Support Your Local Teacher!

Here is my Letter to the Editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press in response to their lukewarm editorial on the recent teacher issues here and elsewhere:
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"Teachers could use more help, and fewer critics"
By Tom King
Updated: 03/26/2011 04:04:31 PM CDT

Count me among your readers who value measured opinions, such as yours in "Evaluating teachers: a moderate proposal" (March 20). But, as Paul Harvey might have said, here's "the rest of the story."

I, like you, "cherish" our teachers (having been one and worked with hundreds in my career). "Cherish" is not an emotion widely tied to teachers these days. More and more, it's become like the zany sports world where coaches are blamed, fired and changed at whim if the players don't perform. If students aren't doing well, just fire the teacher.

Teachers are broadly blamed for the ills in K-12 education, guilty or not. The inherently faulted "No Child Left Behind" legislation has gotten so twisted that districts are now using their students' standardized test scores to measure teacher performance, somewhat akin to evaluating the physician with patient blood-sugar tests. Changing the acronym for NCLB to something different, as the current administration recently proposed, won't change the faulted nonsense of standardized testing, for either students or teachers.

Even if there were high, positive correlations between student tests and teacher performance (there aren't) in today's classroom it rarely applies. Consider that, in many of our inner-city schools, in the classrooms of greatest concern, students enrolled with a teacher and tested in the fall are not the same students who are tested in the spring. The kids have moved on ... somewhere else. No teacher effect.

It doesn't make sense to measure a student who hasn't been with that teacher over time. Nor does it address the issue of students enrolled but rarely present. Or those enrolled who can't speak or understand English. Or those with special needs. The classroom is a volatile environment for a controlled study. The variables keep changing.

Sensible proposals to evaluate teachers can be a good and needed tool for improving teacher performance. We all need to get better at what we do in life. So, it makes sense to call teaching a practice, just as we do for doctors and lawyers. But with continued declining budgets, fewer school district dollars have gone into professional development, continuing education and programs to improve teacher performance. Fewer teachers are seeking advanced degrees in their fields, one measure of advancing teacher competence.

Teacher seniority is not a good answer for evaluation, or making changes. But it's no worse than picking just another number just because it's easily measured, like a standardized test score. In both instances, neither measure correlates highly with teacher performance.

The best way to improve teacher performance is for skilled teachers and trained administrators to more frequently observe teachers, followed by helpful discussion and an improvement plan. Simply videotaping teachers can be a big help, too, enabling teachers to help themselves improve.

Teachers could use a lot more help in the classrooms helping students, and fewer critics. Volunteer to help your teachers by spending some time working with kids who need help. Mentors make a big difference. So do involved parents. We don't need a controlled study or more standardized tests to know that more helpers make the bigger difference to improve students' learning and teachers' performance.
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Tom King of West St. Paul is a retired teacher and administrator from the St. Paul Public Schools. He founded the reform-based Saturn School of Tomorrow in 1987. He has taught grad-ed courses at the University of St. Thomas, since 1974.

Sherpas and the Race to the Top of the Peak

In the words of Jerry Springer (remember him from the early days of TV mayhem?) "What is going on here?"

We've got the President and Ed Sec Duncan trying to get all the schools racing to the head of pinnacle. Never mind that you can fit many more angels on the head of a pin that you can schools. Anyone with commonsense knows there isn't room there for 16,000 school districts, 100,000 schools, let alone 50+ million students. Commonsense is very uncommon in DC these days.

Even if we could get all of K-12 education moving that upward direction, whatever that means, there's not enough sustaining funds to pay all the Sherpas of the world to get us or keep us there. And, if you look at the research, any school that makes it to, or even near, the top doesn't stay there very long.

The sherpas, in this analogy, are the 3 million teachers who labor incessantly to help learners learn and scale against all odds. Lately, the critics have taken to lambasting these helpers for laziness, incompetence and being overpaid.

Instead of worrying about the many children being left behind, our government and business leaders worry instead about schools being left behind, or teachers falling behind, or standardized test scores on nonstandard kids falling behind the standards, whatever they are. We all need a reminder to remember our kids aren't standardized?

One might like to blame some of this lofty, pinnacle thinking on a political party or some errant billionaires, but few seem to really understand the nonsense of their proposed remedies.

Standardized tests are called summative evaluations and are designed to produce a normal curve, a distribution where half are above the middle score and half below. It's impossible to have everyone above the median middle, unless of course, you live in Lake Woebegone and you have Garrison Keillor to extol your virtues.

These tests are made up of questions which only "sample" what learners know. They are far, far from testing the extent of basic knowledge and understanding we'd like all kids to know, to say nothing of the higher levels of learning, like analysis or synthesis or evaluative thinking. Those latter skills are what help us contend with good jobs and life, in general.

Doesn't it make much more sense to focus on helping more learners learning more? How about finding a way to bring more parents into the act? More importantly, let's let students and parents have greater responsibility for a Personal Learning Plan for their child. One that gives far more control and input into what each student needs to become a better learner. Who knows better than the student what they know and what they don't know. Often, they even know better what kind of help they need to be successful. Let each of them plan their work and work their plan, as that old IBM motto put it.

We don't want schools on the top. We want the kids on the top. Each one residing on their own personal peak of proficiency and performance. So, let's all put our efforts and energy into helping more learners learn more!

We teachers and parents are each the Sherpas. Let's help our kids reach the top.

An Ode to the Leaders of Learning

Hey, you, Socrates, take one step forward......everyone else, take one step backward. This is a battlefield promotion. You're the Leader! It's not the Superintendent. It's not even the Principal. It's you!

Like Socrates, you, teacher, are your own leader. You are the one and true leader of the learners entrusted to you. You lead your learners. And more:

• you respect them all,
• you take them as they are,
• you encourage them endlessly,
• you never give up on them,
• you affirm them with praise and encouragement,
• you send them back to their task when the product of their work is lacking,
• you elicit from them the answers to questions they never thought they knew,
• you expect their best from them, always,
• you model learning for them by remaining yourself a learner,
• you tell them failures are just another step to knowledge,
• you truly care for them, each and every one.

And at last, when they leave your classroom, you send them on their way with their own fishing poles and toolkits for learning how to learn.

YOU are the leader! A fellow teacher may encourage you. A principal who truly cares about you may have your back.

But no Superintendent has ever led you into your daily battle against ignorance. No superintendent is in your classroom to help those kids who need help right now. No superintendent gives you kudos when it's due or help when you need it most. No Superintendent passes on the culture and the breadth and depth of what we need to know.

Superintendents may be required by law. A teacher is required by students. A teacher is the real and true leader.

Inspirational Quotes on Teaching and Learning

These powerful quotes gathered by Mr. Vincent are worth sharing:

Education & Technology Quotes

View more presentations from Tony Vincent.

The Saturn School Story and Educational Reform

Thanks to Shelly Terrell who interviewed me recently on the Saturn School of Tomorrow and School Reform.

Here's the video:

Animated Version of "To Grade Or Not To Grade"

TO GRADE OR NOT TO GRADE, THAT IS THE QUESTION...SO, WHAT'S THE ANSWER?

How did you feel the first time you had a grade attached to you? You know...a letter C, maybe with a + or a -. Or maybe a number, like 82 or 69?

Suppose you had a good grade way back when; did you deserve it? Or, how about a bad grade in 3rd grade? Was your performance really that bad? Well, the teacher must have thought so. How did it affect your view of yourself? Were you the better or the worse because of it?

No Child Left Behind, that wonderful mantra, is still leaving far too many behind...attaching their accumulated standardized test scores to their teachers and their schools, assigning extra homework to the errant teachers and closing those bad, bad schools. But how do these test scores help the individual student from being left behind? They advance or retreat one child at a time.

So, what's really wrong with a grade or a standardized test score? The pundits and experts call them objective scores, as they are thought to be free from subjectivity and less prone to error. OK. So someone who really believes this, please tell me what a D- is, or what's a 72? Is there a teacher or an objective test out there with the wisdom of Solomon who can defend the complete objectivity of the grade or the test score? Anyone? Anyone? I thought not.

So, how do we assure that students possess the needed skills and competencies to succeed? How do we know if they can do quality work? How about we look at their work? Why not put each student, with help from their teachers, parents and mentors, in charge of designing, creating and collecting their best, summative projects, papers, videos, presentations, collaborations, apprenticeships (maybe), designs, solutions, poems, pictures, dreams, improved work,....well you get it: a Personal Portfolio of the Emerging Learner. Authentic assessment, if you will.

Why, with help, most students could create an assessment rubric too, so they can learn to judge the quality of their own work. Of course, they want reviews and input and suggestions from their teachers, fellow students, parents, mentors, Skype-buddies...you name it. In time they may need less help and have far more confidence in their skills.

Wouldn't that be far more meaningful than a number or a grade? Sure, students and teachers could keep a checklist of skills possessed, works in progress or improvements still needed. But, most of us in this profession can look at a student's chosen, best work and immediately tell what they know and what they don't know. Even better, with a little help, so can they.

Think of the time and energy saved from all the irrelevant, meaningless measuring we now do. And no one really, truly knows what it means for each learner. Or, finding something effective to remediate it.

It's time to make some fundamental changes in our educational system. How about replacing grading and testing with Personal Portfolios of Excellence and Progress? When they leave their classes next spring, they can only take their fond memories of their good teachers along with them. How about giving them the gift that keeps on giving: Learning how to learn.

Take a look at the changes we tried at our Saturn School of Tomorrow some years ago. We need more ideas like this one. Real reform. Not a race to the top of something that won't be there next year.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS ISSUE? POST YOUR COMMENTS BELOW.....THANKS!