My first vlog.

So since I am in the mood to offer up so many thoughts as of late about how to re-shape K-12 education (heck, who isn’t doing it these days) I thought I’d chime in on the silliness of the manner by which we choose to pink slip 194 teachers in a district with about 900 educators.

We did it by seniority. Merit played no role. (Don’t worry, this is not a post about the budget cuts… though they will certainly see some action, I am sure, going forward.)

I repeat, quality of service played absolutely no factor in the decision making process of who got to keep their job and who got to canned. It all came down to one simple question: when were you hired.

And these are the deepest staff cuts I’ve ever seen.

No one asked, how well did you work? No one asked, to what degree did you serve the needs of the students? No one took into consideration things like work ethic, degree of content knowledge, extra-curricular duties, ability to differentiate for various learning styles, and on and on and on.

Chronology slapped down worthiness.

Add it all up and it means that this past week I had a chat with an ELA teacher I greatly admire, one who is but a few years into her career – and is a real dynamo with a bright future – and told her I’d be happy to write her a smoking letter of rec if ever she wanted one.

Best I could really do.

I mean this is a teacher we should be fighting to hold on to. I know it. The principal knows it. Heck, even the folks in the district offices might know it.

But rules are rules and length of service in public education trumps quality of service.

It’s folly. Plain and simple. No one lets a better employee go so that they can keep an older employee.

BTW, this is not ageism at play. Some of the best educators I know have multiple decades under their belt. Matter of fact, the leading ELA teacher on our campus (in my opinion) is a lady right across the hall from me and she’s at year 32 in our district.

Do you know what I was doing 32 years ago? Lemme tell, ya, it wouldn’t make momma proud.

Just think about what would happen to an institution’s degree of impact if they sustained such a silly policy over the long haul. I tell ya what would happen, it would inevitably crumble over the course of time due to erosion as a result of such poor decision making. (Anyone ever hear of a small industry once based in Detroit?)

Essentially, okay, I get that we are going through a fiscal crisis that is pretty much unprecedented in our lifetimes. But at least make the most intelligent moves you can make. We are compounding the impact of the budget cuts by not better adapting our policies to meet the needs of the current times. Truly, these types of decisions are handcuffing us from being able to do the best job we can possibly do at one of the most important jobs that there is to do in our country.

Society is counting on us to do it well.

And these are the rules by which we determine who gets laid off?

If merit plays no role in determining who stays and who goes, at some point the institution of public education will crumble.

This week, a few stones in the edifice fell. And it’s a sad thing to watch.

So today I wore a Lynwood Knight shirt to school. Am I showing school spirit or am I just a dorkwad? Trust me, this one ain’t all that clear cut.

I mean back when I was a student in high school, I never wore any school stuff. That was for doofs. But now that I am a teacher, I wear school gear.

Fact is, I probably own too much of it. My wardrobe consists of Lynwood Knight sweatshirts, shorts, t-shirt, polos, hats and even headbands. I’ve got classic Lynwood gear (like the senior class sweatshirt from 2002) and just the other day I was thinking about springing for a new long sleeve t-shirt.

Why? I am not sure. My wardrobe is already disproportionally Lynwood-y and now I am going to add to the collection? Why would I do that? I mean let me tell ya, this ain’t Prada.

Of course occasionally I end up wearing school gear and regretting it. Like when you end up going out to dinner with other bona-fide adults straight after the school day ends, meet at a restaurant and feel like the biggest lunkhead on the planet when you realize how nicely other people with real jobs get to dress for their work.

And then there’s my wife. For some reason, she never wears Lynwood clothing. It’s not like I haven’t bought her stuff. She used to smile and say “Thanks.” That was when we first got married. Now she just says, “Why’d you waste your money?” whenever I bring something home for her… which I no longer do.

Ah, the frankness of marriage.

And let’s be honest, don’t some staffers wear just like WAY TOO MUCH school stuff? Really, is it every day gear? Is it every night gear? Is it every weekend gear?

Is it necessary that you wear clothing with school logos on it to the bat-mitzvah of your neighbor’s daughter?

When it comes to wearing school clothing, where is the line of sanity drawn?

One question that has longed bothered me about all of the conversation regarding having one set of national standards for all American schoolchildren is, “If we are going to have standards at all, why should these standards be different from state to state?”

Forget the merit of the standards chosen and the text exemplars cited in the latest information released about the Common Core Standards Initiative. (I know, hard to do.) But can anyone explain the benefit to me of Michigan have one set of English Language Arts standards, Georgia having another and then Texas having yet a third?

And this goes on across all fifty states.

Do any two states at all even share the exact same set of standards? Not any two neighboring states like Mississippi and Arizona? Okay, my geography is off — but that’s because I went to school before there were national standards! (Okay, I am straying here…) I think national standards are the solution for this problem. What is the benefit, especially when American families are more transient than ever moving from state to state, of having different content standards in the same content area across the entire country?

Now before I get pounded with criticism of why national standards are bad, I feel the need to say I hear and find some merit in the arguments against them… and am not even going to try and weigh in on those right now. It’s a different question I am asking.

(And yes, I get the nationalizing education is bad for America argument. And yes, I do hear the complaints about how this is a blatant power grab for centralized control of all our classrooms by politicians. And yes, I do see the link as to how this might actually prove to be a chance for monopolistic corporate behemoths to swoop on in and milk every last dollar from the taxpayer kitty with unprecedented efficiency and accuracy — though I think textbook companies are sweating right now much more so than they are jubilant… more on that at another time. All reasonable, solid points to debate and consider for sure.)

But can someone please make a case for why it is better for individual states to have their own individual sets of standards when the gaping holes between the degree of rigor between some states is so wide, and the language used to describe the same basic ideas from state to state is so varied, that to look at all of them on a kitchen table with a bird’s eye perspective would simply leaving you scratching you head?

Forgetting the political implications of it all (and I know, if education is anything, it’s political… though silly me thought it was supposed to be about the kids) why is a state to state to state standards system better than a national standards system?

In essence, am I missing something or doesn’t this put us all on the same page so that Florida doesn’t value metaphors more than Illinois values relationships between main and subordinate characters in a text while Nevada finds value in etymology?

If you agree with standards-based education, the Common Core Standards Initiative seems kinda logical. If you do not agree with standards-based education then certainly, you are in no way going to be a fan of this. But if you agreed with standards-based education yet think that the content standards for math, English, science and so on should vary depending on which side of the state border you happen to be standing on, I’d love to hear your reasoning.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is about to absolutely rock the Hollywood box office this weekend. And it has been a rip-roaring success in the world of book publishing. As a teacher, when I see this I know that I can leverage the power of an author who has found a way to reach real kids into classroom success for me and my kids.

Here’s how I do it.

First of all, I know that the state has hired me to teach the content standards. (They clearly say so.) And when they assess my student performance, the material they test is not text specific but rather, standards-based. This means that they are not going to be testing my kids on Kafka, Twain, and Joyce but rather on denotation vs. connotation, theme, tone and so on.

And hey, Diary of a Wimpy Kid uses all of the literary elements of denotation vs. connotation, theme, tone and so on. So why not use Diary of a Wimpy Kid as a text to teach the standards in my classroom?

I do.

Now before I get crucified as being someone that does not revere the GREAT BOOKS of human civilization – a canon blaster, if you will — please take a few things into consideration.

California is a state with 6.4 million students. And 1.6 million of them are English Language Learners. This means that I need to differentiate, accommodate and be responsive to the real literary needs of the students that are sitting in my class — all while still teaching the appropriate grade level content standards.

I am not sure if there is a more accessible book for English Language Learners out there right now than Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

-It’s funny. (And kids will wrestle with text when the reward is material that will make them laugh).
-There’s a lot of white space on the page. (Check the research on the value of that to a student with low literacy skills – especially when English is not their first language).
-It’s relevant and kids relate. (The bumbling, fumbling shenanigans of Greg allow students to see their own lives reflected directly in the text.)

And Diary of a Wimpy Kid (for those who want to take a moment to jump off their high horse of that books in school absolutely must be dense, erudite art) is a good read. Personally, I greatly enjoyed it because it’s an energetic, funny and page turner.

Plus, guess what? There’s a theme. (A few of them, in fact: 1) We learn from our mistakes. 2) Self-image is very important. 3) No one escapes problems in their life. 4) You’ve got to show initiative if you are going to get anywhere in this world.)

And there are examples of denotation vs. connotation.

And the text provides me examples of tone, perspective, hyperbole and on and on.

The same stuff that the standards ask me to teach.

Should Diary of a Wimpy Kid replace Mark Twain? Nope, not even close. But can it be used as a bridge to build capacity? Can it be used as a text to illuminate literary devices?

Can it be used as a vehicle to get 100% of your class to do ALL the assigned reading? (And how often do our classes do that? I mean “faking it” through books has become so ingrained in our culture that there’s a multi-million dollar industry to provide resources as to how to better fake it — Cliff’s Notes, Spark Notes, Pink Monkey and so on.)

Yes, I read Diary of a Wimpy Kid with my classes. And guess what? It was a home-run success and a great teaching tool.

And guess what else?

We had FUN!

Since when are fun and and learning mutually exclusive to one another?

But, don’t worry — keep using those 20th century tools to reach today’s 21rst century kids. After all I am sure Hollywood is going to race right out and make a movie of your classroom textbook any day this week.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid… it certainly can have it’s place in a classroom where students are achieving.

I do not believe you can evaluate teachers objectively… that’s part of the reason for the multiple measures approach I’ve outlined all week.

All teacher effectiveness assessment is, in my opinion, going to be biased. Subjectivity rules.

Matter of fact, I don’t think teachers can even assess students in an unbiased manner – but that hasn’t stopped anyone from giving grades this year, has it?

Or stopped the bubble test makers from giving out all those scantron sheets to fill out, I’ll note.

Let’s say you gave a kid an 89 on their persuasive essay. If three other teachers read that essay, do you think they’d all agree it was an 89? Might not one see it as a 90? Thus we have an A- being given out as opposed to a B+ for the same exact work. Maybe it’s an 86 to someone else, a mere B.

Extrapolate the math out now for 3 million teachers across the country. Nope, there will be no objectivity in this process and only a fool would dare even try to promise it.

A multiple measures approach is about gaining representative insight. It will never be exact because I do not think we have even yet mastered the art of being exact with our student assessments, and we’ve been giving out evaluations to kids for years and years.

And kids have been complaining about the grades we’ve been giving them for just as long.

Assessment, like beauty, is ultimately, to some degree, going to be in the eye of the beholder. Jim Burke talks about how one of his high school teachers didn’t flunk him simply because the two of them played racquetball together – though Jim definitely feels he earned an F for the course. (And Jim turned out to be one our most keen thinkers in the field of teaching… yet to get through high school, he needed someone to simply cut him some slack. Was that a “wrong” decision by Jim’s teacher? Would Jim do something of similar sort for one of his students? Would I? Would you?)

Assessment, is it objective? No. Fair? Sometimes. The way the cookie crumbles. For sure!

Just like life!

However, if you diffuse the amount of assessors and modes of assessment and they all arrive at a similar conclusion, I’d say the conclusions that can be drawn will be more than just coincidence… and can work to better inform all of us about what is actually going on in a teacher’s classroom.

And it’s certainly better than trying to connect teacher effectiveness directly to high stakes bubbles tests – don’t even get me started on that silliness things for the ten-millionth time.

But come on, do you really grade the last essay of the night at 11:12 p.m. with the same attentive eye you graded the first essay at 4:45 in the afternoon with a cup of joe in your hand? The world is imperfect, everywhere, and when we do finally get around to measuring teacher effectiveness, I’d be most wary of the person that tries to sell you on the flawlessness of the accuracy, the perfection of the insight of the evaluation.

It ain’t gonna happen. Subjectivity, when it comes to assessment, is the order of the day. From college admissions to who flunks what class (racquetball anyone?) to how we will ultimately be measured once the U.S. Dept. of Education gets this measuring teacher effectiveness kite to fly, we are just gonna have to realize that there is no such thing as objectivity.

We live in a world where all opinions, even those of experts, (and assessment really is nothing more than a sophisticated term for putting forth an opinion) must be taken with a grain of salt.

Thus ends this series…

Have we not brought this on ourselves? Truly, it’s our own fault we are mired in this whole “measuring teacher’s effectiveness” mess anyway.

And why? Because we, as teachers, have run amok.

We had a chance to police ourselves, we had a chance to be our brother’s keeper, we had a chance to self-regulate in a way that resembled sensibility.

We had decades to do so. But we got ahold of too much rope and now we have hung ourselves. Our negative fringes need to be reigned in, our performance needs to be recognized as something that is not above improvement nor reproach, our sense of team is being torn asunder by the “I’s” who think they are above having to be a part of a team, and we need to do a better job at our job — like all aspects of American education do.

We can point the figure at every other quadrant of public schooling: parents, community, societal values, administration, the federal government, the budget and on and on… and be right about the blame we lay!

Yet still, that does not change the fact that we must take ownership over our own shortcomings and figure out a way we, as teachers, can better serve the needs of the next generation of student.

And if it comes with some professional uncomfortableness, so effin’ be it!

Teaching is NOT about us, the teachers; first and foremost it’s about the students. In our field we know this, we see this, we bleed this.

We live this.

But not all of us of do. And a small cancer has spread to the point where it’s no longer small.

Clearly, the campus duds must be de-dudded and we gotta start bringing better game to the table. All of us do.

(BTW, NCLB is not even worth mentioning to counter this argument because NCLB has been a farce and you’re not gonna find any love from me for the calamity that this exercise in folly has wrought for us all.)

Now the thing is, people get uproarious about feeling accused. Chill out because if you are reading this, you probably are not one of the people at whom I am pointing the finger. Those folks rarely, if ever, read blogs on nings seeking out answers on their own time as to how to improve their craft or stay up to date on the latest policy measures (much less looking for a means whereby they can improve a lesson plan).

But if we can’t acknowledge that something is rotten in the state of Denmark then we have absolutely no chance in hell of ever improving it.

It begins with us taking a look in the mirror and being humble (and realistic) about the fact that we can get better.

We all seem to believe, as teachers, that good assessment is an asset to improving our ability to elevate student learning in our classrooms. How do I know what a kid knows unless I assess what it is I am seeking for them to be able to prove they understand and can do?

And once I assess and reflect on the student’s performance, I can chart a new path for extended growth.

Because growth never stops in education. There is no end line to any of this.

However, if you take away my ability to assess my kids (no formal measurements at all) I believe I will be a lesser teacher. By a lot! Nope, I am not Socrates. Or Jesus or Buddha or whatever other person you can think of that was able to turn student water into wine without formal feedback. (Unless Socrates actually gave 5 paragraphs essays that I didn’t know about. Wouldn’t that be the ultimate egg on our face — Socrates assigned hamburger essays on truth, beauty and nobility — the documents were just misfiled amongst the ruins. Yikes!)

No, I am just a high school English teacher in Los Angeles, California and I use multiple measures to gain insight into the knowledge and performance of the kids in my class.

Why can’t the same be applied to us as teachers on the whole?

No one measurement in my class ever gives the whole story to me as to a kid’s learning anyway. (Which is why high stakes tests don’t really strike me as the cat’s meow.)

I use multiple measures. From quizzes to personal contact to project-based learning projects to traditional summative assessment tools, I use multiple approaches to gain the knowledge I seek.

And I find that knowledge valuable because it better enables me to figure out ways to teach my students.

And giving an F is always the last resort. (As firing would be in the plan I envision.) But i do give some F’s. (And we do need to fire some folks.)

But I give a lot more A’s and I work exceedingly hard to recognize good work much more so than I do at demonizing poor work.

Why can’t we transpose these ideas to our own profession? We certainly have, in my estimation, proven the need to do it.

And if we want to point fingers at who has demonstrated this need, collectively, it is us. We have proven the need for our effectiveness/job performance/professional impact to be measured/assessed/evaluated/judged – choose whatever language you want – ourselves.

Individually, you may not feel you need it but holistically, when it comes to American education at large, this need is glaring.

The only real question left for me is, why do I feel so alone when I type this?

If you haven’t followed the prior few days of my blogs on the notion of evaluating teacher effectiveness you might want to go back and do some prep before you read this next post… cause today, I am going to go to bat for yet another key ingredient requisite to drafting a fair, multi-textual portrait of my professionalism as an educator.

I want the kids to weigh in. Yep, let the customers have their say!

The criticism I most often hear with this idea is that the kids can’t be trusted. I believe the opposite is true. I think the kids often give me the most honest insight into what happens in the rooms of other teachers.

When I want to know how a math or history or science teacher is, I go to my students. And you know what… they tell the truth.

The rigorous teachers don’t get slammed. They may get complained about for being too demanding but they don’t get torched. Kids want to learn and teachers that reach and teach them get love when the teacher is out of earshot.

However, the teachers that don’t teach do get scorched. Of course, face to face, the kids act as if the teacher who lets students “kick it” and not work hard and watch movies and the such, they think they are friends with the students… and that the students have their backs.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The kids do not respect these type of teachers and they get sold out as being “dudes who do nothing, who never do nothing in class” whenever someone asks.

The kids might very well be the MOST honest group of people on campus.

A teacher that works ‘em may not be adored, but they will be respected and when evaluation time comes around, the students will most certainly say as much.

“She demands too much and gives too much work and is always making me do stuff.” To the knowing eye, is this really a bad eval? Even if they say, “And she’s mean, too.”

I think we can all read between the lines on that one. One day, I hope my daughter says this. It’s beats the opposite. “Oh, she’s too easy. I’m bored.”

But kids will tell you the real deal. “All we do in that class is copy the problems from the textbook and the teacher doesn’t do hardly nothing,” or “All that teacher does is check their FaceBook page all day long” and on and on.

What should we not trust about this? Are we worried that kids will conspire to collectively lie to try and railroad a teacher? Well, in the anonymous system I propose (see earlier post from a few days ago) I believe kids will tell the truth. (Frankly, I’d be more worried about department wide conspiracies to oust someone by the teachers than I’d be worried about all students buying into a prank to screw over a good educator — and I already addressed that concern as not too legit a concern at all. The Atticus! argument).

Plus, all evals would be viewed over time. 3 years minimum.

Year 1 filled with THIS TEACHER STINKS! evals, well, hey, that could be an anomaly. Year 2 filled with THIS TEACHER STINKS! evals, well, this could be the start of a pattern. But three years in a row of THIS TEACHER STINKS! evals?

And then we look at the peer evals.
And then we look at the admin evals.
And then we look at the, hold your breath, students achievement levels via test scores.

And if all of them point to a “Whoa, this person is a bottom dwelling lemon in every category we consider,” well, that’s when the consequences of not measuring up on the teacher effectiveness scale do seem to have a bit of credibility, don’t they?

Let the kids speak. They will take the evals seriously (for the most part) and they should have a say if for no other reason than it’ll be quite honest.

Multiples measures for measuring teacher effectiveness will continue tomorrow… post is growing too long.

As I discussed yesterday, when it comes to measuring teacher effectiveness (it’s all the rage in national education policy these days), I, as an educator, want multiple measures to be used.

Yesterday I conceded the use of student test scores via bubble tests to measure my effectiveness because I know that this is a deal breaker for the policy makers in D.C. On this point they are intractable and if politics is the art of compromise, then fine — I’d rather accept multiple measures that include test scores than have no seat at the decision making table and have a host of ridiculous other stuff rammed down my throat.

And ram they will.

So what measures do I want? Yesterday, I said I wanted peer evaluations to count. Today I am going to ask for administrative evaluations.

Yep, I want them. But, the quid pro quo is that I want my administrators to be evaluated by the teaching staff as well. And I want the federal government to use whatever stick they will use to punish me for not meeting their targets to be the same stick they use to admonish admins who do not meet their targets.

Let’s level the playing field. Teacher effectiveness is related to administrative effectiveness so while we are re-inventing the “assess our school professionals wheel” let’s do it properly, huh?

We need to implement an administrative effectiveness tool side-by-side with this new teacher effectiveness tool.

It’s not biting off more than we can chew. It’s called doing it properly one time instead of perpetually re-doing it over and over and over again.

Truly, I repeat, it makes no sense not to do all of this at the same time. (Or else, let me guess, eight years from now some genius is going to look up and say, “Ya know, teacher effectiveness is related to administrative effectiveness. Maybe we should measure them, as well?”)

Suddenly, that cantankerous VP who makes every teacher’s life hell but sucks up to the Assistant Superintendent like a lap dog will not have a place to hide. Conversely, the principal that really goes to bat for their staff yet takes it on the chin from the Assistant Superintendent will have a means of not being forced into the role of subservient lap dog.

Let the admins measure my effectiveness. But theirs must be assessed as well.

And then we get to the juicy stuff… the district level measurements of effectiveness.

Why should they not also have to answer to the assessment and accountability God? I am not joking, either. A great Supe gets a lotta love from the peeps in the district. I know, I have seen it many, many times. And a bad Supe operates almost with impunity nowadays.

Tyrants in a fiefdom, unchecked and protected only by mammoth buy-out clauses.

Look, there are basically three levels to classroom education that are being funded by the state and nation: the classroom level, the administrative level and the district level. (The state level already has to answer in part to the Federal level and the state’s voters — plus, that realm of accountability is only growing these days so I don’t want to tread into that muck too much).

Admins, please feel free to measure my effectiveness. But know that your own effectiveness will be measured by me as well and whatever consequences can be meted out for my underperformance will apply to you as well should your measurements not measure up.

Justice is blind, no one is above the law, and take that, Mo Fo!

Fair is fair.

The VP who comes at 5:30 a.m., leaves at 7:45 p.m. and does the work of three distict level employees… give ‘em some love.

The bonehead principal who only has two more years to retirement and is playing out the string trying just not to cause any waves nor expend too much effort.

Meet your maker!

This game is gettin’ fun now, huh? Suddenly, everyone is accountable and teachers can’t be the only ones demonized with data.

Multiples measures for measuring teacher effectiveness will continue tomorrow… post is growing too long.