L.A. Administrators Challenge Deasy and School Board on A-G

Last year, the Los Angeles School Board mandated that all students pass several A-G courses with a C or better. A-G courses are those that are accepted by the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems as prerequisites for their courses and are seen by many reformers as the minimum we should be expecting from our students under the misguided expectation that all students can and should go to college. In support of the mandate, Superintendent Deasy argued that A-G was a glowing success in other districts (e.g., San Jose).

Indeed, many districts, including my own, have also mandated that all students take A-G courses, but they do not all require a C or better for graduation. In many districts, students who fail an A-G course can pass an alternate course to meet graduation requirements. This makes sense considering there are not enough university slots for each of California’s high school graduates and many cannot afford college or prefer to go directly into the workforce. Furthermore, many students simply are not academically ready for these courses (e.g., those reading below grade level or lacking in the prerequisite skills).

Consequently, large numbers of students who take A-G courses are unable to pass them with a C or better. Indeed, Deasy’s claim that A-G was a glowing success in San Jose was based on inaccurate data. Initially, San Jose claimed that two-thirds of their students were passing their A-G courses with a C or better (hardly a glowing success). Yet after reexamining the data, San Jose is now saying their pass rate is only 36%.

The Association of Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA) is now calling for an end to the mandate, according to the 4LAKids Blog. AALA has pointed to Deasy’s politicizing of the issue and the faulty data used to support his case. However, back when the school board was still investigating the merits of the A-G requirement, AALA argued that several reforms and student supports would be necessary for the policy to succeed: more support for English Learners and students with disabilities; additional summer support programs; interdisciplinary professional development; better articulation with community colleges and vocational training for students who choose not to go to college; recruiting of more math and science teachers; increased science and technology classrooms; and better outreach to parents. To date, AALA says that none of its proposals have been implemented.

It is nice to hear about school administrators taking collective action to fight for sound educational policy, particularly in light of the near universal acceptance of (or lack of resistance to) No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and Common Core Standards). However, AALA does not go nearly far enough. It is clearly idiotic to require a C or better in in A-G classes in order to graduate, but even the less extreme (but more common) mandate that all students be required to take these classes is wrongheaded. San Jose’s 36% rate of C or better should make it obvious that large numbers of students simply are not academically ready for these classes. Forcing them to take the classes anyway is only setting them up for failure. This contributes to low self-efficacy and alienation from school and learning, which in turn can lead them to give up entirely on school and drop out.

Even for resilient students who are able to shrug off the failure and move on with their lives, they still find themselves in the position of having to make up the course (or an alternative) in order to have sufficient credits to graduate. This places an unnecessary burden on them to double up classes during the next school year, take community college or continuation school classes after school and repeat classes during the summer. This can prevent them from taking electives, or participating in athletics and extracurricular activities. Many of these students come from low income families and have to work after school and on weekends to help support their families, which may be why they failed an A-G class in the first place. Having to repeat classes only exacerbates this challenge.

Mandatory A-G for all students is also bad for those students who are academically ready for these classes. Forcing large numbers of students into classes for which they are inadequately prepared creates management problems for teachers. When some students are reading below grade level, repeatedly absent, failing to complete assignments, coming to class unprepared, and neglecting to follow instructions, it not only takes teacher attention away from helping other students, but it sometimes prevents them from covering all the required content or having the time to indulge in “teachable moments” and enrichment activities.

Perhaps most problematic with the A-G requirement is its delusional premise that all children can and should go on to college, despite the fact that there aren’t enough spaces in the UC or CSU systems for every high school senior, nor the scholarships and grants to make it affordable. Yet, even if college was free and there were enough classrooms and professors for every 18-year old in the state, students will continue to drop out or lack the prerequisites for college as long as we continue to ignore the underlying socioeconomic problems that cause the achievement gap and prevent students from being successful in A-G courses. The pipeline to college does not start at high school or with college preparatory coursework. Rather, it starts before children are born, with the health and material wellbeing of their families and children’s subsequent abilities to compete with their peers.

Over 60% of LAUSD 6th-Graders Exposed to Trauma

A study completed last year that found that over 60% of Los Angeles-area 6^th-graders had witnessed or experienced more than one event that could be considered traumatic, according to the 4LAKids Blog. The study ruled out vicarious acts of violence, such as television, focusing on questions like “How often has someone said they were going to hurt you?” or “how many time over the past year have you been punched or hit by someone?”

While some of the affirmative answers, no doubt, referred to fights with friends or siblings, the data should not be taken lightly, nor should this been seen as a problem unique to Los Angeles. Traumatic experiences can significantly affect a child’s ability to focus, concentrate and participate in school activities, and can lead to chronic depression, PTST and even suicide. Many of these children are experiencing ongoing traumas that are harming their mental health, as well as their academic success.

There have numerous times in my own teaching career when I have referred students for outside services because the effects of their trauma were so obvious. At my first school in a low income San Francisco neighborhood, I had at least one student per month who sat in the back of class with her head down crying. I have had several students who were jumped outside of school. I had one student who witnessed his father murder his mother and another who witnessed a stranger murder his father. I had a student who had seizures whenever her mother was binging on crack. I had dozens of students affected by the San Bruno PG&E explosion, many who were made homeless and one who died. Rape, molestation and abuse at home or in their communities are not uncommon.

The good news is that The Los Angeles Unified School District’s mental health department, along with several partners (UCLA, USC, Rand Corp., and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network), recently received a $2.4-million grant to help students exposed to traumatic events. The money is a drop in the bucket, but could provide the seed for better monitoring and intervention in the future.

Teaching Kids to Persevere

Hands of Struggle (image from Flickr, by mopics80)

One of the most frustrating aspects of teaching is when students give up or won’t try when the lessons get difficult. Unwillingness to take risks, try different approaches, or simply persevere with a tough problem may stem from fear, low self-efficacy or self-confidence, or misperceptions about intelligence.

A new study, however, suggests that perseverance can be cultivated in students without making any significant changes to the curriculum. The trick is to change students’ perceptions about intelligence by teaching them that it is malleable and not predetermined by genetics. This can be done by emphasizing the struggles of the historical figures they are studying. In science, for example, Newton, Einstein, Darwin, Curie were not simply raw geniuses who made their discoveries effortlessly. They each had to work hard to develop their theories and understand the phenomena they studied. They also made mistakes, struggled and had to overcome adversities.

In the study, 271 high school students were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 similar lessons. In the first group (n = 90), students were presented with stories about 3 physicists and their struggles to develop their theories. In the second group (n = 88), students simply learned about these 3 scientists’ accomplishments. The third group (n = 93) was the control group in which students just learned the physics content.

The researchers assessed students’ perceptions of scientists, interest in the physics lessons, recall of science concepts, and their ability to solve physics problems. They found that students exposed to the struggle-oriented background information had an elevated interest in science, increased recall of the key concepts and increased ability to solve complex physics problems compared with the control group and the students who only learned about the scientists’ accomplishments.

New York Teacher “Victory” on Evaluations

This week, State Supreme Court Justice Michael C. Lynch ruled that the New York State Board of Regents incorrectly interpreted a new law on teacher evaluations, the New York Times reported today. The ruling invalidates parts of the Regents’ vote on evaluations and will delay the introduction of the law.

The teachers union had sued the Board of Regents in June, arguing that the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers went beyond what the law permitted. The judge ruled that the Regents failed to consider the law’s collective bargaining requirements or the law’s requirement that test scores alone cannot determine a teacher’s performance review.

The ruling is a hollow victory for teachers, as they may still be evaluated based on student test scores. The law says that 20% of their evaluation must be based on state tests, while an additional 20% may be based on locally-derived tests. 60% must be based on subjective measures, like observations by administrators. The state attempted to circumvent the law by basing 40% of their evaluations on state standardized exams, rather than the 20% allowed. In fact, they could have even gone up to 40% total, so long as half was based on local tests.

Because student test scores measure student ability, they can only tell us how well students perform on standardized tests. They cannot tell us why. For example, students with test anxieties tend to perform poorly on high stakes exams, even when they know the material. This has no connection to the quality of their teachers. Likewise, numerous studies indicate that students’ socioeconomic backgrounds correlate much more strongly with their test scores than do their teachers’ quality.

While it might seem counterintuitive, teacher quality has very little to do with student test scores or even their ability to improve on tests. Good teachers may be able to help some low performing students improve, but they cannot reverse the effects of a lifetime of poverty, malnutrition, lead poisoning, low birth weights, absenteeism, lack of access to reading during the pre-K and toddler years, or lack of access to enriching extracurricular activities. A super teacher in a low income school will still see lower overall test scores and weaker improvements than a mediocre teacher in an affluent school. Therefore, student test scores should not be used at all to assess teachers.

Unfortunately, there is no reliable or fair method to quantitatively evaluate teachers. We could regularly test the teachers, rather than their students, but this would only tell us what they know about their content, for example, and nothing about how they actually deliver it in the classroom. Because teaching is a social endeavor, teacher evaluations must be based substantially on observations of their interactions with students. Are they communicating grades and performance well with students and parents? Are they setting fair and reasonable expectations and classroom norms? Are they designing curriculum and lessons that not only cover the content standards, but that incorporates students’ interests and questions?

Good teachers do these things regardless of the skill and successfulness of their students. Some students benefit from it and some do not. A student who is reading at the 4^th grade level is unlikely to do well on an 11^th grade state English exam, though a good teacher might help them significantly improve their reading comprehension over the course of the year. However, a student who is suffering financial insecurity at home, violence, chronic illness or depression will be much less likely to benefit from good teaching.

It is as much of a fantasy to think that good teachers can make all children succeed in school as it is to believe that welfare reform or slashing unemployment benefits will force people to get jobs.

Why I Oppose Education Reform

Education reform, almost without exception, means teachers, schools or districts doing things differently to help improve education outcomes for students. Most of the “reforms” making the news lately have been initiated or promoted by corporate and philanthropic interests seeking to increase entrepreneurial opportunities in public education. However, no reform, not even teacher-initiated ones, can help all students meet educational expectations. No reform can get all students to graduate on time or meet testing goals because the primary cause of low academic achievement is poverty, not schools, curriculum or teachers. Without ending poverty and closing the wealth gap, even the best reforms will only help some students do better.

Many make the point that even if we cannot help all students succeed academically, we should still pursue reforms because they can help some students do better. Certainly, as professionals, we should always examine our methods and consider which are most effective. However, as professionals, we must also do a careful cost-benefit analysis. If a reform is unlikely to have much benefit, but will be stressful to students or time-consuming or expensive for schools and teachers, then it should not be done. Even if a reform seems likely to be beneficial to students, if teachers must put in a lot of unpaid extra hours to make it happen, the reform should be opposed. One reason is that “seeming likely to be beneficial” is a far cry from actually being beneficial, while the time and resources devoted to the reform may supplant curricula and pedagogy with a proven track record. Furthermore, even when a reform has the backing of academic studies, one should be skeptical. Reforms tend to be pushed well before there has been enough time for reproducible results and educational studies are notoriously biased and full of uncontrolled variables.

Because most reforms require considerable extra work by teachers, usually without compensation, they are the educational version of the “factory speed-up.” People forget (or perhaps never appreciated) that even without reforms, teachers have far more work to do than can be accomplished during their contractual hours. Consider a high school teacher, who is contractually obligated to work from 7:45 until 3:15. The teacher is legally responsible for the safety and education of 150-180 students for 5-6 of those hours, leaving 30 minutes for a “duty-free” lunch, plus 15 minutes each before and after school and 50-60 minutes for a prep period to grade papers, write lesson plans, set up or break down labs or other activities, contact parents, meet with other teachers or administrators, and use the rest room. For many teachers, the “duty-free” lunch is spent sponsoring clubs, meeting with students, tutoring and collaborating with peers. Few teachers actually work the minimum contractual hours because it is impossible to accomplish all these things in that amount of time. Many come in as early as 6:00 am, while others stay as late as 6:00 or 7:00 pm. Some do both. Reforms cut into these responsibilities, forcing teachers to come in earlier still, stay later, and/or work weekends to complete their work, usually without any extra compensation.

Education reform also lets society, especially the wealthy, off the hook. If the biggest cause of low academic achievement is poverty, then the only truly effective way to improve academic achievement is to increase the wealth and material security of the lower income members of society. Continually asking teachers to do more to improve student achievement distracts attention from the growing wealth gap and the enormous impact this has on student achievement, gives a false sense that the problem is being addressed and allows everyone else to smugly do nothing.

Destroying Education Teacher By Teacher (With Help from Bill Gates)

Yesterday John Fensterwald published his take on the Gates-funded proposal for improving LAUSD. However, he called it a United Way study (which it was), but didn’t bother to mention Gate’s funding until the very end. Nevertheless, United Way is nothing more than a moralizing poverty pimp mill, so we should be suspicious of their proposals, too.

I will list some of Fensterwald’s summaries below in italics, with my takes in bold.

Teacher Placement:

Sacramento: Allow performance to be used as a factor in determining which teachers will be laid off. California is one of only a dozen states mandating layoffs by seniority.

There is no accurate and unbiased way to measure “performance,” and virtually all evaluation systems are subject to manipulation by administrators. Thus, administrators will be able to (and will) find ways to get rid of higher salaried veteran teachers, as well as union activists and anyone who is critical of their policies. This might be different if well-trained nonpartisan evaluators were hired and evaluated teachers “blindly,” something that will never happen, especially with education budgets being slashed (or held at anemic levels).

Ultimate Consequence: Districts will lose many high quality veteran teachers AND have trouble maintaining sufficient staffing because novice teachers have such high attrition.

Sacramento: Permit districts to dismiss displaced teachers who are unable to secure a new assignment after one year (they’d be on the district payroll for that year, however. Under the current financial crisis, districts are likely discouraging paying any teachers to sit out).

If a teacher is displaced because of bad evaluations (i.e., dismissed) they are not eligible for the “Must Hire” list. However, if a teacher is displaced because of downsizing, charter conversion or returning from an illness or family leave, they have every right to be rehired by the district AND have priority over candidates seeking employment by the district for the first time. In fact, the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires an employer to give them a job back if they were out for child rearing or caring for a sick family member. Yet even these other reasons for displacement are insufficient to justify nixing a teacher who has received good reviews. If a district cannot afford or does not have the positions available to rehire the person immediately, they should still retain priority over new hires if positions open in following years.

Ultimate Consequences: There will be federal lawsuits for violation of FMLA and a bunch of really paranoid teachers who continue to work while caring for sick relatives or who ignore their newborn babies. Districts will also be able permanently ban any teachers they do not like for political (or other reasons) and cull their workforce of veteran teachers at the top of the pay scale, thus denying students the experience of many excellent and experienced teachers.

Contract: Eliminate the priority placement list based on seniority that forces principals to accept teachers who aren’t a good fit for their schools.

What does “good fit” mean? This sounds like another way to get rid of teachers who are critical, political and otherwise a thorn in the side of administrators. Any good teacher can teach in any school. That’s what we are trained to do. “Bad fit” implies they don’t want any more black teachers or Jewish teachers or union activists or critics of privatization.

On its own: Move up the June 30 deadline when teachers must notify principals if they are returning. That would give the district a head start on hiring for the fall. As it is now, LAUSD loses good candidates to charter schools and other districts and ends up hiring most new teachers in July and August. Deasy says the district has made progress during the past year, although the report notes that the hiring problem is particularly acute in poor schools.

Moving this deadline up doesn’t seem like a terrible idea. However, if LAUSD doesn’t want to lose teachers to charter schools they need to stop supporting, promoting and certifying them.

On its own: Educate principals in low-performing schools that they have some flexibility in rejecting priority-list teachers who won’t be a good match.

Low-performing schools are low performing primarily because of high rates of poverty. If we really want to fix this problem, then we must improve familial wealth.

On its own: Require prospective teachers to present lesson plans (hard to believe, the district doesn’t).

This is just a silly micromanaging waste of time. Administrators do not have the time to scrutinize the lesson plans. Therefore, this just ends up being more paperwork (or digital work, for those eco-friendly schools) designed to control and manipulate teachers. Don’t get me wrong. I think lesson plans are important and I would have drowned had I not written daily lesson plans my first few years. I also had a superb instructor and mentor in Curriculum and Instruction. A much better solution would be to provide paid collaboration time for novice teachers and paid, well-trained mentors to help them develop curriculum. Most veterans do not need written daily lessons plans (except perhaps when teaching in a new subject). They have the skill and experience to deliver good lessons without them.

Ultimate Consequences: A lot of time will be wasted doing useless paperwork, particularly by veteran teachers and other much more important things will get ignored (e.g., grading papers or taking the time to write meaningful comments; communicating parents; sleeping).

Compensation

Contract: End salary differentials for earning course credit for new teachers and use the savings to award teachers bonuses for effectiveness.

Getting raises for classes unrelated to teaching does seem stupid. However, not offering any incentives for developing professionally by taking courses relevant to one’s job seems even more stupid.

Ultimate Consequence: Teachers won’t waste their time and money with continuing education.

Another problem with this proposal is that until there is an accurate and unbiased way to measure effectiveness (and a scale), this runs the risk of being nothing more than a punishment and reward system for toeing the line, keeping your mouth shut and accepting abusive or destructive administrative policies.

Ultimate Consequence: Teachers who want raises will be reduced to groveling and ass-kissing, and working even longer hours, even at the risk of harming their students in the process. If effectiveness is measured by improving test scores, for example, teachers will be encouraged to give up their lunches and stay late to offer extra tutoring (or to ignore content standards to provide more class time for test prep). This is patently unfair to students and teachers.

Contract: Offer higher salaries to top teachers who consistently produce the greatest learning gains.

Again, there is no way accurate, unbiased way to measure this. The Value-Added method that is so trendy right now, still as a wealth-based bias. Higher income students not only have higher test scores, but they come to school with advantages in health, diet, familial support, enriching extracurricular activities, academic maturity and preparedness, that increase the chances that they will benefit from good teaching. While many low income students can improve their test scores, teachers at low income schools must also grapple with higher rates of absenteeism, disciplinary disruptions, lack of follow through on homework, and numerous other factors that can limit the effectiveness of their teaching, regardless of its quality.

Ultimate Consequences: This will lead to an exodus of veteran quality teachers from the lower performing and lower incomes schools, precisely where they are most needed.

Tenure

Sacramento: Extend probation to four years or, failing that, the right to extend probation beyond two years as an option.

The problem is not that tenure is given too quickly. The problem is that teachers are not evaluated very often or very well and by people who are biased and subjective. If we want to improve the evaluation process, a two-year probationary period is sufficient, but we need to hire objective, well-trained outside evaluators who assess teachers “blindly,” with concrete, easy to measure benchmarks.

Ultimate Consequence: If the probationary period is extended to four years, teachers will be forced to be meek and servile longer or face dismissal. A lot of people won’t bother going into the profession at all. Teachers need to feel safe speaking candidly, not just about workplace politics, but about their students’ safety and wellbeing. If a teacher is scared about possibly losing their job, they will be less likely to speak up. Consider my first workplace, where two students accused a teacher of sexually harassing them. This teacher was good friends with the principal. I knew I had to speak up, but as a probationary teacher I was terrified I might get into trouble. As it turns out, I did get in trouble, but luckily I did not get fired over it. Others might not be so lucky (or so brave).

On its own: Only 2.5 percent of probationary teachers receive a bad review, the same as tenured teachers. Therefore, hold a formal review in which principals and teachers present evidence of performance.

In many districts this is already the policy. However, it doesn’t solve the problem. Administrators are still subjective and can manipulate the data to make a teacher look bad and they seldom have the time to adequately assess the evidence and make classroom observations. Furthermore, why is 2.5% considered a problem? Maybe this means we have a lot of good teachers. Or maybe it means we have a lot of lousy administrators who aren’t doing their jobs.

Work Schedule

On its own: LAUSD teachers tend to use up all of their sick days, nearly 10 per year (6 percent of the school year). They should be required to report absences to a school-level administrator.

Sounds like more micro-managing harassment to me. Sick days are earned. They are a form of compensation. Teachers, like all employees, are entitled to use sick days and should not be discouraged from using them. We don’t want ill teachers infecting students or making themselves worse by working when they should be at home resting. Most districts already have teachers report absences to their schools to an administrator, even if indirectly through paper work, a sub-reporting system and/or the administrative assistant. It is absurd to think that every sick teacher will be calling the principal at 6:30 in the morning in between retching and heaving.

Evaluations

Sacramento: Require annual evaluations for all teachers.

More micromanaging harassment. A veteran teacher who consistently receives positive evaluations should be left alone to do their job. The evaluation process is time-consuming and stressful. Administrators lack the time as it is to providing meaningful feedback and conduct thorough observations.

Ultimate Consequence: Less teaching and administrating and a lot more paperwork, meetings and anxiety.

Sacramento: Enable teachers without an administrator’s credential to do peer evaluations. This would enable teachers with subject expertise to participate in classroom observations.

This could be very helpful to teachers. However, peers must be provided quality and paid training and be provided paid release time to do it (i.e., not expected to do it during their prep periods). Furthermore, it must be done in a non-punitive or mentoring manner—not as a way to determine tenure, compensation or dismissal. It is the boss’ job to evaluate, compensate or discipline employees, not the employees.

Ultimate Consequence: If teachers are given the responsibility of evaluating each other for determining compensation, tenure or dismissal, it will encourage destructive competition between peers and destroy collaboration and/or lead to biased, rubber stamping approval of teachers who are popular, well-liked or who dole out the most generous gifts.

Sacramento: Make the evaluations a management right not subject to negotiation with the union or poor ratings on various criteria the subject of grievances.

This is a major working conditions issue. The unions will not (or should not) accept this without a fight. Teachers as a class are well-trained professionals who are in the best position to identify the qualities of good teaching. If left entirely to administrators, evaluations could be changed to include things like “willingness to work extra unpaid hours.”

On its own: Include student feedback as part of evaluations.

Student feedback is useful. It also is extremely biased. What happens if a teacher has high standards and few of the students meet those standards, not because of poor teaching, but because they were socially promoted and not academically ready for the class? Their evaluations might read something like this: “Teacher was too hard.” Or worse. Students might retaliate and accuse the teacher of things that are not true. (It’s happened before).

Ultimate Consequences: Many teachers will feel like they have no choice but to be easy on their students, not set or enforce strict boundaries or unpopular school rules, purchase their students’ love and loyalty with candy and games, all to win positive feedback from them at the end of the year.

Contract: Make student performance the preponderant criterion on which teachers are evaluated.

I said it before, but I’ll say it again. Student performance tells us little or nothing about teacher quality. Furthermore, there are no accurate and unbiased methods for measuring it.

Ultimate Consequence: Again, mass exodus from the lower income schools.