Destination San Diego, where Dr. Trani and I will be the guests of The College Board at their annual Western Regional Forum on Saturday and Sunday. We'll be giving a talk about overcoming barriers to Advanced Placement courses for all children.
This month The College Board released its State by State analysis of Advanced Placement participation and performance. Corbett was one of two districts in Oregon in which 30% or more of seniors attempted at least one Advanced Placement exam. The key word is attempted. In 196 Oregon school districts, fewer than 30% even attempted such a thing.
Corbett was also one of only two districts wherein 30% or more of graduating seniors passed at least one A.P. exam prior to graduation. The state average is about 13%, so 30% is pretty good. But in Corbett's Class of 2009, 40% of graduating seniors passed three or more exams!
What about that 13% number? If that's how many Oregon students passed one more more exams, what did Corbett's top 13% do? They attempted an average of 10 exams each, and passed 85% of them with a score of 3 or higher! They earned a score of 4 or 5 on 60% of their exams. One was a State AP Scholar (one of two in Oregon) and one was a National Scholar (one of 53 in Oregon). That's what Corbett's top 13% did. How many passed one or more exams? 60%.
If that's the senior class, it was probably just a flash in the pan. What about the junior class, the Class of 2010? What did its top 13% produce? The top nine of 65 juniors passed an average of 5 exams each. They passed 67% of their exams (a little higher than the national average passing rate). They posted 4's or 5's on 38% of their exams. So Corbett's juniors performed far beyond the Oregon norm for seniors.
Could just be another fluke...law of small numbers and all of that. Let's see what the 10th graders did! (We'll find a flaw here. Just wait!) The top 13% of the Corbett 10th grade (Class of 2011) last year attempted 2.6 exams each and passed 48% of them. They passed an average of 1.25 each. And every one of them had at least one score of 4 or 5. In the 10th grade! So with regard to AP productivity, Corbett's 10th grade significantly outdistanced Oregon's Seniors.
So we're going to San Diego to talk about it. Should be fun.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Academic Decathlon Results
Barlow High School earned 1st place at the State Of Oregon Academic Decathlon Finals. They did commendable work and earned the win. Of special note is that the team exists in large part due to the effort of a remarkable student who wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. It's a great story. A high school senior demanding that pure academic achievement be given a place at the table.
Corbett School and Corbett Charter School earned 2nd and 3rd places, respectively. Corbett Charter School placed 2nd in the Super Quiz, with Corbett School placing 3rd. There were a number of great individual efforts, but we simply lacked the needed depth to pull out the win.
Corbett School won the right to represent Oregon in the online Small Schools national competition. We will do our best.
Overall, we would have to call this a building year. We took two freshmen to the event (almost unheard of) and the Charter team had no veterans. Barlow had two students who competed last year and seven of their nine members were seniors. They were well poised for a win. And they were well prepared.
I have to add that spending time with the 17 competitors from Corbett School and Corbett Charter School was a wonderful experience. These are among the nicest, brightest young people anywhere. I am deeply grateful to know them, and everyone with whom they came in contact was favorably impressed.
I predict that we will (both) do better next year. Stay tuned. For a year.
Corbett School and Corbett Charter School earned 2nd and 3rd places, respectively. Corbett Charter School placed 2nd in the Super Quiz, with Corbett School placing 3rd. There were a number of great individual efforts, but we simply lacked the needed depth to pull out the win.
Corbett School won the right to represent Oregon in the online Small Schools national competition. We will do our best.
Overall, we would have to call this a building year. We took two freshmen to the event (almost unheard of) and the Charter team had no veterans. Barlow had two students who competed last year and seven of their nine members were seniors. They were well poised for a win. And they were well prepared.
I have to add that spending time with the 17 competitors from Corbett School and Corbett Charter School was a wonderful experience. These are among the nicest, brightest young people anywhere. I am deeply grateful to know them, and everyone with whom they came in contact was favorably impressed.
I predict that we will (both) do better next year. Stay tuned. For a year.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Valentine Thought
We are off to the State Academic Decathlon competition. Some of the kids have worked very hard. I hope that they earn a trip to nationals...it's a sight to behold. I can't believe I'm nervous. I'm going to miss Lara today. Even more than usual.
Budgetary advice for the day:
Better a great teacher drawing in the dirt with a sharp stick than a mediocrity massaging a Smart Board.
Wish us luck!
Budgetary advice for the day:
Better a great teacher drawing in the dirt with a sharp stick than a mediocrity massaging a Smart Board.
Wish us luck!
Saturday, February 13, 2010
P is for Several Words, All Starting with 'P'
P is for Paternalism. It is the bedrock of the traditional public school system in Oregon and elsewhere. Paternalism in education includes the well-intended requirement that parents must send their children to a particular (usually 'neighborhood') school based on their place of residence. Paternalistic school districts believe that the children residing within their boundaries are 'their' children and that they have a fundamental right to whatever funding 'their' children generate from the state or federal governments. They believe that offering parents choice regarding attendance is harmful to 'their' students. The only escape from traditional Paternalism is private school or home school. (There are districts that allow students to attend outside their boundaries, but only with the explicit approval of the district and within certain explicit or implicit 'caps' in place.) Corbett School District has had a clear policy of approving all requests to transfer out for the past decade. I don't know of another district that keeps its doors open to that degree. Corbett made that principled decision, by the way, when it was losing 4% of its student population to transfers out, and twice as many students were leaving as were transferring in.
P is for Patronizing. When districts insist that they know best where a student 'fits', local schools are left to deal with those parents who are unhappy with their powerlessness to choose what's best for their children. Concerned parents rightly believe that if they are given no choice regarding attendance then they should have a say in how the school works. They should get to shape curriculum, operating hours, discipline policies, the choice of math programs, the budget, the contents of the library, the hiring and retention of principals. They hold that no individual decision made by any member of the staff should be beyond parental review. Principals and teachers who want to stay in good standing with their Districts know to keep their parents happy. I once had a superintendent for whom the highest complement that a principal could receive was the news that "I haven't received a single call." What should be educational decisions are now politically motivated. And because some parents are much more demanding than others, parents do not get an equal say in school matters. So now parents are forced to attend particular schools in which key decisions are made by other parents rather than by the professional staff. Giving parents a voice always caries the danger of giving some parents more voice than others.
P is for Professionalism. Schools need to 'go pro'. Plans need to be made and executed by trained professionals. Seasoned educators need to be empowered and responsible to make the decisions that matter. Teachers need to make decisions without fear of reprisal. They need to make demands of students without interference. They need to exercise their judgments based solely on what is best for students without regard for the opinions of non-teachers. They need to be liberated from Politics. (Politics is NOT one of our P's).
We are well on our way to 'going pro'. Many of our parents have discovered that their responsibility is to choose the very best school for their children and not to supervise the teachers or the revise the school philosophy after-the-fact. Some of the first parents who made the breakthrough to 'going pro' made the decision to leave. We honor their decision. When they discovered that teachers were going to be in charge of their classrooms, that students were going to be required to behave themselves, that completing assignments is the job of the student and not the teacher or the parent, they made the decision to find a better 'fit'. They did the right thing and we will remember them as people of conviction.
I have said to my staff that I believe that 90% of our students and 80% of our parents have made the transition to the new reality of the charter philosophy. The students are in the building and in the classroom every day, so they have an advantage. They know that their education is their work. They know that their teachers care about them and that they can count on being held to a high standard of effort, of conduct, of scholarship. They know that being kind and respectful greatly increases their standing in the school community. They know that whining is futile. 90%. That's pretty good.
There are those who haven't turned the corner with us. There are those students who still imagine that to remain intellectually inert will eventually result in someone else rescuing them, though I can't imagine how that would look in practice. A small fraction still believe that the accumulation of zero effort, day after day, will eventually amount to something more than zero. We are working with them. Most will come around.
There are still parents who believe that a nasty email will somehow compensate for a student's missing work or that the appropriate response to a student's misbehavior is to accuse the teacher of 'picking on' the student! These are good, time-tested strategies in the Patronizing School, but they are conspicuously out of place in a Professional School.
There are those who, based on past experience, believe that gossip is a school improvement strategy. I must have heard the phrase a hundred times during my career: "I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I've been talking to other parents..." The occasion for the last time I heard this? A student was reprimanded for being rude in the hall. So the expectation is that an administrator will be swayed by the fact that more than one parent doesn't think children should be required to behave in school? Well, in a Patronizing School, discontent (even in the form of gossip) is a potent weapon. But we strive not to be that school. And I predict that parents who are at home in that environment will continue to feel out-of-sorts regarding their experience here.
I think that achieving 80% consensus among parents in our first year of operation is an astounding achievement. The vast majority understand and appreciate where they are. Their students are going to graduate with an astounding array of options laid out before them. They will be ready to stand on their own and will be prepared, through years of practice, to take responsibility for themselves and to help those around them. They will be magnificent...and all the more so to the degree that we hold ourselves accountable to the vision of Professionalism and refuse to settle for less.
P is for Patronizing. When districts insist that they know best where a student 'fits', local schools are left to deal with those parents who are unhappy with their powerlessness to choose what's best for their children. Concerned parents rightly believe that if they are given no choice regarding attendance then they should have a say in how the school works. They should get to shape curriculum, operating hours, discipline policies, the choice of math programs, the budget, the contents of the library, the hiring and retention of principals. They hold that no individual decision made by any member of the staff should be beyond parental review. Principals and teachers who want to stay in good standing with their Districts know to keep their parents happy. I once had a superintendent for whom the highest complement that a principal could receive was the news that "I haven't received a single call." What should be educational decisions are now politically motivated. And because some parents are much more demanding than others, parents do not get an equal say in school matters. So now parents are forced to attend particular schools in which key decisions are made by other parents rather than by the professional staff. Giving parents a voice always caries the danger of giving some parents more voice than others.
P is for Professionalism. Schools need to 'go pro'. Plans need to be made and executed by trained professionals. Seasoned educators need to be empowered and responsible to make the decisions that matter. Teachers need to make decisions without fear of reprisal. They need to make demands of students without interference. They need to exercise their judgments based solely on what is best for students without regard for the opinions of non-teachers. They need to be liberated from Politics. (Politics is NOT one of our P's).
We are well on our way to 'going pro'. Many of our parents have discovered that their responsibility is to choose the very best school for their children and not to supervise the teachers or the revise the school philosophy after-the-fact. Some of the first parents who made the breakthrough to 'going pro' made the decision to leave. We honor their decision. When they discovered that teachers were going to be in charge of their classrooms, that students were going to be required to behave themselves, that completing assignments is the job of the student and not the teacher or the parent, they made the decision to find a better 'fit'. They did the right thing and we will remember them as people of conviction.
I have said to my staff that I believe that 90% of our students and 80% of our parents have made the transition to the new reality of the charter philosophy. The students are in the building and in the classroom every day, so they have an advantage. They know that their education is their work. They know that their teachers care about them and that they can count on being held to a high standard of effort, of conduct, of scholarship. They know that being kind and respectful greatly increases their standing in the school community. They know that whining is futile. 90%. That's pretty good.
There are those who haven't turned the corner with us. There are those students who still imagine that to remain intellectually inert will eventually result in someone else rescuing them, though I can't imagine how that would look in practice. A small fraction still believe that the accumulation of zero effort, day after day, will eventually amount to something more than zero. We are working with them. Most will come around.
There are still parents who believe that a nasty email will somehow compensate for a student's missing work or that the appropriate response to a student's misbehavior is to accuse the teacher of 'picking on' the student! These are good, time-tested strategies in the Patronizing School, but they are conspicuously out of place in a Professional School.
There are those who, based on past experience, believe that gossip is a school improvement strategy. I must have heard the phrase a hundred times during my career: "I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I've been talking to other parents..." The occasion for the last time I heard this? A student was reprimanded for being rude in the hall. So the expectation is that an administrator will be swayed by the fact that more than one parent doesn't think children should be required to behave in school? Well, in a Patronizing School, discontent (even in the form of gossip) is a potent weapon. But we strive not to be that school. And I predict that parents who are at home in that environment will continue to feel out-of-sorts regarding their experience here.
I think that achieving 80% consensus among parents in our first year of operation is an astounding achievement. The vast majority understand and appreciate where they are. Their students are going to graduate with an astounding array of options laid out before them. They will be ready to stand on their own and will be prepared, through years of practice, to take responsibility for themselves and to help those around them. They will be magnificent...and all the more so to the degree that we hold ourselves accountable to the vision of Professionalism and refuse to settle for less.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
What is a Charter School?
Charter Schools are the hope of education turned right-side up. In what respect?
Several come to mind.
With Regard to Foundations:
Upside Down education begins with the obvious need to educate the children of a geographic area. More specifically, in the British Colonies, the public school system was born out of concern that too many young men were lying about town unprepared (and possibly unwilling) to contribute to the well-being of the community. Parents were accused of failing in their responsibilities, and the community felt the need to respond.
Right-side Up education begins with a sense of HOW children ought to be educated and by whom. The school is designed, top to bottom, to support a particular vision. Parents are invited to have their children educated in accordance with this vision. Parents are not asked to take on the roles of designer, principal, curriculum director or classroom teacher. Those jobs are filled by professionals.
With Regard to Parental Rights:
Upside Down education corrals families into neighborhood schools based solely on residency and without regard to individual family preferences. The results are too familiar to warrant description. Parents have a right to provide input. They have a right to ask for change. They have a right to lobby within the system, to advocate for their kids. But they don't have the right to change schools unless they successfully petition the district for permission to transfer or abandon public education altogether in favor of private or home schooling.
Right-side Up education puts ultimate authority, in the form of choice, in the hands of parents. Parents can support the school or shun it. Because Charter Schools are schools of choice, staff members are under no obligation to please each parent or to respond to pressure from groups of parents. Because parents have the right to walk away, they are never trapped in a charter school, but neither do they have leverage to make demands. Educational decisions are made by professionals, and parents retain their right to choose the best option for their children. The tension built in to mandatory attendance boundaries is broken in favor of a voluntary association.
At its best, that's what a charter school does. It resolves the fundamental tension inherent in the traditional school system. It offers a revolution in the partnership between parents and schools.
Several come to mind.
With Regard to Foundations:
Upside Down education begins with the obvious need to educate the children of a geographic area. More specifically, in the British Colonies, the public school system was born out of concern that too many young men were lying about town unprepared (and possibly unwilling) to contribute to the well-being of the community. Parents were accused of failing in their responsibilities, and the community felt the need to respond.
Right-side Up education begins with a sense of HOW children ought to be educated and by whom. The school is designed, top to bottom, to support a particular vision. Parents are invited to have their children educated in accordance with this vision. Parents are not asked to take on the roles of designer, principal, curriculum director or classroom teacher. Those jobs are filled by professionals.
With Regard to Parental Rights:
Upside Down education corrals families into neighborhood schools based solely on residency and without regard to individual family preferences. The results are too familiar to warrant description. Parents have a right to provide input. They have a right to ask for change. They have a right to lobby within the system, to advocate for their kids. But they don't have the right to change schools unless they successfully petition the district for permission to transfer or abandon public education altogether in favor of private or home schooling.
Right-side Up education puts ultimate authority, in the form of choice, in the hands of parents. Parents can support the school or shun it. Because Charter Schools are schools of choice, staff members are under no obligation to please each parent or to respond to pressure from groups of parents. Because parents have the right to walk away, they are never trapped in a charter school, but neither do they have leverage to make demands. Educational decisions are made by professionals, and parents retain their right to choose the best option for their children. The tension built in to mandatory attendance boundaries is broken in favor of a voluntary association.
At its best, that's what a charter school does. It resolves the fundamental tension inherent in the traditional school system. It offers a revolution in the partnership between parents and schools.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
How to Lengthen the School Year and Save Money!
Oh, and improve student achievement and teacher retention rates, increase attendance and graduation rates, and reduce anxiety among elementary students.
It's a simple plan, and it will make TPTB nervous from the outset. But they should find comfort in the fact that it is scientifically based.
The Plan? Stop administering OAKS to students in 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. The current practice is at best wasteful, at worst (more likely, in my mind) harmful in other ways as well.
What would be the result of this Cessation of Hostilities toward the cultivation of the intellect?
We could:
1. Increase time for teaching and learning by anywhere from 3 (in really good schools that only take minimal time for the tests) to 20 (in schools that spend a month on test-prep) days with no added expense. (The longest school year in the world doesn't do any good it's not being used well.) We could add significantly to the school year without touching the calendar.
2. Make school libraries and technology labs available to students and teachers for instructional activities. (There are schools in which the entire technology inventory is tied up for months out of each year because one or another grade has to take state tests in reading, math or science.)
3. Increase the willingness of the best teachers and administrators to work in the most challenging schools. This is critical. Policy-makers bemoan the fact that great teachers don't line up to go to work in struggling schools. But the fact is that teachers who work in struggling schools are often required to employ mind-numbing, commercially-driven strategies aimed at putting band-aides on test scores. Of course great teachers don't want to teach in a place where the teaching profession has been reduced to reading scripted lessons to a room full of defeated youngsters.
4. Save significant dollars and hours that are currently wasted on teaching teachers how to interpret the results of standardized tests (This activity is often referred to as Professional Learning Communities). What if teachers were allowed (and supported) instead to use this time to learn more about the world through participation is real Professional Learning Communities?
5. Save countless dollars and hours that are spent revising the State Standards and the State Assessments for 8-to-11-year-olds. Not one of these hours or dollars adds one iota to student achievement, and yet we continue to hold bake sales for classroom books while throwing good money after bad in the quest for the well-phrased mandate articulating the need for children to know how to add and subtract using carrying and borrowing.
6. Allow children the joy of experiencing a well-rounded school day rather than punishing them with 'early intervention' when they fail to perform on a standardized test. There are students all over Oregon who are being deprived of part of the normal school experience so that they can spend 'double' time doing something at which they are judged to be deficient. I can't think of a better way to make a child hate a subject forever than to force him to spend twice as much time at it while he is missing out on something else that he finds of interest.
7. In the place of anxiety over testing, cultivate a love of learning. For children who love to learn, testing takes care of itself.
My proposal is to give these children a chance to grow up before we begin weighing and measuring the contents of their minds. This is particularly urgent in light of the fact that long-term academic achievement depends far more on the virtues of care, commitment, respect and diligence than it does on specific subject-matter prerequisites. To fail to understand this is to miss the boat so entirely as to risk an ankle sprain from the jolt of striking dry land.
To those who worry that without OAKS academic deficiencies would go undetected, I have to suggest that you go introduce yourself to a real teacher. Elementary teachers know who can and can't read. They know who can and can't do math. A teacher who doesn't know these things regarding his or her own students needs to hang it up. But to organize an entire system around the assumption of incompetence in every classroom is both unrealistic and wasteful.
For those who argue the urgency of EARLY INTERVENTION, your theoretical ice is pretty thin. Early intervention makes the adults feel good. But most children just need more time to get their feet under themselves. And the most urgent needs for early intervention have never relied on state assessments for detection.
Longer School Year? More instructional time? Savings? All doable. Abandon OAKS in the elementary grades.
Sometimes progress depends on the bold implementation of a recent stroke of genius. But there is also something to be said for the decisive abandonment of a deeply entrenched monument to mediocrity.
P.S. I am aware of the federal mandate for testing. So let's grab a test off the shelf (whichever one requires the least amount of time) administer it, and never speak of it again. The savings in instructional time, money, and quality of life would be reduced only slightly by the nuisance. But to continue the charade by which we treat the testing nuisance as a boon to education is unconscionable.
It's a simple plan, and it will make TPTB nervous from the outset. But they should find comfort in the fact that it is scientifically based.
The Plan? Stop administering OAKS to students in 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. The current practice is at best wasteful, at worst (more likely, in my mind) harmful in other ways as well.
What would be the result of this Cessation of Hostilities toward the cultivation of the intellect?
We could:
1. Increase time for teaching and learning by anywhere from 3 (in really good schools that only take minimal time for the tests) to 20 (in schools that spend a month on test-prep) days with no added expense. (The longest school year in the world doesn't do any good it's not being used well.) We could add significantly to the school year without touching the calendar.
2. Make school libraries and technology labs available to students and teachers for instructional activities. (There are schools in which the entire technology inventory is tied up for months out of each year because one or another grade has to take state tests in reading, math or science.)
3. Increase the willingness of the best teachers and administrators to work in the most challenging schools. This is critical. Policy-makers bemoan the fact that great teachers don't line up to go to work in struggling schools. But the fact is that teachers who work in struggling schools are often required to employ mind-numbing, commercially-driven strategies aimed at putting band-aides on test scores. Of course great teachers don't want to teach in a place where the teaching profession has been reduced to reading scripted lessons to a room full of defeated youngsters.
4. Save significant dollars and hours that are currently wasted on teaching teachers how to interpret the results of standardized tests (This activity is often referred to as Professional Learning Communities). What if teachers were allowed (and supported) instead to use this time to learn more about the world through participation is real Professional Learning Communities?
5. Save countless dollars and hours that are spent revising the State Standards and the State Assessments for 8-to-11-year-olds. Not one of these hours or dollars adds one iota to student achievement, and yet we continue to hold bake sales for classroom books while throwing good money after bad in the quest for the well-phrased mandate articulating the need for children to know how to add and subtract using carrying and borrowing.
6. Allow children the joy of experiencing a well-rounded school day rather than punishing them with 'early intervention' when they fail to perform on a standardized test. There are students all over Oregon who are being deprived of part of the normal school experience so that they can spend 'double' time doing something at which they are judged to be deficient. I can't think of a better way to make a child hate a subject forever than to force him to spend twice as much time at it while he is missing out on something else that he finds of interest.
7. In the place of anxiety over testing, cultivate a love of learning. For children who love to learn, testing takes care of itself.
My proposal is to give these children a chance to grow up before we begin weighing and measuring the contents of their minds. This is particularly urgent in light of the fact that long-term academic achievement depends far more on the virtues of care, commitment, respect and diligence than it does on specific subject-matter prerequisites. To fail to understand this is to miss the boat so entirely as to risk an ankle sprain from the jolt of striking dry land.
To those who worry that without OAKS academic deficiencies would go undetected, I have to suggest that you go introduce yourself to a real teacher. Elementary teachers know who can and can't read. They know who can and can't do math. A teacher who doesn't know these things regarding his or her own students needs to hang it up. But to organize an entire system around the assumption of incompetence in every classroom is both unrealistic and wasteful.
For those who argue the urgency of EARLY INTERVENTION, your theoretical ice is pretty thin. Early intervention makes the adults feel good. But most children just need more time to get their feet under themselves. And the most urgent needs for early intervention have never relied on state assessments for detection.
Longer School Year? More instructional time? Savings? All doable. Abandon OAKS in the elementary grades.
Sometimes progress depends on the bold implementation of a recent stroke of genius. But there is also something to be said for the decisive abandonment of a deeply entrenched monument to mediocrity.
P.S. I am aware of the federal mandate for testing. So let's grab a test off the shelf (whichever one requires the least amount of time) administer it, and never speak of it again. The savings in instructional time, money, and quality of life would be reduced only slightly by the nuisance. But to continue the charade by which we treat the testing nuisance as a boon to education is unconscionable.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
J. K. Rowling for State Superintendent?
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix includes a magnificent parody of the anti-intellectualism that gave rise, in this country, to No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. In the novel, the Ministry of Magic invades Hogwarts and attempts to convert it to a test prep mill in which students prepare to pass their OWL exams and avoid unnecessary distraction such as wands and magic. This in a school for wizards!
The parallel to schools in Oregon where attention to passing the OAKS exam threatens to eliminate any possibility of classroom magic is unmistakable.
Silly? Perhaps. Fun? Undeniably. Hogwarts is a school the likes of which would never be tolerated in the pubic sphere. Classes are taught by 'unqualified' teachers who are only expert practitioners in their fields of study. Instructors raise their voices. Sarcasm is freely administered. Classroom activities sometimes end in bumps and bruised egos (which in our schools is allowable only on the football field) and there is no guarantee against the possibility of failure.
All well and good, but what of the Ministry of Magic working to reduce schooling to a series of basic competency exams? Certainly there is no parallel in our experience!
Is there really a movement so plodding, so pedantic, so life-denying in our own place and time? Obviously! It's common name is No Child Left Behind. A more recent incarnation goes by the name of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. It is the brainchild of the nation's governors and the state superintendents of schools. Forty-eight states have signed on to date. Oregon included. Who signed on Oregon's behalf? Who knows? And yet we are somehow signed up!
Common Core State Standards! What can that mean? All fourth graders the nation should know and be able to do the same things on February 19th of each year? And how is this educational chimera to be promoted if not by a single, national test? Call it an OWL, and OAK, or whatever you wish, it is a profoundly wrong-headed notion. It would be a wrong-headed notion if it could be achieved with the waving of a wand, with no investment of time or expense. But in the world of muggles, there will be no wand-waving. Instead, we will waste millions of hours and dollars on a process at the end of which we will not have achieved any significant gains and we will be looking for the next silver bullet, magic bean, or scientifically-based miracle.
Let's be clear. Common standards do not make sense for two 9-year-olds sitting in the same classroom. They make less sense to two 9-year-olds living across town from one another. And common standards for all 9-year-olds in America (among whom the oldest are 364 days older than the youngest) is absurdity the likes of which can only be achieved on a grand scale.
Rowling is smart. She tells good stories. But how does she understand so much more about education than do the high-profile policy-makers in our state and nation? What a strange turn of events when a writer of fantasy displays more educational insight in her sub-plot than the majority of educational thinkers have been able to put together with decades of conferences, summits, legislative edicts, and re-re-re-re-re-reforms?
We educators like to call what we do a profession. Yet we tend to be cowards when it comes to actually professing. We leave it to the Rowlings, the Tolkiens, the Mathesons of the world to say what really needs to be said about schools and schooling while we professionals stand guard over the safe, the stalwart, the polished forms that are too often empty of meaningful content.
We professionals need to find our voice. We need to profess. We need to demand that what we be allowed to do what we know. That what we do should be fun. We need to be a little more fanciful and a little less concerned with appearances. We need to teach more like coaches and coach more like teachers. We need to develop real, authentic relationships with our charges and bring extraordinary expertise to their intellectual lives. We need to read literature with an ambulance on the sidelines and play football with a poet's passion.
We should demand that what we do be fun. Serious fun. More fun than Bill and Ted or Ferris Bueler. More fun that Charlie Bartlett.
The obstacles are many and they are formidable. The State of Oregon. The Ministry of Magic. The U.S. Department of Education. Every professional organization that I am aware of. Public opinion, shaped by years of uniformed (to put the best face on it) reporting. But the possibility of progress is worth the effort.
It appears that Superintendent Castillo may have competition in the next election. Election? Is that really how we want to choose a state superintendent? Do we really want which ever applicant can mount the best political campaign? Perhaps we should consider an alternative. Many states appoint a superintendent. Maybe it's worth considering. And J.K. Rowling might be worth a careful look. She won't fall for claims of magic where there is none. That would be a great start.
The parallel to schools in Oregon where attention to passing the OAKS exam threatens to eliminate any possibility of classroom magic is unmistakable.
Silly? Perhaps. Fun? Undeniably. Hogwarts is a school the likes of which would never be tolerated in the pubic sphere. Classes are taught by 'unqualified' teachers who are only expert practitioners in their fields of study. Instructors raise their voices. Sarcasm is freely administered. Classroom activities sometimes end in bumps and bruised egos (which in our schools is allowable only on the football field) and there is no guarantee against the possibility of failure.
All well and good, but what of the Ministry of Magic working to reduce schooling to a series of basic competency exams? Certainly there is no parallel in our experience!
Is there really a movement so plodding, so pedantic, so life-denying in our own place and time? Obviously! It's common name is No Child Left Behind. A more recent incarnation goes by the name of the Common Core State Standards Initiative. It is the brainchild of the nation's governors and the state superintendents of schools. Forty-eight states have signed on to date. Oregon included. Who signed on Oregon's behalf? Who knows? And yet we are somehow signed up!
Common Core State Standards! What can that mean? All fourth graders the nation should know and be able to do the same things on February 19th of each year? And how is this educational chimera to be promoted if not by a single, national test? Call it an OWL, and OAK, or whatever you wish, it is a profoundly wrong-headed notion. It would be a wrong-headed notion if it could be achieved with the waving of a wand, with no investment of time or expense. But in the world of muggles, there will be no wand-waving. Instead, we will waste millions of hours and dollars on a process at the end of which we will not have achieved any significant gains and we will be looking for the next silver bullet, magic bean, or scientifically-based miracle.
Let's be clear. Common standards do not make sense for two 9-year-olds sitting in the same classroom. They make less sense to two 9-year-olds living across town from one another. And common standards for all 9-year-olds in America (among whom the oldest are 364 days older than the youngest) is absurdity the likes of which can only be achieved on a grand scale.
Rowling is smart. She tells good stories. But how does she understand so much more about education than do the high-profile policy-makers in our state and nation? What a strange turn of events when a writer of fantasy displays more educational insight in her sub-plot than the majority of educational thinkers have been able to put together with decades of conferences, summits, legislative edicts, and re-re-re-re-re-reforms?
We educators like to call what we do a profession. Yet we tend to be cowards when it comes to actually professing. We leave it to the Rowlings, the Tolkiens, the Mathesons of the world to say what really needs to be said about schools and schooling while we professionals stand guard over the safe, the stalwart, the polished forms that are too often empty of meaningful content.
We professionals need to find our voice. We need to profess. We need to demand that what we be allowed to do what we know. That what we do should be fun. We need to be a little more fanciful and a little less concerned with appearances. We need to teach more like coaches and coach more like teachers. We need to develop real, authentic relationships with our charges and bring extraordinary expertise to their intellectual lives. We need to read literature with an ambulance on the sidelines and play football with a poet's passion.
We should demand that what we do be fun. Serious fun. More fun than Bill and Ted or Ferris Bueler. More fun that Charlie Bartlett.
The obstacles are many and they are formidable. The State of Oregon. The Ministry of Magic. The U.S. Department of Education. Every professional organization that I am aware of. Public opinion, shaped by years of uniformed (to put the best face on it) reporting. But the possibility of progress is worth the effort.
It appears that Superintendent Castillo may have competition in the next election. Election? Is that really how we want to choose a state superintendent? Do we really want which ever applicant can mount the best political campaign? Perhaps we should consider an alternative. Many states appoint a superintendent. Maybe it's worth considering. And J.K. Rowling might be worth a careful look. She won't fall for claims of magic where there is none. That would be a great start.
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