Is Our Children Learning?

Four Lessons from This Week: February 17th

2012-02-18T14:45:00.004-05:00

Tests Aren't Always Designed for the Right Purpose...
Or used in the way they were designed. Often tests that are meant to diagnose student strengths and needs are being used for accountability. Some claim that their standardized tests can do both - assess students and teachers - but it's a lot more difficult than it sounds.

Shopping at the Mall Can Be a Lot Tougher Than the Corner Store
Class has a big impact on a family's economic, human, social and cultural capital which are instrumental in school selection and therefore school selection. It is not enough to give parents choice, when not all families have the same resources to inform their choices. Thomas Stewart and Patrick Wolf liken the skills needed in the setting of school choice to shopping at a mall instead of a convenience store. There are a lot more options, but it takes a lot of information to best take advantage of them: "Our central argument is a play on the biblical adage that from those to whom much is given, much is expected. In the field of parental school choice, to those from whom much is expected, much needs to be given."

There's a Delicate Balance Between Choice and Structure
In Building a Democratic School we were asked to design a sample student schedule. This was a good way to think about our priorities for teachers and students, and how to establish a schedule that supports those priorities. A lot of us talked about the desire to give students as much freedom and choice in their learning as possible. But a conversation with students from Boston Arts Academy also brought up students' need for a certain level of structure that in fact enables freedom at the same time.

It's Time to Think About Disability in Terms of Variability
Advances in neuroscience are changing our understanding of the way different students learn. This has exciting implications for students we previously thought were out of reach for conventional classrooms, like students with autism. We still have a long ways to go toward understanding these differences and how to capitalize them for learning, but for now it's a step towards shifting our ideas of these students from disabled to differently abled.

Do Successful Schools Need Parent Involvement?

2012-02-15T19:50:00.000-05:00

Presented without comment...for now.

Very curious to hear comments and reactions!

"I'm Normal to Me"

2012-02-14T21:41:00.000-05:00

The theme of this week in UDL is "From Disability to Variability". It's a powerful shift of perception that's so necessary in our society and within our classrooms. Our syllabus asked us to watch this video by a girl with autism who summarizes this view well when she says, "We have special talents." Of course it requires a different outlook and approach to teaching if we want to really optimize the variable talents in our classrooms.

Four Lessons from This Week: February 10

2012-02-10T12:00:00.000-05:00

Making Meaningful Inferences About Test Data is Hard
This quote from the August 16, 2003 edition of the Palm Springs Desert Sun which Dr. Koretz presented to class on Monday illustrates what is common (and wrong) in the way test scores are interpreted:

Coachella Valley Unified School District posted the highest overall percentage gain in the state, with a 33 percent jump in English language arts scores over the past year and a 62 percent increase since 2001.

It's a lot tougher to make valid inferences from test scores than we realize, and it usually involves looking deeper at data by examining scale scores and standard deviations in order to make valid comparisons.

"Ghosts" Need to be Interrogated
Having talked about the presence of "ghosts" at parent-teacher conferences and other meetings, I want to add the importance of interrogating those ghosts as teachers. That is, we need to examine the own experiences and memories we bring to our interactions with students and their parents as well those brought my parents. Ideally this gets us to a place of better understanding and thus, better communication.

There Are a Lot of Ways to Think About a Democratic Classroom
The video I watched of a Central Park East Elementary classroom was an interesting jumping off point for me as I read about different approaches to pedagogy in the classroom. Freire's work in rural Brazil exploring literacy and the meaning of culture was especially fascinating and made me think about applications to a classroom in the Bronx (or Brooklyn, Chicago, Baton Rouge...). All of the readings also challenged me to think about the extent I could or could not create a democratic classroom within a more traditional public school setting. This led to an interesting discussion with members of a panel on Thursday about the workshop model that could be a post unto itself...

Human Beings Weren't Born to Read
It's a rather obvious statement when you think about how recently print came along in in relation to human existence. That said, it's a profound idea when you think about our expectations for every child to be able to read at a certain level by a certain age. Furthermore, it's an idea that says a lot about the powerful plasticity of our brains in general to adapt and reorganize to develop completely new skills. Put simply: "We are, it would seem from the start, genetically poised for breakthroughs."
- Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, 2007

Ghosts at Parent-Teacher Conferences

2012-02-09T12:02:00.003-05:00

Last night in my class on community and family engagement we discussed the "ghosts" that attend parent-teacher conferences. The idea, which comes from Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot's The Essential Conversation, describes the way that parents and teachers bring their own prior experiences and traumas into their interactions.

One story that struck me was about an African-American father who grew up in Detroit, Michigan, but whose son now attends an affluent private school in Seattle. Paul, the father, shares his experience of the humiliation and anger he felt in the sixth-grade when his teacher told his parents he was at a fourth-grade level in math, even though this was not true. He eventually has a chance to show off his skills, and when his teacher reacts with surprise, saying, "Paul has never, ever done these problems before in this classroom," his father replied, "Well, you never challenged him." As he recounts this story, Paul realizes the way it has affected his relationship with his son's teacher, who he feels also doesn't push him hard enough in math.

This story was powerful in its own right, but it reminded me of an experience in my second year of teaching. I was rarely challenged during parent-teacher conferences, but in one case, my student's aunt was very upset about the reading responses I was asking her niece to complete. She didn't feel like the one paragraph summaries her niece was doing were at a high enough level. She showed me the reading response worksheet her own daughter did as evidence.

While I felt defensive in general, and also believed that one paragraph summaries were more authentic and rigorous than answering questions on a worksheet, I realize I was missing a major part of the interaction. How much of this aunt's frustration came from a place of her own experiences in school? Who were her teachers and did they push her enough? In what ways was I letting her niece slip by with subpar work, and repeating the injustice done to her upon the next generation?

In this context, the frustration and passion she communicated were more than understandable, they were restrained. Parent-teacher interactions are challenging for so many reasons. All human relationships come with challenges of communication and perspective. When you recognize the "ghosts" of teachers and parents, you start to see there's a whole new level of complexity right below the surface.

Ending the Deficit Model in the Classroom

2012-02-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

Not long ago I was reading a blog post by a New York City teacher. He intended to show the many challenges students in high-poverty schools face by writing a post from the perspective of one of these students. Unfortunately, the result was a caricature. The imaginary student's home life was an amalgamation of some of the worst stereotypes about children living in the Bronx.

Before coming to Harvard I hadn't learned the language to describe this type of thinking, why it bothers me or the ways in which I perpetuated it my own classroom. However, if there is only one lesson I take away from my short time here, it will be identifying and responding to deficit-based thinking.

The idea that children, schools and communities affected by poverty are little more than a collection of ills and deficiencies is pervasive in education today. The teacher blogger from the Bronx sees his students this way, and sadly he's not alone.

I think about my own time in the classroom. In particular, I think of a student I nicknamed The Scowler. Last year The Scowler was one of my most challenging students, but how much of this was because of my deficit-based approach? He didn't have reading comprehension skills. He didn't have basic numeracy skills. He didn't have a strong work ethic. He didn't have strong self-esteem. In my mind, The Scowler was a combination of weaknesses.

But in reality, this boy was much more than that. He was an incredibly sweet, kind and sensitive kid who cared about other students' feelings. He grew a lot socially from an extremely introverted boy who refused to answer yes or no questions to someone willing to share his ideas, even in math his most terrifying subject. He loved our field trips to museums and he loved food. How might I have reached The Scowler more effectively if I had taken a strength-based approach to teaching, and focused on this latter list of his characteristics rather than the former?

I don't think all educators use deficit-thinking in their classrooms, but I think it's a easy trap to fall into when you're working in an neighborhood affected by poverty. Whether it's the way we view the students, or very often their parents, many educators can't see past what they see missing to see what's there. The result is a perspective that undermines the dignity of students and their families. At the same time this view amplifies feelings of isolation and anxiety, because it makes the work of teaching that much more insurmountable.

In my original view of The Scowler, I felt frustrated and overwhelmed. Had I looked at his strengths I would have seen him as an invaluable partner. Imagine the multiplying effect of seeing every student and family in this way?

There are a lot of ways deficit-based thinking affects our overall educational ecosystem. But that isn't to say teachers and schools cannot control our own view of our students, their families and their communities. Rather than being blinded by inadequacies that weaken our classrooms, we can see the power they have to make our work stronger.

We All Know Why We're Here

2012-02-06T22:01:00.000-05:00

For Building a Democratic School the syllabus asks us to watch this documentary about Central Park East Elementary, a progressive school founded by Deborah Meier. At the time the documentary was shot, the school served a diverse group of students, including kids from East Harlem. One mother, a teacher at a traditional school, comments, "A lot of people are afraid that oppressed kids need discipline and a traditional classroom, and I think that's bull."

Deborah Meier - We All Know Why We're Here from Gary Stager on Vimeo.

Four Lessons from This Week: February 3

2012-02-03T11:20:00.001-05:00

Setting Standards Isn't So Different From Making Sausage
According to Dan Koretz, you probably won't feel very good about how it's done. It's rarely a good sign when a process is defended as arbitrary, but not capricious. We learned about a number of different methods districts and states use to set performance standards, and disturbingly, they all produce very different results.

There's a Lot of Research to Support Community-Family Engagement
It seems very easy schools, organizations and leaders to pay lip service to the importance of community and family engagement. It seems equally easy for others to dismiss these as "touchy-feely" ideas with little practical application, but to do so is to ignore a growing body of research - qualitative and quantitative - that shows that improving parental involvement has real effects on student learning. In fact, those dedicated to improving schools should recognize that doing so requires parental involvement.

Another Way to Think About 'Vision' is a 'Unifying Framework'
"The 'new initiative every year' model doesn't work. Teachers need to be involved in articulating the framework, and a school must be willing to commit to the implementation of the framework over the long haul. Finally, I would argue that schools without a unifying framework still have an unspoken one - a defacto assumption of what this school is about.... To honestly answer the question 'What does your school stand for?' takes a willingness to ask again and again how your practices are improving, what students know and can do, and how day to day realities in the classroom match the ideals you have articulated." - The Hardest Questions Aren't on the Test, Linda Nathan, 2009

There's a Lot Education Can Learn from Neuroscience
In some ways, neuroscience just supports a lot of practices that are already popular. Differentiation is basically another way of thinking about Universal Design for Learning. At the same time, I feel like neuroscience adds another layer to this type of instruction by providing a scientific rationale for providing multiple representations of content, multiple ways for students to express ideas and multiple ways to engage. This quote from Teaching Every Child in the Digital Age, by David Rose and Anne Meyer explaining the way strategic processes are distributed is a good example:

Different layers of an action are added on at the same time and mutually influence one another. For this reason, skill instruction is often more effective when the various components of the process are learned simultaneously rather than one at a time (Gopher, 1996). Thus, a tennis instructor may model the whole serve and encourage the learner to try it out, only analyzing individual steps (ball toss, backswing, step forward, swing, and follow-through) when particular aspects must be corrected. Likewise, each subcomponent of a task like writing an essay makes the most sense to our students if it is taught in the context of the whole task.

Learning About Learning: Professors as Role Models

2012-02-02T15:02:00.000-05:00

There's something very special about being a student again after being in the classroom, in a school of education, no less. It gives you a lot of time to think about "good teaching" in its many forms. I'm always impressed by the professors who manage to lead student-centered learning when lectures have clearly been the dominant norm. Last night, in a lecture hall with 80-something students, the class was buzzing as we worked over slogans and campaign ideas that would promote the power parent engagement at all ages.

I've also recently noticed the way a couple of professors have brought their own narratives into their teaching. This is a technique I never really thought about consciously until it was advocated and modeled by Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot last semester. Last night I admired the way my professor Karen Mapp brought her own stories into the discussion a number of times. She didn't do it in a way to make the class about her, but as vivid illustrations of the content, in this case the power of family involvement in shaping student success.

Again today, I read a book by another professor, Linda Nathan, and was equally impressed by her candor and ownership of a past mistake. As she talked about a missed opportunity to address homophobia in her school, it was clear she felt passionately about this issue, and felt regret over her failure.

My professors' use of student-centered learning and their own narratives have provided inspiring models for my own teaching. My experiences at HGSE thus far also prompted a simple and exciting revelation in the middle of last night's class: I haven't had this much fun learning since I was in third grade. While I'm sad it will be over so quickly, I am more excited to be a part of this learning community while I can.

Looking Beyond What Works "Just Fine"

2012-01-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

Yesterday in Dan Koretz's educational testing course we were talking about test scales: how they're set, what scales do and don't mean, and the misinterpretations often drawn from them. As an example we were looking at the SAT and GRE scales and in passing Dr. Koretz made a comment about the kinds of scores those of us in the class likely earned to be sitting there. I thought about my own scores and general experiences with the SAT and GRE and standardized tests in general, and a reading from another course, Building a Democratic School, came to mind.

In the introduction to her book, The Hardest Questions Aren't on the Test, Linda Nathan describes leading a tour of Boston Arts Academy for leaders from another school. One of the members of the tour talks about resistance to developing small learning communities at their school:

"'They just aren't convinced that small makes a difference in high school. And to be honest, neither are some of us. I went to a big high school and it was just fine.'

To me, this teacher had hit on the essence of what makes changing schools so difficult. Most teachers become teachers because they did well in school. The system worked for them: it worked 'just fine.' How can teachers truly grapple with different approaches than those they experienced as a student?"

This thinking could easily be expanded to include current and aspiring policymakers dealing with education today. It's difficult to get in a position of authority without at some point having success with standardized tests. It's fair to assume that those of us at Harvard, in state and local education departments, and leading organizations like TNTP and TFA have generally done quite well on these tests.

To what extent does this contribute to a blind faith in testing-based accountability? It's often very easy to project your own experiences as common and it's difficult to see the flaws in a system that served you just fine. Finding a way to set aside these experiences and assumptions is vital then to figuring out a system that serves everyone well.

Four Lessons From This Week: January 27

2012-01-27T17:53:00.000-05:00

In an effort to hold myself more accountable to my writing, and to reflect more often on my learning, I'm going to try to write at least once a week about what I'm learning. Here's my first attempt. Questions and comments are always appreciated!

Testing Forces Us to Make Choices
Designing a test inherently involves choosing a subset from a larger domain of knowledge. It's impossible to test everything, even once you've narrowed your curriculum to a set of standards. New York's recent math exams provide an extreme example as half of the test items assessed only a dozen standards. These decisions to narrow what is assessed, coupled with attaching the test to high stakes leads to interesting results:

In Family-School Partnerships, Assumptions Matter
After reading a few perspectives on the importance of parents in education (here, here and here) our class discussed the various roles expected of parents. We generated a list of over 20 roles including protector, advocate, nurturer, disciplinarian, and partner in learning. Then we listed the various efforts to push or support parents in fulfilling these roles. Finally we generated another list of the assumptions these roles and efforts are based upon. These assumptions, some positive, but many negative, can be explicit, but are often subtle and always powerful in shaping our ideas of parent roles. Some assumptions that resonated with me were that parents are literate, that teachers know better than parents, that the deficit is in the home rather than the school, and that parents trust the school. Finding a way past these assumptions to recognize the diverse strengths and needs of parents has to be a prerequisite of a positive home-school relationship.

In Ed Reform, Those Who Forget History...
"Although many groups have entered school politics, especially in the protest movements of the last half century, this pluralism is misleading. The politics of education has not been conducted on a level playing field. Policy elites - people who managed the economy, who had privileged access to the media and to political officials, who controlled foundations, who were educational leaders in the universities and in city and state superintendencies, and who redesigned and led organizations of many kinds - gained a disproportionate authority over educational reform."
- Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform, 1995, David Tyack & Larry Cuban

Reaching the Needs of Diverse Learners Can Help Us Reach the Needs of All Students
"The needs of diverse learners who have until now been disenfranchised in a print- centric world can drive us to discover, develop, and apply the astonishing power of new media to expand educational opportunities. Learning is supported and facilitated by the interaction between the learner and the curriculum. When that support and facilitation is missing, “learning disabilities” arise. If the curriculum can be flexibly designed, it can meet more learners where they need to be met. It can challenge and support the vast variety of needs, skills, and interests arrayed in a diverse classroom....

Designs that increase accessibility for individuals with disabilities— those who are typically “in the margins”—tend to yield benefits that make everyone’s experience better."

- The Future is in the Margins, 2000, Anne Meyer, Ed.D., and David Rose, Ed.D.,

Connecting the Dots: What Does it All Mean?

2012-01-26T12:00:00.000-05:00

In a way my coursework at Harvard has felt very therapeutic. Just having time to think and reflect on my teaching and education in general has been a positive experience, but at the same time my classes have helped me think about specific aspects of my experience in the classroom.

My course on Teacher Quality helped place my own experiences with training, induction, mentoring, and evaluation into the larger context of national trends in education policy. Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Learning helped me think about missed opportunities for leadership in my own classroom, my schools and New York City's entire school system. Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot's class, Ecology of Education, helped me think about the role my own identity and culture played in my teaching.

As I've read, discussed and reflected upon different areas of education at times it's been frustrating and at other times cathartic. Sometimes I've found it difficult to concentrate on my reading as my mind drifts to my own experiences, but ultimately I've benefited from the opportunity to connect the various challenges of teaching to one another and to the bigger picture of education.

It's fitting then that this last semester one of my classes focuses on the topic that dominated much of my teaching for four years: testing. Testing took over my instruction. Testing loomed over my evaluations and tenure process. Testing cast a shadow over my feelings of self efficacy.

So, it's about time I got to the bottom of it all. What's the point of testing? What can tests tell us and what can't tests tell us? What about the tests we used in New York City in particular? To use the language Dr. Koretz is teaching us, were these tests "valid" or "reliable"? Perhaps if I can answer these questions I can answer some final lingering questions about my time in the classroom.

What I've Learned and What I'm Learning Next

2012-01-24T16:46:00.001-05:00

So it's almost February? 2012? Whoops.

December flew by. Finals, a trip home to California and an amazing week in New York City. January hit and I took two intensive courses as part of Harvard's J-term.

The courses were Leadership for Instructional Improvement and Designing Effective School and Community Interventions for At-Risk Children. They were great complements to one another, helping me think about what schools can and cannot do to impact learning. The first class helped me think about what is called the instructional core, the intersecting relationship between a teacher, a student and the content. Any reform that hopes to change schools for the better must keep this core in the center. It's an idea I alluded to in my last post, but one that has gained a lot of clarity thanks to my J-term learning.

The course on interventions for at-risk children taught me a great deal about risk and resilience and the many factors beyond a school's control. This was an important course for me, because its content strikes right at the center of the debate surrounding education reform right now. Can we expect schools to overcome the effects of poverty? Or is ameliorating the effects of poverty a prerequisite to educational success? The answer is more complicated than most people seem willing to accept.

Schools and quality instruction can be powerful factors in building resilience in young people. In fact, the presence of a caring, supportive adult (yes, even a teacher) in a young person's life is the single most powerful factor in developing resilience. That said, there are a lot of factors outside of the classroom that are vital to healthy psychological, social and cognitive development. Schools cannot do this work alone, but neither are they powerless to help children living in poverty. Unfortunately that kind of nuance isn't popular or common in the education reform debate.

Once J-term ended it was time to pick classes for my second and final (!) semester. The kid in a candy metaphor was thrown around a few times when we first got here, and it's all too true. I had about a dozen classes I was interested in for the spring, not including classes offered at the Kennedy School or the Business School.

After a lot of thought I opted to stick to ed school classes, rather than taking a business school class just for the sake of taking a business school class. We've just started our first week of the semester, but I'm already incredibly excited for the learning ahead of me. I'm enrolled in four classes:

Understanding Educational Testing with Dan Koretz
The Why, What and How of School Family Partnerships with Karen Mapp
Building a Democratic School with Linda Nathan
Universal Design for Learning: Meeting the Challenge of Individual Differences with David Rose

Each of my professors is an expert in their field. Each of them have literally written the book on the topic of their course. It's hard not to feel like I'm missing out when I'm only taking four courses, but at the same time I cannot wait to dive into the content of the four classes I am taking.

Hopefully I'll do a little bit better sharing it this semester.

If I Forget You...Keeping the Classroom at the Center

2011-12-01T12:00:00.000-05:00

Last week I had the opportunity to visit my old school and spend some time with my students from the last two years of my teaching. It was a great day. The excitement and joy of the kids was truly overwhelming.

At the end of the day one of my students, a heartbreakingly adorable girl whose thick Spanish accent is slowly lightening up, told me that one of her former classmates is "mean now". We talked briefly about this before we had to go our separate ways. Although it was a small moment in the course of the day, it sticks out in my mind now as a reminder of the profoundly multifaceted world of children.

It stands out now in stark contrast to the relatively simple, safe environment of my college classrooms. Today in my class on teacher quality we simulated a panel on teacher pay structure for the Rochester City School District. We clearly grappled with the intricacies of teacher pay as we weighed different benefits and costs, and the concerns of different stakeholders. Nonetheless, the exercise felt incredibly uncomplicated compared to the ecosystem I used to share with 25 - 30 children. This disconnect is one I am constantly aware of and working to bridge as I prepare for my transition from the theory of education reform to its practice.

Earlier in the day during that same visit to PS 310 I received a note from one of my old students. It was a short thank you note, but I was deeply moved by the innocence and sincerity of its tone. For some reason as I read the note my mind flashed to a phrase from a Hebrew psalm, "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!" Those words, "If I forget you," were unshakable. Just as Jerusalem is at the heart of the Jewish faith, so must the classroom and the kids within it remain central to my work in education. If I forget that, I need to find a new line of work.

Solving the big problems of education is certainly difficult. I am grateful to have the time and space away from teaching this year to study, think and discuss the questions of how to build a better system. At the same time, I am consistently thinking about the distance between my work at Harvard and the work I did in the classroom. The classroom is where the solving of the big problems will eventually take place, and as my short visit reminded me, there are countless variables that are often hard to remember from afar.

In several of my courses we have discussed the concept of the instructional core. Essentially it is the idea that at the center of the framework for all successful education systems is a successful relationship between teachers and students. While the ideas for education reform may originate in universities or district offices, this idea can't be ignored. The teacher-student interaction is remarkably complex, but it is the nexus of educational transformation. It's vital education leaders never forget that.

Climbing the Summit: How is Ed Reform Like Everest?

2011-11-29T17:03:00.001-05:00

I've really been enjoying the Learning module of Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Learning. Last week our class studied a case that was very different from our others in terms of its setting, challenges and lessons. The case told the story of the 1996 Mount Everest climbing disaster. We were asked as usual to diagnose what happened and what could have gone differently. We were also asked to think about what lessons we might take away for education leadership.

There were a number of fascinating comments from my classmates. One drew a parallel between the work of the death of a guide and the burnout of many principals. The need for leaders to take care of themselves in order to make the work sustainable was a clear lesson for him. Another classmate touched upon the climbing teams' "all or nothing" approach to climbing the summit, with no intermediate benchmarks or opportunities for celebration.

What struck me most about the case was the enormousness of the undertaking and the lack of respect or humility from many of the climbers, including the guides. At several points in the case, experience was outright dismissed. As long as climbers were reasonably fit and stuck to a few smart rules, nothing could go wrong. Unfortunately, eight deaths stand as a tragic counterpoint to that thinking.

In education reform, our work is no less daunting than scaling Mount Everest. When we attempt to change at the disparity in educational opportunities in this country, we are looking at a problem created by decades of structural and cultural ills. This isn't to say the challenge is not worth our effort. Like Everest, a certain level of foolhardiness is essential to avoid hopelessness.

That said, I worry that many of us at Harvard, myself included, don't fully respect the size of the work in front of us. Like many of the climbers who believed that their money and relative fitness were enough to get them to the top of Everest, some of us mistake our future Harvard diplomas as sufficient credentials to found the school or the non-profit or social enterprise that will solve the education crisis in this country. I worry about where this thinking will take us.

I have no doubt that there is more than enough talent at this school to solve some of education's most intractable problems. Nor do I doubt that Harvard is giving us invaluable skills and helping us form a powerful network to effect change. I could not be more excited to use these tools when I leave here. However, as I commit myself to the challenge of giving a quality education to all children I don't want to lose sight of the immensity of this work.

What Does Taco Bell NOT Have to Do With Education?

2011-11-09T16:30:00.000-05:00

While there are a few lessons I think the education system could learn from my Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Learning course's case study of Taco Bell from 1983 - 1999, there are definitely some parallels that should be avoided. While the changes implemented by then-CEO John Martin helped transform Taco Bell from a regional restaurant to a global brand, they don't all fit so well with the education.

The first is Taco Bell's shift from a made to order production model toward assembly line and eventually pre-made production. Translating this to education is a scary thought, and unfortunately not that difficult to imagine in schools today. Schooling in the original 'made to order' model would be truly differentiated, focused on the needs and preferences of individual students. Schooling that follows the current Taco Bell would be prepackaged in order to maximize efficiency over all else. Looking back on the number of Kaplan, Harcourt, Scholastic and Mcgraw-Hill products my schools used during my teaching, it's easy to say that education has adopted this model already, and not to the benefit of students or teachers.

Another problem with the Taco Bell model would be Martin's decision to start hiring managers from outside the fast food industry. Martin started looking to MBA programs with a focus on leadership skills, then worked to acclimate these individuals to the fast food industry through their orientation. Within education, I see this trend already occurring, and I find it troubling.

While a lot of people, including some of my classmates at HGSE, believe education needs "true leadership" regardless of background, I reject this argument. Cathie Black may be too easy a target, but I think her short tenure illustrates the dangers of putting a leader in place with no understanding of the day to day work of teaching and learning. Schooling cannot be understood as easily as a Taco Bell kitchen, and to put someone in charge of this work without real appreciation for the complexity of it is a risky idea.

There are a lot of lessons that can be learned by educators from outside the system. But analogies always have their limits. Unfortunately it seems like education today has more negative parallels with Taco Bell than positive.

What Does Taco Bell Have to Do With Education?

2011-11-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Last week my Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Learning class entered the Learning module with a case on Taco Bell. Taco Bell might seem like an odd subject for a case study for a class in the ed school, but it wasn't the first out of sector case we've looked at this semester. Dr. Higgins was very clear that we wouldn't be sticking to ed sector cases this semester, calling herself an 'agnostic', and true to form we've looked at cases from school districts, non-profits, small businesses and large corporations. Still, the number of lessons that can be applied from the Taco Bell case to education today was a little surprising.

To begin Taco Bell's growth from a regional restaurant to a fast food giant, the CEO shifted the focus of the company toward the customers. This seems like an obvious idea, but it seems overlooked in education. To be fair, singling out schools' customers may be trickier than a fast food restaurant's. But you'd have to concede that parents and students are chief among them, and you'd be hard pressed to find examples of school systems incorporating their ideas and concerns into their strategy. More often, rather than serving the 'customers', schools serve the adults within the system and the system itself.

One of the biggest lessons I would like to see education take from the Taco Bell case however, was the way former CEO John Martin continually adapted the strategy to place an emphasis on developing human capital in order to meet the needs of the customers. At the beginning of the case, in 1983, Taco Bell's had a rigid management structure of Restaurant Managers and District Managers whose main role was to enforce company-wide standards. This should sound eerily similar to the work of many assistant principals and principals in our schools.

Martin recognized that this structure wasn't working and redesigned the role of management to focus on leadership skills and coaching. In turn, he set up a system that put information and decision-making in the hands of the employees on the front lines. By empowering the workers who were working firsthand with the customers, Martin improved the work environment which improved outcomes for the customers.

Thinking broadly about this strategy (obviously, as Dr. Higgins pointed out, 'Children are not tacos') it would be exciting to see this model applied to education. What if principals and assistant principals were asked to focus on development and coaching, rather than compliance? What if teachers, the ones working closest with children and their parents, were given the autonomy to make decisions about their work? Today it seems teachers are shouldered with all of the accountability, but zero decision-making power. If ed reformers are so intent on adapting business strategies to education they could do worse than looking to the lessons of Taco Bell.

Teaching Down: The Culture of Poverty and the Classroom

2011-11-07T13:19:00.000-05:00

Last week Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot gave one of my favorite lectures so far for our class Ecology of Education. The course presents a sociological perspective on schooling, and in that way it is a nice complement and counterbalance to my other classes which are more "skills-based". In her lecture, Dr. Lawrence-Lightfoot's lecture discussed the culture of poverty literature and the subsequent pushback in sociological research and literature.

Dr. Lawrence-Lightfoot discussed the way sociologists "studied down" toward their subjects. Often times they took a pathological approach, looking to diagnose the social ills of their poorer (and often darker-skinned) subjects. This perspective is also known as a deficit model, looking at the flaws, failures and weaknesses of a group, rather than their strengths.

Not long ago, The New York Times discussed the return of the culture of poverty in social research. What struck me about Dr. Lawrence-Lightfoot's lecture, however was the parallels I found in education and my own teaching.

It seems to me that the culture of poverty permeates a lot of education reform efforts beginning with the nomenclature of the major challenge in education today, the achievement gap. Dr. Lawrence-Lightfoot touched on this idea as well in a discussion with my section. As someone who has dedicated myself to closing the achievement gap, it was unsettling to make the connection between this phrase and the underlying implications about the children whom it addresses. I wonder how we might better discuss educational inequality in a way that doesn't stigmatize entire populations of children.

Beyond this somewhat abstract problem with semantics, there is a broader pattern in education reform that seems to follow a deficit model of thinking. Again and again we hear about what poor children lack. Again and again we hear about the way in which their families and communities fail them. Again and again we hear about what "we", the privileged few, can offer to these communities. However positive the intentions for these children, this approach seems fundamentally flawed in its failure to account for and engage the existing strengths of these communities.

Finally, I thought of my own experiences as a teacher. I remembered co-workers who made disparaging comments about parents and students. I also recognized my own culpability as a young teacher who bought into the 'hero myth' propagated by Hollywood and society at large. While I always attempted to show respect for the community around my schools, I still fell victim to culture of poverty thinking in my own way.

As a fresh faced college graduate I thought I was the sole key to my children's success. All they needed, in my naive and idealistic assessment, was a passionate, caring, intelligent young teacher who would help them overcome the obstacles of the "inner city". As Dr. Lawrence-Lightfoot explained in a conversation with my section, this thinking may entail good intentions, but it is no less a manifestation of the culture of poverty. Like the sociologists who embedded themselves in the 'black ghetto' I was also adopting this perspective as a teacher. I was teaching down.

Thankfully I do not think that I held on to this superhero myth for long in my teaching. I think my first year of teaching gave me the maturity and humility to better understand what I could and could not do as a teacher. Throughout that first year and beyond I learned the immeasurable value of my students backgrounds, experiences and families as resources for our learning. This is a powerful shift that I don't think I felt or recognized explicitly until this recent lecture helped me to make the connection between the culture of poverty and my own false assumptions.

Moving forward, I think that education can make some important changes to better serve the children we all want to help. At the macro level there needs to be a shift in the way we look at poor communities. On a more practical level, I think that teaching programs, especially those that rely on high achieving college graduates like Teaching Fellows and TFA, need a stronger and more explicit emphasis on cultural awareness. These teachers have a lot to offer, but they should be taught to respect, appreciate and leverage the strengths of the communities they enter.

The culture of poverty can be subtle, but it is powerful. If we are serious about using education to change communities, we need to also change the way we view these communities.

Midterm Reflection

2011-10-20T15:31:00.002-04:00

I regret not having the time or energy to blog about my experiences at Harvard so far. Writing was an integral part of my reflection process for teaching - part catharsis and part problem solving. I think it could serve an equally valuable purpose for my coursework. I can't promise I'll start posting more often, but I will try, starting with a brief overview of my thoughts so far...

Much of my coursework and my thinking over the past eight weeks has focused on leadership. This shouldn't surprise me, since one of my courses has the word leadership in its title. Still, I find this theme reappearing in my Education Sector Non-Profits class as well as Pursuing Teacher Quality. The question of what makes a good leader intrigues me, because I think there's such a dire need for leadership in education right now. I certainly didn't witness much of it at any level during my time in the classroom.

While my classes have presented a number of different models and approaches to leadership, one constant seems to be a need for a clear vision. It sounds ridiculously obvious and simple, but looking back on my experience in the Bronx, there was a shocking absence of vision. At the school level, too few principals articulate a clear and inspirational vision for what teachers and students should be accomplishing. Yes, every school is required to have a mission statement, but it is rare for schools to translate this from a superficial document into meaningful action that pulls a school together toward a collective purpose.

If vision was missing at the school level, it was even more absent from the DOE at the level where it's arguably more vital. Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein spoke constantly about the need to close the achievement gap, lower drop-out rates and raise graduation rates. Their approach was clearly focused on data-driven results and greater accountability for schools and teachers (not so much for themselves). But this speaks to their strategies, it does not lay out a vision, or at least not one that a communities, students, teachers and school leaders can passionately rally behind.

As I've thought about my own teaching, I wonder if I laid out a vision for myself and my students. I know that my driving goal was to prepare my students to pursue whatever path they chose. I wanted to give them the academic and social-emotional skills to succeed against all obstacles. Underlying these ideas was the hope that my students would become lifelong learners, critical thinkers who loved the pursuit of knowledge. Sounds nice, right?

But to what extent did I express this to my students, parents, or myself? I know I tried at times, but I wish I had done so more explicitly and consistently. Perhaps it would have made the learning more powerful for my students. It could have helped engage parents. It may have helped keep me focus when I felt discouraged by seemingly endless test-prep or other frustrations.

Vision can certainly seem like an abstract, even unimportant, component of school reform. If you discuss the day to day challenges of teaching, it's more likely you'll hear about resources or academic support. These aren't unimportant, but attacking these problems at their roots requires stronger leadership, and while there's a number of factors involved in that, a clear vision is the foundation. It's a shame it is so hard to find in our leaders today.

Who Would You Rather Work For?

2011-09-30T14:31:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite courses is titled Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Learning. Toward the end of our first module we learned about Jan Carlzon, former head of Scandinavian Air Systems.

Jan Carlzon saw SAS through the oil crisis and helped the company reach record profits in a time of market stagnation. This interview gives a sense of his leadership philosophy and style.

Frank Borman addressed his workers on a Sunday evening 1983 as Easter Airlines faced a major crisis.

How many of our school leaders are like Jan and how many are like Frank? I know that in my short time I saw a lot more of Frank's style, from principals all the way up to the Mayor. I wonder what our schools might be like if we had leaders who sought to create buy-in from their teachers and other employees, empower them to make decisions, and "flatten the pyramid" as Carlzon did.

Academic Honesty in the Ed Reform Debate

2011-09-13T22:15:00.003-04:00

It seems like I'll be writing a lot about Susan Moore Johnson this semester. Another reaction I had to my first class with her last Wednesday was to a simple, but well-worn statement she made.

"Teachers are the single most important school-based factor on student achievement as measured by standardized tests."

This sentence isn't particularly extraordinary, but I chose to highlight a few words that carry profound truths, often overlooked in our current conversation about education debate. I chose to emphasize them, because Susan Moore Johnson is someone who through her research and her associations could be considered pro-reform. And yet, as a professor she makes certain to make evidence-based claims in class. It's frustrating this honesty rarely carries over to the broader discourse on education reform.

Instead, what we're getting from both sides are abridgements and misinterpretations of the basic statement above, and many others. This isn't unique to the discussion of education reform obviously. Pundits and policymakers are always looking for the most effective way to make their argument, usually at the expense of nuance. However this dishonesty is having an impact that is both polarizing and counterproductive.

Take away those bold words and this is the statement we're left with: "Teachers are the single most important factor on student achievement." It's not just simplistic, it creates a false framework for fixing our schools. Instead of talking about all the factors that need to be addressed to improve educational equality - parenting, peer culture, community support, and yes, teachers - we've let the teachers become the sole focus of reform.

Admittedly, teachers are the "low hanging fruit" of reform. It's easier to "fix" teacher quality than poverty, which explains its appeal to reformers. As a teacher, the emphasis on the importance of teachers was empowering, in a way. Working in two schools that were sometimes frustrating work environments to put it mildly, I liked thinking I had control over what mattered most to my students' success. Other times though, the pressure to be great felt overwhelming. I'll admit I may have bought too heavily into the Superman myth, in the hopes I could close the achievement gap in a single year. But returning to the larger debate, the focus on teacher quality has allowed the debate to devolve into talk of "poverty deniers" and "status quo defenders". And those are the polite labels.

As I start my year in academia, the time to learn more about policy and reflect upon my own practice has been refreshing. Even more so, I appreciate that our discussion of American schools is bound by norms of honesty that seem missing in the larger debate.

Our Narrowing Focus on Teacher Quality

2011-09-07T13:42:00.000-04:00

I'm only in my first full week of classes and I'm already fascinated by some of the coursework. One such class is Pursuing Teacher Quality, taught by Susan Moore Johnson. In preparation for our first class we were asked to read a number of documents that discuss the challenges of American education and their root causes, with a special focus on teachers. Our readings included A Nation at Risk and A Nation Prepared, two seminal reports from the 1980's, but they also included more recent reports from domestic and international policy groups.

I had two main reactions to these readings. The first was just a tremendous excitement to be reading (a lot!) about a topic that I found so interesting. This was exactly what I was looking forward to about my experience at Harvard, the chance to focus entirely on studying and learning about the issues that matter most to be.

The second reaction was one of demoralization. A Nation at Risk didn't provide much in the way of policy prescriptions, but it definitely nailed a lot of what was ailing American education 28 years ago, and sadly, still today.

This was a common thread as I read all of these documents. One the one hand, I felt it reassuring that there was some clarity identifying the myriad of factors affecting teacher quality: recruitment, retention, training, incentives, professional development, autonomy, opportunities for growth and advancement, school supports and structures, salary... On the other hand, I couldn't help feeling frustrated at the virtual lack of progress since these ideas first gained attention.

Here we are, three decades removed from A Nation at Risk, and the words haven't lost any of their relevance or urgency. We find ourselves mired in an economic recession. We are facing growing global competition, and there's a desperate need to move toward a knowledge-based economy. Meanwhile, our students are falling behind at an alarming rate, and seem increasingly unable to perform tasks that require critical thinking.

Unfortunately, the only thing that seems to have changed in response to these challenges is that policymakers have narrowed their focus. There is lip service paid to the need to revitalize our education schools, but little action. There's some discussion of how to better recruit and reward our teachers, but again, little action.

Almost all of the efforts by district, state, and to a certain extent, federal policymakers seems focused on accountability, without an iota of attention expended on the continuum that goes improving the quality of teachers in our classrooms. Some of these changes, like more holistic teacher evaluations, will improve the professionalism of teaching, but not unless we address other fundamental questions. How are we going to change our approach so that we're recruiting the most talented students in our schools, adequately training them, supporting them in the classroom, rewarding them for their efforts, and providing opportunities for growth and leadership?

These aren't new questions. They haven't changed in 30 years, but our approach is getting more confined when it needs to expand.

A Nation At Risk: 28 Years and Counting

2011-09-05T23:42:00.005-04:00

Classes are just getting started, and I'm still getting a handle on the idea of my new job as a student. I'm looking forward to sharing some of my experiences and the connection to my old classroom. In the meantime, I wanted to share this quote from the introduction to A Nation at Risk, a report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, published in 1983:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.

I was struck by the bluntness of the language in the report. It's also disturbing to think that the challenge of education reform has been evident for three decades now and for all the urgency called for in this report, not much progress has been made. Looking forward to comparing this document with several others on the same topic.

Back to School: Learning to Put Down the Duckie

2011-08-26T18:35:00.000-04:00

The last two days I went "course shopping". This is a time when practically all the professors give 40 minute explanations or previews of their courses so that students can make decisions about their schedule. As someone who thought I had my schedule all figured out at the beginning of the week this was exciting and frustrating at the same time, as I suddenly felt doubts about all the classes I wasn't taking. With only two semesters of coursework while I'm here, the stakes feel pretty high for each selection.

That said, the stress of figuring out which courses to take has been far outweighed by the excitement of getting to know my classmates and professors. I have been continually awestruck by the knowledge and experience my professors bring to the classroom. I am equally humbled by the breadth and depth of experience of my fellow students.

In the past few days I met Ron Ferguson, a man who literally wrote the book on closing the achievement gap; I listened to Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot speak, and literally got chills; I sat in on shopping sessions for about a dozen other professors who have in many ways shaped the direction and discourse on education in this country.

What also struck me in the midst of this exciting and overwhelming period is the need for me to stop and prepare to totally open my mind. During orientation's opening ceremony, one of the speakers, Joseph Blatt, mentioned the need for us to "put down the duckie." By this he meant the need for us to shed our biases, our hang-ups and preconceived notions, and open ourselves up to the rich discussions of the year ahead.

Over the past year I have felt pressured to create an ad hoc ideology. Since the publishing of my op-ed in the NY Post, I felt pressured to take stances, sometimes based more on gut reactions to the attacks and assumptions of others, rather than a thorough, well-researched process. This is not a process that leads to the thoughtful formation of lasting, meaningful beliefs.

I am excited then to take a deep breath and "put down the duckie" as I prepare for the year ahead. I am putting down my Educators 4 Excellence duckie. I am putting down my teacher duckie. I am shedding as much as I can about what I think I know for certain, in order to really learn from my professors and peers about the issues that really matter to me. This isn't to say I won't use my experiences to act as a lens to aid my studies, but I am excited to approach my studies with a fresh perspective in order to come to an understanding about what I truly believe.

My New Classroom

2011-08-10T02:56:00.002-04:00

I can still remember a conversation I had with my child psychology professor during my first week of pre-service training for Teaching Fellows in June 2007. She asked me about my plans for teaching, and I responded without hesitation, “I’m only going to do this for two years. Then I’m planning to move on to journalism.” I’m embarrassed now when I think of myself back then.

I had the best of intentions when I entered the Teaching Fellows, but even as I ended my training filled with nervousness and doubt, I had no real appreciation for the challenge ahead of me. At the end of a tumultuous first year, I felt proud I hadn’t quit but deeply regretful about the classroom I’d presided over.

By the end of my second year I felt a much greater sense of pride, but I knew my work wasn’t finished. The ingenuous idealism I felt two years earlier had evaporated. Now that I understood the immensity of the task of teaching, I had no choice to work until I had mastered it.

Now, two years later, I can see that I was still looking at teaching from naive perspective. While I’ve made important gains each of the last two years, it’s become apparent to me that while one may become a “master teacher” over time, the challenge of growing, developing, and improving as an educator never ends. I could dedicate myself over the next year, or next 10 years, and my growth would never be finished.

It’s with mixed emotions, then, that I am preparing for my new classroom, no longer on the third floor of PS 310, but in Longfellow Hall at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education where I will pursue a degree ineducation policy and management.

Early in my time as a teacher I felt a frustrating disconnect between the policymakers handing down mandates from City Hall, Albany, and D.C., and those of us practicing in the classroom. I had been discouraged by a lack of preparation for my first year and a lack of support throughout it. I have been angered by an over emphasis on testing, and at times frustrated by a curriculum (Everyday Math in particular) that seemed ill-fitted for my students. Above all, I remain overwhelmed by the evidence that system is not working for the kids who needed it most.

Over the past four years I’ve gained a greater appreciation for the importance of school leaders in interpreting education policy and carrying it out effectively. With different supervisors during those formative years, I’m not sure I would have experienced those frustrations as acutely.

Meanwhile the past year has given me opportunities to think and write about issues like tenure, layoff policies and teacher evaluations. Still the issues I faced as a first year teacher — preparation and ongoing support, a robust inquiry-based curriculum, and social-emotional supports for students — retain a central place in my thinking as an teacher interested in education policy. Whatever the issues being debated, in four years I’ve still found teachers’ voices startlingly absent from the public discussion on education reform.

I hope that my time at Harvard prepares me to add one more teacher’s voice to this conversation. Through this one-year program I hope to get a better grasp of the technical tools of policy research and analysis and a broader and deeper understanding of what makes some schools and school systems succeed, while others fail. I’m especially interested in the role of teachers, school leaders and district leaders in these successes and failures. I hope to draw on the diverse experiences of the faculty and my fellow students to explore the answers to these questions. My cohort will include other teachers, as well as those with experience in non-profits, district offices and the private sector. I’m most excited to join classmates from all over the world who share my passion for education.

I am nervous and excited to bring my own classroom experiences into a challenging new academic setting. I look forward to connecting my four years of teaching with the academic research and the experiences of my classmates and professors in order to develop a broader perspective on education reform.

It turns out I was wrong when I told my professor my career in education would only last two years. I’m grateful that the challenges of urban education became a enduring passion, rather than a brief line on my resume. Whatever the future of urban education reform, I hope the next year will help me continue to make an impact.