Keeping Teachers Off the Unemployment Line

“I don’t want teachers on the unemployment line. I want them in the classroom,” Secretary Duncan said last Friday at an American Jobs Act roundtable in Richmond, Va. “This is really a moment of truth for the country,” Arne said. Either invest in education, he added, or other countries will pass us by.

Secretary Duncan talks with students during a tour of Richmond Community High School (official Department of Education Photo by Leslie Williams).

The American Jobs Act would provide $60 billion for education, in the form of jobs for educators and upgrades to schools and community colleges. Virginia alone stands to receive ?$425 million for public school upgrades, and $742 million to preserve up to 10,000 teacher jobs. Richmond superintendent Yvonne Brandon said that federal money through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and additional job-saving funding had prevented teacher layoffs, but with that money now spent, Richmond faces a $16 million deficit for the next school year.

“In this budget cycle, everything is on the table,” Brandon said. “I’m afraid [teacher layoffs] may have to be part of the conversation this year.”

In addition to participating in a roundtable, Duncan toured Richmond Community High School—a 2011 Blue Ribbon School—where students and teachers showed the Secretary the need for infrastructure upgrades at their 86-year-old campus. He saw outdated science labs and leaky ceilings and heard about duct-taped textbooks and slow computers.

Arne noted the visit on his Twitter account and asked other students and teachers to join the conversation:

The American Jobs Act proposes a major investment that will modernize at least 35,000 public schools, and support 280,000 teacher jobs nationwide. See what impact the Act will have in your state, and read a complete overview of the American Jobs Act here.

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Books For Teachers: Brian Clegg's Getting Science

Getting Science by Brian Clegg targets an audience of elementary school teachers who feel less than confident about teaching science in their classrooms. While I am not in his target audience, I'm close to it. (I love science and teach in small groups of homeschooled students.) Clegg did some things authors should do. He caught my attention, told me stuff I needed to read or wanted to learn, and kept my attention throughout the book. I learned a bit and further solidified prior knowledge. It's a good book, and after reading this it, I hope many primary school teachers do read it.

Clegg starts his writing with reasons why science can be a little scary. Journal articles and academic writing in general is stuffy and uses inflated words instead of simple-to-understand, everyday language. Science articles weren't always written that way, and they certainly don't need to be written that way, but it is custom and tradition now. It takes a bit of effort to sift through that language, but luckily, you don't need to. You can be an effective and fun science teacher without the stuffy journals. Learn from reading popular books and science shows instead.

Clegg also talks about what science is and should be. Science is an adventure. It should be fun. It should fill you with wonder. Science tries to figure out how the universe works. That doesn't sound so scary, right?

His first chapter talks about how to engage the kids in the lesson. People like people, so he suggests putting the science in context and finding it in real life. What was the scientist who made the discovery like? How did that scientist grow up? What in his or her life led him to think and experiment the way he did in order to make the discovery? In addition to involving the people and a little history, find the science in real life. If you're talking about cell division, you could mention making bread and perhaps bring yeast into the classroom. He suggests sprinkling the discussion with amazing, and gross, facts. Kids like gross. He emphasizes that the kids should do stuff with their hands. Watching a demonstration is better than just hearing about it, but the best bet is to have the kids do the experiment or demonstration themselves. We learn by doing. And mostly, make it fun.

If nothing else, teachers should read the first chapter of the book.

The second chapter talks about why we have labs. People aren't good observers. Many people don't know the difference between causality and correlation. Anecdotes are not data. Disproving is much easier than proving. All of these people facts lead to why we have laboratories. Fortunately, labs are no longer just filled with middle-aged white men in lab coats, and personalities of all different types can be found in scientific laboratories.

Clegg talks about different scientific eras in his third chapter. 500BC to 1500AD is the classical period. During this time, the prevailing "theory" prevailed because it was argued successfully. There really wasn't much science involved. Some of this classical thinking is still around today in the form of astrology and the four elements. The clockwork era of science was from 1500AD (the end of the middle ages) to around 1900AD. This era was filled with scientific discoveries and theories that make sense. Newton said force equals mass times acceleration. That makes sense. Spontaneous generation theories disappeared because people figured out flies deposited eggs on raw meat. Clegg calls the current era counter-intuitive. That is, this era of science doesn't seem to make sense. Just think of the phrases quantum theory, relativity, and light is light but it can act like a wave or a particle.

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 talk about cool things in science and Clegg gives suggestions for learning and teaching the topics. What is life? Why don't humans have fur? How does cloning work what are the five states of matter (Yes, five. It's not just solid, liquid, and gas). How do mirrors work? What's the difference between mass and weight? What are black holes? What are wormholes? His explanations are pretty easy to follow.

Chapter 7 makes a case for making science hands on. Chapter 8 talks about finding and seeing science in the real world and how to make experiments come alive, but not in a Weird Science like way. Chapter 9 talks about science on the web. Which web sites are trustworthy, and how can you tell if a site is trust worthy. He also gives hints on how to search the web. Chapter 10 gives ideas on how to keep up to date in science and Chapter 11 tells you to go inspire the world.

The book was easy to read and didn't take a long time. Even so, it managed to pack a lot of good information in it. Are you a primary or elementary school teacher? If so, go to your library and check out this little treasure.

Gwen Nicodemus is a freelance engineer/writer and a homeschooling mom. Visit her website, Notion Nexus, for unit studies, worksheets, notes, and educational videos.

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Training of Teachers Is Flawed, Study Says

The National Council on Teacher Quality, an advocacy group, is to issue a study on Thursday reporting that most student-teaching programs are seriously flawed. The group has already angered the nation’s schools for teachers with its plans to give them letter grades that would appear in U.S. News and World Report.

The council’s report, “Student Teaching in the United States,” rated 134 student-teaching programs nationwide — about 10 percent of those preparing elementary school teachers — and found that three-quarters of them did not meet five basic standards for a high-quality student-teaching program.

When the U.S. News rankings are published, the student-teaching programs will count for one-fifth to one-third of an education school’s grade, according to Kate Walsh, president of the council.

“Many people would say student teaching is the most important piece of teacher preparation,” Ms. Walsh said. “But the field is really barren in the area of standards. The basic accrediting body doesn’t even have a standard for how long a student teacher needs to be in the classroom. And most of the institutions we reviewed do not do enough to screen the quality of the cooperating teacher the student will work with.”

Many of the nation’s 1,400 education schools have taken issue with the council’s ranking project.

“This report will generate some attention and discussion, but we don’t know how valid the analysis is,” said Sharon P. Robinson, president of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. “They ask for a lot of documents, reviewed by people we do not know, against rubrics we are not privileged to see.”

In some areas, like the length of student-teaching placement, Dr. Robinson said, the council’s standards are less rigorous than what many education schools require. In others, she said, the standards actually go against the current direction of education overhaul.

“A school can lose points for not having absolute control over the selection of the cooperation teacher,” she said. “But we think these clinical experiences should be crafted in partnership with the schools, not dictated by either the principal or the education school.”

This year, officials from 35 leading education colleges and graduate schools wrote to the editor of U.S. News, criticizing the council’s methodology, and complaining about the “implied coercion” in the initial plan to use open-records laws to get information the schools would not supply voluntarily — or, if the information was unavailable, give the schools an F.

Among the 134 schools in the report, 12 asked not to be included; the council included them anyway, using public records requests to get information about the public institutions, and indicating with an asterisk institutions for which some information was unavailable.

The ranking plan is more popular among state education officials. In 10 states, the chief education officer has specifically endorsed the council’s project.

“This is shaping up to be quite a battle royale, not just between the education schools and us, but between K-12 education and higher ed, since state school officers want this information, but education schools are fighting it,” Ms. Walsh said.

The pushback might delay the rankings, which were to be published late next year, she said.

“Our schedule was predicated on schools voluntarily complying, as they do with all other U.S. News and World projects,” Ms. Walsh said.

Because some of the standards on which the education schools were ranked are subjective, some institutions ranked “poor” said they disagreed with that rating. Ten programs, or 7 percent, were rated as having “model” design; 17 percent had “good” design, and the rest were rated “weak” or “poor.”

Fayneese Miller, dean of the College of Education and Social Services at the University of Vermont, the largest teacher-training school in the state, said she could not understand why her school got a “poor” — worse than the other two Vermont schools ranked — when hers is the only education school in the state that exceeds all state standards, the only one with national accreditation and the one with the longest student-teaching placements.

“We have no problem about being evaluated, but as you can imagine, I am not at all pleased about the way they conducted the study,” Dr. Miller said. “This has major implications for us in terms of our ability to attract and place our students.”

The council, however, said that, like many education schools, the University of Vermont’s did not meet its standards because it left principals too big a role in choosing cooperating teachers, and did not do enough to ensure that they are effective teachers who will be good mentors.

At New York University, rated “weak” — along with CUNY Lehman and SUNY Cortland, the other two New York institutions included in the report — Mary M. Brabeck, dean of the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, also took issue with council’s methodology, saying that she would grade the report “poor.”

“It relies on standards that appear arbitrary and unsupported by research, and it uses them to draw incorrect conclusions,” Dr. Brabeck said in an e-mail.

For example, she said, N.Y.U.’s elementary education students must have four different placements, and 15 weeks of student teaching, more than required to meet the council’s standards. But because of the way the placements are structured, they are counted as not meeting the standards.

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Home Style Teaching - A Handbook For Both Parents and Teachers - A Book Review

In the field of education as it is seen today, there can be a tendency to view it as an 'us versus them' mentality when it comes to who is more responsible for the children's education. On one side of the line are the parents; on the other side are the teachers.

From a purely academic standpoint, the teaching profession believes it to be eminently qualified as the best avenue to a child getting a proper education as society deems acceptable. From a practical position, parents feel the need to have great sway regarding their children as to what curriculum is presented that best suits their children's educational needs.

Into the middle of this situation come Raymond and Dorothy Moore. Known around the world as fully qualified within the academic field, they have also taken up the cause of the parent's right to determine what is best for their children. From this position we find an excellent book that addresses both viewpoints titled "Home Style Teaching".

"Home Style Teaching" is more than just another book written that positions itself as to what is best for the child from the parental point of view. It also takes the side of the teachers, understanding why they are so passionate about their perspective when it comes to the education of the child. "Home Style Teaching" is a great resource for teachers and parents alike as it determines to quench the differences between the two camps and accentuate the positives that each has to offer.

Here is an excerpt from "Home Style Teaching" authors Raymond and Dorothy Moore, describing their own reason for writing this book in the first place:

"Home Style Teaching is a simplified, research-based handbook designed for both parents and professional teachers and for student teachers who are worried about becoming professionals. The parents may be either home-schoolers or those who wish to help their children who are troubled by school or are failing. This book sets out to make clear what education should really be and to make the art and science of teaching as understandable, successful and thrilling as it can be...With this book, we hope to take parents and teachers by the hand and lead them to courage and wisdom in one of the greatest of all professions."

From the beginning "Home Style Teaching" sets the stage for cooperation between teacher, parent and student alike. In the sections contained in this powerful book you will find answers to such issues like 'Becoming a Good Teacher' to 'Some Teaching Secrets Not Commonly Practiced'. You will gain insight from "Home Style Teaching" as you explore issues such as 'What We Mean by Curriculum' and 'How Children Develop'. As a bonus, in the appendix, you are given names of well-known individuals that were educated at home, as a source of encouragement that it can be done right and successfully.

In "Home Style Teaching" the authors encourage the option of homeschooling without giving the impression it should be mandated for all. As a result, it can be read from the standpoint of simply learning what is best for the child's education, whether it be received in the public, private or home school environment.

Raymond and Dorothy Moore have placed between the pages of "Home Style Teaching" a ray of hope that will unite both parent and teacher to establish common ground; to agree that all they both really desire is that the child receive the best form of education, resulting in their best chance of succeeding in the world as productive members of society.

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Hurdles Emerge in Rising Effort to Rate Teachers

“I feel as though I don’t exist,” she said last Monday, looking up from playing a vocabulary game with her students.

Down the hall, Deirdre Corcoran, a fifth-grade teacher, received a ranking for a year when she was out on child-care leave. In three other classrooms at this highly ranked school, fourth-grade teachers were ranked among the worst in the city at teaching math, even though their students’ average score on the state math exam was close to four, the highest score.

“If I thought they gave accurate information, I would take them more seriously,” the principal of P.S. 321, Elizabeth Phillips, said about the rankings. “But some of my best teachers have the absolute worst scores,” she said, adding that she had based her assessment of those teachers on “classroom observations, talking to the children and the number of parents begging me to put their kids in their classes.”

It is becoming common practice nationally to rank teachers for their effectiveness, or value added, a measure that is defined as how much a teacher contributes to student progress on standardized tests. The practice was strongly supported by President Obama’s education grant competition, Race to the Top, and large school districts, including those in Houston, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis and Washington, have begun to use a form of it.

But the experience in New York City shows just how difficult it can be to come up with a system that gains acceptance as being fair and accurate. The rankings are based on an algorithm that few other than statisticians can understand, and on tests that the state has said were too narrow and predictable. Most teachers’ scores fall somewhere in a wide range, with perfection statistically impossible. And the system has also suffered from the everyday problems inherent in managing busy urban schools, like the challenge of using old files and computer databases to ensure that the right teachers are matched to the right students.

All of this was not as important when the teacher rankings were an internal matter that principals could choose to heed or ignore. City officials had pledged to the teachers’ union that the rankings would not be used in the evaluation of teachers and that they would resist releasing them to the public.

But over the past several months, the system of teacher rankings has been catapulted to one of the most contentious issues facing the city’s 80,000-member teaching force. A new state law, passed this year to help New York win Race to the Top money, pledges that by 2013, 25 percent of a teacher’s evaluation be based on a value-added system. The city has begun urging principals to consider rankings when deciding whether to grant tenure. And the city now supports the release of the data to the 12 media organizations, including The New York Times, that have requested it.

The departing schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, defended the release of the rankings in an e-mail to school staff members, acknowledging that they had limitations but calling them “the fairest systemwide way we have to assess the real impact of teachers on student learning.”

“For too long,” Mr. Klein wrote, “parents have been left out of the equation, left to pray each year that the teacher greeting their children on the first day of school is truly great, but with no real knowledge of whether that is the case, and with no recourse if it’s not.”

But the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s teachers’ union, has sued to keep names in the rankings private, arguing that the data is flawed and would result in unnecessary harm to the reputation of teachers. The matter is now before Justice Cynthia Kern of State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

New York City began ranking teachers in the 2007-8 school year as part of a pilot project intended to improve classroom instruction. The project, which cost $1.3 million, with an additional $2.3 million budgeted over the next 18 months, was expanded in the 2008-9 school year to give rankings to more than 12,000 fourth- through eighth-grade teachers.

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