Are we hiding something? Really, are we?

Because let me be the first to call it like it is — when it comes to the conversation about teacher effectiveness, I think I am secretly harboring an inferiority complex about my own deficiencies to do this job of being a teacher… at least to do it in a manner that is beyond reproach.

And I don’t want other people to know about it.

And I certainly do not want this information revealed to my bosses. Why? Because I don’t sense that they are sympathetic to all the challenges, hurdles and generally unreasonable demands that are being placed on me.

Come on, I can’t turn water into wine. And yet, in a way, that’s what I am being asked to do when you take all the mitigating factors into consideration. Amazingly, I do pretty well at it — at times, that is. Let’s just say that some days are way better than others.

However, I certainly don’t feel that “measuring my effectiveness” is going to take all of the “peripheral issues” and “extenuating circumstances” into account and ultimately, I think that politicians are just going to use whatever information they glean from “measuring my effectiveness” to shame me and try to make me worker harder, work longer, and do it all for less money with less resources.

So am I hiding something when it comes to being transparent about measuring my effectiveness as a teacher?

I tell you this, my natural reflex is to want to hide. To want to cover up. To want to close my door and only seek the solace and company and empathy that someone else in like circumstances can understand.

Other teachers get me. Politicians, I feel, do not. Therefore, when they say they want to measure me, I recoil and think, “Up yours, Dude… you are the one who captained this ship to the rocks and now you want to blame the people rowing.”

So, is measuring teacher effectiveness even possible? Well first, for me to really play ball with this whole idea, I am going to have to trust the process.

That is the one of the first “hows” when it comes to measuring teacher effectiveness. The teachers must feel as if we are going to be given a fair shake, we must feel that our evaluations are going to be taken in proper context as opposed to being viewed through myopic, unfair prisms, and we must feel that we have been properly and fairly represented at the table when the rules of what constitutes this measurement is made.

And with NCLB being your latest foray into education policy, you are already starting behind the eight ball buddy. I have emotional baggage right now and let’s be honest, as an educator I am a tarnished, not a clean, slate.

And you are the one who tarnished me. I want to believe — really I do. But fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…

Everyone on the internet has a perspective to sell. Simply put, I don’t believe that there is anything remotely related to objective data being published about our schools right now.

Look too closely at any aspect of things and you are almost assured of detecting bias For example…

Charter schools are the big buzz these days. But are they the magic pill that’s being sold? Of course not. Yet are they commendable in a variety of ways. For sure.

To that end Stanford just put out a report on charters, a pretty sweeping one that is well-summarized in this L.A. Times article.

Now as I state all the time, I think the assessments for all these studies are flawed (i.e. have you heard me holla about bubble tests before?) so I don’t put all that much stock into much of the data I am fed. But it’s certainly interesting to see how people are viewing — and informing others — about what’s going on.

As written, the Los Angeles Times article says, “California charter schools stronger in reading than math.”

But it also could have said…

“Statistics prove charter schools outperform traditional schools.”

Or it could have said…

“For all the hoopla, charter schools only negligibly better.”

Or it could have said…

“Over 33% of charters deliver worse results than traditional schools.”

And each and every headline would have been acceptable (based on the information in the article).

The point is, how the news is framed matters immensely — it’s an activity I do with my students all the time to demonstrate bias in the media — and while this reporter seems to have worked hard to be fair, there is no doubt that through the examples above we can all see that if there’s an axe to grind, data can be easily manipulated to do it.

It’s why Fox News and MSNBC can report on the same story and see two totally different things.

You think our schools don’t do this stuff? Our politicians? NCLB policy wonks? Voucher advocates? Union heads? The ACLU? The NEA?

It’s just amazing the ways in which headlines can be written. So how important is the manner by which information is framed to the perception we take away from the information? I’d suggest it might even be more important than the information itself!

Next time you see numbers on education, see how they’ve been set up and presented. Remember, it matters. It matters a lot.

(NOTE: This post was inspired by a good friend of mine, Dr. Jerry Harvey, who turned me on to a winner of a book called, How to Lie with Statistics.)

More and more attention is being paid to the notion of writing in the 21rst century. This report just came out and it’s got some stuff that is well worth reading. However, the irony that I am posting this on a digital thread on a ning, well… in a way, if you are already reading this, it’s like preaching to the choir.

Having said that, there is no doubt that the world is changing under our pens and keypads. The idea that students in the next era will have to be competent writers using 3,000 words, 300 words, 30 words, 3 words and no words to express their ideas is somewhat of a leaping off point for comprehending both the opportunities and challenges of the era ahead.

Yet, while writing changes, shifts and morphs I am not fearful because the importance of critical thinking rises with these new mediums — instead of diminishing. In my estimation, thinking seems to be more important than ever as weighing, evaluating, synthesizing and applying brain power appears to be more important than ever to the writers and readers of the 21rst century. I mean so many folks are bemoaning the demise of newspapers but it’s not the black ink which smudges on our fingers in a semi-hard to navigate linear, non-interactive transmittal of information in an environmentally unsound paper-wasting business model that people are decrying… what they really fear is the art of real journalism is being supplanted by bloggers who have no training in the art of effectively verifying information. If newspapers die, I am not sure we care. If journalism dies then democracy is at risk. Now on one hand, the first hand twitterers and bloggers who are on the scene at things like the Mumbai bombing provide some of the most insightful information into what happened at the scene of the disaster — so the bloggers and twitterers certainly have their place. On the other hand, if people don’t pay for their news, then the NY TImes, Washington Post and so on, do not pay real journalists to go investigate, illuminate, and communicate the salient facts (i.e. the perpetrators, their motives, the impact on a geo-political scale and so on). Twittering an analysis of the international complications which arise from destabilizing governments through attacking civilians seems as if it might be a bit lightweight. (Huh? 140 characters isn’t enough space to get Kissinger-style insight into the circumstances? You are just so old fashioned, Mr. Alan!)

Now I am not so quick to defend traditional journalism because they let a buffoon like George Dubya pull the wool over our eyes with the whole WMD farce which really cost America… well, I am not going to go there. But traditional, mainstream media drank the kool-aid for the neo-cons who were hell bent on invading Iraq under a cooked up WMD scenario so all the things which I fear traditional journalism is supposed to defend us against and represent is on shaky ground with me. However, if world news devolves to the point that a 15 year with a blog is on equal footing with a pulitzer prize winning Chicago Tribune reporter in terms of disseminating our news, I do feel there is some cause for concern.

So what does 21rst century writing look like? That’s easy — it looks like a lot of things… and it’s evolving. But how do we effectively think about writing — both while we are doing it and when we are reading it? These, seem to me, the real questions.