Open Lines of Communication Between Public and Charter Schools

As much as I applaud our Governor's administration for its efforts to address issues of accountability and the quality of instruction, I remain adament that nothing they do will improve the learning outcomes of our inner city students until we accept the reality that fundamental differences exist between urban and suburban schools, and that unique policies must be constructed for each in the areas of curriculum and assessment.

Charter schools have been an enduring feature of our education landscape, but as of yet their presence has done little to improve student performance. This is not to say that there haven't been some successes in a few charter schools, but that really isn't the point. The intent of the original charter school legislation was not to create schools that would compete with public schools, but to create schools that would serve as "laboratories for innovation," places where new strategies and policies would be instituted and evaluated. Alone, no amount of charter schools will make a dent in the performance of the general student population, and wasn't that the point?

What we need in New Jersey is a committment to the idea that our charter schools and urban public schools are in essence a partnership, and that it is incumbent on our leaders to create a system to facillitate greater communication between these schools. Whether on a state wide, regional, or city wide level, it is imperative that our administrators and teachers get together to share "what works" with their colleagues at other schools.

Success in the classroom is mainly the result of trial and error. When methods work, that knowledge should be shared. It would distressing to find that teachers and administrators are so territorial and so protective of their successes that they are reluctant to share their work with others. I call on the State Department of Education to take the lead on this issue and bring together representatives of our charter and urban schools to spend a few days each year communicating their successes and failures with one another. This collaborative approach to learning will directly benefit students who otherwise might not ever be exposed to strategies that will improve the teaching of content and skills.

If we really care about providing a quality education to as many students as possible, and not just to a few select families, then we must honor the original intent of our charter school legislation and work together for the good of the children. And isn't that what we all really want anyway?

A shocking story to share

This past weekend I attended my nieces bat mitzvah, and as expected I got into another high spirited discussion with my youngest brother.

The subject turned to education and the inequities between urban and suburban schools.  It was then that I learned some disquieting news.

It turns out that parents who have a child performing below grade level, and that subsequently get classified with a learning disability, are able to receive even more money from the state SSI program. I'm sure the school also receives additional funding through Title 1.

The ramifications of this are incredible, as this is in essence an incentive to be an unsupportive parent. I know this assumes the parent has less than noble intentions, but when you look at the inordinately high percentage of under performing and special ed students in the inner city it does establish at least a prima facie case that an abuse of the system exists, to the detriment of any child caught up in this naked, selfish grab for money. At the very least the issue deserves someone's attention.

Inner city children already exist in an environment that compromises their right to an education that properly prepares them for life after high school. Equity and greater opportunity are in short supply in New Jersey's public education system. To think that some parents may be contributing to the challenges facing their children is too sad for words.

The Christie Administration's Great New Initiative, Now for the Final Pieces to be Put in Place

Today's announcement that the DOE will be partnering with Princeton University to seek out the "best and brightest" college graduates to pursue careers as math and science teachers for low performance schools represents another positive achievement for our Governor.

As a former alternate route teacher, I can say unequivocally that, at the high school level, a degree in education is a meaningless indicator of future performance. It is in fact a detriment to higher learning and achievement, as these graduates have nowhere near the level of knowledge and passion embodied in graduates with degrees in other fields of study such is engineering, statistics,  astronomy, accounting, government, kinesthetics, or other specialized fields.

Teaching is the ultimate "learn what works on the job" profession. Trial and error, when supported by excellent supervisors, is how teachers succeed. A Mobil sponsored television commercial getting airplay these days is right on the mark: teachers with greater knowledge of the subject matter are best able to inspire students and provide higher level learning.

The true test of this initiative, however, will be in keeping these new educators motivated to make teaching a career. As reported in the Scientific American, 25000 young STEM teachers left the profession before their tenure year. This flight out if education must be thwarted.

So what can be done to improve the profession so we can create faculties full of passionate, intelligent, and effective teachers? I'd like to suggest the following steps:

Most important is to begin thinking of teachers as entrepreneurs, with their class and curriculum as their product, and students as future entrepreneurs being mentored. Give teachers ownership of their course and incentivize the workplace so they can profit for exemplary performance. I truly believe this should be the future of education. The difficult part is that it will require a more decentralized system where our politicians and bureaucrats are less involved, relinquishing power and their inclination to  micro manage  education, ESPECIALLY in low performing inner city schools. The absence of any real improvement in student performance at these schools is as much an indictment of their policies as it is of the schools themselves.

In conjunction with this change to an entrepreneurial model, with "teachers as entrepreneurs",  important practical steps need to be taken. (I will explain the importance of these steps in subsequent posts)

First,  require all Title 1 schools to have a clinical supervisor on staff to work with new and at-risk teachers.

Second, replace the current HSPA with an assessment that tests across the curriculum rather than the current test, which only assesses math and language arts.

Third, completely gut and rewrite the core curriculum content standards to reflect what students MUST know to become independent, healthy, and  empowered citizens that understand and can function in our democratic, free market system.

Fourth, give teachers the academic freedom and latitude to design their own unique curriculum/products.

And fifth, incentivize the system of teacher remuneration with either performance pay or performance tiers, replacing a system built around years of service with one that rewards exemplary work.

Currently our State treats suburban and inner city schools the same when it comes to indicators of success and failure, in spite of the fact that the huge gulf in performance between these type of schools renders the use of "one size fits all" metrics a harmful joke.

The needs of urban schools are different, the immediate goals of the schools are different, and so the policies that guide theses schools should also be different.

Our inner city schools should be seen as fertile grounds for dramatic reform and laboratories for innovation and risk taking. I humbly suggest pursuing the course I have laid out above. Given the current state of education in our inner cities, there is much to gain and little risk that things can get worse than they are now.

With this latest initiative, the Christie  Administration has shown itself receptive to bold new ideas. I certainly didn't expect to be saying this when he took office, but the Governor has proven to be a champion for public education.

Much more needs to be done by our State. Our limited resources need to be channeled to where they will do the most good, new partnerships with stakeholders need to be undertaken, and ineffective mandates and initiatives coming from Trenton must be ended. Though it may seem counter intuitive, what is needed in our urban schools is less, not more, government oversight and intrusion into learning. Let local educators design "student friendly" high schools that young adults want to attend and we'll be on our way to real improvement in student performance.

Deplorable Trenton High Infrastructure

A recent story in the Trenton Times documented the abominable conditions inside Trenton High. Is it any wonder that the kids, and faculty for that matter, get the impression that the public, as communicated through our elected officials, just don't care?

As a former teacher, I just can't imagine trying to create an environment conducive to learning. If I was a student or faculty member I'd invite the media and stage a walkout.

Perception is important. It must be frustrating enough as a student to see so few opportunities on the horizon. There are no distractions facing low income students both in and out of the school building. They shouldn't have to worry about getting sick we're getting injured by the very school they see as there gateway to a better life.

The Lunacy of NJ's CCCS

In the previous blog I strongly suggested that New Jersey's Core Curriculum Content Standards are too onerous and unduly broad and deep, requiring teachers to cover so much content that it is a fool's folly to expect students to actually learn the subject matter. If the purpose is simply to introduce students to a wide variety of information, what's the point? Invariably, students will tend to forget what they have learned as soon as the test is over; possibly they will retain it throughout the school year, but by the time they graduate the information will be almost completely lost unless it in some way connects to work they will do in college or career.

According to Bloom's Taxonomy, there are 6 levels of understanding or learning, from basic knowledge through to evaluation. It follows that the higher the level of understanding, the more time will be required in class to reinforce, assess, and evaluate. A look at the CCCS   indicates that the State is expecting students to often be taught at the higher end of the taxonomy. Of course, since the HSPA is limited to just language arts/English and mathematics, there is no mandated mechanism for determining what has been learned. Similarly, there is no mechanism for holding teachers accountable for that learning. And thank G-d for that, because there is little chance that most students will be proficient.

In social studies, five of the six standards are content based. Within these standards are 168 "cumulative progress indicators" - specific items that teachers are expected to teach. If we break down the actual content of these CPI there area well over 500 elements of social studies that teachers are expected to discuss, analyze, evaluate, identify, engage, debate, explore, compare and investigate at the high school level. They are cumulative, so, get this, "teachers should NOT reteach concepts and skills in previous grade levels."

The purpose of social studies should, generally speaking, be to develop a passion for learning and a thirst for knowledge so that teenagers will become "lifelong learners," willing and able as adults to pursue information they want or need to know.

I am begging our political leaders and the DOE to reconsider the whole idea of what should be required content for high school students, and narrow the requirements to those things that a student MUST know prior to graduation. Those should not be those things that students may need for college; count on the students, with help from parents and guidance counselors, to know that you should take biology if you are planning on a career in medicine, to take physics if you plann to be an engineer, and so on.

Preparation for college should NOT be the lense through which we develop the CCCS, it should be preparation for life. In my opinion, graduation requirements (and the HSPA) should include financial literacy and economics, health and nutrition, practical law such as reading a contract, practical math such as determining compound interest, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, physics, how the political process REALLY works, psychology and sociology, and maybe some aspect of our cultural history. Even that general list may be too broad.

In my experiences as a student, teacher, and writer, I've learned that it is much harder to condense writing than to expand it. The same is undoubtedly true with rewriting our content standards, but it must be done.

Only then can we give teachers the freedom to design their own innovative and challenging courses based on their own passions and knowledge. In the same way it is hard to condense writing, it is going to be hard for our State leaders to relinquish power to the local level, letting schools manage their own culture, respective of the community stakeholders, parents, and teachers. Hard, but necessary, because the State's effort to bring more equity to educational achievement has been a horrible failure.

Time for a New Education Paradigm

The subject of this posting is going to make a lot of people uneasy, as I propose eviscerating what stands today as the core content curriculum standards. Now I am assuming that most readers of this blog are adults, and so I have a question: what do you remember from high school? Separate what you learned in college and just think about high school. Now think about what skills you learned in high school.

The purpose of this thought experiment is to make an enormously important point: unless the content is in some way connected to our current jobs or experiences, we have pretty much forgotten everything.

There are two main reasons for this. One is the issue of “who cares?” Let’s be honest, most of the content we learned in school we learned because it was required, not because you were truly interested in it. The second, more important reason, is that because state mandates are so broad and deep that teachers don’t really have the time to confirm that the content was actually “learned.” It was remembered long enough to take a test, and it may rest ever so precariously somewhere in the recesses of our mind, but we never really learned it. Learning is a long, complicated process that requires a great deal of reinforcement and assessment. To really be certain that someone has learned something, they should ideally be able to engage in a discussion of the subject matter and probably also be able to write on the subject; then and only then can there be some assurance that the content has been broadly understood by the class.

By requiring too much, we are actually making true learning less likely. All this content is demanded because we have academicians in all of these fields determining what they believe should be required learning. Is it any wonder why there is so much required content?

Learning skills is another matter. I have read the new national skill standards and find them to be perfectly constructed to meet the needs of today’s society. Unlike the content, skills will be reinforced across the curriculum. If we are to require anything, it would be the skills. Let teachers have greater freedom to design the curriculum content they will use as the foundation for skill building.

I have total faith that, with input from teachers, students, administrators, and the community, that a curriculum will be developed that is perfectly tailored to the future goals and interests of the students. The problem is that our political leaders don’t have enough confidence in teachers to design engaging, challenging curricula on their own, and that is a real disappointment. Granted, there are teachers performing at the lower end of a performance continuum, but hopefully the new evaluation process will help end that. I am also hopeful that the State will support financially school districts that want to reach out and find college students outside of Schools of Education, students with expertise in engineering, accounting, economics, zoology, or any number of fields of study. It is these “future teachers” that will bring their knowledge and passion into the classroom, creating courses that inspire and challenge. Supported by a strong system of clinical supervision, these teachers will help transform our inner city schools into vibrant centers of learning.

All I know for sure is that what is being done now and over the past decade has yielded horrible results. It is time for a new paradigm and a new outlook on education. Let’s give these inner city schools, its teachers, its parents, and stakeholders in the community a chance. I am confident that success will follow.

Free Inner City Schools from the Tentacles of the State

In today’s Trenton Times Connie Goddard wrote an OpEd piece which seemed to call for greater autonomy for the Trenton School District. Her praise of both Toby Sanders and new Superintendent Francisco Duran, and her clear skepticism towards the motives of our State Commissisoner and the Regional Achievement Centers that act on his behest epitomize a core belief that the best way to reform and improve underachieving schools is by returning key decision making to the local level. It is a sentiment that I strongly support.

Readers of this blog know that I have called for radical reform to the State’s education hierarchy, and in fact believe that the enormous gulf separating urban and suburban schools is tantamount to declaring them so dissimilar that they should not be required to abide by the same mandates, take the same tests, or study the same curriculum. The problems facing failing urban schools are so complex that, unlike suburban schools, a holistic approach that involves all stakeholders is required.

With about half of all inner city students dropping out, with test scores showing at best tepid improvement, and given the overall poor performance of the schools, it is time for state officials to admit that their efforts have been a failure. What is needed, and I will admit this is counterintuitive to most “experts,” is to completely liberate schools like Trenton High from the state system.

Inner city high school teachers should have almost complete freedom to design their own curriculum. Administrators, after consulting with teachers, parents, and students, should be free to create their own culture of learning at the school.

Although a decent number of graduates go on to college, mainly community college, very few of them are pursuing the type of programs pursued by the majority of kids at suburban schools. This suggests having these high schools aggressively reach out to the business community to design programs that will better prepare these kids for employment. A school like Trenton should of course provide a challenging curriculum, but that curriculum should be highly differentiated, in essence creating tracks for students based on their personal aspirations. Flexibility is the key, as is the essential involvement of parents and stakeholders in the business and non-profit communities.

A pool of “incentive” money should be created to support efforts to use money as an inducement to exceptional college students, as bonus pay for teachers and administrators, and possibly to pay students and parents for taking positive steps to improve performance.

Ms. Goddard’s approach to education suggests deep frustration with our State’s top down approach to reform. Those in power seem convinced that a firm grip on these schools is needed, when the truth is that they need to perform the most selfless of acts and admit that government, and the academics enriched by government, don’t have all the answers. What is needed in our inner city schools is a more entrepreneurial approach. We hail the entrepreneur and entrepreneurial activity as the main engine of innovation and growth in our economy, but that exaltation seems to stop at the schoolhouse door.

Let the teachers take ownership of the classroom, and let administrators, with enormous input from teachers and the community, take ownership of the school. Maybe Trenton High should consider becoming a charter school? The one thing I know for sure is that local schools should be governed locally; the tentacles of the State should be removed. I’d hate to think that the State believes poor communities and inner city schools are incapable of improving performance without the involvement of politicians and their experts. Next time these people look at the data, rather than see it as a failure of the schools, see it as a failure of their policies. That is where the real blame belongs.