Thank You, NCLB

Let me give you an example of a school that is broken thanks to No Child Left Behind.

For the fifth year in a row, my school has not made Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) on the state test or ISAT. In the past, our school's English Language Learners and special education students were the two categories that performed poorly on the test (due to the school's lack of a bilingual program and dismal special education services). But this year, the overall Reading scores fell a few percentage points. In fact, since 2006, the overall percentage of students who met proficient levels on the test has been steadily decreasing, while NCLB requires the number to rise incrementally until 100% of students are proficient by 2014.

My principal, obviously alarmed at the prospects of being "restructured" by the powers above, has decided to take drastic measures to raise test scores. For one, she is mandating one day a week as ISAT day for the entire year ahead. That means all teachers have to indicate on their lesson plans the ISAT strategy they will be teaching, which the students will practice that day. Since there are 40 weeks in a school year, that's 40 days, 240 hours and 14,400 minutes a year dedicated to ISAT. Oh, I'm exaggerating. The principal has stressed that there are only 19 Wednesdays before the ISAT.

This confirms one of the biggest criticisms of high-stakes testing as a means to hold school accountable - Teachers will be forced to teach to the test. Students will bubble in answers for multiple choice questions and write formulaic paragraphs instead of doing any meaningful learning or critical thinking. Unfortunately at my school, test-driven teaching has been the norm, and obviously that's not even working. But the administration insists that we continue drilling ISAT skills to an even greater degree.

Secondly, my principal has combed through the data to connect every teacher to the number of students in their class who were "below" or at the "warning" level on the ISAT last year. She sent out a list of all the teachers in 3rd-8th grade and the breakdown of their class's performance to the whole school. I find her actions disrespectful towards her staff and inappropriate on many levels.

You cannot evaluate a teacher based on one year's test scores. There are questions of accuracy (one day, one test) and whether the test itself reflects what a student knows. As is often the case in my school (again because there is no bilingual support), English Language Learners lag far behind grade level in reading. A 6th grade teacher who has moved a student from a 3rd grade reading level to a 5th grade reading level in one year is still considered a failure since the student couldn't pass the test.

You can, on the other hand, look at the progress each student made in that teacher's classroom during the year as one component of the teacher's effectiveness. The administration could make an effort to visit the classrooms regularly and observe the teacher in action. Teachers could evaluate each other as well and offer feedback to improve our practice. The administration could support teacher leaders to pave the way on curricular and instructional changes. We could, together, ensure that a student has a consistent and coherent education throughout his time at our school that prepares him not only to do well on a test but to succeed in life - to show care and tolerance, to be articulate, to reflect and critique, to solve problems, to be creative.

Placing blame on individual teachers for our school's performance on the test is hardly a way to build a team. I don't know if, by sending out the list, my principal anticipated that teachers were going to compare themselves to others, gossip, and just feel completely deflated, unmotivated and angry. But she has succeeded in doing so. I have never seen such low morale of the staff as we start this new school year, and I am feeling the pressure too. I know one thing though. "ISAT Day" won't exist in my classroom.

The Silver Bullet

I like catching up on education news on the Schools Matter blog (http://schoolsmatter.blogspot.com). Yesterday, they posted an article about how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is planning to put half a billion dollars into a project to research teacher effectiveness. The project will gather data about what makes a quality teacher and test methods of hiring, evaluating, and firing teachers. Several school districts across the nation submitted proposals of their effective teaching plans for a share of the money. The districts' ideas included teacher training, tenure and monetary incentives, and coaching and mentorship for teachers. The deputy director of education at the Gates Foundation called their new goal for having effective teachers in front of every student the "silver bullet" to educational reform.

I'm going to ignore the "silver bullet" comment for the sake of avoiding a rant. I could go on about how the obsession over silver bullets has undermined any progress on holistic public policy change in the field of education. But I won't.

I don't know the specifics about the project, but I do have several points of concern about this new focus on teacher effectiveness. First, I don't think we can go about asking what makes an effective teacher if we don't come to a conclusion on what it means to be effective. In other words, I'm assuming that effective means "resulting in higher test scores" in this case. We are looking for a reason why so many of our students do poorly on a flawed test, so let's focus on how "effective" teachers teach to the test. I guess it would be relatively easy, then, to come up with a formula for good teaching that completely obliterates teacher individuality and who the students are in front of them.

But if by effective we mean the complex set of skills, knowledge of their students, environmental factors, personality, ability to adapt, leadership, creativity, motivation, and other subjective (gasp) aspects of teaching that are used to reach and push students toward relevant goals; then we are talking about something that cannot be easily measured. Ironically, we already implicitly know what makes an effective teacher in this sense. The thought of putting this into some sort of formula is also scary.

My last concern is that, once again, we teachers are having studies and assessments done to us (and against us.) You don't need billions of dollars to tell you why some of us teach - a hint: it's not always about the money. You don't need a study to tell you what makes us good teachers or need to use test scores to bully us into teaching a certain way. We teachers need to lead the discussion on what changes need to be made and how we want to be treated.

Are we going to have outside "experts" tell us exactly what to do or should we take it upon ourselves to open our classrooms and share or critique our practice with each other? Are we going to be at the mercy of "objective" evaluations, or should we evaluate ourselves and each other on the values and skills we need as we grow as teachers? We know what works and what's wrong in our schools. We know the kids. We know what it means to be an effective teacher. And if some of us take a good, long look at ourselves and realize that we are failing at our job and are unwilling to do anything about it - then maybe we shouldn't be in this profession.

A Reason for Blogging

I have shamelessly stolen the title of my blog from Deborah Meier's book called In Schools We Trust. In her book, she reminds us that there is an alternative vision for education and schooling that is not based on high-stakes testing and top-down reform. She gives a definition of the kind of trust we should have in our schools and in our teachers: "It is a hard-won, democratic trust in each other, tempered by healthy, active skepticism, and a demand that trust be continually earned." As a teacher, I feel that this trust is hard to come by in many urban, public schools. There is little trust among the teachers, no trust between the teachers and the administration, and increasingly less trust of teachers from city and federal government leaders.

I believe that we as teachers are as much to blame for the lack of trust in our profession as are the politicians in DC. Very few of the debates on education reform are driven by the people who know children, who see how they learn and interact with each other, and who struggle with the myriad of challenges in the classroom. I hope to shed some light onto what it means to be a teacher. This blog is more for my benefit because I am constantly asking myself (and reminding myself again) why I teach, especially when it gets tough, but I also hope that people will begin listening to teachers again. Indeed, trusting them in the way that Meier suggests.

I like how Meier's definition of being trustworthy involves being open to skepticism. I plan on being very critical of teachers - who we are and why we do what we do. I know that politicians have sometimes labeled us as incompetent, lazy, and unwilling to change, and I disagree with these labels since they are untrue for the most part and are used to push a political agenda. But in my mind there is no excuse for teachers who have lost sight of why they are in the classroom or never had a good reason in the first place.

Some groups of more vocal teachers have shifted the debate away from educating children to saving face and saving their jobs. I'm talking about how teachers' unions have battled for shorter workdays and better pay but ignored taking part in any real curricular or instructional reform. This brings me to another point. Yes, I wish we were paid more as are other professionals, but I'm not sure teachers who do the bare minimum and show no real commitment to the job are deserving of such pay. Instead of becoming defensive at the negative name-calling, I think it is a good opportunity to ask ourselves what it means to be competent, professional, and open to improving our practice. We need to demand respect for being a teacher. That means no longer being complacent about our job, how schools are run, and what it means to educate a child.