The Green Cup

Note: It’s nice to have a Secretary of Education with some personality. Arne Duncan makes it easy (for me, at least) to be interested in what going on in his office. That said, I’ll probably start to port somewhat regularly on what the Secretary of Education is doing…

Some red flags were raised this week on the status of special education at the Department of Education. One of the criticisms that emerged when Duncan was appointed to the Ed job was that special education had never really been on his radar during his tenure as head of Chicago’s schools. So people wondered whether that neglect of special education would come with him to DC.

Blogger Mark Miller talked yesterday about Duncan’s speech to the National Press Club on education reform.

In a speech intended to highlight the administration’s education priorities, his 4,720 words did not include “special education,” “special needs,” “disabilities,” or the “Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.” That seems odd to me…

You can watch the hour long video of the speech here.

To be fair, Duncan mentioned IDEA in response to a question after the speech and pointed out that it was receiving “unprecedented money” as part of the stimulus bills.

The slight that special education got in the NPC speech came even as Education Week was already questioning why the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services is still being run by a stand-in. Duncan’s office announced several appointees to major posts within his agency this week, but OSERS wasn’t on the list.

While special education might be a fiscal priority, the question remains: What’s the vision for special education as reform progresses? It’s a question I look forward to seeing answered.

I thought the poll at Edutopia was interesting. The question: Should special-needs students take high school assessment exams? These are exams that, in about half the states, students have to pass to receive a diploma. So far, 21% say “yes” (without any accommodations), 39% say “maybe” (and with accommodations) and 40% say “no.”

In addition to his appearance at the National Press Club, Duncan also went to Chicago this week to participate as a player in the Hoop It Up three-on-three basketball event. The Chicago event is a qualifier tournament. A national championship tournament gets played at the end of the summer, and Duncan’s team has won that national event in three of the last five years…

John Wills Lloyd, Ph.D. (University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education) had an interesting post early this week on the relationship between ADHD meds and achievement in math and reading.

Writing in Pediatrics Richard M. Scheffler and colleagues reported that elementary-aged children who took medication for ADHD had higher mathematics and reading scores than their unmedicated peers with ADHD.

Dr. Lloyd looks briefly at the strengths and flaws of the study. I guessing there will be more to come on this issue (both information and controversy), though research will take time.

I’ve spoken to a number of people recently who are anxious over an event scheduled to take place at our school this summer. Deep Freeze will be installed on all our student-use computers. Faronics describes the impact of Deep Freeze like this:

Faronics Deep Freeze helps eliminate workstation damage and downtime by making computer configurations indestructible. Once Deep Freeze is installed on a workstation, any changes made to the computer—regardless of whether they are accidental or malicious—are never permanent.

The software also prevents you from storing your own files on the computer. Each time you reboot a machine with Deep Freeze on it, the computer comes back on in exactly the same state that it was in when Deep Freeze was loaded. That means that if you save some shortcuts or student work to the desktop of your computer, when you turn it back on tomorrow it just won’t be there…

I don’t think that’s a big deal because I expect us to be saving student work to the cloud very soon. In some cases we are already.

My students use at least two software packages that save their work to the web: PearsonSuccessNet (or reading curriculum’s software) and Writing Road Map 2. Anywhere that the student or I can access the Internet, we can use this software.

With both pieces of software, students can do things in class and I can look at it and evaluate it after I get home. Or (better yet) students can do things at home and I can go over it with them the next day at school. If the need arose, I could even evaluate work students did with these software packages for a substitute while I was away from my classroom.

Pete over at Ed Tech Journey’s took a look recently at the developing trend toward cloud computing in schools. He talks about the advantages and disadvantages and draws the conclusion that we will soon see school systems developing their own private clouds. I think West Virginia is ahead of the curve on this with the development of a virtual desktop for educators it calls WebTop. There are even some social networking applications available with it.

The cloud isn’t the only option. The growth of solid state memory technology has made student flash or jump drives affordable and functional. The problem then becomes one of what to do when a kid looks at you and says “My dog ate my flash drive.”

No one ever lost the cloud. In our life today, it’s just there…

Scott McLeod recently blogged about creating a Twitter group for teachers from his state. It sounded like a good idea, so I ripped it off….

If you’re a West Virginia educator and you Tweet, add yourself to this group, WVTeach, so that other educators in the state can find you. Think of it as part of your personal learning community.

What is the place of students? What is the role of teachers? The questions are reciprocal in the sense that you must have students in order to be a teacher.

Students should be active participants in the learning process. I believe in cooperative learning, in a process where students learn together. And I believe in participatory learning. Education, especially in the early grades, is not about knowledge – facts and figures, dates and names. It is about skills. Students learn the three R’s mostly through exercising, practicing particular skills. You don’t tell someone how to read. You introduce them to the process and allow them to practice it in ways that build strength in it.

Teachers should be expert guides, not bosses or masters. The rigidity of the relationship and the formality of the two roles, student and teacher, will vary from subject area to subject area and from grade to grade. The idea that we can make generalizations about kindergarten classroom relationships that will still hold true in the tenth grade is probably a naïve desire to oversimplify theory and philosophy.

If I must generalize about teaching situations in a subjunctive mode, I’d prefer a student-centered classroom where the teacher aids in the discovery process (not in construction of “reality,” since reality is already here and is pretty real without the help of my students) and where the teacher acts as a coach in the development of skills. I’d prefer a classroom where the students felt as few restrictions as possible within the requirements of the learning process. And I’d prefer a classroom where learning, not teaching, was the central focus.

The higher the student-teacher ratio, the less like this a classroom becomes. And in my mind the single biggest factor in the quality of education and the success of the educational process is the most expensive factor – personnel. We can tinker with curriculum. We can alter pedagogy. We can think of new ways to measure success (and accountability). We can require that the one teacher we have (in a room where two are needed) be better trained. And in a changing world, teachers need a continuing stream of professional development opportunities. But the solution that is most likely to work is the solution that no one wants to pay for: more teachers per school.

Three basic educational approaches competed in the second half of the 20th century to shape our views on WHAT we should teach and HOW we should teach it. Those apporaches were:

• Perennialism – a teacher-centered philosophy that focuses on “great books” the hope of impart the culture’s enduring themes to students. The goal is to develop the ability for rational thought in students.
• Essentialism – a teacher-centered, back-to-basics approach to education that stresses the three R’s and emphasizes the remembering of facts.
• Progressivism – a student-centered philosophy that attempts to interact with the real-world concerns and experiences of students. Classrooms are more democratic in governance and learning is more participatory and experimental than in either Essentialism or Perennialism.

  Most teachers tend to be eclectic – they draw from more than one of these approaches. And I fall into that same category; I’m an eclectic, I suppose.

  Adjectives serve as better answers than do nouns in describing what the curriculum of education should be like. The content of the curriculum should be flexible, responsive to the changes of society. The content of the curriculum should be sympathetic to the values and limitations of the students. My own experience leads me to believe that every life is richer if the individual has read Kafka and Steinbeck, Aeschylus and Blake, Camus and Hemmingway. But I view the Great Books approach to education today as more of a misguided effort to preserve a cultural timeframe than anything else – to halt (or at least slow) cultural change.

  I believe that reading (and literacy) is essential; it is the medium of later instruction. To the extent that an emphasis on basic skills has become exclusive, to the extent that a concern with math and language skills has crowded out social studies, music and the arts, the emphasis on basic skills has become a destructive force. But kids who show up at school should learn to read. And as much as I hate to agree with George W. Bush about anything, they should learn to read early. They should learn to do arithmetic and they should be exposed early to more abstract forms of math. They should be introduced to the various formal genres of language – to poetry and letter writing, the short story and the novel. When Piaget allows, they should be introduced to epistemology and taught to ask “but how do I know that.” And of course they should be given an understanding in social studies classes of how our society works (civics) and why (history). And there is science. But none of these core classes should be allowed to displace completely the arts. And an understanding of the importance of the role of creativity in fields like math and grammar needs to be maintained.

  Finally, schools have to teach values. They should make students aware of thier community’s values and they should be sure students understand that alternative to those values exist and must be tolerated in a democracy.

  Curriculum must be viewed in terms of culture and values. It must also impart essential knowledge and skills. And it must keep up with change in the larger society.

Before a child is taught anything in school, the school system provides a service that is indispensable: it ensures that the child has been inoculated against diphtheria. And tetanus. And whooping cough, measles, rubella, polio, and a few other things.

Through the various carrots and sticks available to society from universal schooling, public health in America has been greatly advanced in the last century; I can’t think of a more reasonable agency to carry out this service. The decline of child mortality in America that has resulted from every parent knowing that eventually they’ll have to produce that shot record at the door of a school house may by itself be make the cost of schooling in America worthwhile.

Without establishing a timeline for what services (or mandates) entered the public school system at what point in time, I tend to just push the blame for all of them off on Lyndon Johnson. He started the modern trend, at least, of providing services that were not directly educational in nature. Among my favorite is free and reduced lunch. It serves society (and students) with a safeguard against poverty. Children are disproportionately impacted by poverty. The free and reduced lunch program has served to keep large parts of America from turning into scenes from a Charles Dickens novel. And the school system has been the tool society used to achieve that.

Another example has to do with the treatment of people with disabilities in our society. Forty year ago America may have been far above much of the world in the treatment of disabled individuals; but families were still largely on their own in dealing with and supporting their disabled members. Today, disability laws in America require that children with disabilities be sought out early during the preschool years, and that services be provided under many circumstances to families with disabled children. This is part of the reason the life expectancy of a person with Down’s Syndrome has more than doubled in the last few decades. And it is the public school system that at least seeks out and identifies the children with disabilities and, often, provides the actual services. The quality of life for the retarded, the hearing impaired, the visually impaired, and those with other disabilities has been greatly improved as a result. That safeguard against neglect of the disabled is part of what makes us a civilized society.

Some socialization also takes place, and I would argue that much of the weight of socialization in American society falls upon the public school system. It is where kids learn to stand in line in the cafeteria the way they will have to stand in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles of the Post Office later in life. It is where they learn that you can’t hit people just for what they say (even if your father says you can). It is where they learn not to steal, not to bite, how to act in groups, and how to relate to authority. Schools serve as an experimental playground of social actiivism and civic responsibility and development more fully the idea of citizenship. Schools partner with the home in the porcess of socialization.

Of course, some of the safeguards provided by the school system are in fact educational, or academic, in nature. The school system should infuse a minimal level of literacy and math skills into all the children who come through its doors. And there are economic safeguards – the hope that schooling will provide employability skills to the majority of students.

Society currently disagrees about what that minimal level of literacy is; perhaps there has never been a consensus – just an idea. And the employability skills need to survive in society are rapidly changing. It becomes easy to lose sight of the many other things the school system does with success when the educational goals become difficult to measure. Parhaps we should start with its role in helping to rid America of polio – and work from there.

(Note: This series on the philosophy of education is something I’ve published elsewhere. Here it is updated, though only slightly…)

A philosophy of education should include discussion of several basic components. Central issues should include the purpose of education, the nature of the curriculum, the place of students, and the role of teachers.

Education in America has no purpose – at least no one, singular, canonical purpose. The purposes of education are multiple and interwoven. Those purposes change with time and politics, with age, with environment, and the with peculiarities of individual students so that even within a specific classroom the primary purpose of schooling for this child may be one thing and the primary purpose for that child may be yet another. In the case of any given child, the parents’ purposes for sending the child to school may differ significantly from the purposes of the educational agency requiring the child’s presence. And in as much as the provision of educational services is a joint venture that usually involves funding and policy initiatives from at least three different government agencies (a local city or county, a state, and the federal government) the purposes of the various agencies taking part in this partnership may vary significantly, or even be at odds.

For all parties involved, the purposes of education change significantly with age. Programs for PreK students have a unique set of priorities for everyone engaged in the educational process. The nature of those priorities change significantly when the student hits kindergarten, then again by middle school. They are additionally altered in high school and are further renovated in the college setting.

I am not avoiding the question. I am simply acknowledging its complexity – and the ambiguity of the semantics involved. “What is the purpose of education?” The answer depends on who you are, and on whether you’re providing it or receiving it. And that is what the answer should depend upon. Because somewhere high on the list of the many and various purposes education serves in our society, the preservation of pluralism, the equipping of those who are somehow different in our society to maintain there membership in it nonetheless, holds a now prominent (and hopefully permanent) spot.

My view of the purpose of education (now, at the age of 48, with three degrees and 100 some odd graduate hours already under my belt) is mercenary: I continue to participate in education as a student for economic reasons. I’ve been paying tuition because doing so keeps me my job and creates the possibility of personal career advancement. That’s not very philosophical; nor is it a complete picture. I have three degrees and 100+ graduate hours because I like going to school. And if I came into some large and unexpected inheritance this week (or won the lottery), my new financial security would probably only result in a change of major, not in a change in my status as a student. In the meantime, I am compelled to pursue professional development goals; I would prefer to have the time and resources to use education as tool in the hunt for self-actualization.

If the question were put, though, to me with the idea of determining why I want my children (ages both now adults) to continue as students in some educational setting my answer would be somewhat different. I see college (preferably at a liberal arts-oriented institution) as the logical place in our society for them to obtain skills (some cognitive, some technical) that will improve significantly their vocational prospects and the general quality of their lives (by which I mean their ability to understand the news and appreciate Steinbeck).

In both of these cases my answer to the question differs significantly from my answer when the question is rephrased more abstractly, more globally. If the question is phrased in such a way as to ask why I think that educational services (schooling) should be provided universally in my society at my expense (through tax dollars), I’d say that I am not particularly concerned with my next door neighbor’s self-actualization. And while I think in terms of maximizing benefits from education for my own children, I understand that not everyone shares my values in this regard. Instead, I would say that school should be a universally available service in our society and that participation in it should be mandatory because it provides a huge number of safeguards (for lack of a better term) within our society.

I completed a technology course recently that clarified a couple of ideas for me. One important idea that I’d never really articulated for myself was technology integration.

Technology integration is a term you hear a lot. But I don’t think most people have a clear idea of what it means. We took a big step in our district toward understanding the concept last year when a phrase was circulated that created some context for technology use. The phrase: Using technology to learn, not learning to use technology.

As long as technology itself is a focus, technology integration hasn’t taken place. It’s only when the technology begins to be taken for granted that you can claim that it is really integrated into your classroom and curriculum.

In reflecting on the idea of technology integration, I came to realize that it is not something that you ever finish with. Technology integration is a continuing process, not an achievable goal. That’s because technology changes. We had the SMART board pretty well integrated into our classes when the smaller, student held chalkboard became available. We had to develop some proficiency with it, introduce it to students, and begin using it regularly enough for it to lose its novelty. Now it’s almost integrated into the curriculum.

It’s the same with everything. I remember Windows 3.0. I loved it. Then it seems like Windows 95 replaced it and, eventually, I became comfortable with it. Next, along came Windows 98. And then there was Windows XP. I’ve full integrated Windows XP into my life. Occasionally I am forced to use Vista. I’ve been making a conscious effort not to integrate Vista into my life because I hope it will be replaced with something better. But I know that one day I’ll have to give up XP and do the work involved in learning to us a new operating system again.

I could point out other examples. New technologies are constantly emerging. Old ones get updated. The process of technology integration has to be pursued in order for those things to become learning tools. The goal for a fourth grade student is not for them to learn to use a word processor. The goal is for a word processor to help them learn to write – to plan and compose a well constructed essay or story. I suspect that about the time we become comfortable with that process, someone will want us to augment the process with speech-to-text software that does away with much of the work of keyboarding.

Technology integration is a continuing process. The tools available to promote student learning and preserve the products of their learning are multiplying quickly. A successful school simply must be prepared to evaluate a new piece of technology to determine its usefulness and then integrate that technology (if its useful to them) quickly into the classroom.

Scott McLeod wrote an entertaining and thought provoking piece recently on reworking the teacher evaluation process to make it more like a reality show:

Every year fire the worst teacher in the school. If you don’t have a robust teacher evaluation system (or if you’re worried about administrator bias), do it like they do on Survivor: everyone gets a vote and the one with the most votes leaves the island.

Scott said that teachers know who the bad teachers are. We should just let the teacher’s vote somebody off the educational island each year (if we don’t already have some better system in place). Eventually we’d reduce the number of “bad” teachers we have…

I share Scott’s sentiment. The simple truth is that at almost every school where I’ve ever worked there’s been a teacher or two (or three) who were different. Maybe they simply didn’t try. But often they were people that you could watch go about trying to fulfill their professional duties, and you just knew from watching them that the world would be a better place if they’d find other employment – preferably in an endeavor where they weren’t required to deal with children. (I say “almost” because I work at a school now where that isn’t true; it’s a very small school and I can’t see that anyone needs to be run off.)

I discussed Scott’s suggest with a number of people. The first one I mentioned it to asked a question. Who would we find to replace the teacher that had been voted off? If there was an easy answer to that question, I suspect we wouldn’t have the problem that we do with of incompetent teachers hanging on in the classroom. In my state at least, the evaluation process in place could be used to fire bad teachers. But administrators feel some ambivalence about firing a certified teacher when the only replacement is an uncertified long term substitute. After all, under NCLB the certified teacher is probably “highly qualified” and the substitute is not – something that will cost the school points when it comes to determining adequately yearly progress (AYP).

The solution to this aspect of the problem is for colleges and universities to produce more entry level teachers. Of course, that’s not purely up to the universities. Individual students have to see teacher prep programs as a good career choice. If NCLB has accomplished nothing else, it has managed to make people look more skeptically on teaching as a possible career. The demands on teachers have increased and the training required to do the job has increased, but compensation for teachers has not kept pace. A large portion of the teacher workforce is moving toward retirement, but teacher is a less attractive career option for college students today than it was five years ago. Since Scott is involved in teacher preparation, I suspect he know this all too well.

A second reaction I had was that voting someone off the school seems kind of abrupt. I actually watch Survivor. People get blindsided on a regular basis. Their playing the game and thinking they’re own they’re way to the million dollars; next thing they know, they’ve been voted off. I know that many incompetent teachers just don’t have whatever raw material it takes to be good teachers. I know that some of our incompetent teachers don’t care that they’re incompetent. But we should at least give teacher improvement a try. Maybe we could go to a system where a teacher gets voted out of a school, but not altogether out of the profession the first time. Let them get voted out of two or three school before we revoke their license. Or let them get sent to some form of Exile Island first, before a school’s staff can vote to get rid of them completely.

My last reservation revolves around individual rights in our society. I like the fact that we live in a republic, as opposed to just a democracy. Even incompetent teachers have rights; and in our society, I’m grateful that the majority doesn’t always get everything it wants. If you’ve ever watched Survivor, it’s not a nice world to live in. In the real world there are confidentiality and privacy issues that have to be somehow managed before the faculty senate at a school starts debating who to get rid of this year. At the end of the vote, questions arise about just cause in the termination process. The Survivor approach sounds like we’re ditching any concept of due process. I think that would be a dangerous precedent in our society.

At its heart I think Scott’s suggestion is thought provoking. But I suspect it’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek, or mostly meant to provoke discussion.

Having said that, the basic underlying idea of getting teachers involved in some form of peer evaluation is an exceptional idea. And while we have great difficulty quantifying merit so that we can recognize it in our teacher workforce, Scott’s right: teachers know who the bad teachers are…