principal, Wounded by Government’s Good Intentions, the New York Times tells the appalling story of a highly effective principal dismissed from her position so that her school could qualify for millions of Federal dollars.

Ms. Irvine's job woes serve as a cautionary tale of the perils of top-down, one-size solutions in a country without a tradition of nationally centralized education oversight. By all accounts, Ms. Irvine is a great principal. Her accomplishments at the school are legion: she rolled out many enrichment programs, developed a new arts curriculum, created community partnerships, and reinvented the school as an arts magnet. None of it counts in the face of the school's low test scores. What is more, it is not like her raw material started out with advantages.

The New York Times used the wrong adjective in their headline. It should read, “A Highly Effective Principal, wounded by Government's Good Intentions.” That she is popular is beside the point.

At the heart of things is whether the testing system under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 can fairly assess schools full of middle-class children, as well as a school like Wheeler, with a 97 percent poverty rate and large numbers of refugees, many with little previous education.

...snip...

About half the 230 students are foreign-born, collectively speaking 30 languages. Many have been traumatized; a third see one of the school’s three caseworkers. During Ms. Irvine’s tenure, suspensions were reduced to 7 last year, from 100.

Japan's education system must surely be one of the most rigid of nationally centralized systems. The Ministry of Education has policies for everything. It has been said every student, no matter where in the country, is on the same page of the textbook on any particular school day. That assertion only slightly overstates the case. Every teacher in every school hews closely to the national curriculum using one of a handful of nationally approved textbooks. For example, only six textbooks are approved for use in middle school English classes. Nevertheless, Japanese administrators may make discretionary judgments on a “ke-subaike-su” (case-by-case) basis. How did the supposedly more creative and individualistic American officials respond?

Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for the United States Department of Education, noted that districts don’t have to apply for the grants, that the rules are clear and that federal officials do not remove principals.

A school with as many immigrants as Ms. Irvine's requires a customized assessment. By definition, a standardized test normed to an American population will be unable to capture the knowledge and experience of immigrants. I have a true story about an American boy born to middle-class parents living in Japan. He went to Japanese pre-school and kindergarten. His mother wanted to enroll him into first grade at an American school. The first grade teacher gave the boy a readiness “test” which consisted of asking him questions about an American fairy tale.

The boy “failed” because he did not know who Rumpelstiltskin was. Never mind that the teacher had never heard of Momotaro, a famous character from a Japanese fairy tale. Never mind the boy was reading and doing math at higher levels than his peers. Because the Japanese and American academic calendars are very different, there was only two months left to the American school year. She admitted the boy conditionally into the first grade with the caveat that he would probably be starting first grade over in September. Imagine her surprise when this same boy scored in the 99th percentile on every section of the first grade Stanford 9 test just a month later.

So often reading tests can become experience tests when given to students outside the intended population -- like immigrants.

Students take the reading test after one year in the country. Ms. Irvine tells a story about Mr. Mudasigana’s son Oscar and the fifth-grade test.
Oscar needed 20 minutes to read a passage on Neil Armstrong landing his Eagle spacecraft on the moon; it should have taken 5 minutes, she said, but Oscar was determined, reading out loud to himself.

The first question asked whether the passage was fact or fiction. “He said, ‘Oh, Mrs. Irvine, man don’t go on the moon, man don’t go on the back of eagles, this is not true,’ ” she recalled. “So he got the five follow-up questions wrong — penalized for a lack of experience.”

Meanwhile, the community is deeply impressed with the school, regardless of it test scores. Many middle class parents have enrolled their children, so many that half the children in the early grades will be middle class. Even if the school does nothing more, when these kids take the standardized test, the results will show dramatic improvement. Will Ms. Irvine get her job back then? Does she have a job now?

The district has replaced Ms. Irvine with an interim principal and will conduct a search for a replacement.

And Ms. Irvine, who hoped to finish her career on the front lines, working with children, will be Burlington’s new school improvement administrator.

On the other hand, if Ms. Irvine has successfully set her school on a sustainable growth path, perhaps she should go and work the same magic on other schools in dire need of her skills. Furthermore, she should spare not a moment's thought about the opinions of some segments of education society who seem bent on belittling achievement.

Storming Educational Barricades

On June 22, 2010, the well-respected educator and sought-out Washington DC dinner party guest, Diane Ravitch, wrote, "Even privately managed charter schools are affected negatively by high-stakes testing; to claim ever-rising test scores, they are prompted to avoid low-performing students, thus bypassing the very students that charters were originally intended to serve."

A comment to her blog asked, “Have you ever managed to come up with any evidence for this claim?”

The very next comment pounced, “You have the whole Internet at your disposal. Surely you know that DR doesn't have to provide footnotes on what is now common knowledge for most literate people?”

Is the notion that charter schools are avoiding low-performing students a common knowledge fact? A perusal of the “whole Internet” suggests that what is common knowledge is that charter schools have long been accused of creaming the crop and pushing out low achievers in order to artificially raise their academic achievement when compared to regular public schools. Whether the accusation has research merit is not so clear.

A Mathematica study commissioned by the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools examined twenty-two KIPP schools and found no basis for the accusation. I am well aware that the study's will be heralded by charter school supporters and dismissed by charter school detractors. The grounds for dismissal will be the perceived conflict of interest in KIPP commissioning a flattering study of itself. Charter school detractors would love it if the study were damning and would be quick to generalize the results to all charter schools. As it stands, charter school supporters will be happy to likewise generalize the study's conclusions.

Which brings me to my point. As long as those of us seeking education reform continue to cherish one position or another, we will fail to come to the consensus society so desperately needs before the forward trail can be blazed. Large swaths of American society either do not care about education or feel they have too little power or influence to make any difference. It is a true pity so many of those who feel “unempowered” are in fact, teachers and parents. Anthony Cody is one teacher who has been trying hard to be heard.

Among those who deeply care, many of the most vociferous can absolutely be classified along political lines: the right who love charter schools and the left who hate them. The constant bickering between them neutralizes any positive effects. The KIPP study is a case in point. Supporters of charters rush to embrace and extend its conclusions while opponents focus on finding flaws. I say, go ahead and enumerate flaws. But don't stop there. Let us have better designed studies that take previous flaws into account. And let us not be so foolish or short-sighted to think that if we and our friends believe we have debunked a study that we can ignore it because its merits are inconvenient to our politics.

I completely understand the conflict of interest question. Many years ago a marine biologist friend of mine was hired by Suntory Whiskey to conduct research on the environmental impact of their distilleries upon the ocean where they dump the waste. My friend wrote a most uncomplimentary report. She was fired and the report never saw the light of day. Would KIPP have suppressed the study if it did not like the conclusions? I do not know. I remember when early studies of charter schools consistently found that the academic achievement of charter school students surpassed that of public school students. The most recent studies show regression to the mean. In the early, heady days of charters, some people made it political and immediately erected defensive barricades. The favorite barricade has been the accusation that charters cream the crop.

In my work with both charter schools and regular public schools, I have observed that charter schools do not cream the crop or push out low achievers. In fact, parents of cream and parents of low achievers both flock to charter school. Parents of high achievers believe that charter schools are better than regular public schools and therefore their high achieving child will be challenged and rise to even greater heights. The parents of low achievers flock to charter schools because they often believe their child is a bored underachiever who needs the extra competence and challenge they expect their child will find in the charter school to turn from being a low achiever to a high achiever. For their part. Charter schools take students from both groups because, just like regular public schools, their state funding depends on enrollment numbers. Besides, self-study is not inherently bad. The school accreditation process depends on schools studying themselves and writing up what they find.

I am aware that both sides collect anecdotes as if the matter will be decided by a sort of vote, that is, the side with more anecdotes wins. Reasonable people would reject such a method of decision making as ridiculous, but in reality we act like tallying up anecdotes is exactly the way to make big decisions. The health care debate was replete with anecdotes. It did not work. The pro health care reform camp and the anti heath care reform camp simply ignored each others anecdotes.

Data supporting the so-called common knowledge that charters cream the crop is inconclusive. More importantly, we should be looking for data to inform our opinions, not to confirm ourselves in our prejudgments. We need to detach ourselves from partisan political positions on education and study the issue, if not dispassionately, at least with a conscious effort to identify our own cherished opinions and set them aside for the time being.

How Narratives Impede Education Reform

Patrick McGuinn is right. There are two narratives, and that is part of the problem. It sets up yet another dangerous either-or dichotomy where every fact and opinion must be squeezed through one sieve or another.

Meanwhile, all over the country, in individual local schools, education reform takes place apart from public awareness. Typically, the reformers are responding to the internal culture and politics of their school, making scalability a challenge.

Perhaps it is time to put aside partisan politics and narratives, and think hard about what we as a society want for the future of American education, because, as Deborah Meier points out, we are deciding on our shared future. The key word is “shared.” As it stands, we are divided, playing an evenly matched tug-of-war. No wonder nothing moves. Many education stakeholders are ambivalent about involvement. They want to be deeply involved, but distrust the process because important stakeholders, like teachers and parents, are shut out. Stakeholders do not esteem and trust each other.

So while stakeholders say they want to be empowered, normally the empowerment is worthless, consisting of false choices, like whether to have chocolate or vanilla ice cream. Early charter schools showed us what empowerment could look like. Early studies of charter schools found many local instances of excellence. These days there are too many operators with, shall we say, impure motives. The charter school movement has experienced serious regression toward the mean. Trust has been lost.

In-the-trenches educators have a lot to offer, but policy makers do not listen. We need to avoid over-simplified narratives that can be summed up in a couple a phrases, and begin to wrestle with the complexity of the issue. We got where we are today through a series of smaller actions taken beyond their usefulness. For example, I remember when education defined as the ability to locate information took hold. At the time, I was all for it. No body can know everything, but knowing how to find what you do not know is essential. It was not long though before I started getting students in my classes who did not have enough basic memorized knowledge to use as a foundation for an information search.

We do this all the time---create dichotomies and then swing from one to the other. Education decisions have been made locally for a very long time. I believe education reform must start with local initiative and relational trust. Supposedly, the purpose of the Race to the Top was to give local schools the ability to design their own reform and win funding to implement it. I was part of a local successful reform that did not have a technology piece, a merit pay piece or a community buy-in piece. We teachers just did it. I think the dynamic of how our efforts succeeded in the absence of left-right divisiveness is worth considering and perhaps applying to other local, yet different circumstances.

Mathematica Study Undermines Teacher Merit Pay

So often when I read what passes for news in education, I find myself thinking, “No surprise there.” I am thinking of starting a No Surprise There watch. A case in point is the latest news out of Chicago.

According to the study from Mathmatica:

Preliminary results from a Chicago program containing performance-based compensation for teachers show no evidence that it has boosted student achievement on math and reading tests, compared with a group of similar, nonparticipating schools, an analysis released today concludes.

The program also failed to improve teacher retention rates. Over the two years of the study, achievement gains from the first year evaporated in the second year. Researchers and commentators speculate at least three factors account for the disappointing outcomes:

1. Reform takes time. It is unreasonable to expect stable achievement gains after only two years.
2. Schools did not adhere to a standardized implementation of the plan. Since not everybody did it the same way, the averages may be washing out positive effects in some schools.
3. The basic design of the plan needs tweaking. Perhaps higher or “more meaningfully differentiated” payouts.

It is impossible to generalize from the mere handful of studies on the efficacy of merit-based or performance-based incentives. However, many researchers have studied extrinsic versus intrinsic rewards.* The meta-conclusion is that extrinsic rewards actually undermine achievement. What works is intrinsic, not extrinsic rewards.

You don't hear hardly anyone but teachers mention what may be the most salient factor. Merit pay did not lead to achievement gains as measured by higher test scores because teachers simply do not have control over the myriad of variables that affect student achievement.

*Results of Google search on “research extrinsic rewards”

College the New High School?

Long ago, American society decided that high school graduation represented the minimum amount of education to get a decent job. It used to be a person could graduate from high school and make a living. My childhood milkman (anyone remember those) graduated from high school and got a job with Foremost where he worked until he retired. He lived comfortably, bought (and paid off) a house two blocks from the nicest neighborhood in town, and saved enough to create a trust fund for his disabled daughter. He successfully kept his family smack dab within the middle class, all on “just” a milkman's salary, with just a high school education. His wife never worked outside the home.

Today, statistics show that a student with just a high school education has a slim chance of being able to support a family within the middle class. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) recently released a report which says, among other things, that California needs educated workers and the high schools are not producing them. PPIC is calling for updates to California's Master Plan for Higher Education.

Currently the master plan establishes the top 12.5 percent of the state's high school graduates as eligible to attend the 10-campus University of California system, and the top 33 percent as eligible for the 23-campus California State University system. The PPIC projects a shortage of educated workers by 2025. High schools are not keeping up, but we have known that for a long time. Parents, teachers and guidance counselors have been advising students forever that if they want a decent job, one that will accomplish for their lives what my milkman's job accomplished for his, they had better graduate from college. High school has been insufficient for a long time.

So the PPIC proposes changing the Master Plan.

Eligibility goals for the CSU and UC systems should be gradually increased to new levels by
2025. The share of the state’s high school graduates eligible for UC should grow from the
top 12.5 percent to the top 15 percent of high school graduates. The share eligible for CSU
should grow from the top 33.3 percent to the top 40 percent.

Of course, California should expand college eligibility. In fact, PPIC”s recommendations may not go far enough. What with college being the new high school, everyone needs to go to college. If only it were so simple. Keeping students in school another four years effectively postpones childhood, an untenable position. Even now, since the age of majority was reduced to 18 mostly to classify soldiers in the Vietnam war as adults, college from age 18 to 23 is a strange limbo where children may be called adults while unready for adult responsibilities.

Because any decent job requires college graduation just as decent jobs used to require high school education, college must be part of public education. We, as a society, have been down this road before. There was a time when an eighth grade education was sufficient, but when the necessity for high school was recognized, high school became publicly funded. College occupies the same place now.

What happens when college graduation cannot get you a decent job, say around the year 2075? Perhaps we need to get serious about upgrading high school---and junior high---and elementary school. We need to stop doing it wrong: adopting faddish bandaid reforms, testing to the moon, or shoving curriculum down the grades.

We need to begin with recognizing that crucial academic foundations are laid in the early grades in an atmosphere of relational trust.

Meanwhile, far from increasing enrollment, UC and CSU have cut courses, laid off faculty, and raised fees. The once nearly free public universities today charge upwards of $5000/term in “fees” because they do not charge “tuition,” doncha know.

Stand and Deliver? No, Sit Down and Shut Up

The movie, Stand and Deliver, told the inspirational story of one teacher's success in using Advanced Placement (AP) calculus with his demoralized students. The students complained, worked hard, fought back, bought in, and eventually passed the AP calculus test. Test administrators thought the students had cheated and canceled their scores. The students retook—and passed---the test. Garfield High in Los Angeles would never be the same. Or would it?

Texas hopes to replicate Jaime Escalante's resounding success. More and more schools are offering more and more AP courses to more and more students. But Texas school officials do not like the results. At least they do not like the statistics. More and more students are failing.

But the latest data show Texas high school students fail more than half of the college-level exams, and their performance trails national averages.

School officials wring their hands and wonder what could be going wrong. Not only the students who are expected to fail are failing. Surprise, students from elite schools, the top tier, are failing in increasing numbers, too.

But high failure rates from some of the Dallas area's elite campuses raise questions about whether our most advantaged high school students are prepared for college work.

What's the problem?

For one, you can't just “helicopter-drop” AP courses into a school and expect instant education reform.

Because, two, the teachers may not be qualified to teach AP courses.

So, three, the teachers tend to fail to cover the material and properly prepare the students.

Besides, four, too many students enroll without adequate academic foundation for the courses.

The problem with looking to a movie for direction in education reform is that Garfield High's AP calculus program was just a bit little different than the movie version. Mr. Escalante spent years preparing the students, requiring them to take summer courses and come to school from 7:00 am- noon on Saturdays.

Even Garfield High did not sustain their own success. Please read that link. I may spend several posts discussing how very emblematic Mr. Escalante's experience is in terms of reform obstructionism, professional jealousy, and society's lack of respect for teachers.