Coming out of a long bout of illness, I recently felt well enough (I thought) to scan the educational news horizon, and came across the second part of the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher. What I saw was not only sobering, but infuriating.

"Only 36% of teachers and 51% of principals believe that all of their students have

the ability to succeed academically."

Not only do a lower percentage of secondary teachers believe setting high expectations for all students would help improve their performance, but distressingly few (62%) believed that addressing individual needs of diverse learners would help; and even fewer (57%) saw the value of collaboration among teachers and school leaders. These figures are not unrelated.

For many years now, I have argued with secondary colleagues who hated the mantra "All children can learn." I've heard high school teachers (some openly, some under-their-breath) attack the notion that every student presented to them could learn (the corollary of that obviously being - "Every child should be taught"). If we accept as an article of faith that every student has the ability not only to learn, but to be academically successful, then we can't really justify not doing everything we can to help each student achieve that goal.

However, if fully 64% of us think at least some (maybe quite a few) of the students for whom we are responsible don't even have the ability to succeed, then we have just excused ourselves from anything close to our best efforts on their behalf. Sadly, I've had more than a few conversations with teachers who feel exactly that way. Some go quickly on the defensive pointing to the lack of responsibility on the part of many students and parents to hold up their end of the educational contract. Ironically, the same survey indicates that the students are more aware of their responsibilities in this process than teachers or administrators may want to believe. But even if student and parent weren't holding up their end, what does that have to do with my belief in the ability, and more important the opportunity, for this young person to succeed in my class or at my school?

The inconsistency in the thinking is revealed by the other two figures. There has been a persistent and decided reluctance on the part of secondary and post-secondary teachers to adjust what we do for the benefit of the students as compared to our elementary or middle school colleagues. We have been slow to even attempt ideas like teacher collaboration, notwithstanding that the antiquated structure of most high schools discourages such collaboration. Similarly, the student loads faced by most high school teachers (100-150 students/day), makes addressing the needs of diverse learners physically daunting, especially if we don't collaborate to get it done. Which is why I don't understand why more of us haven't joined a coordinated charge to change these structures for the benefit of our sanity and the success of our students.

I know the conditions under which we are working; know them 20 years too well. But this lack of belief in students' ability to succeed has an even more insidious undertone. I'm thinking now of an earlier post I wrote on the revival of lower expectations for poor students and students of color as educators bristle under the deeply flawed provisions and implementations of NCLB. NCLB, poverty, economic recession, corrupt or inept policymakers, and a dozen other problems are all real, formidable obstacles facing education in America today. And all the more reason we, educators, should be unshakable in our resolve to be part of the solution.

Bottom line: There is no excuse for a professional educator not believing in the ability and the right of every student to achieve academic success. Period.

I’ve been trying to wait until the spin dust from the State
of the Union message settled, before I did my own end-of-the-year
evaluation of the Administration’s work thus far on education issues.

In all fairness, the President has had quite a few major
issues to juggle in his freshman year, and I, for one, did not expect education
to race to the top of that list. I did hope to see signs that groundwork for
some meaningful and significant change would be forthcoming.

Craig A. Cunningham at the Education
Policy Blog approached this assessment with a thoughtful and open
reflection on his Dec. 2008 predictions on then Education Secretary-in-Waiting,
Arne Duncan. Sort of a pre-and post-test. 
In it, Cunningham reaches a somber conclusion about the person charged
with leading change public education: “The primary group that Arne does not
appear to be listening to (much) are education professionals.”  Sounds distressingly like most of Duncan’s
recent predecessors.  Craig also notes,
as I have, that “Duncan’s closest advisors are also not education professionals.” 
Not spelling
relief, so far (pun absolutely intended). 
Some of my teacher colleagues distress over this continuing
marginalization of teacher voice at the federal level led to a public letter
writing campaign to the President spearheaded by  fellow TLN member Anthony Cody.

So far, the most noticeable change in education policy has
been to remove Bush’s NCLB nameplate from ESEA, and to distill some of the
worst aspects of it into a high-profiled sprint for desperately needed funding,
Race-to-the Top.  One of the concerns
here, is that RttT gives budget-axe wielding state authorities more incentive
to close struggling schools, than to do the work of correcting why they were
low-performing in the first place. This poses a special threat to poor
rural students for whom multiple school options do not exist. But this
Administration has a decidedly urban tilt. Still, it’s curious why Duncan
appears to be putting more stock in the policies that produced only
questionable results in Chicago’s public schools, as opposed to pushing for a
wider range of options, including one of the few truly effective turnaround
strategies in the country also found in Chicago, the Strategic
Learning Initiative.  In this interview with Public School Insights, John Simmons shares this tasty bit of
advice:

[School improvement] is like baking a cake. If you include
all of the essential supports, you get a great cake. But if you leave out one
ingredient, like the salt or the eggs, you are not going to get anything that
tastes like a cake. That is what we found as we put together the best
strategies from education research and the best strategies from high-performance
systems research. So now we have a systemic approach to school improvement. But
it is not a silver bullet.

Unfortunately, silver bullets still appear to be Washington’s tool of choice for school reform. There is growing concern that NCLB reliance on flawed standardized testing and weak data systems
will become even more entrenched through RttT criteria and incentives.  Among those wondering about the potential for
misuse of test data is Chester
Finn of the Fordham Institute who recently told EdWeek:

He worries that the Obama administration’s ambitious goals
for the assessment funding—which include generating information about both
school and student performance as well as data about teacher
effectiveness—could prove to be irreconcilable. “If all the glitterati…remains
in the grant competition, anyone that wants to win the competition is going to
have to pretend they can do all those things….but since we know that they can’t
all be done by the same assessment, in the same period of time at a finite
price, something will get left in the dust.

That same Edweek article also revisits the ongoing concerns
about the inaccuracies and inadequacies of current standardized tests,
especially the flawed attempts to make them more authentic raised by people
like former testing industry insider, Todd Farley, which he also shared via Edutopia. Farley
supports, as I do, that assessment, particularly high-stakes, is better handled
by classroom teachers. I also agree with 
CyberEnglish
teacher, Ted Nellen, that “fixing"
the tests is the very least we could do if we are going to continue to use them
or expand their use for high stakes decisions. Better, as Nellen and others
suggest, is to reduce our dependence on them in favor of more comprehensive
evaluations of student growth and performance. But both these options presume
we actually care more about the students than those who are profiting from the
tests.

Of course, there are
those, like Andy Rotherham, who think NCLB deserves credit for “making
school performance more transparent.” 
More transparent, I suppose, to those who actually didn’t know that
minority students have consistently received an inferior quality of education.
Those would be the same people who for years have refused to listen to the
parents or teachers of poor and minority students as we have complained loud
and long trying to get Federal policymakers to end inequities in allocation of
resources, assignment of teachers, and application of policies by state and
local officials (and that’s not just here in Mississippi).  Incredibly, Rotherham wants to see NCLB
strengthened by among other things “giving [more] political cover to state and
local elected officials…”

Still, the optimist
in me would like to think that there is yet time for the President and his
team to rethink some of these issues, and to engage us all in more thoughtful
discussion before and during the reauthorization of ESEA (formerly known as
NCLB).  I thank another TLN friend, Mary Tedrow, for reminding us that so often learning is a messy and recursive
process, not a linear one.  She suggests
that the raucous and revealing debate around healthcare reform may be a preview
and a omen of what the ESEA process may hold. When a healthcare bill finally
arrives on Mr. Obama’s desk, I’m waiting to see how closely he will hold the
lawmakers and himself to the promises he made about what such a bill would and
would not contain. Yet, I respect him for allowing the democratic process to
run its course (unseemly as it may have been along the way).

If he and the
Secretary do as much with ESEA and other education issues, then I’ll be ready
to pull out my own scoring criteria from just before the election and give them
a passing grade.

I've been following the growing discussion of assessment among teachers in the virtual world.  Starting with a fascinating #edchat thread on Twitter a few weeks ago.  That led to a thoughtful post by Greg Thompson. In his blog, Thompson revisits the importance of formative assessments in ensuring that students leave a topic, subject, or class with a thorough and applicable understanding.

I love this quote from his article, "Assessment is not a necessary evil, it is rightfully necessary..."

Also, part of that exchange was a post from Steven Aderson.

Most recently, my TLN colleague, Anthony Cody shares this insightful report from Dr. J Myron Atkin of Stanford on how formative assessment has been "hijacked" by the testing companies and through the smoke and mirrors of marketing, twisted away from its proven usefulness in real classrooms with real students.

Constantly, analyzing what my students are learning, where they are needing additional support, where they need more challenge, what teaching adjustments I need to make are the core professional decisions that determine the ebb and flow of my teaching life. Make no mistake, these are professional judgments. Formative assessment is not giving a series of mini-standardized tests to see how close we are to being ready for the BIG test. But sadly, this is what it has been reduced to in too many classrooms and schools. Even the best standardized data requires the expertise of the classroom teacher to be of any real use in helping children, and frankly, most of the standardized data currently available is of fairly low quality and little practical use to students or their teachers.

By contrast, a steady flow of meaningful information throughout the semester or school year on each student's learning along with timely and appropriate teacher feedback provides not only irreplaceable support for individual student growth, but richer data for use by the larger school community (teams, faculty, districts) to use in accurately assessing curriculum and instruction.

How can teachers reclaim assessment as the critical tool and learning experience that it should be for our students?

It's time to give thanks, and I am extremely grateful for some people who are doing wonderful things in education today.  I realize I'm often guilty, as are many others, of focusing attention on problems and failures.Contrary to myth, there are many successful educators among us, some of whom are pointing us toward a promising future. Here are some I'd like to thank this season:

Reflections of a Techie (aka Marsha Ratzel) for sharing her fascinating work with middle school science students using the web tool Diigo to follow a real time research expedition.

The ever-amazing Bill Ferriter (aka The Tempered Radical), put together his own classroom tested instructions for using a plethora of web applications with students on the wiki page, Digitally Speaking. 

Anthony Cody, at Living In Dialogue, for organizing teachers to write open letters to President Obama and Secretary Duncan, reminding them of promises made to educators during the election that need to be kept, and reminding us of our professional-civic responsibilities.

English teacher and prolific author, Jim Burke, for nurturing one of the most vibrant virtual learning communities around today, The English Companion Ning.

Teacher's College professor, Celia Oyler, for expressing most succinctly the false logic of judging either student achievement or teacher performance on our current state testing systems.

Claus von Zastrow at Public School Insights for constantly reminding us that there are many places in America today where education is done well and that's where our education policy making should start.

These is just my short list; feel free to add your own.

Thanks to the Forum for Education and Democracy for inviting me to speak at their Oct. 22nd Capitol Hill briefing on "Effective Teachers, High Achievers: How Strengthening the Teaching Profession Can Improve Student Learning." I was part of a panel that included: Angela Valenzuela, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Kati Haycock.

My comments focused on what I believe are two closely related reasons why we do not have quality teachers for all students, particularly for those in high needs, high poverty areas: ineffective teacher evaluation and weak professional development/support.

I am, by whatever measure you might want to use, a highly effective teacher. And, I've done that while teaching in high needs schools. High needs schools are chronically understaffed in quantity and quality. In Mississippi, for example, we will annually have 1,000 more openings for teachers than all of our teacher education programs combined can fill with graduates. A constant turnover of new, underprepared teachers, most of whom will leave the classroom in three years or less, is damaging to the students, who often take these staff departures as a reinforcing sign of their own lack of worth. Meanwhile, those of us who stay, including those who have proven ourselves effective in these difficult settings, are pressured to do more with less and less support, little respect, and no additional time.

I have know from the results of my own work and from the research that highly effective teachers make tremendous difference for all students, but effective teachers are not just energetic missionaries. We are reflective, accomplished practitioners who know our subjects, know our students, and know how to teach those subjects to our students (yes, I just quoted from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards). We're not superheroes from another planet; we're hardworking professionals, who have honed our craft. The really good news is: There are more of us than most people realize, and we could be the rule rather than the exception in public education.

To get to that point, we need to bust at least two myths.

Myth #1: Teachers are the problem. In its multiple variations, this myth asserts that the current teaching force of over 3 million is composed mostly of incompetents who should be replaced with younger, brighter, more dedicated persons. Truth: Even in the most dysfunctional schools or systems, quality teachers (of varying ranges) can be found. They are routinely ignored, their expertise wasted by administrators and education reformers alike. The largest percentage of teachers are mediocre; these include the defensive, the cynical, the frustrated, or as one recent survey called them the "disinheartened." They need either better professional development and/or to be disentangled from noxious learning environments that stifle them as well as their students.

Myth #2: We could get rid of all these incompetent teachers if it weren't for tenure and union contracts. This is a particularly urban myth behind which some administrators and politicians hide to avoid doing the work necessary to remove truly incompetent teachers. I work in an open-shop state where teachers have neither tenure nor collective bargaining. State law says a teacher may be fired by a school district for incompetence, and the procedure for removing them and striping their teaching certifications is relatively straightforward as compared to places like NYC or LA. Yet, in over six years on our state licensure commission, I have yet to see a case of incompetence brought before us for action. Either Mississippi (a) does not have any incompetent teachers, or (b) it's not tenure or union contracts that keeps incompetent teachers in classrooms.

The true culprit appears to be the what passes for teacher evaluation in most places. Apparently, we do not have systems that accurately identify teacher effectiveness or the degree of that effectiveness. Rigorous evaluation systems would not only identify quality teaching, but give each teacher a realistic, timely assessment of his/her work, identifying areas or strength and weakness; thereby, guiding professional development and support needs.

Teacher evaluation in most places, however, is a checklist filled out by a harried administrator during a drive-by walk-through visit of a classroom. In the districts where I've worked, the annual procedure was supposed to go like this: a pre-visit conference between myself and the principal to discuss my work since last year's evaluation, review any areas that were in need of improvement, note any changes or new conditions, and plan for the classroom visit. Next, would come the classroom visit itself; a full-period visit by the principal. The last step was a post-visit conference to review what the administrator saw, clarify areas of concern. Between the steps, the administrator would review my lesson plans (something that s/he should do throughout the school year) and other classroom evidence (student work, test data, etc.) that might shed light on the quality of my work. In over 15 years of high school teaching, I got that full procedure only twice, one of those being my rookie year. I have taught under five principals, one of whom has never seen me teach; three others saw me teach for half of one period. Most years, they simply filled out the paperwork and sent me a copy of my "perfect" evaluation.

The desire for a true and accurate evaluation of my professional work was my primary motivation for seeking National Board Certification in my 10th year of teaching. As my TLN colleagues who reviewed the numerous research studies on the National Board commented in their findings: "Teaching is difficult and important work, it deserves equally complex and thoughtful assessment."

National Board Certification stands out as a model upon which we can build truly rigorous but adaptable approaches to teacher evaluation. The NBPTS process contains the key elements of comprehensive and accurate assessment of what teachers should know and do:

1. It is an advanced certification for examining experienced teachers (not the same as what we might use for novices)
2. It examines both teachers' knowledge of their subject matter AND their skill in teaching that subject matter
3. It is peer evaluated
4. It is based on well-developed standards of teaching
5. It looks at student performance (test data, classroom work) 
6. It looks at teacher performance in context (school conditions, student characteristics, support systems)
7. It requires multiple forms of representation of teacher's work (visual, written, audio) as well as supporting evidence from the teachers' own classroom, students, and peers.
8. It looks at contributions and work the teacher may be performing outside the classroom (community, schoolwide, contributions to the profession, etc.)

These are elements upon which we could build more flexible and rigorous teacher evaluation processes that could take into account the wide variations in teaching styles and situations.

A little side note on item #5 above: Contrary to misperception, Board certification process does look at student's standardized test data if that data exists for the candidate. Remember, most teachers work with subject areas and grade levels that are not tested; and the certification is available to public and private educators. I submitted test data as part of my NB portfolio and so do most candidates for whom such data is available. I believe this is the best way to use test data in teacher evaluation--by combining it with other measures and setting those in the specific context of the teaching situation. This is in direct contrast to those who tout "value-added measures" alone as an accurate gauge of teacher performance.

I know there are some teacher (and administrator) evaluations that are more effective than the ones I've experienced. North Carolina, for example, has recently changed its teacher evaluation system, based in large part on ideas from NBPTS (love for some of you to share about that here).

Anybody working with an effective teacher evaluation model? Know of one? What about the administrators perspective?