reform » Philly Teacher

EdReform Impossible

education, reflection, reform 2 Responses »

Aug 292012

The more I read about school reform here in Philadelphia, the more it feels like an episode of the Food Network show, Restaurant Impossible. For those who have never seen it, picture a professional restauranteur swooping in to turnaround a failing restaurant with his years of experience and no-nonsense attitude.

The changes that the host, Robert Irvine, makes usually include a changing of the guard, renovations of the current dining room, menu curation, tightening up of management, and more often than not, tears. Having experienced a school turnover from the inside, the metaphor really hits the mark. The first thing we found out when our school was declared a “Renaissance School” was that we were all going to be force transferred. In addition, just as Irvine renovates the dining room, the turnaround charters invest a lot of money in capital improvements as can be seen in this video of the Grover Cleveland Elementary turnaround school from the local news. The school I taught in had holes in the wall, broken heat, broken bathrooms and overall deplorable conditions. In fact, so deplorable, it was, in my eyes, a civil rights issue. Through outside funding, charter networks can make improvements that the school district never could.

In addition to capital improvements, these schools also experience a change in curriculum as well as discipline programs (their ‘menu’). The larger networks also bring in new management, most of which are highly-groomed and prepared administrators from within the network. These administrators employ their charter network’s motto, which usually includes some iteration of “No Excuses” and includes some kind of reference to “Success.”

All great changes for a school that has been continuously failing to meet its students’ needs year after year.

The metaphor falls short, however, in a few places. For one, Irvine gives each of the existing staff a chance to prove their worth as a leader or with their cooking skills. This is never the case with a Renaissance School. It is assumed that the school is failing because of the awful teachers that work there, so they all must go (and, I might add, be replaced with young, inexperienced staff). The biggest place that the metaphor falls short is in the fact that Irvine works with the current owners to fully understand their vision for their restaurant and to help them improve their own business practices to save their restaurant. Were Irvine to follow the Renaissance School model, he would strut in, fire everyone and sell the business to Bobby Flay.

Still, I’m pretty sure that Bluford Elementary is a safer, higher performing school than it was when I left it. So what’s my beef, really?

After experiencing Mastery Charter classroom management training I can say that their model is not brain surgery. They have packaged a variety of well-respected methods (imagine a formulaic blend of Responsive Classroom without the morning meetings and Harry Wong) and have provided extensive training for their teachers that includes reviewing video taped lessons with teachers. What Mastery has (and I’m sure many of the other turnaround school charter companies have as well) is the funding to do what the Philadelphia School District can’t: repair buildings, offer extensive coaching and support as well as provide highly-trained and indoctrinated administrative teams.

An unsettling aspect of this large-scale turnaround movement is the fact that, as I wrote about earlier this year, all of these schools essentially look the same. KIPP, Mastery and even Uncommon Schools use the same vocabulary (like ‘grit’), have the same college-ready focus and even use the same management techniques (acronyms like “SLANT” and “STAR” to describe what ‘academic posture’ looks like). The other thing they all have in common? They are all located in urban areas and pride themselves on offering real opportunities to urban kids.

I’m not arguing that they don’t.

But what they don’t offer is true school choice. What happens to our urban school system when every school is a KIPP or a Mastery school? What real choices will our students have? I’ve seen videos of Mastery and Uncommon School classrooms. Rows, silence, little to no group work, teacher-directed, teacher-centered instruction. These are highly-structured and tightly controlled classrooms. Which work for many kids, but not for all. I know that many of my inner city, North Philadelphia and West Philadelphia students would blossom in a Quaker/Friends style school or a school modeled after Quest2Learn. To make matters worse, Mastery Charter just received a huge grant to take their practices to other schools around the city. The more we allow our neighborhood public schools to be turned over to these large charter networks, the less choice our students really have.

As many changes that Robert Irvine makes when he comes in to rescue restaurants in trouble, he also helps them maintain their own identity as a restaurant and empowers the owners with the tools they need to succeed. Where is that kind of support for our struggling neighborhood schools? How can we ensure that we empower our neighborhood schools to succeed and provide a variety of educational offerings that meet the desires of the community in which they are housed?

Connecting the Pieces in Philly’s Education Reform

reflection, reform 3 Responses »

Jul 072012

Photo courtesy of 401K 2012

This week’s City Paper cover story, Money Talks by Daniel Denvir, has gathered a lot of attention. The article explores the financial reach of the William Penn Foundation in the current reform plans being discussed for the school district. While a lot of the facts in the article were nothing new to me, a few things really troubled me. I have always been leery of private foundations dipping their hands into education reform. It’s one thing to support schools, it’s another thing when large, private foundations begin to fund larger scale school reform. What is truly unnerving about the current plan being proposed by the Boston Consulting Group, whose work here in Philly has been partially funded by the William Penn Foundation) is that, according to Denvir’s article, they are calling it the “Blueprint.” I just recently started reading Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System and the first part reads like a history of the Philadelphia school district over the last 10 years. When I joined the District in 2003, I was trained in Balanced Literacy and Everyday Math, which were both part of the “Blueprint” implemented in San Diego by Alan Bersin and Anthony Alvarado from 1998-2003. This Blueprint was, as the current BCG’s plan is, poorly received by many parents, teachers and the San Diego teachers’ union due to it’s top-down, take no prisoners approach. Interestingly enough, according to Ravitch’s book, the Broad Foundation supported a campaign to defeat an anti-Blueprint school board nominee. William Hite, the Philadelphia School District’s newly selected superintendent, is a graduate of the Broad Foundation’s Superintendent’s Academy.

The other disconcerting part of the article is an infographic showing the reach that the William Penn Foundation has here in Philadelphia. Along with helping fund the BCG’s Blueprint, they also provide financial backing for the political watch dog group the Committee of Seventy, which recently called for more transparency in the new superintendent’s contract, as well as the non-profit newspaper The Public School Notebook, which has closely followed and reported on everything from Arlene Ackerman’s exit to the controversy over Hope Moffet’s reassignment to ‘teacher jail.’ Something has to give when one entity has influence in so many different arenas. While Denvir’s article hints that the Foundation may be ending its funding of some of the more politically active, anti-privatization groups, this is even more worrisome.

All said, I certainly hope that these partnerships between the Philadelphia School District and private foundations like the William Penn Foundation and The Gates Foundation turns out better than the San Diego Blueprint fiasco and that any plans to move forward with the BCG plan involve community, parent and teacher voice and input. It sounds like Hite is willing to listen and continue the work that has been started, but he is only one piece in the puzzle.

Synthesizing Thoughts from the #beyondthetextbook Forum

education, reflection, reform 3 Responses »

Mar 212012

After a day and half of great conversation hosted by Discovery Education with a group of educators for whom I have the utmost respect, I’m not sure if I am able to walk away with any solutions or magic bullets.

What I am able to walk away with is a better idea of what I envision and what I don’t want to see.

When we broke out into small discussion groups it occurred to me that all of the features we were discussing already existed. It seemed that all of the tools, like bookmarking, a ‘share’ feature, access to databases, were existing technologies, and it seemed silly to overlay them on a new device or ‘textbook.’

What if, we pondered, a ‘textbook’ was really a portal to a repository of varied media resources? One that teachers could search and curate according to their needs? What if students could also log into this portal and see the resources pooled by the teacher, add their own resources and connect with classmates? Teachers could differentiate content on a student-by-student basis through the portal.

Here are some of our thoughts from the half hour discussion. We separated our thoughts into three categories, Delivery, Content, and Interactivity (hat tip to Wes Fryer for the categories).

The conundrum that I find hard to wrap my head around is how any company can embrace openness and sharing of information and still make a profit. When resources are behind a paywall, how do we make authentic learning, content and collaboration work in the most effective ways for kids?

I suggested that Discovery create a community for students similar to their DEN Network, but even then, it will be behind a paywall.

Another worry that I have is that, since many teachers will still feel lost without a book, guide or physical text, that the culture of worksheets and printing out ‘activities’ will be sustained rather than sussed. This shift will require strong and fearless leadership in order to move the culture of a school or district forward.

What is vital for the next steps of any discussion around what a learning text (or ‘resource collection,’ as I may begin calling it) looks like is to hold a student forum similar to the adult forum. Even an 8 year old can tell you what he or she does and doesn’t like about the books they use in their classroom. For some insight into what a high school student sees in a textbook, I love this video by a student at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.

Overall, the day was very inspiring, and through discussion, I was able to form, re-form and question my own perceptions, beliefs and visions for the future of the textbook. I hope the conversation continues and that whatever comes of it is modular, learner-centered and pushes the envelope for not just pushing out content but for guiding the learning process.

Beyond the Textbook

education, reflection, reform, technology 10 Responses »

Mar 132012

photo by Mary Beth Hertz

I am humbled to be part of a team of educators, many of whom are esteemed peers, converging in a little under a week at Discovery Education headquarters to discuss the future of the textbook, specifically the digital textbook. As an elementary teacher, I know that my opinions and experiences with textbooks differ from those who teach high school and higher ed. However, my experience using textbooks in high school and college helps mold some of my views on the topic.

The first textbook I ever remember using was my French textbook in 6th grade. Before that, I don’t have any clear memories of textbooks. After that, my memories are that of doing the odd problems at the end of the chapter in my math textbook, reviewing my notes and trying desperately to figure out the magic in the explanation in the book that would make me able to figure out how to do a problem. I remember my textbook for AP US History, for Global Studies, and a couple of textbooks that were anthology-like. Most of these were heavy and used mostly for homework and for memorizing things that were on a test.

Once I got to college, the only textbooks I bought were for classes I took to satisfy requirements. Psychology, Astronomy, Anthropology (huge, impersonal lecture hall classes)….. As a French major, I had the delightful experience of shopping for novels and poetry each semester, all hand-picked by the professor for a particular reason (a class on French Vietnamese literature, a class on Medieval French literature). Some of my classes in other subject areas (or seminars as I guess they would be called) involved a mixture of novels picked by the professor and mini books of articles and selected chapters pulled together by the professor. I still have many of those mini books because they were like little gold mines of information and a great resource to refer to later when I was thinking of a particular class discussion.

My textbooks? I sold them back to the store or left them in the attic of my parents’ house to rot.

Moving back in time to elementary school, I am disheartened by the heavy reliance that teachers have on Pearson and Houghton-Mifflin textbooks. I am even more disheartened to hear instructional directors call these “curriculum.”

I was overjoyed to hear about a principal who collected all of the math textbooks from the teachers and told them to teach math the way they wanted to. This was in response to teachers expressing frustration with teaching math and with kids learning math. The result? After stages of anger and helplessness, the teachers figured things out. They taught math better and the kids learned math better. Very few, if any teachers, according to the story, came back for their textbooks.

So what does this have to do with the future of the textbook and digital texts?

Two things.

First, we need to be careful that we don’t waste this new technology by doing the same things in a different way (similar to the way the glorious Interactive Whiteboard still remains a teacher-centric digital chalkboard in many classrooms). Second, we need to use the digital technologies available to allow for professors and K-12 teachers to build the kinds of resources that fit the needs of their classroom. No longer should educators be forced to asked their students to purchase a $100 textbook so they can use the 3 chapters that are relevant to their course.

I also see educators pooling their knowledge to crowd source courses and texts that are inexpensive, flexible, across many digital platforms, are specific to their students, their specific course and that are easily amendable should new information arise that is relevant to the course. This is already happening, and will only become easier as the technology gets better and easier to use.

Another aspect of the new digital textbook is the opportunity to display information through multimedia and interactive activities. Again, I will point back to my first statement above. These tools and mediums are amazing and match much of what brain research shows us about how people learn in different ways and through different modalities. However, let’s be smart and avoid using this new technology to embed lectures or videos that could be found with a simple Internet search or to create fancy “end of chapter” activities that are a waste of time.

I’m not trying to pretend that I have an answer for how we can leverage digital texts to truly do something different, but I won’t accept a Pearson-produced textbook with a built-in dictionary and highlighter with a few videos embedded here or there to be the limit of innovation.

What do you think?

Please share any links, resources or opinions you have in the comment area!

Change from Within vs Change from Without

education, reflection, reform 24 Responses »

Jan 172012

Until recently I counted myself among those change-minded folks who believed that true change could be enacted (and must be at some level) enacted from within ‘the system.’ Amid the discussions of many homeschoolers and unschoolers, who believe that it is time to throw the whole system out, I have always argued that there has to be some people who stay within the system to push for change.

After making it halfway through Disrupting Class, I’m beginning to form a new point of view. What if it wasn’t about throwing out the baby with the bath water? What if it was about meeting the needs of those ‘non-consumers,’–the homeschoolers, the unschoolers, and any other learners for whom the current system as it stands does not work–and making this new way of learning so good and so effective that the ‘mainstream’ had no choice but to embrace it?

It’s already happening in the form of online schools and classes and in the huge number of people who have chosen to homeschool their children and have created networks of other homeschoolers. What about the fact that these families can now provide access to knowledge and information to their children that they previously could not due to the amazing learning opportunities (free MIT courses!) one can find on the Internet.

I have always been against throwing out the whole system, mostly because I’ve seen what happens when people completely disrupt students, teachers, families and communities through school closings and upheaval through throwing out what was done and imposing a new way of doing things.

However, if a new way of doing things becomes so irresistible and begins to play a part in the existing system, then there is a chance that this new way of doing things can become the way we do things without upheaval of families, students, teachers and communities.

Christensen and Horn use the metaphor of the Apple PC and the huge DEC Corporation to explain how this works. If DEC is the school system as it stands, then the online schools, unschooling, homeschooling trends are the Steve Jobs of education. Apple met the need of people who never consumed DEC products in the first place and then slowly took over the market.

What I do know is that I want the next step I take to be toward a disruptive model that will help fine-tune the new way we educate students in this country in the future.

What do you think? Change from within or change from without?

Getting Education Leaders to #takethetest

education, reflection, reform 2 Responses »

Dec 132011

image via MforMarcus on Flickr

Unless you were under a rock last week, you probably saw the Washington Post article “When an Adult Took Standardized Tests Forced on Kids.” This article has spawned the Twitter hashtag #takethetest, and it has also inspired some of my favorite education bloggers to share their own thoughts.

Canadian educator and blogger Joe Bower was even able to converse briefly with Alberta’s Minister of Education about the possibility of the Minister taking the test. My friend, Deven Black argues that, “After all, if the tests are adequate to judge teacher ability they must certainly be able to judge the ability of the people who hire the teachers, set curriculum and allocate assets to schools.” Deven’s post has some interesting comments and I think they are important to consider. Some adults don’t think they need to know what a 10th grader knows because it’s no longer applicable to their lives. Others worry that politicians, should they take the tests, will begin to try to influence their content.

I am intrigued by the idea, not just of school board members taking The Test, but also by the idea that these leaders will stand by what they enforce on teachers, administrators and schools. As someone who has proctored hundreds of PSSAs, I have seen a fair dose of poorly worded questions, reading selections that assume a certain amount of prior knowledge and questions that teachers have thrown their hands up at because an open-ended question was on an obscure topic that the curriculum they were following didn’t stress. Every time I proctor, I make sure to take the test at the same time, walking around the room with a blank test in my hand. I’ll freely admit that despite my fancy liberal arts degree, numerous academic achievements, a Master’s degree and three certifications, I have come across at least one question on every test that I could not answer correctly.

I think it would be at least fair for Arne Duncan or Michelle Rhee to take one of the state tests and then own up to their score and reflect on it.

**update: I have to give credit to my friend, Lisa Nielsen for the work she does to push the envelope in education and challenge the status quo. Along with Joe Bower, she has been advocating for families and students to opt-out of standardized tests. (a subject on which we do not always agree) I was made aware of Joe’s post through her.

Give Us Back Our Voices

education, reflection, reform 4 Responses »

Sep 292011

Despite leaving the Philadelphia School District for a charter school in 2010 (a direct result of the Renaissance School Initiative), I have been watching the developments and news in the District very closely. I have read harsh, aggressive comments about charter schools, neighborhood schools, parents and teachers along with name-calling and exaggerations in comment areas that stretch on for pages on both Philly.com and on The Notebook’s website.

If you’ve been paying attention at all you’re probably enraged, confused and feeling a little hopeless about the state of Philadelphia’s schools. Between budget woes, investigations and massive layoffs, it’s been a rough 6 months. Just within the past month or so we’ve seen a controversial and tremendous payout to Arlene Ackerman, former Superintendent. Earlier in the summer we saw a surprising last minute decision to keep Foundations as the manager for Martin Luther King High School. Later, we learned about back door dealings between Robert Archie, the Chairman of the School Reform Commission and Representative Dwight Evans along with Arlene Ackerman that led to the decision. When I read the stories surrounding the investigation it reminds me of a schoolyard argument, with each party pointing their fingers at the other.

For those of you not familiar with the history of the Philadelphia School District, a quick lesson. In 2001 the State took over the Philadelphia schools and created the School Reform Commission, a governing board of members appointed by the Mayor of Philadelphia and the Governor of Pennsylvania, who appoints 3 of the 5 members. With the recent controversies, this group has dwindled to two members, one of whom commutes from California for meetings. Today, Mayor Nutter appointed Wendell Pritchett to the Commission to ensure that the SRC had quorum for its meetings.

In addition, with the recent departure of Superintendent Ackerman, the District has decided to do another national search for a new Superintendent.

Enough is enough already.

It is obvious to me (and many others) that the SRC experiment has failed.

You know what’s missing from these headlines?

Families and children, citizens and community members.

It’s time for their voices, along with those of Philadelphians all over the City to be heard. I haven’t spoken to anyone here in Philadelphia who sees the SRC as a well-functioning entity. In fact, I am always amazed at the amount of jaw-dropping I’ve seen when I casually mention that Philadelphia doesn’t have an elected School Board.

It’s time for Philadelphia to take back control of its schools. Sure, Philly is not short on cronyism and corruption, but at least, with an elected entity, we have only ourselves to blame. Why, I wonder, after stints by both Paul Vallas and Arlene Ackerman who have left the District broke and with more of a bureaucratic mess than when they came in, would the District continue to look for these hot shot, swoop-in-and-save-the-day celebrities?

The time of State-appointed, non-local officials running our schools needs to come to an end. I know that this extreme of a change cannot come all at once, but it needs to be a goal. What if the structure of the School Board were reinstated, with 3 of the members elected by the Philadelphia citizens and one appointee each for the Mayor and the Governor? Eventually, with term limits, those appointed positions could be replaced by elected officials. What if the Superintendent came from our city? What if s/he already knew the game and the players?

The City’s schools belong to the people, they are our responsibility.

Philadelphians need to speak up. Give us back our voices.

A Mastery/KIPP Eureka Moment

education, reflection, reform 10 Responses »

Aug 112011

Today I was lucky enough to catch a fascinating conversation with the CEOs of both KIPP and Mastery Charter Schools here in Philadelphia. As someone who was directly impacted by the Philadelphia School District’s Renaissance School Initiative, I have some deep seated mistrust of Mastery Charter. They campaigned to take over my former school in a not-so-honest way and they’re merit/demerit system has always irked me.

However, listening to Marc Mannella (KIPP) and Scott Gordon (Mastery) I found that there was nothing they said that didn’t sound acceptable, well-meaning and respectable. Granted, the whole picture was not really painted during the interview, but the guys honestly care about kids and families.

So, I kept pondering, “what’s my beef?” Obviously, these schools work for some kids. Some families love them and they have definitely turned kids’ lives around. In fact, Mannella specifically states that KIPP is not a “silver bullet” or that it works in every school in every community.

So, what’s my beef?

Both men kept agreeing and referring to the commonalities between the two school models. In fact, at one point one of the men basically said the other had taken his answer.

This is my beef.

OK, I get it. KIPP works, Mastery works. But are they really offering the choices they claim they offer to students and families in Philadelphia? If they’re so similar, what’s the choice there? I have already made reference to this false school choice in a previous post, but I finally had my Eureka moment when I sent out this tweet:

Bam.

That’s it.

We need to offer students and families more than college-prep, reward/punishment models. Granted, there are a number of diverse charter schools here in Philly that offer distinct models, but these two models run 15 schools in Philadelphia alone. Yes, it works for many, but it shouldn’t be all that’s out there.

You can check out the interview here on the Radio Times website.

It’s Time to Take Our Schools Back

reflection, reform No Responses »

Feb 282011

Why???

I moved to Philadelphia in August 2002 with a lot of energy and no idea what I was doing here. Nearly 9 years later I have built a career, bought a house and am proud to call Philadelphia home. I think that there are amazing things happening in this city and it is an exciting place to be. The city is full of creative, inspired and passionate people of all ages. Between The Mural Arts Program, events like Ignite Philly, a movement of food co-ops, farmers markets as well as a number of civic associations that work hard to make their neighborhoods great places to live.

The majority of these groups are community-run and are not funded by the City or the State. Often, the people running them work full time along with the work they do for their neighborhoods and the larger Philadelphia community. There are a lot of hard working individuals trying to make Philadelphia the best city it can be.

So, I ask, why does the state still run our schools?

It is time for these concerned and involved citizens to say “enough is enough.” We’ve seen the enraged parents, the protests and the shady actions by the School District.

Until we have an elected school board that truly represents the parents, families and stakeholders of our city, then we will continue to have change forced on us and we will continue to lose our voices.

I don’t pretend to know where to start, but I wonder who is with me?

Why Scale It?

reform, teaching 5 Responses »

Dec 242010

photo courtesy of FreeFoto.com

I recently read an article entitled, “Education’s Status Quo to Parents: How Dare You Use the Parent Trigger and Make Decisions!” on the blog Dropout Nation. I won’t get into the details of the article, which was about the uproar over a private company helping parents in California use the “Parent Trigger” to call for the closing of a failing elementary school. Rather, a comment by the author of the post grabbed me.

We had been engaging on various points back and forth in the comment area and one of my comments claimed that many of these privatized charter schools are not scalable. They cannot replace traditional schools on the larger scale. To which the author, RiShawn Biddle replied,

The obsession with scale, both among traditionalists and school reformers, from where I sit, fails to consider what actually happens in the real world. Which leads to another point: Your concept of a “corporate” approach is rather false. In the corporate world, there is rarely full standardization; companies will approach their operations, markets and array of products and services differently. Proctor & Gamble is different from Colgate-Palmolive and from Unilever. All are successful in the space in which they compete and satisfy the needs of their customers. Same is true for Apple and Microsoft. What these companies do have in common is what all successful companies share (including strong talent development, and clear focus on product, service and customers). What each company does that is particular to its corporate culture and historical development will not work for others.

I stopped to think for a minute.

While I find it heartbreaking to think of students as customers and schools as customer service–first of all, this applies only to private schools with tuition, second, it’s a team effort so the road goes both ways. I wonder about the argument, “it’s not scalable.”

We are constantly talking about how learning should be individualized, how we need to teach students, not subjects, how what works for one student may not work for another. So why are we constantly seeking that one model that ‘works?’

As I stated in my comment on the post:

Privatized charter schools are not scalable. What IS scalable is giving ALL schools the freedom they need to educate students. Give ALL parents the power to make changes in their schools not because they are privately run charters, but because their school has the freedom to meet the needs of the community rather than bow down to district mandates.

There are a lot of ‘franchise’ type charter schools out there right now (Mastery, KIPP, Harlem Success and others), and I won’t expound on my feelings for some of them, but these kinds of school networks ARE trying to scale their model by taking over more and traditional public schools. Whenever a traditional public school is taken over by a charter school, in my experience here in Philadelphia, the ‘no excuses’ environment and high expectation for parent involvement often causes huge attrition rates. Where do these students go? Back to a traditional public school.

It seems that the more control the government wants to have over schools the worse off everyone is. In a district as big as Philadelphia, with over 200 schools, we have the federal government telling us what to do thanks to Race to the Top, and we are run by the state rather than an elected school board. We have programs that are mandated across the board for all low-performing schools (usually scripted programs) and decisions are made for sometimes all elementary schools across the board no matter what part of the city or what population the schools serve.

This is what scalability looks like. And, as Biddle states, it doesn’t work.

So when will politicians, teachers, unions, parents and edreforms galore stop looking for the magic solution and understand that any organization that deals entirely with people is complicated and defies the logic of scalability? We need schools that serve the communities and children in which they stand, not the blanket mandates of districts and large network franchises.