Last week I was part of an amazing banquet where we honored the 2010 California Teachers of the Year in Sacramento. Big kahunas were all over the place. State senators. Educational policy makers from the Department of Ed. And of course, the inimitable State Superintendent of Public Education in California, Jack O’Connell. (Being a part of this crowd is like being a part of my only real Skulls and Bones Society — aside from this ning, that is… LOL!)

The point is, okay, I admit — I am not objective. I was a 2007 TOY (Teacher of the Year) for the state of California and when it comes to “pimpin’ for my homies” I call it much like Chick Hearn used to call Los Angeles Laker games… with an eye towards the hometown fans.

So yep, I adore Kelly Kovacic. But the thing is, when it comes to Kelly, she completely deserves the admiration. From all of us.

First off, she’s a teacher’s teacher. At school late. At school early. Taking on all kinds of extra duties. (I’d say without fanfare but hey, just she stepped into a world of fanfare so it’s no longer true — but toiling in obscurity with her shirt sleeves rolled up is how she got where she is.)

So what is all the hoopla? Well, the press release says that Kelly provides “a rigorous college-preparatory education for motivated low-income students who all live below the poverty level”.

It’s a well turned phrase to read on paper but what’s that really mean in the real world to me and you? Well, in real world terms, it means Kelly is on the front line of education changing lives. Breaking the patterns of generational poverty as bequeathed from one to the next due to a lack of education. She provides resources. She provides tools. She provides belief.

Kelly makes a difference — an immense one. And she works her ass off doing it.

There are well over 300,000 educators in the state of California. Many, many, many of them do Herculean, fantastic work. Kelly was chosen as the 2010 representative for us all.

There are millions of teachers in our nation. Many, many, many of them do Herculean, fantastic work. Kelly is now one of four teachers that might represent us all as the National Teacher of the Year. (Wow, huh?)

Many, many educators don’t even realize that their states have a Teacher of the Year program. Well, we do. We all do. And why?

As it turns out, one of the core missions of this program is to shine a positive light on the great work being done by teachers across this country. It’s that simple. There are scores and scores and scores of people doing TREMENDOUS work out there — and our parents, our students, our peers and our politicians need to know about it.

It’s not that Kelly is the “best” teacher. That would be preposterous to even try to to determine. It’s that Kelly is a GREAT teacher. And now she represents all the teachers in my state.

Do you know your state teacher of the year? Do you know someone that deserves consideration for state teacher of the year? (Hit your state’s dept. of ed website — you’ll find more info there.)

After all, if we don’t celebrate our own, who will?

Congrats Kelly! You do California proud!

If I was going to craft a list of the top 10 books of the 20th century in our nation’s English classes, the ones that have most shaped, informed, been taught, and so on, I have a feeling The Catcher in the Rye would make the list.

Today we note that the author of that work, J.D. Salinger, passed away yesterday at the age of 91.

I always really liked the fact that Salinger was a so-called “recluse”. Especially since in this day and age, the rush for media attention on behalf of every Tom, Dick and American Idol Harry kinda irks me. I mean here’s a guy who has sold about 250,000 copies of his book a year every year for about five decades. (Wow, right?) And yet, his last official interview was in 1980.

How much do I wish that Ann Coulter’s last official interview was in 1980, huh?

And Salinger’s last published work was in 1965. But do you think he stopped writing? Personally, I don’t. Does that mean someone is sitting on a few manuscripts that might be genuine treasures?

Does that mean that Salinger had a bonfire filled with manuscripts we’ll never get to read. Or better yet, assign theme papers about.

Discuss the theme of angst and rebellion evidenced by Holden Caulfiend in the novel The Catcher in the Rye and illuminate why the protagonist’s nervous breakdown represents the breakdown of the modern American family’s sense of genuine intimacy. And be sure to use MLA format.

Sheesh! Teenagers everywhere should be kneeling that he never published again. It saved them mountains of 5 paragraph essays!

Maybe a grandkid will inherit a bounty of books written by his grandpa that will one day see the light of day? And maybe, what we got is all we’ll get.

Was he liberated by his success or a prisoner of it? Probably both.

Either way, as an English teacher I just hope someone is going through his attic. After all, there are essays to assign!

Does it happen to everyone in education that they lose touch at some point, like an athlete that doesn’t know when to hang it up, and they hold on for too long… to the detriment of those they have been hired to serve?

Thing about this issue though is that age, oftentimes, has very little to do with the matter of when someone should hang up their educational spurs. Truly, some people ought to take their chips off the table after but 3 months in this profession — and for a few, that’s 90 days too long in this field! Others need to stick around for another 2 decades even if they have already put in 35 years of service. (Let me tell ya, Boca Raton, Florida retirement with dinner served at 4:30 p.m. can wait.)

For a boxer, as the years roll on you lose hand speed. And you get punched in the head too many times and it becomes clear to even the most casual fans when a once-ferocious fighter simply needs to stay out of the ring.

Football players, baseball players, NBA superstars… Father Time and Mother Nature conspire to do ‘em in. As ticket buyers we see it and we let ‘em know.

But in schools, it’s not really the same. Like I said, some of the best folks we have in education are people who have been in this field for 30 years or more.

(If only they could NEVER retire.)

However, as I also said, some of people should have hung up their educational spurs when Nixon was president.

All in all, the big point is that time and age don’t necessarily translate to “excellence” in our profession. As too many of us well know, some of the best folks we have in our field have been in their jobs for less than 5 years.

And they are the ones who are first to get chopped when the budget cuts roll in.

Ouch! We butcher our most promising seedlings.

Yet, some folks in our field (no names — or organizations — mentioned) quite wrongly equate “years in the classroom” to “quality of work being done in the classroom” — as false premise as ever there was.

Age before beauty… it’s not right! And when common sense returns to public education — or finally rears its head, as some may argue — the idea that quantity of time in a class trumps quality of time in a class will be expeditiously bounced.

Why is it that the higher up one rises in terms of being an educational decision maker with real power to wield, the further one is distanced from actually working with real kids on a day to day basis?

Kinda weird, huh?

I mean, by this logic — wacky as it is when you really think about it — the ratio works out so that those who make the most influential decisions are the folks that spend the least (if any… and I literally mean, if any) time with real kids in real classrooms.

Let’s break it down in a broad overview…

–Real classroom teachers who work with between 100-200 kids per day. Immense exposure to real kids. Infinitesimal influence over matters of educational policy.

–Principals, Vice Principals and other admins. They see lots of reals kids but all too often it’s from their office windows. (And I question whether or not 50% of America’s administrators could identify, by name, 100 specific kids on campus.) They certainly dictate some policy, but big, big stuff is out of their hands in most cases and they are henchmen for bigger puppet masters in a great many cases.

–District Office Personnel. A healthy amount of power… but many of them go whole weeks at times without talking to any kids at all.

–School Board Members. Also a healthy amount of power. Do they know 50 kids by name? I genuinely wonder.

–County Offices of Education. A bureaucratic jungle where their are more cubicles than actual children.

–State Departments of Education. Now you are talking influence. This is where policy gets made. Kids are talked about every day — but real, live ones made of flesh and bone? Well, at least there are pictures on the walls.

The federal government. (Congress, the U.S. Department of Ed. TheWhite House.) Spectacular influence but they lean heavily on their political aides to give reports (in order to relay salient pieces of information inside 863 page reports such as, “Kids like snacks.”). They believe in kids. They fight for kids. They are the champions of kids. (That should lock up the parent vote, right?)

Thing are outta whack! And why? Cause the higher they rise, the further they are from what they need to see.

I greatly distrust the data I hear. Why? Because the way one presents the data all too often determines the message that the data conveys to the audience. And the less insightful the audience (i.e the more laypersons in the group) the easier it is to spin, spin, spin away.

For example…

Scenario 1: Headline
Local school doubles their test scores over last year! YAY!

Scenario 2: Headline
80% of students at local school flunk the test. BOO!

Now, in scenario 1, if you only had 1 out of 10 kids pass last year’s test and this year 2 out of 10 passed the test, you did indeed DOUBLE YOUR TEST scores.

YAY!

Yet, if only 2 out of 10 kids passed the test, that means 80% of the kids still came up short.

BOO!

And, as I hope you can see, this “data” has been taken from the same school.

There’s too much wiggle room in the world of data interpretation — because ultimately, in so, so, so many cases, it’s all in how one presents/spins the numbers.

And people who rise to the top in organizations know this very, very well. After all, as many a big kahuna CEO has said in reference to numbers they have been presented, “I don’t want these numbers. Now go out and get me the good data!”

Look behind the numbers at what is being presented at your next staff meeting and I am quite confident your first impression (the one the data presenter intended for you to take) will offer another way entirely to view the numbers if you so choose to take a different route.

And which is correct? Data, like beauty, seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

Not so sure I buy into the “objective measure” argument in regards to student test scores being an inarguable method of insight into teacher performance. I mean just because all kids take the same test well, does it really mean that their performance on those tests translate so flawlessly to “windows on the teacher at the front of the room”?.

For example, just the other day a teacher in 11th grade showed me his grade book for his 5th period class.

It looked like it had been shot up by gunfire. Zero, zero, zero… bullet holes everywhere.

He showed me a kid who had perfect attendance and yet had 17 doughnut holes (i.e. “did not turn in work”, scores of zero) in a row.

The kid came.
The kid showed up.
The kid did nothing.

The kid has issues. He is short a zillion credits, doesn’t even bring a backpack to school and certainly doesn’t look like he has much of a chance of graduating.

Conversely, another kid in that same class has terrible attendance… but shows up just often enough so that the school has not yet bounced him off the roster.

Bullet holes in the grade book – for both of them. It’s an entire class like that.

Are either of these kids going to reflect test scores that 1) favor this teacher or 2) prove anything about this teacher’s merit?

Cause this is a good teacher. A guy who tries. A guy who shows up and takes the “lowest kids” because he feels he can reach them.

And he likes to reach them. It’s his life’s work. But nope, he doesn’t reach all of them. Not even close.

Aren’t these kids actually illuminating shortcomings of…
-parents?
-community?
-truant officers?
-administration?
-politicians?
…as much as they are illuminating the shortcomings of educators?

Does this man deserve to be demonized? Who is going to want to take on our most challenging kids, the ones that need the most help, if there are draconian punishments waiting for those who do not “deliver measurable performance”?

Perhaps he reaches all those kids… when they are 22 years old and finally decide that they are gonna stop being a screw-up and listen to Mr. _______’s words — the ones that have been hauntingly careening through their head for the past seven years?

Now, take a guess at what an AP Calculus teacher’s grade book looks like. There might not be straight A’s for everyone but it certainly isn’t bullet holes all around either.

Those kids work. They show up, turn in assignments and even do extra credit assignments when they already have an A in the course.

Whaddya think his scores are going to reflect on the state tests? (Especially since they barely touch on Algebra II in their most challenging form.)

Doesn’t the actual teaching assignment you get directly have a correlation to the test scores your students deliver? At least in a measure that deserves some real weight?

And is any weight given?

BZZZPP!!

No, it is not.

(Because that’s just liberal coddling and buying into having low expectations for our children, I assume. After all, it’s No Child Left Behind by 2014… even if they are leaving themselves behind.)

Just not sure about how apples equal oranges on this front. And I am HUGELY skeptical of the word “objectivity”.

I love data. It entertains me greatly.

People collect data.
People save data.
People create data.
People fabricate data.
People withold data.

Really, what can’t be done with data?

People spin data.
People generate data.
People ask for data.
People research data.

I bet there’s even data about data.

I used to think I knew some things… until I saw the data.
I used to think I could believe in things… until I saw the data.

Now I am not sure if I know anything… until I see the data.

Data, I love you.
And, Data, I hate you, too.

And you know what, Data? For both declarations I can surely provide you data.

Data, You Make Me Smile!!

I wanna hug your data!

Here’s a a phrase for the tombstone of public education: “trust not in humans; trust in data.”

My wife was talking to some mothers the other day about public versus private school. She’s worked as a K-2 teacher in both settings for years and as I listened on, something she said really caught my ear.

Overall, she believed, administration at private schools were all about teaching to the top. Push it, set a rigorous pace and work your best students long and hard. That was the mantra. The rest will catch up — or at least follow along. Kids in private school, that’s what they do – top work. And this is what parents expect.

In public schools, she notes that it was all about the low end kids. Get them caught up. Raise the bottom. Sure, work to serve the middle and the high but the “top kids” they were not the ones who were to get the oomph. The ones who lacked the most were the ones that were supposed to be offered the most.

Private worked one way; public the other. Quite telling indeed.

–Which is right?
–Can both realistically be done?
–Can a school raise the bottom while simultaneously teaching to the top?
–Can a school teach to the top while simultaneously raising the bottom?

Theoretically, lots of folks — especially people running for some sort of political office –will say both can be done. But in practice, I am not sure I really see it accomplished all too often.

Me, I do believe — like my wife — that most schools choose and, whether it’s resources, intentions or merely the nature of the beast, it’s rare to find a campus that accomplishes excellence at both ends of the scale, for both the top and for the bottom. (Maybe excellence is too strong a word. Simple okay-ness might be a better word choice.) They either, as a campus, really do well by the top kids or, as a campus, spend a heck of a lotta time working to serve the “low” kids.

And doing that well is hard enough. Few of us really knock it out of the park on this front… or rather, I should say, not enough of our schools do.

And so, the question is, top or bottom?

Well, if you look at the way that NCLB rewards a school’s test score data, it’s a no brainer. Elevate the bottom and you are rewarded. That’s where all schools get the most bang for the buck. Seek out the lowest achievers and make them higher achievers. Do that and your scores go up.

Have the top kids perform at an even higher level and… you really will not see much of an increase.

Now Arne Duncan seems to realize this and has thus put forth Race to the Top. It’s a GREAT notion. However, unless they change the formula of evaluating our academic institutions, we’ll still see more schools look to the floor before the ceiling.

Which groups gets most of the dialogue around your campus?

You want the top or the bottom? Welcome to America’s bunk bed educational mentality.

So here’s a fear I have about national standards. I think it’s going to create too much of a checklist system.

For example, I will be given a national standard to teach. I will teach it.

Then there will be a test. Scouring over the data from this test will be on a checklist of “tasks to do” for my school site administrators.

This data will be collected because collecting this data will be on a checklist for school site administrators. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone sends to the district. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone sends to the county. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone sends to the state. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone sends to the federal government. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone checks at the level of the federal government.

And then, the federal government will look at all this data. And they will provide feedback on their ascertained checklist. Then they will send it on… which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it on to the state. Which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it on to the county. Which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it on to the district. Which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it on to the school site administrator. Which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it back to me, the teacher. Which, of course, will be on a checklist that they expect me to check.

And what will that check actually tell me?

Something preposterously obvious that I am sure I could have already informed anyone along the chain of checklists if ever they had bothered to 1) ask me or 2) trust my professionalism.

Is this the new world?
Is this the current one?
Is it just me or are American schools becoming more and more dystopian?

The Checklist System, A Banquet of Preposterous Beauty

Schools are so understaffed on the admin front that sensible evaluations of teachers that are thoughtful, timely and fair to all parties involved seem almost like a pipe dream.

Take my school, for example. We have 4 admins on our campus: a P and 3 VP’s.

That’s for something like 150 teachers.

So if each educator were to get 8 classroom visits (two per quarter; that doesn’t seem unreasonable, right? I mean not if you are to reasonably try to gain insight into a situation — I mean that’s only once every 4 and 1/2 weeks) that would mean that a total of 1,200 classroom visits would need to be made.

This means that each admin would have to do about 300 visits per school year.

This means that each admin would have to do something like 75 visits per quarter.

This means that each admin would have to do about 8 visits per week.

That’s two classroom visit a day with Fridays off from classroom visiting.

Seems reasonable for all right? (I can already hear the chuckles.) At least if you are going to be able to draw and fair, verifiable and rational conclusions.

And then, instead of using silly check sheet rubrics, they might actually be able to provide some support and guidance to better steer the direction of the campus ship.

I know, more pipe dream.

(BTW, this is assuming that the admins actually know how to be an effective teacher themselves — a great leap of faith in and of itself. And by so much of the verbiage they use, I often doubt whether some of the people who oversee teachers actually could do the job of a classroom educator.)

Anyway, how far are we away from those numbers?

I am reminded of Frost: “Miles to go before we sleep.”

All right — let’s go in from a different angle. The P.E., the arts, the R.O.P. classes and such — do they even get/need a visit? I mean come on, if it ain’t gonna be tested, why should an admin waste their time, right?

Ya think they are walking though the cooking class asking where the “Daily Objective” is written on the front board?

And the “core” classes? Aren’t we merely getting cursory walk-throughs that seem as if they are merely judgement based fly-bys? After all, my first was this January — and school started in late August.

Also, are we really hopeful to get more of them? It’s like a little game. Admins come in and do their thing. We do our thing. And then, when that thing is done we both look forward to going back to doing our original thing hoping not to cross paths again over this matter — cause there are other things to do.

Note to self: new book title idea.

Sensible Evaluations of Teachers… and More Farces from the Front Lines