Teachers won't participate in statewide task force on school accountability reform

The situation referenced in the title of this blog post is the headline of an article printed in the Wisconsin State Journal last Friday, July 22. I missed the article when it was first published because I was still in South Dakota, but I have since become aware of the situation it reports. More importantly, the article has been unavoidable on the Madison.com website because it still ranks at the top of the “Most Commented” list with 396 comments, more than triple the article in second place.

Wading through the comments is an interesting endeavor and can siphon an enormous amount of time from one’s day. Most of the posts are the same old rhetoric, but there are moments of insight hidden like gems among the rubble. Frankly, it is difficult to blog about this topic because I still have trouble forming an opinion that I am comfortable expressing on the topic. One of the first things I wondered was if WEAC will not have a representative on Scott Walker’s committee tasked with developing a statewide school accountability system, who will be on the committee? Well, here is the list:

• Governor Scott Walker
• Superintendent Tony Evers
• Senator Luther Olsen, Senate Education Committee, Chair (Republican)
• Representative Steve Kestell, Assembly Education Committee, Chair (Republican)
• John Ashley, Wisconsin Association of School Boards (the organization has long sought more power and flexibility in dealing with teachers and their unions)
• John Gee, Wisconsin Charter Schools Association (charter school advocacy group)
• Matt Kussow, Wisconsin Council of Religious and Independent Schools
• Jim Lynch, Association of Wisconsin School Administrators
• James Bender, School Choice Wisconsin (representative of the school privatization industry)
• Gary Myrah, Wisconsin Council of Administrators of Special Services
• Miles Turner, Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators
• Woody Wiedenhoeft, Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials

Reading the list, I identified Walker himself, a state senator and representative, both members of the Republican Party, pro-charter school and business lobbyists, administrative union leaders, and Tony Evers. The lack of balance in the ranks of the committee is obvious, but is that any reason for the teacher’s union to take its ball and go home? Union leader Mary Bell says that “we simply do not have the necessary trust or confidence” to be part of the committee. That makes some sense, I suppose, because a committee whose members harbor blatant political or economic agendas will not likely listen to anything they are obligated to disagree with.

However, Bell also says, “anytime you have the voice of educators at the table, you do better.” So, will she resist offering the voice of educators simply to punish Walker and the committee? If teachers could help improve the system the committee will create, the very system which will judge their success as professionals and the success of their schools, why not sit down at the table? It is likely that the other committee members would plug their ears, ignore Bell’s input, and do what they want to do regardless. But rather than criticize the plan from the outside looking in, criticism that will surely be dismissed by anyone not already in lockstep with WEAC, why not attempt to be part of the process? If the collaboration fails, the WEAC representative could then speak with authority about why it failed. Reform is coming, and I guess I have decided that it would have been better for teachers to swallow their collective pride and try to make a difference from the inside.

To be proud and inaccessible is to be timid and weak. - Jean Baptiste Masillon

A vacation from my problems

While I feel a bit impertinent churning out these book blogs, I want to mention my recent “vacation” with my dad. A few days ago, I returned home after spending about a week traveling, mostly in the Black Hills and other parts of South Dakota. Before leaving, I was so consumed with school and wrapped up in my own things that I did not really know where I was going. I had agreed to “go out west” with my dad, as that was always something he wanted to do, but I had assumed that meant Arizona or New Mexico, not South Dakota.

Despite the subterfuge involved in my travel arrangements, I had a pretty relaxing and enjoyable week. Unlike most vacations I have taken, however, I had quite a bit of down time. Driving to South Dakota, I read books for class; at night in the hotel room, I read books for class; on the drive home, too, I read books for class. I took some notes, but I found it hard to write much more in the car or in my windows of time at night. Still, I had plenty of time to lay the foundation to write about these books, so even though it feels like I’m scrambling to finish these blogs, that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Choice book blog: Disrupting Class

In Disrupting Class, Clayton Christensen makes a strong case that online learning is the way of the future. Throughout the book, it was clear that I was reading the work of an economist rather than an educator as most of Christensen’s theories were obviously developed for business and later applied to education. Similarly, most of his examples throughout the book to explain and validate his ideas come from the business world. This made the book a denser read, but it also gave considerable weight to some of Christensen’s arguments, such as his projected rise of online learning. Some of what he predicted in 2008 has already begun to manifest in the present.

For example, to support his projections for online learning, he cites a study from the middle of the last decade showing that schools are investing in reading and math to the detriment of other subjects because of a focus on standardized test scores. He predicts that “a darkening budget picture could make this focus on the core even more dramatic” (103). The current decay of school funding in Wisconsin certainly supports what Christensen predicted a few years ago, but what is interesting about the book is its application of economic theory to this reality. He argues that this atmosphere creates a vacuum of nonconsumption and that schools should take this as an opportunity to move all courses away from local instruction to technology-aided instruction. The vacuum created by budget shortfalls should be used, according to Christensen, to “outsource more and more of the instructional job to virtual providers” (104).

To back up, this sly method of upending traditional education by infiltrating and conquering its operations is Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation at work. Schools have been implementing technology all wrong, according to Christensen, and to truly reform instruction, computer-based learning needs to beat monolithic learning at its own game. When Apple first introduced personal computers, he argues, it did not attack existing PC markets but created its own market by selling its computer as a toy for children. Likewise, if school administrators “first implement computer-based learning in places and for courses where there are no teachers to teach, then computer-based learning will, step by step, disrupt the instructional job that teachers are doing in a positive way” (73).

Christensen’s application of his economic theory to advance education leaves me torn in coming to my own conclusions about his ideas. On one hand, I approach everything I read critically and tend to play the role of devil’s advocate. This leads me to argue that Christensen is adopting a starve the beast strategy to promote his educational agenda. Of course, I would say, depriving school systems of funding will force them to look for cheaper educational alternatives. Of course cutting resources from traditional classrooms will cause them to become less effective. However, I believe that Christensen believes that disrupting traditional instruction is the only way to improve student outcomes. I accept that he believes this disruption will change things in a positive way.

It is difficult to set aside my rational self interest and accept the fact that his proposed system will need less people like me and achieve better results. Reading his book, I felt that Christensen spent too little time arguing why his way would succeed and too much time explaining how it would be implemented. It sounds good when he states that students will never receive a customized education in the traditional system. It sounds compelling when he argues that computer-based learning is the way to achieve a modular, student-centric system (38). Unfortunately, after establishing this thesis in chapter 1, he spends the rest of the book taking it for granted. By the time he gets to his conclusion and argues that disruptive innovation must “go around and underneath the system [to drive] affordability, accessibility, capability, and responsiveness” (225), I find myself wondering which of these outcomes he finds most important. There is no question that a computer-based instructional model could be more affordable than the current system, but Christensen never fully convinced me it would be better.

Choice book blog: Productive Group Work

Productive Group Work, written by Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and Sandi Everlove, begins by defining the parameters necessary for productive group work. The authors identify positive interdependence as a hallmark of this productivity and cite Johnson and Johnson’s four methods to achieving it: group goals, individual resources, rewards, and distinct roles. To this list, the authors add a fifth principle, defining a meaningful task. They believe that “a task for productive group work must offer a challenge or a problem to solve to make all of those principles of cooperative learning come into play” (20). At first this seems obvious because without a meaningful task, it would be impossible to achieve the other criteria on the list. Still, when the authors go on to explain the idea of “productive failure,” which a teacher facilitates by offering sufficiently complex tasks, their point becomes clearer. In my own classroom experiences with group work, I have often witnessed students who do not work to their full potential because of inadequate tasks. It is up to me as the teacher to clarify individual roles in the group, to provide individual and group feedback, and to structure the activity to make it challenging and complex.

One of the biggest problems I have had with group work that I alluded to above is when student groups focus on completing a task or getting the answers instead of the process of learning. This attitude can be mitigated by a complex task, but that complexity does not necessarily change the completion mindset. In chapter 3, the authors argue that to get students to change, teachers must be better models of these behaviors themselves. They cite a study which found that “students mimicked what their teacher had modeled, not what the teacher had intended for them to do” (42). This passage hit home for me because in my own classroom, despite the fact that I stress group norms and collaboration, I see many of the student behaviors witnessed in the study. Examining a text for symbolism or figurative language, students working in the same group are quick to share answers rather than help each other through the process. Instead of telling them how to work productively in a group, I need to model the “language of learning” myself and then monitor whether student groups adopt this model of interaction. The language of learning “poster” can be downloaded as a Word document at the following website: maldenells.wikispaces.com/file/view/Language+of+Learning+Poster.doc

In chapter 5, the authors address another problem that has hindered some of the group work in my classes. To support group learning and productivity, students need to give each other feedback, but they are often too nice and sometimes too blunt. The authors quote Jay Simmons who writes that “responders are made, not born” (76). Students do not know how to give constructive feedback, and like modeling productive group behaviors, teachers must model peer responses rather than tell students how to respond to each other’s work. Teachers can model praise, understanding, questions, and suggestions as well as share their own writing, have the class respond to a piece of model writing, guide partner responses, or hold response conferences. I have used many of these techniques in the classroom, but I may not have always done them with enough purpose or tenacity. One thing this book has helped reinforce is the idea that for student group work to be productive, the teacher must continually reinforce the behaviors that make it productive. The chart from Simmons’ book can be found on page 7 of the following PDF: users.ipfw.edu/wellerw/Responders_training.pdf

The final chapter of the book includes many tips for facilitating successful group work in the classroom. The authors recommend not grouping students by ability, having teachers assign groups based on academic and social factors, assigning four students to a group, adjusting groups based on behavior or performance, and differentiating within groups. They answer common questions about group work and illustrate how to introduce group work in a classroom. Like the entire book, the last chapter offers a good balance between theory and practical examples. Throughout the book, the authors explain the research pertinent to whatever facet of cooperative group work they are discussing and offer examples from the classroom. Although much of the book felt like review, it presented moments of insight and proved to be an engaging read.  

Choice book blog: Rethinking Homework

Rethinking Homework by Cathy Vatterott begins just as I would expect from a book with such an impartial title, with the history of homework. Vatterott belabors the point that teachers and the public have long vacillated between believing that homework is inherently good and that it must be eradicated. She does offer an interesting anecdote from 100 years ago, a time when labor laws were being developed for adults and children were thought to need plenty of fresh air and exercise. “Rather than diagnosing children with attention deficit disorder,” Vatterott writes, “pediatricians simply prescribed more outdoor exercise” (4). I believe that today’s students would benefit from hopping aboard a time machine for a visit to a clinic of yesteryear.

Vatterott’s chapter on homework in the context of the new family touched on many of the themes Dr. Parks explored in her social justice course. Kids from low income families tend to have many responsibilities around the house such as cooking or babysitting. Furthermore, parental involvement in homework ranges from non-existent to overbearing, with low income parents working multiple jobs or odd hours least able to support their children’s studies. Vatterott reiterates that teachers should not assume students have “a quiet place to do homework,” “a parent home in the evening,” “money for school supplies,” or parents who “speak and read English” (40). These seem like obvious assumptions to avoid, but they are worth reiterating because, in my opinion, they offer the strongest support for Vatterott’s call to decriminalize the grading of homework (96). Students neglect homework for a myriad of reasons, many of which are out of their control.

To grade homework, one must assume that all students are capable of doing the work and that all students have time to do the work. Vatterott refers to Ken Goldberg’s idea of the “homework trap,” where “incomplete homeworkàpoor gradesàpoor attitudesàa predictable avoidance of homework and resentment toward the systemàmore failing grades” (92). I have seen many students in my freshman language arts classes fall into the homework trap, and at one point of my high school career, I fell into the trap myself. For me, junior year of high school was the year my focus in the classroom waned and I began to neglect school. I often skipped classes, and the class I skipped most of all was Accounting 1. I don’t why I took an accounting class: I did not enjoy math and had little patience for mundane, repetitive tasks. This combined with the fact that the class immediately followed my lunch period made it easy to avoid. I kept up for a while, but between missing classes and neglecting the homework, I soon fell into the homework trap big time. Luckily, I had parents who were involved, and once they found out about my delinquency, they pushed me until I earned a passing grade in the class. When a student whose parents are uninvolved for whatever reason falls into the homework trap, they will not be lucky enough to escape it. Unlike me, many low income students fall into the homework trap through no fault of their own, and criminalizing their inability to complete homework only makes a bad situation worse.

Citing many research studies, Vatterott comes to the conclusion that “a small amount of homework may be good for learning, but too much homework can actually be bad for learning” (62). She uses a list of common sense things teachers know about learning to argue that homework should be purposeful and personalized. She suggests ways to differentiate homework according to difficulty, amount, structure, learning style, or interest. Finally, she makes a case that anyone teaching in the Howard-Suamico School District should be familiar with. She argues that “homework’s role is not assessment of learning; therefore, it should not be graded” (112). She also provides support from people like W. James Popham, author of Transformative Assessment, who has found that when teachers stop grading homework, students “feel a sense of empowerment over their own learning” (115). After a long indoctrination into this mindset, I did not find Vatterott’s ideas to be groundbreaking, but I did appreciate her perspective. An idea that once seemed foreign to me, that homework should not count toward a student’s grade, has come to make more and more sense. Much of the content of Vatterott’s book regarding effective homework practices seems like common sense, but by walking readers through the process of rethinking homework, she successfully leads readers to accept her conclusions about best homework practices.      

Khan Academy: Over 65 million lessons delivered

I read an article today on Wired.com about the Khan Academy, which is basically a website featuring educational videos by Salman Khan. Khan guides students through math, science, and economics problems and concepts with his audio narration and by “writing” with his mouse cursor on a black background that looks a bit like a chalkboard. The videos are very simple, and Khan does not actually appear on camera, but his eager narration helps students work through the concepts. The site also lets students earn digital “badges,” which can be an incentive to master skills.

The aspect of the Wired article that struck me as interesting is how the teacher referenced in the article, Kami Thordarson, uses the videos in her classroom. Instead of lecturing in class and teaching all students at the same pace, the students are assigned to view Khan’s video lectures outside of class. Class is where students complete their “homework,” which Thordarson is able to guide them through at their individual paces. Advocates of Khan’s site and methods say that is taps into what Benjamin Bloom discovered in the 1980s: students learn more with one on one instruction.

Wired.com: How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education

TED.com:  Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy

Khan Academy example video: Introduction to the bank income statement

Staff Development Presentation - Xtranormal

Presenting GoAnimate for EdL 755 yesterday leads me to believe that there is interest among the cohort in animation tools. So, for my final presentation for EdL 719, per Keith’s approval, I would like to present a similar tool, Xtranormal.

As I said yesterday, there are positives and negatives to using GoAnimate. Xtranormal is another Web 2.0 animation tool that has some advantages over GoAnimate. It’s not perfect, of course, but I hope that in my presentation I can demonstrate its use and explain when it may be better suited to a project than GoAnimate and where it comes up short.