Category Archives: Why We Can’t Get It Right

Merit Pay for Students: Testing and Concerns

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So tomorrow and Wednesday my school will administer the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). In the past, there has been concern that some students have not taken the test “seriously.” Some of my past seniors, in fact, have retaken the test because they said they simply raced through it because it felt inconsequential (even though they need to pass it to officially graduate).

However, when I look at the work in my classroom and data from other measurements at the school, it’s pretty clear that many, many of the students have a lot of academic strides to make before they can pass the test. While participation and engagement may be part of the challenges our students face, quality instruction is probably most important.

Which is why the following excerpt from a faculty email is so problematic:

Every Student Who Passes a CAHSEE Test Earns a Prize as follows:

Proficient on Both Sections = iPad, IPod Touch, iPod Shuffle or $20 gift card

Proficient on 1 and Pass on Other Section = iPod Touch, iPod Shuffle, or $20 gift card

Pass on Both = iPod Shuffle or $20 gift card

Pass on 1 section = Gift Cards of $5-$20

Remember to tell your students a Pass Score is 350, and a Proficient Score is 380.

Additionally, another Small Learning Community (SLC) teacher emailed the following:

To [specific SLC] Teachers

Please remind our [SLC] 10th grade students that are taking the CAHSEE for the first time, and score proficient on both the math and english, they will receive $50.00.

They must score proficient on both tests. Also, we will raffle a pair of tickets to the Laker game February 22nd, as well as, other prizes for [SLC] students who show up both days and

show a sincere effort while taking the exam.

Hoping the best for all our students.

To me, it would be one thing to reward participation on the exam. However, when students are being rewarded (beyond intrinsic rewards) for passing the exam, it creates a false hierarchy on campus. My prediction: the students in the magnet academy, the NAI program, and a handful of students in AP & the honors tracks will clean up and get lots of rewards and the students that need the most academic support will feel deficient. There is some (problematic) support to the notion of paying students to get good grades. However, this differs significantly from performing on a single test over a two day period. We may be trying to reward diligence and participation, but the model looks–to me–like we’re instead penalizing struggling students for systemic poor teaching.

Waiting for Dialogue

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There’s a lot of talk about Waiting for Superman: what it gets wrong, what it portrays incorrectly, what needs to be done. Having finally seen it, I actually can’t say I’m all that disappointed with the film. If anything, I see it as a tremendous opportunity.

Sure, I take issue with the ways that charters are lionized, unions are vilified, and lottery-losing parents are victimized in Waiting for Superman. However, as an educator, I can say I’m still genuinely glad this film is making headlines. I realize this idea may upset many of my colleagues, but I hope more people will see it. I hope they’ll walk out of the theater angry.

Scanning the credits, I noted that Waiting for Superman utilized a data set and resources I am not only familiar with but know and trust the researchers that created it. As such, it’s not that the film is menacing propaganda but more a gripping reminder of the ways that data can be framed to tell specific narratives. Of course, when such tales deal with the opportunities and lived experiences of young people across the country, the stories matter much much less than actual results.

I appreciate efforts like Not Waiting for Superman and I hope more people will be able to look at some of the more level headed responses coming out of the film. And frankly, the amount of funding that can go directly into classrooms as a result of the Donors Choose promotion with the film is fantastic. If anything, I feel like a lot of individuals are going to walk out of the theater and many will be compelled to visit the film’s web site, maybe click the Take Action tab, maybe even buy the more problematic companion text. And critical educators are going to stomp their feet and make this a debate when it should be a dialogue.

Here is a film that is helping create vitriol for the atrocities that are happening – historically – within classrooms. This is an opportunity to build coalitions around anger – not see the film as an attack but as an entry point for more dialogue and for action regardless of if you are pro-Waiting or pro-Not Waiting. Frankly, it would be great if a site like Waiting for Superman and a site like Not Waiting for Superman simply linked individuals to the exact same forum – everyone will be going to these sites for the same purposes: students.

Because I’m Teaching L.A.’s Kids: Thoughts on Today’s Front Page Article

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I can’t say I’m all that surprised by today’s LA Times article addressing teacher effectiveness; it said nothing surprising about the importance of effective teachers; LAUSD sent out a phone blast to its employees on Friday essentially warning us of the impending article; a union-related listserv I subscribe to hotly debated the level of vitriol with which to respond to the Times both before and subsequently after the article was published; value-added analysis has been something of a hot topic in education reform discussions of late.

All that being said, I’m worried about the implications the article – not the findings – have on the continuing hunt for the “bad” teachers (now publicly searchable) working with America’s youth. I’m reading this from a bunch of perspectives – as a union member participating in committee work around teacher effectiveness, researcher within an urban school, and Department of Education employee: I have many concerns as I read the article. However, my opinion here comes solely as a frustrated and still hopefully optimistic teacher. And as a teacher, I’m worried that I’m now going to be judged on my natural talents and not those that are being fostered through development from the district or other support networks. The article focuses on the importance of individual teachers without looking at how teachers become effective or suggesting anything other than the notion that effectiveness is a permanent, immutable status. Why is there less focus on how teachers improve? On the impotent “professional development” that does little than caterwaul about problems within instruction practice? On how resources can be used to triage teachers like John Smith?

I say all this also frustrated that the LA Times paints a false picture when stating that “the most effective teachers often go unrecognized, the keys to their success rarely studied.” Lately, I’ve been wading through significant heaps of research around teacher effectiveness. I’ve been discussing with WestEd’s Ken Futernick the way school turnaround emphasizes the importance of teachers as leaders and empowered individuals; we’ve discussed recent work by Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullen. I’ve been reading research about how three effective teachers in a row essentially close the achievement gap. I’ve been a part of a Freshman Academy that specifically recruited perceived effective teachers within Manual Arts to best address the needs of the most at-risk grade at the school. There is plenty of research about teacher effectiveness (these links being solely the stuff I’ve been reading on effectiveness over the past two weeks) and still the LA Times has chosen to frame the debate about education reform around individual teachers.

Of the many points also made, I don’t agree with the way the article seems to negate class as a factor in looking at student performance. Though “other studies of the district have found that students’ race, wealth, English proficiency or previous achievement level played little role in whether their teacher was effective” and “contrary to popular belief, the best teachers were not concentrated in schools in the most affluent neighborhoods, nor were the weakest instructors bunched in poor areas,” a distribution of resources, the culture within schools based on SES and the role of stringent imposed mandates all weigh heavily not only on teacher effectiveness, but consistent student outcomes.

Lastly, I feel concern for the way that teachers and my union will respond to this. While I feel disappointment at the missed opportunity that this article has in shedding light on needed steps of reform, I’m surprised by the way some UTLA members chose to respond to the article by complaining about parents, students, and communities. Though this is not at all exemplary of all teacher points of view it is yet another way blame is being shifted for the problems highlighted.

With this acting as the introductory piece in an ongoing series of articles highlighting education within Los Angeles, I’m skeptical of positive change arising from the work the LA Times has published. We’ll see how the opportunity for public commenting from teachers within the study pans out over the next few weeks.

“Consequent Confidence” And The Books Our Kids Read

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“Social hegemony [as] … spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production.” – Antonio Gramsci

Alice Waters Gathers Us Around the Table

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The table is a civilizing place. It’s where a group comes and they hear points of view, they learn about courtesy and kindness, they learn about what it is to live in a community – live in a family first, but live in  bigger community. That’s where it comes from, don’t you think?

And

And I just feel like the best way to inflence those kids is to help educate them in the public school system and to teach them to open their senses. Do you know that eighty-five percent of kids in this country don’t eat one meal with their family a day? I think we just forgot, you know. It just got thrown out that idea of being around a table. And we don’t know what got thrown out with it. There are a lot of things that happen around a table; even if you don’t like what’s on the table and you can’t communicate with your family, you have to sit there in a way and wait ’til that guy stops talking so that you go pass the bread to another or use a napkin or a fork or a knife. And those things are becoming very foreign to a lot of children! It’s an offering to-someone-who-needs-food. It’s healing. And I think that’s what the table is! It’s an offering to nourish people!  And the more you’re out there, the more you realize what’s upstream is coming downstream. The more you realize that, you know, we’re all sort of connected here.

From this play, incidentally. (Will be reading with the eleventh graders in two weeks.)

Baby Steps

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I’ve been trying for some time to track down the new Babies documentary trailer, after first seeing it before Where the Wild Things Are. I remembered feeling troubled by the way the film other-izes and makes cute foreign lifestyles and traditions.

I’m not trying to be curmudgeonly and express distaste for everything, but it feels odd when everyone in the theater is laughing at African and Asian babies (“Ha ha, they’re fighting” and “Ha ha, they have a goat that’s drinking the bath water”) while the whiter babies are simply seen as adorable, as normal.

It doesn’t look like this was the intention of the film or the trailer, but – when we’re filming & editing from a westernized position (I believe the film is French) – these biases arise unintentionally.

I think the trailer will have to be online soon. In the meantime, I snapped a bunch of pics in the theater as I watched Fantastic Mr. Fox as if I were some bootlegger trying to peddle wares in the LA Santee market.

Check out the contrast in depiction of lifestyles (yes, perhaps this is partly the point of the film, but doesn’t it make it even more problematic?). Enjoy.

Apparently Its Own Department‽

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Saw this on the shelf in our main meeting room the other day and felt creeped out.

Fitting, considering that on the same day, Wayne Au spoke to my Critical Theory class about his book, Unequal by Design. If ever a picture deserved an interrobang, it’s this one (thanks for the link, Peter).

Defaced of Embraced?: A Much Needed Guest Post

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So it starts with this:

And then I get this:

So I send this:

As I think about the many conversations happening around YA literature, youth literacy, and reading efforts in our schools, it’s more and more obvious that the people that matter most in these discussions are not being included. I couldn’t be more thrilled to get someone as knowledgeable in the Twilight series to add such an astute addition to the current discourse. If you’re wondering, Sam’s a natural writer and voracious reader. Already with a few completed drafts of novels under her belt, she will be helping me co-teach a unit to her fellow seniors in a week in conjunction with National Novel Writing Month (NANOWRIMO).

I know my email said this would be a conversation, but I’ve written enough and want to yield the proverbial mic to Ms. Diego for the duration of this post (your comments are encouraged to further this discussion with a true expert).

Defaced of Embraced?

Everyone has had to read them. Many have been asked to analyze the writing. Some of us even read them for the sole purpose of a good book. But, have our classic novels become a victim of this Twilight epidemic?

Sure, many girls are going crazy for this newly famous Edward Cullen character. Yet, you have to wonder what Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth Benett, Cathy, Heathcliff, even Romeo & Juliet have to do with Twilight. Although these classic stories have been mentioned in the series, it leads me to believe that what was once a nice reference has become an act of violation.

Recently, our classic novels have been reprinted with different book covers; those which resemble that of the Twilight series. While they may look new and shiny, the same story remains. However, I can’t help but realize that that feel of the authenticity of the book has been defaced. And yes, Pride and Prejudice may not have had the best cover to begin with, but the story itself was so different than anything read before. Which is what made it that much lovelier.

Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight Saga, was inspired by five different books throughout her skyrocketing writing career. Classics such as Romeo & Juliet, Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, The Merchant of Venice and even A Midsummers Night’s Dream. These are all wonderful classics that, let’s face it, have inspired many other writers, but to take that inspiration to a new level is to be questioned.

By now it is obvious that Meyer is a big fan of our wonderful classics. We welcome her to our club with open arms. Does that mean that what she does afterwards will affect us? Of course.

Everyone is different, everyone likes things and appreciates them differently. Meyer’s reprinting process is an act of embracing those wonderful novels that once inspired her. To others, like myself, it has become an act of defacing such wonderful novels that will remain fresh and great for years to come. I do not wish them to become sellouts.

There’s just one more question: Do we want our spectacular novels to be known as the books that inspired Stephenie Meyer? Or do we want them to be known for the writer’s who did anything and everything to put a good book in our bookshelves?

Think about that next time you hit your local Barnes and Noble and see Pride and Prejudice with a flowery cover.