Another loss . . .

I haven't said much about football and probably shouldn't after today's loss at San Francisco.  Two minutes left and they are losing 40 to 14 though they may score after the two minute warning.  I can't believe how much I watched of this game.  Turnovers and poor play over and over again this year.  If it was a home game I would have left by now. 

Well, they did score to make it 40-21, but now another injury to a wide receiver doesn't bode well for next week.  Bad team, terrible conference, and I just bought my playoff tickets.  Difficult to believe after today that the Seahawks could be a division winner.  Could they win with a less than .500 year?

What students can teach us . . .

This New York Times article shares findings from a Gate's Foundation study about teacher evaluation systems.  This part of the study is focused on learning what good teachers do by asking students.  Teachers in the study are ranked using a value added statistical method and student learning is measured year-to-year on changes in test scores.

Positive correlations that have emerged thus far include the following.

• "Our class stays busy and doesn’t waste time,” tended to be led by teachers with high value-added scores.
• The same was true for students who ranked the following statement high,  “In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes.”
•  “My teacher has several good ways to explain each topic that we cover in this class,”  also had a high correlation.

A finding that some may find interesting is the negative effect of learning in classrooms where teachers spend considerable time drilling and preparing for state tests.

• Teachers whose students agreed with the statement, “We spend a lot of time in this class practicing for the state test,” tended to make smaller gains on those exams than other teachers.

In this post from March I shared what we learned from our students about what teachers motivate them to do their best.  Instead of asking them questions we had a conversation.  I am thinking that there is more that we can and should learn by asking them questions.  The summary of our findings is shown below where relationship is a significant contributor.



What questions should we be asking our students to learn what they see as teacher behaviors that influence their learning?

A different voice . . .

I found the link to this article in the Boston Globe from a retired Boston teacher at Russo’s This Week in Education. She writes . . .


Blaming us, the teachers, absolves all others of their complicity in the failure to educate our students and relieves them of all responsibility for solving the problem. It’s expedient. Yet until we accept collective responsibility for the problem and for finding a permanent solution, progress will remain an elusive phantom.

It is a short article and worth the read as she shares her thinking on what must happen if we are to truly change public education. In response to the cries to emulate Japan, Finland, Korea, and now I would add China, she cites the work of Pedro Noguera into the culture of those countries and the mental models people have of the importance of education compared to our country.

We need to hear more of these voices.

I can't believe it!

Yes, I can’t believe yet another message about a Sputnik moment; this time in reference to the “poor” showing of U.S. students on the 2009 PISA assessments in combined literacy, mathematics, and science. This is an international comparison of how 15 year olds did on these three tests. For reference, 5,233 students from 165 public and private schools randomly selected to represent the United States.


From this FLYPAPER post from Chester Finn we read about the reference.

Fifty-three years after Sputnik caused an earthquake in American education by giving us reason to believe that the Soviet Union had surpassed us, China has delivered another shock. On math, reading and science tests given to 15-year-olds in sixty-five countries last year, Shanghai’s teenagers topped every other jurisdiction in all three subjects. Hong Kong also ranked in the top four on all three assessments.

The results of this assessment produced immediate reaction from our Secretary Duncan and many others in the blogosphere. It has been a hot topic the last two days.

"For me, it's a massive wake-up call," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Monday. "Have we ever been satisfied as Americans being average in anything? Is that our aspiration? Our goal should be absolutely to lead the world in education."

The surprising news was that Shanghai replaced Finland at the top of the rankings. Our students scored around the average on all three tests resulting in a ranking of 23rd out of the 65 participating countries and education systems in science, 31st in math, and 17th in literacy. This average ranking is what has given rise to all the media hype. You can find articles in the Washington Post here, in the New York Times here, the Seattle Times, and a CNN article that gives reasons why we must start learning from Asia.

This short Washington Post article raises one of the questions going through my mind; given these results, has the NCLB focus on testing been successful? There are also the questions about education in Shanghai not being representative of that in China, that Hong Kong, another high scoring country, is not governed by China, the issue of one test for comparisons, universal education, the cultural differences, and . . .

This is one more opportunity for center stage about how poorly we are doing. I’m not familiar with the content of the assessments, but it would be interesting to see how our young people would do compared to the U.S. average and to those from the other countries. If one of you is a statistician, 5,233 students would be a representative random sample for what n? I don’t know how many 15 year olds in our country, but it seems like a small number. Probably just reaching when I need to accept the data and see what we might learn from it.

Another Sputnik moment . . .

On November 29th I blogged about Energy Secretary Chu’s comment of this being a “Sputnik Moment” for our country related to China’s work on renewable energy. Now, today I read about President Obama’s speech where he says that we are facing a “Sputnik moment” related to our nation falling behind others in the future.


But as it stands right now, the hard truth is this: In the race for the future, America is in danger of falling behind. That's just the truth. And when -- if you hear a politician say it’s not, they’re not paying attention. In a generation we have fallen from 1st place to 9th place in the proportion of young people with college degrees. When it comes to high school graduation rates, we’re ranked 18th out of 24 industrialized nations -- 18th. We’re 27th in the proportion of science and engineering degrees we hand out. We lag behind other nations in the quality of our math and science education.

I wonder if this Sputnik moment thing is something that we will be hearing about from other federal agencies. Maybe it’s a planned strategy or maybe the President read about Secretary Hu’s comments. In either case, how many of these fundamental shifts in doing business can we afford at one time given the current economic situation? I applaud his comments about the need for more spending, but do not agree that the reforms and initiatives from the education department are necessarily going to achieve his goal.

We’re reforming K-12 education –- not from the top down, but from the bottom up. Instead of indiscriminately pouring money into a system that’s not working, we’re challenging schools and states to compete with each other –- to see who can come up with reforms that raise standards, and recruit and retain good teachers, raise student achievement, especially in math and science. We call it Race to the Top -- (applause) -- where you get more funding if you show more results -- because part of the argument here is, is that if we’re going to have a government that's smart and helping people compete in this new global economy, then we’ve got to spend our money wisely. And that means we want to invest in things that are working, not in things that aren’t working just because that's how things have always been done.

Race to the Top was not about more funding if you show results. It was about what states lined up the best to meet the parameters established by the federal education department. It was about forming partnerships with groups like the Gate’s Foundation for grant writing and other support purposes. The RttT winners haven’t shown better results they simply achieved the highest scores on the rubric designed to separate winners from losers. Yes, competition is alive and gathering more momentum in the department and being supported by the President given the above comments. Over time I hope that the “reforms” embedded in the winning proposals prove effective so that we can learn from them. I remain skeptical and we don’t have the time to wait before moving forward without the support of additional funding.

In his speech the President also said that we shouldn’t be cutting funding to education and innovation.

So we can’t stop making those investments. The best antidote to a growing deficit, by the way, is a growing economy. To borrow an analogy, cutting the deficit by cutting investments in areas like education, areas like innovation -- that's like trying to reduce the weight of an overloaded aircraft by removing its engine. It’s not a good idea. There may be some things you need to get rid of, but you got to keep the engine.

That’s why even as we scour the budget for cuts and savings in the months ahead, I will continue to fight for those investments that will help America win the race for the jobs and industries of the future -– and that means investments in education and innovation and infrastructure. I will be fighting for that.

I for one do not want to see any cuts to federal support for public schools so calling for more just might be an effective strategy in at least keeping it at current levels. Given the changed makeup of the House and Senate, maintaining current levels would be a victory as I don’t believe that many of the new members are going to be supportive of “new” money going to public education.

I wonder how the talks on ESEA and replacing NCLB are progressing. Does anyone know or care?

TITLES CAN BE MISLEADING . . .

One of the blogs I follow is the Cliff Mass Weather Blog.  Last Friday his post was titled, Climatologically, The Worst Is Over.  I got excited after reading the first couple paragraphs that maybe the nightmare winter will not be a reality.  Please know that I don't understand many of the charts that he uses to explain the weather, but things looked good until I got to this part.

If we looked at surface winds, a similar story would be evident..the end of November is ground zero for rainy, stormy weather and the situation improves in December.



And certainly the first week of December this year is going to seem like a walk in the park compared to what we had at the end of November.


But the worst is yet to come for one parameter...snow. As shown below for Sea-Tac, January is the snowiest month in our area.

Just what I didn't want to know, especially since I think that February is historically as bad as January.  See what I mean about titles being misleading. 

Like kicking a beehive . . .

A couple weeks ago Secretary Duncan and Bill Gates made the news by supporting economists calling for the end to teacher bonuses for master degrees. The claim is that research has shown over time that there is no connection between the master degree and increased student achievement.


In an article in the Huffington Post we hear from Gates and Duncan.

Duncan told the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday that master's degree bonuses are an example of spending money on something that doesn't work.


On Friday, billionaire Bill Gates took aim at school budgets and the master's degree bonus.


"My own state of Washington has an average salary bump of nearly $11,000 for a master's degree – and more than half of our teachers get it. That's more than $300 million every year that doesn't help kids," he said.


"And that's one state," said Gates, the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, at a speech Friday in Louisville to the Council of Chief State School Officers. Gates also took aim at pensions and seniority.


"Of course, restructuring pay systems is like kicking a beehive," he acknowledged.

From the article, we also learn that in a study of fifteen states coming out of the University of Washington, master’s degree bonuses amounted to between 2% and 3% of total education spending. Given this, doing away with the bonus will not have a significant impact on education spending; something the economists and Duncan suggest is necessary and possible given the current economic situation of most states.

So, what do we do with this information? It is clear that successful systems use research and data to inform their decisions and that they are focused with a laser like beam on instruction for increased student achievement. If there is no connection between the bonus and student achievement, should we continue to operate as Juke’s would suggest ttwwadi (that’s the way we always did it) or should we be exploring other options? When and how do we pick and choose what research will influence our work and the decisions that we make to support success for all young people?

There is certainly much turmoil and uncertainty in the current education environment and this just adds to those finding fault. Research reports, articles, and influential people continue to suggest that public schools are not preparing young people for the future and that we need charters and more competition to force us to change. I don’t believe this to be true or necessary given our current reality, but it does concern me that there is data such as the master’s findings that we don’t consider as we continue our journey.

Might there be a better way to use this compensation that research would show does support increased achievement? I don’t see the motivation for change being a cost saving measure; it would be more of aligning salary with learning and increased knowledge and skill that is directly linked with achievement, the major component of our purpose for being. Remember, we still have the capacity at the local level to determine what success is, how it is measured, and how we use the data.  The external measures forced on our students should be a byproduct of the work that we do, not the driver for all that we do. 

So many opportunities for study and so much information to influence our choices.  Finding the leverage to maximize the use of our resources to increase student achievement should be driven by research.  Is the master degree issue leverage for us at this time?  No, I don't believe that it is, though it would be interesting to pursue as a topic for future consideration.  Leverage for us is implementing research based practices and learning from them in our school environments something that we are doing as we focus on three of the Classroom 10 characteristics; making key content visual, active learning, and checks for understanding.  Collecting data to determine the impacts on achievement is a necessary component of this work.

More on this topic to come in future posts.