Charter public schools have come up often in the primary and now the general. But charters educate 2% of MA kids. This is a charter-free thread. Let’s talk about the other stuff, then return to our regularly scheduled food fight manana.
1. The challenge of statewide K-12 is that policy needs to encompass two starkly different realities: kids in suburban schools are doing pretty well, and kids in high-poverty districts are doing terribly.
What policy would help the Patriots, who are strong but benefit from tinkering, and the Bills, who struggle every single year?
2. In high-performing districts, there are really two concerns.
a. Kids doing well vis a vis other Americans, but poorly compared to kids in China et al. “China Gap.”
b. Pockets of kids – often poor, black, Hispanic, special ed, non-native – who struggle amidst many who succeed.
Last week the Globe ran a story on how MCAS is helping “good” districts with the China problem – as districts compete with one another. Meaningless drills to “teach to the test?”
No, just common sense stuff – Hopkinton making sure elementary kids get an hour a day of math, offering some advanced math classes to middle school kids, etc.
Meanwhile, some districts like Brookline work hard to close the Achievement Gap. Again, it’s common sense stuff, but it takes execution by dedicated educators, a mix of data analysis, getting family buy-in for more hours of studying and teacher buy-in to really reach kids who’d been written off in previous years, and as Brookline people put it, “tough conversations about race.”
Other suburban districts make excuses: “We’re working really hard, these kids just can’t catch up.” It sounds plausible until you see districts like Brookline that have fought past this knee-jerk response.
State policy should reward high-performing districts that really tackle the China Gap and the Achievement Gap.
3. But what about low-performing districts….where usually something like 40% of kids are “Proficient” at either English or math in any given year?
Quantity or Quality?
Both Patrick and Healey mostly plan “more hours.” Quantity.
For Healey, it’s not allowing 16 and 17 year old kids to drop out. For Patrick, it’s more pre-K and K, plus “longer school day.”
Think about that mathematically. Currently, a kid gets about 13,000 hours of school from K to 12. Healey would get some kids back from 11,000 to 13,000. Patrick would get some kids from 13,000 to 15,000.
Obviously, if kids are actually focused and studying hard during the 20% increase in dosage, they’ll do better. If not, if quality is still really low, then we’re essentially “multiplying by zero.”
Even if (optimistically) 20% more hours = 20% more learning, then let’s say 40% proficient rises to 48% proficient. Still scary.
4. I’d suggest that “Classroom Quality” is the most important variable – state policy needs to help more here.
a. One component, particularly in several middle and high schools, is that even a good teacher is hung out to dry…no support when kids misbehave – text message on cell phones, slap each other playfully with rulers, ignore the teacher and talk about the prom.
In some pilot, chart , and other public schools, the principal is greeting every kid at the door and in the hallways, rounding up chronic wanderers, meeting with parents of kids who’ve been sent out, etc.
If you want to see the contrast, visit the former South Boston High, which is now 3 “schools-within-a-school.” In one of the three, they run a tight ship, and teachers are able to teach. In the others, well, it’s a LOT tougher.
b. The other component, obviously, is teacher quality. We need better teachers.
The usual response here is $. I think that’s part of it. Yet Boston has the highest paid teachers in MA, higher than Wayland and Weston and Wellesley, higher than the other hundreds of districts.
Still teachers depart in droves. That means Boston has to hire 500+ teachers each year. Imagine if Boston only had to hire the, say, 300 best applicants, instead of 500, how that would improve Classroom Quality over time.
Governor Patrick will need to work on “Classroom Quality.” Won’t be easy.
nopolitician says
I think that people make a fundamental flawed assumption when thinking about education in high poverty areas. Do you really think it is possible to see decent results in schools that are up to 90% poor by having them simply “try harder” or even “getting better teachers”? I don’t.
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I think that any strategy towards poor urban districts have to focus on one of the following approaches:
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I think the former solution is more achievable than the latter, because I’m not aware of any place in the country that has taken districts with high concentrations of poverty and turned out acceptable levels of performing students. It’s been done on a limited basis, but those stories are the exception, not the rule.
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Let me give you my personal story. I live in Springfield, one of the worst performing districts in the state. I have two kids, not in school yet. I don’t plan to move from Springfield, so I have to evaluate my options. Luckily, private schools are within my budget.
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Springfield just went back to neighborhood schools, and I think that’s great, because one of my decision points is fixed: instead of a lottery (which I would likely lose) for inter-district school choice, I know the neighborhood school assigned to my address (well, in theory I know it — the district stupidly doesn’t publicize the list, but that’s another story…).
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I unfortunately now have concerns about my neighborhood school. It has lost a lot of teachers and neighborhood patronage over the past few years due to the contract situation in Springfield. Many people in my neighborhood are sending their kids to magnet schools or charter schools. The student body is worse off due to the flight of those students.
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My main concern as a parent is that I want my child to attend school with kids who have a similar desire to be schooled. I don’t want to send my kid to a school where 90% of the kids are from families that don’t value education. I don’t want the teacher to spend 99% of his or her time on that 90%, ignoring my child. I suspect that many parents feel the same way — they want their kid to get more or less equal attention.
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Because of that, I will likely not send my child to the local public neighborhood school. I expect my child to be in the “advanced” category, or at the very least “proficient”, so without trying to sound arrogant, that school will be deprived of a student in that category.
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But on top of all that, I’m probably the exception. Race factors very heavily among a lot of people — they don’t want to send their kids to schools that are too “non-white”. Others don’t want to send their kids to schools that are too poor. I have no problem with either of those things, as long as the kids all have the same educational goals, and are all able to learn at roughly the same pace.
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I know there are a lot of knocks against the old “tracking” system, but I firmly believe that learning takes place the best when all the students are roughly at the same level. I’ve been to training classes where others were all below me in skill, all above me in skill, and roughly equal to me in skill. The “roughly equal” classes were the ones I benefited from the most. I was bored when the rest of the attendees were below me, and I was frustrated when the rest of the attendees were above me. I suspect that this is what kids go through in school. Hence, some form of grouping seems necessary.
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That all speaks to my first suggestion. Regarding my second suggestion, I think that the schools would have to somehow become tailored to serve characteristics of the poor urban population. I don’t know how to do that, but one issue I’ve heard is transience of students — their parents move around from apartment to apartment, city to city. Teachers tell me they get the best results from the students who are there from kindergarten, and the worst results from the kids who pop into a middle grade, in the middle of the year.
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But that said, I still don’t think I’d send my child to a alternative-methods school that was geared toward a poor population, because I wouldn’t want to gamble unless she was not coping with a traditional education.
goldsteingonewild says
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I agree with you that any solution that relies on parents being required to – perceived or real – sacrifice their kid’s education for a philosophical commitment to the nearest school just isn’t going to fly. Most parents are like you.
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2. I agree that high-poverty schools that succeed are not common, but they do exist. Here are a few examples.
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The Education Trust is a liberal think tank in DC that basically ferrets out such schools and publicizes what they do.
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The University Park school in Worcester, which is about 70% low-income, is the type of school where you’d send your own kid.
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3. On tracking –
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I agree with the cons you point out of de-tracking.
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But tracking also has problems: kids locked forever in dead-end tracks simply b/c of early skill deficits that they had no real chance to remedy; much higher likelihood of getting the rookie teachers (since experienced teachers are more likely to choose to teach higher-tracked classes). Historically, these also have been most likely to be black and Hispanic kids.
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I think the pros and cons of tracking tend to cancel out, making it appropriate to be a school-based decision that could reasonably go either way. If you’re really interested, check out this book from Brookings Institution.
weissjd says
My daughter goes to the Hurley School in Boston where about 75% of the kids are low income (qualify for free or reduced price lunch), but all the families I’ve met value education very highly. I’m shocked that you think there are schools where 90% of families don’t.
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There’s ample proof that schools like this can be successful (there are several in Boston). The problem in Boston is really that there’s a lot of inconsistency.
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I agree with others who’ve said that principals are the key. A change in principal made a huge difference at my daughter’s school. The new principal greets the students daily and makes it clear that she expects success from both the students and teachers. The same teachers who’ve been there for years are performing at a much higher level because they are getting the support they need and believe that they can accomplish there goals.
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High expectations are the first step. At the Hurley school the old principal would say the MCAS scores were due to the population. Lots of low income kids, kids who didn’t speak English, etc. If you ask the new principal about the scores she’ll tell you about all the things the school needs to do to raise the scores. This doesn’t solve all the problems, but without this attitude there’s really no hope of success.
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Another factor is definitely school size. The Hurley School is just small enough (about 300 students) so that the teachers and staff get to know all the students.
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As for dealing with kids of different that’s definitely a challenge. The BPS deals with that by using workshop instruction. This method has the teacher speaking to the whole class for a small percentage of the time and the students working individually or in small groups the rest of the time. When done right this allows kids to work at their own levels. The school tries to get as many adults in the room (teacher, assistant, student teachers, parents, community volunteers, etc.) as possible to help make it work. Teachers also assign different homework to different students.
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The bottom line is that if you have a good principal, good teachers, and good methods, public education can work even in schools with a high percentage of low income students.
nopolitician says
You’re right. I incorrectly stated that the poor students don’t value education. That was lazy thinking. However, I stand by my assertion that there is a positive correlation between poverty and students whose parents who don’t value education.
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I have spoken to friends and relatives who are teachers in Springfield. They see this all from the front lines. From what they say, one of the biggest problems is transience of the student population. They tell me that they don’t have nearly as many problems with students who have been in their school since kindergarten, the problem is that they have students who come into the school mid-year, and leave before the year has finished.
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I hear about so much crap that takes place in the schools that I’m not willing to say that it’s all just because of bad principals, unqualified teachers, or because of the low expectations. Don’t get me wrong — I think that those things exist and contribute to the problem, but there’s far more, and its very tied to the parents. I think it’s no coincidence that their parents are poor because for many I think their behavior has put them in that position, and they are transferring those negative skills to their kids.
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I think that’s why the charter schools can show success — because they act as a magnet for kids whose parents dovalue education. The application process weeds out the others.
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The fact that some public schools are able to achieve some levels of success is not an indication that we are on the right path. Bill Gates dropped out of college and he became a billionaire — does that mean that a college education isn’t necessary in today’s world?
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I think that while the MCAS allows people to pinpoint schools that are in trouble, they also scare people like me away. I read what you said about the Hurley school and I wanted to know more about it. I found an article in the Globe, referred by the school’s website, that contained this phrase: “The Hurley’s MCAS scores are low. About 56 percent of fourth-graders failed English, and 75 percent failed math last year.”
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Facts are great, but they work very much against a school that is trying to get better. Instead of taking the position that my child could improve the school’s performance, my initial reaction was “this school isn’t good”. The MCAS scores are treated as an indicator of the education one would receive at the school, but the students, not the school, are the ones being tested. That’s unfortunate — how many caring parents use the MCAS to make their judgement, ignoring schools like Hurley that have low grades?
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I will tell you from a personal perspective, as someone who is faced with such a choice, that I will notsend my child to a school that has a 90% poverty level unless I’m convinced that the percentage of students in that school who do not want to learn are similar to schools in wealthier towns. Why? Because I don’t want my kids to get short-changed due to there being so many other students who have more needs. That’s just my perception. Picking a school is a big step, and it’s not something I want to gamble with. I’m going to choose the best school that I can choose for my child, and if I perceive one to have too many problems, I’m not going to consider it. I’ll go private; others will move.
weissjd says
If you haven’t already done it, walk into your neighborhood school and see what’s actually going on there. You might find out that it’s better than you thought. You might also find out that it’s even worse.
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Boston is certainly different from Springfield but a large percentage of the people I know who have moved or sent their kids to private school never set foot in a Boston public school. I know many who were pretty set on private schools before they actually toured a BPS school. Again, I really know nothing about Springfield so it could be very different.
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Your impression of poor people is really pretty sad. Have you actually met any of the poor families that send their children to the Springfield schools?
nopolitician says
My impression of poor people is that if every town in this state works so hard to exclude them (so by default, they wind up in poor cities), the cities need to do the same to merely survive.
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My perspective on the poor is based on the fact that Springfield has become the dumping ground for the poor for the state. Literally. A couple of years ago a state agency bundled up a bunch of homeless families from Boston and sent them to live in Springfield, because the housing was cheaper here. From numbers I’ve seen, Springfield has the highest percentage of subsidizing housing vouchers in the state. If I remember right, the vouchers were 10x that of Boston.
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Springfield has the highest per-capita murder rate in the state, and has the highest violent crime rate in the state, yet all we hear about is Boston’s problem. It pales in comparison to Springfield.
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I’m also speaking as a middle-class person who, every day, sees other middle-class people throwing up their arms and saying “I’m sick of the crime, I’m sick of the schools, I’m sick of the formerly high-end businesses turning into discount centers, I’m getting out of this city before its too late”.
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I’m speaking as a person who lives in a neighborhood where there are 40,000 people in a 1-mile radius of a grocery store, yet grocery chains would rather expand into locations where there are 8,000 people within a mile — but those people aren’t poor.
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I believe that poverty is a problem for our entire state, yet state policy (and lack of referreeing between municipalities) in recent years has been very clear to me: shunt the poor into urban centers like Springfield and then reduce funding for them. Less money is spent, and the problems aren’t in the face of the majority of the state’s residents. And then wag your finger at the city, saying “tsk tsk, it’s your fault”.
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I’ve seen group homes spring up near me. I’ve seen formerly owner-occupied houses sold to Eastern MA “investors” who proceed to fill them up with subsidized renters, turning two-family residences into four and five family residences. Housing people in attics, basements, you name it.
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My position is that if economic discrimination is legal, acceptible, and encouraged in nearly every other town in the state, that I’m not going to be a patsy and welcome the poor with open arms when others are showing them the heels of their shoes.
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I realize that there are an awful lot of good, decent, hard-working poor, and that we need to do things like increase the minimum wage, provide them with protections under the law, etc. But until I see that happening equally — from Springfield to Wellesley — I reserve the right to hold the same opinions of the poor that the majority of the state are allowed to hold and practice.
dweir says
I’ve taught in three different states, in poor districts and wealthy ones, big schools and small, at every grade level. I’ve worked with great teachers and ones that should have been fired. I’ve seen students arrested for carrying guns and others go on to the best colleges. Despite all these differences, one thing was constant — the biggest impact on the quality of a school is the skill of its principal.
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Too much emphasis has been put on teacher quality. I’d rather us get rid of undergraduate teaching degrees, just take a subject major like everyone else, and then begin your career as a paid intern like medical students do. Advanced degress are worthless without some practical experience to draw on and apply it to.
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There has also been a emphasis of a principals as master teachers. I think this is a mistake. The best principals I worked for were excellent managers. Principal certification doesn’t require even the basics of management — finance, HR, IT, statistics. Improve the quality of school management, and the quality of instruction will soon follow.
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To GoldsteinGoneWild: I’m interested in hearing more about your work with charters. If you’d ever be so inclined to share more, please drop me a line. You can find my e-mail address on my website.
goldsteingonewild says
Good point. More programs are training principals to be managers, but that’s very recent. Largely it’s true that few principals have ever been taught how to read a balance sheet or analyze data.
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I think that’s why I call it “Classroom Quality” – and not “teacher quality.” Individual teachers matter – but so does the overall school climate, for which the principal should be accountable.
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A “6 out of 10” teacher in the abstract can still succeed in a well-run school – it may not be the teacher who changes kids’ lives, but they can still learn a decent amount.
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Meanwhile, an “8 out of 10” teacher in the abstract can still fail miserably in a highly chaotic school; he may actually change 1 or 2 kids’ lives, but most of the kids won’t make real gains.
david says
of Patrick’s “school-wide merit pay” idea? It makes sense to me, for the reasons you’ve already outlined, but I’m no expert on this stuff.
pablo says
I disagree with Deval’s schoolwide merit pay idea. I also disagree with Healey’s plan to single out teachers based on test scores, specialty, or evaluation.
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I think the common sense way to do merit pay is to identify teachers who have contributions to make to the school. Merit pay would be in exchange for additional responsibilities. Merit pay for coaching other teachers. Merit pay for being a team leader.
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We need to build merit-based opportunities for our teachers – who want to be involved in teaching, but who want to expand into leadership and support roles.
nopolitician says
I disagree with the school-wide merit pay, and I also disagree with merit pay based on test scores. I think that merit pay should be based on evaluations.
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When I hear parents talking about schools, they all seem to know who the really good teachers are. When I hear teachers talking in private, they seem to know who the mediocre teachers are. When teachers leave a district due to a contract squabble, the union seems to know who the good departing teachers are.
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But when it comes to write a new contract, the unions jump up and down and say “it’s impossible to be unbiased, there will be favoritism, principals will use the raises as patronage, etc.”. I don’t buy it. I think that an exceptional teacher should be rewarded more than a mediocre teacher. I don’t think the reward is as important as the idea of there being a reward.
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I once worked at a company where everyone in the same job category was paid the same. I had been on the job for a couple of weeks and they had this little ceremony for this guy who did a bang-up job. He had been putting in 60 hour weeks for months to get a project done. Do you know what he got for his trouble? An “atta-boy”. I thought to myself, “wow, I can bust my balls and get a pat on the back, or I can do my job to the level that I’m comfortable with and get no pat”.
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I opted for the “no-pat” plan. I don’t think that I’d have worked 60-hour weeks even if more pay was on the table, but it just didn’t seem right for that guy to be paid the same as me.
goldsteingonewild says
I support experimenting with all 3 versions of merit pay. Nobody in the nation has yet nailed it to the point where it’s ready for prime time. Let’s figure out what works, then roll it out statewide.
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1. Here’s an Arkansas district tinkering with a pure “pay for performance” – if kids in your classroom learn more, you get a bonus. Maybe that’s because you’re “naturally” a better teacher, or maybe you outwork the other teachers, but the bottom line is your kids learn more.
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2. Denver Public Schools is experimenting with a hybrid version of teacher merit pay.
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3. Alaska is trying to launch the schoolwide plan – the only state, to my knowledge, going this route.
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Alaska officials are seeking their own version of the pay-for-performance models being tested or proposed in some of the Lower 48 states. The plan offers bonuses not only to teachers, but also to principals, secretaries, cooks, janitors, and other school employees.
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sabutai says
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Is that the plan, or is it “if kids in your classroom do better on standardized tests, you get a bonus”? Two different things.
dbang says
I can’t wait to see how the Alaska program works out. That appeals to me in principal.
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I work in the private sector (high tech), and just about everyone in the company participates in the stock purchase plan, and we all have stock options — from the VPs down to the receptionist and shipping people. That means when the company does well we all do well, and since every person provides an essential element of the company’s function, we need every employee to be motivated for the whole company to succeed.
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If a similar model could be applied to a public education setting, that would be great. We’ll watch Alaska and see if it works.
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I’m especially delighted that their plan includes people like cafeteria cooks and janitors. Think those people don’t effect the quality of education? Ha. I remember there was a mean janitor in one of my schools and I would go to great lengths to avoid being in the halls when no one else was because I was scared I’d run into him. My kids, on the other hand, have a good relationship with their custodian and enjoy talking with him. It sets a much more positive tone for their whole day.
opus says
Thanks for bringing this issue up.
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Good administrators AND good teachers are both necessary elements of a quality school. I, too, have taught at a variety of schools, and have worked for a variety of administrators over the past 15 years. What I have seen too often is really good teachers driven out by incompetent administrators. A good administrator can also work to attract the best teachers. I also agree with you that advanced degrees are far less important than developing the practical skills of teaching.
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Management is only one piece of being a good administrator. Experience being an educator is also an essential element. I’ve seen too many administrators fail because they have only one of these elements. A good teacher without management skills can’t run the nuts and bolts of a school – leading to chaos. And I’ve seen good managers fail because they have no idea what it takes to develop curriculum, connect with kids in the classroom, etc. These managers often are only concerned with the “bottom line” – test scores, balancing the budget, etc. without understanding the more complex picture of teaching and learning.
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Mentoring is also a very important part of successful schools – new teachers need a lot of support, especially in urban schools. Without experience in the classroom, administrators can’t provide adequate mentoring. (Or effectively supervise those teachers who are mentoring the newbies)
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Ultimately it boils down to $$ – to get better administrators means you have to pay them. While we may be facing a critical shortage of good teachers in some areas, we are facing an even more critical shortage of good admininstrators.
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Frankly, I think I’d be a damn good administrator. I consider myself a very good teacher, and I think I have competent management skills. However, there is one simple reason I will probably never go that route: I simply cannot afford it! The increase in my salary wouldn’t outweigh the increased hours and days I’d have to put in – I can earn more by moonlighting (teaching workshops, tutoring kids, etc.). Plus, I would give up the incredible job security I have as a teacher! Not to mention that I’d have to give up a lot of what I find fulfilling about teaching – as an administrator you are further removed from kids and have a level of stress that is orders of magnitude greater than that of teachers. I think that until we find ways to attract people like me to become administrators, we will continue to have so many schools in crisis.
theopensociety says
Research indicates that it (or family involvement) matters a lot and yet it is not often the focus of attention. Unfortunately, in poorer communities, parents are either both working a lot or there is only one parent who is working a lot. Yes, great, inspiring teachers matter too, but family involvment, or a sufficient surrogate, may have an even greater effect on the education of a child. Improving family involvement, however, is a more difficult goal to accomplish.
goldsteingonewild says
Acutally you’re right and right.
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1. Parents matter most
2. It’s hard for gov’t to change parents
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So the policy question for a Governor might be: is there any way to create incentives for districts to increase parent involvement?
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I’d editorialize that I believe schools often think of parent involvement in a traditional but flawed way. Most schools think of getting parents who will volunteer a bit, join PTA, attend parents night which is a presentation to the group. As you say, this is particularly tough for single parent households.
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A few high-poverty schools take a different approach – trying to communicate by phone with each parent, fairly frequently. Even single moms barely holding it together tend to be pleased to get verbal updates about their kid, and reinforce teacher messages.
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I know of a school where they get college students to grade papers for teachers, thereby freeing teachers to phone parents on weekends (when they’re around) to check in and talk about the student’s successes and failures. It’s a good deal all around.
pablo says
There is certainly a literature that discusses school leadership. The National Institute of School Leadership is one such model, and is actively being employed in Massachusetts. There’s lots of reading and work based on leadership from an organizational/business model.
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It’s not management, it’s leadership.
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The principal is the key to a school. A great principal can make great things happen, and NISL comes from the philosophy that great principals can be trained.
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A great principal can make a school great. There needs to be a systems thinker at the top, in the superintendent’s job, who can put the whole thing together.
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There also neeeds to be a systemwide and constant drive toward improvement. The really great school systems are always looking to get better.
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One year of austerity can be a benefit to a system. The need for cost cutting can create an environment in which people look critically at programs, and gives cover or incentive for eliminating programs that are not effective. However, a consistent environment of austerity changes the focus from improvement to survival. While throwing money at a problem is no guarantee of a solution, the lack of money is a guarantee that you won’t solve the problem. The reductions of state funding over the past four years has placed the major focus on keeping enough duct tape in stock to keep the system together. The local budget cuts and user fees that have been cobbled together to get through four years of state disinvestment have been the biggest barrier to school improvement.
goldsteingonewild says
I agree with almost everything you just said! Yes to the need for leadership to drive an agenda of constant improvement, and how short-term austerity can help but long-term hurts.
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My quibble is only whether money is “the biggest” barrier, but I’ll quit while ahead.
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Joel Klein (another former Clinton Justice Department guy) is superintendent of the nation’s largest district, New York City, which has more kids than all of Massachusetts.
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I think that even in the 1994 to 2000 mega-years of huge K-12 spending increases, the culture of excuse was hard to change. I think culture of how we think about schools is even more of a barrier than cash.
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But overall I’m calling it a day: 90% agreement with Pablo! Could stranger things happen? Maybe tonight when I play basketball, I’ll even nail my 3-point shots!
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pablo says
Here and now, the money is a huge barrier. When you are spending your time working around cuts to librarians, crossing guards, school nurses, and increased user fees, you get distracted from the core mission.
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I would like the opportunity to focus on the high leverage tools for change. We have lost that opportunity in the past four years. We’re in a state that reduces resources (Massachusetts is near the bottom of percentage of funding from the state) and increases sanctions) and increases sanctions (the highest NCLB bar in the nation).
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The Romney-Healey administration has been very hostile to public schools. I hunger for the changes this election can bring to public education.
pablo says
when you remove the “c”-word from the discussion??? 😉
dweir says
Too early to tell yet whether NISL is having an impact in MA, but I’m glad that we’re giving it a shot. Pablo, do you have data from other states that are farther along in their implementation? I think the state has made a wise decision to approach this is as a broad based solution rather than cherry-picking districts.
pablo says
The program is relatively new, so I don’t know what kind of data is actually attached to school performance. However, from what I have seen (as a NISL participant) the training is on target. There are also very critical skills in teaching and learning (for example, Research for Better Teaching) that dovetails nicely with NISL.
dbang says
1) More hours != better school
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I live in Acton, which has excellent schools, if one judges by MCAS scores, SAT scores, college admittance or any other standard academic factor. In fact, Acton/Boxboro is arguably one of the top 4 or 5 school districts in MA.
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BUT…a law passed a few years ago at a state level dictates a certain number of hours students must spend in school, and the kids here at ABHS aren’t meeting their hours. (900something are required, 700-800something is what they are doing.) So…the state department of education threatens to pull Acton’s funding.
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Oh great, let’s take a phenomenally successful program and change it just to meet arbitrary standards with no actual basis behind them. how on Earth does it benefit kids, parents or educators to have more hours spent in school when the current hours are working so well?!
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2) Public schools exist to bring the slow kids up to speed
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I have three children, all school age. One is a “slow” kid and he’s getting absolutely fabulous handling with the public school system — special services that have brought him from very delayed to only slightly delayed in just 18 months. We couldn’t be more pleased with the district’s early childhood special ed program.
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Two of my children, however, are advanced: reading, vocabulary, math, science and comprehension skills 3 to 5 years above grade level. These are first graders and they are bored at school because they are forced to read picture books at school, when at home they are reading Harry Potter; at home they ask for multi-digit addition and multiplication problems and at school they do endless worksheets of 2+3 and 5-2.
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The teacher just doesn’t have time to deal with these kids. She’s so busy trying to get the kids who can’t read or can’t add up to speed that my little fast learners just fall off her radar. meanwhile, they learn to hate school and think of learning as busywork.
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Oh great, let’s take the kids with the highest potential and bore them to tears until they start acting out as the only way to get any attention at school.
centralmassdad says
Getting an F to a D, or getting a dropout to an F gets more NCLB attaboy points than getting a B to an A, or an A to an A+. The incentives are skewed against the brighter kids.
goldsteingonewild says
It’s good to hear that you’re happy with A-B’s support of one of your children, and at least the others have the problem of being ahead of other kids! I can see how you’d be frustrated.
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Some context:
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1. Out of all the districts in MA, to my knowledge, Acton-Box is the only one which has complained about the “990 hours per year policy.” That’s about 5.5 hours per day….seems reasonable to me.
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On the other, like you say, “What’s broke?”
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It seems like if you get good results, say in the top 10% of districts statewide, you should be able to get out of some regulations. Flexibility in exchange for accountability.
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2. Smart kids bored in school is obviously not a new problem.
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Diane Ravitch, the leading education historian, argues that the great American education accomplishment is the very ideal of “Education for All.” That was not a popular notion once upon a time – in part b/c of the fear that slow kids would hurt progress of smart kids – and kids who couldn’t keep up were expected to stay home.
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The commenter above is correct that No Child Left Behind does reward schools for helping the worst-off kids first. I dunno, that seems like a wise progressive ideal if not taken to extremes.
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But NCLB is not the only influence on school decisions. Friendly local competition matters, too. As per above, some districts respond to MCAS by creating more ADVANCED classes, like Hopkinton. Here’s the link again.
dbang says
My kids are first graders. Advanced algebra classes aren’t what they need; what they need is a teacher/curriculum/classroom that doesn’t stunt their growth while also meeting the needs of average and slow kids.
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I am not a child education expert, so I don’t have answers to this, only a general sense of personal frustration when I see all the focus on helping the lowest performing students. I agree they should be helped, but I think we do a huge disservice to both individual kids like mine and also the Commonwealth and society at large when the highest performing kids languish.
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At first I thought perhaps the problem was class size: if there were fewer students, maybe the teacher would have more time to devote to the individual needs of each student at his or her own level. But then I listened with envy as my best friend in Boxford described her first grader’s class, with just as many students, but a teacher who somehow manages to find a way to keep each kid challenged to move one step beyond their current abilities. So then I thought perhaps the problem is the teacher.
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but as I think about it, I think the problem is systemic. I think our entire approach to education serves, at best, to equalize, rather than to bring each kid to his highest potential. (At worst, it bores the smart kids AND abandons the slow ones.)
lynpb says
I’m surprised that class size hasn’t come up yet in this thread. Teachers need to be able to provide time and personal attention to help struggling students. That’s tough to do in today’s very large classes. DP advocates smaller class sizes, which would help the quality issue without requiring a whole new teacher cadre who are somehow more talented, creative and committed than the teachers we have now. My years in corporate America have taught me that while it’s always lovely to have a superstar in a position, it’s more practical to design the job role so that it doesn’t require one. Reducing class isn’t free, but it’s eminently do-able if we’re willing to pay for it.
goldsteingonewild says
If you’re interested in the debate on class size, the heavyweight battle of all time (for the stats-minded) on this topic is Princeton’s Alan Krueger versus Stanford’s Eric Hanushek.
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They crunched a jillion numbers. You can read it here.
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Briefly, Hanushek who raises these cautions:
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California has lowered class sizes a lot statewide (to 20 kids in K-3). Some unintended consequences followed that Hanushek describes in his second point: good teachers left struggling schools for the newly created slots in better schools.
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Struggling schools – who had struggled before to attract teachers – found that now that had “normal teacher attrition” plus “class-size reduction teacher attrition” plus “new teaching slots to fill because of class size reduction.” Triple whammy.