Local Boy Makes Good In A Very Big Education Fishbowl

I spent this past weekend in the New York area.
I was shocked to see the name of someone that I actually had met more than once running across the trailer at the bottom of the screen on ABC News. Truthfully, that doesn't happen all that often.

And I was so very, very interested to read this article in the New York Times:
Mayor and State Reach Deal On A Schools Chief.

If you've been following this issue at all, you know that New York City is a huge, urban school district. In fact, it is the largest public school district in the world, and the school chief is appointed by the mayor. And Mayor Bloomberg has just appointed Cathleen Black, who has absolutely no education background, to be chancellor. Not only that, but she never even attended a public school. Read about the requirements for the New York City chancellor--this requires a waiver, which has just been given.

[The idea is, I believe, that schools can be run like businesses. I don't believe they can--first, because kids are not a product or service, and second--perhaps more importantly--because in a for-profit business you can try to control both your income and your expenses, and in the non-profit education world, you typically only get to control your expenses. But I digress.]

So anyway, to pacify the people who are outraged that she would be chosen (because there was a possibility that the New York State Education Commissioner could veto her appointment), Mayor Bloomberg suggests a compromise. . . a number 2, a deputy chancellor, who actually knows something about education.

And this is where the "local boy makes good" part comes in, and this is why I was so interested in the article. The local boy is Shael Polakow-Suransky, who got his high school education at the fine local institution, Ann Arbor's own Community High School. He also has the distinction of having a mother, Valerie Polakow, who is a professor of Teacher Education at Eastern Michigan University; and a father, Leonard Suransky, with a PhD from the University of Michigan who is a professor in the Netherlands.

Reviews of Polakow-Suransky's work from the education community in the New York area seem to be pretty positive. (See Gothamschools.org for an example.) The real question of NYC activists, though, is whether Polakow-Suransky will have any power at all.

That is likely because the New York Daily News reports Mayor Bloomberg responding to this question:

Q: How much autonomy will the chief academic officer have?
A: I think it'd be inappropriate to speak while we're waiting for the. . .  for David Steiner to act but there will be one person in charge. Make no mistake about that.

I like what Gothamschools.org quotes Polakow-Suransky as saying:

At a recent panel on how federal education policy is affecting local school districts, Suransky described his interest in standardized tests as being rooted in everyday teaching:

[U]ltimately the reason for assessment is to motivate what happens in the classroom. If it doesn’t actually lead to good practice in the classroom then it’s undermining practice in the classroom. And so this is an opportunity. This is a moment where there’s an opportunity to shift the direction of practice in the classroom and to push on the level of rigor and to actually figure out what is it that kids and teachers need in order to engage in that type of practice. (Emphasis added.)

It's not really a side note to say that I also had lunch with a few friends whose children are making their way through the NYC public schools. Suffice it to say that ensuring that your children get into the "good" schools might require that you yourself have an advanced degree. For high school, there is a huge book of school choices--which you get to wade through and rank order. . . and if your grades weren't good in 7th grade, you may have ruined many of your chances. . . if your test scores were poor, you can forget a different set of schools.

It's also not a side note to say that I'm sure Shael is influenced in the way that he thinks by his parents' work--in particular, Valerie Polakow's work on children and poverty. As it states in her biography on the EMU web site:

My scholarship is dedicated to advocacy on behalf of women and children in poverty, and in my writings I have attempted to document the lived realities of those who have been shut out— from early childhood education, from K-12 education, and from post-secondary education; and to give voice to those whose rights have been violated by poverty, race and gender discrimination.

In fact, Valerie Polakow is the co-editor of a journal I had never seen prior to looking up her biography. It is called PowerPlay: A Journal of Educational Justice and it looks interesting. [See, for instance, the lead article in the most recent issue: The Persistent Issue of Disproportionality in Special Education and Why It Hasn't Gone Away. And that topic is very related to an earlier conversation--see the comments section--on Ann Arbor Schools Musings.]

So, I admit, I was curious to see what someone I had met when he was a teenager looks like now.

Answer: he has a lot less hair!  In any case--good luck Shael!

The Opportunity to Give Thanks (All Hail the Thesaurus)

Please--take this week to thank a

teacher

secretary

custodian

principal

bus driver

librarian

administrator

lunch lady (or lunch gentleman)

after school staff person

before school staff person

counselor

teacher's aide

or any other school staff person whom you would like to

appreciate

laud

notice

applaud

recognize

acclaim

cheer

boost

commend

magnify

praise

recommend

plug

rave

glorify

cheer

encourage

extol

(All hail the thesaurus, provider of wondrous synonyms.)

And feel free to post your thanks, publicly, in the comments section.

Why now? It is, after all, Thanksgiving. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Piece of My Heart: Skyline

The play, A Piece of My Heart, by Shirley Lauro, has become the nation’s most enduring theatrical production that deals with the Vietnam War."
-The VVA Veteran, The Official Voice of Vietnam Veterans of America, Inc.

A Piece of My Heart is a drama about nurses in Vietnam. It is at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor tonight, Saturday 11/20 at 7:30 p.m. and tomorrow Sunday 11/21 at 2:30 p.m. Buy your tickets at the door.

Want To Learn About The Lab School Proposal?

If you are interested in the Lab School proposal on the Scarlett and Mitchell campuses, here are two opportunities to find out more:

Opportunity #1: 

6:30-8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 10, 

Scarlett Middle School, 

3300 Lorraine St.  

Opportunity #2: 

6- 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18, 

Mitchell Elementary School, 

3550 Pittsview Drive (A spaghetti fundraising dinner is also scheduled here on this night, but you can go to the event and not eat the spaghetti if you prefer, or go eat spaghetti and skip the event.)

Scarlett and Mitchell schools are located west of Carpenter Road, south of Packard in Pittsfield Township. (Enter south off of Packard at the traffic signal at Fernwood Avenue to reach both schools.) You can also enter via Platt Road onto Lorraine St.
From the press release: 

Scarlett Principal Gerald Vazquez said the forums are expected to offer basic information on the partnership and encourage discussion in small groups to generate ideas and raise pertinent questions. “We want parents to know that we are working on this as a process and we want them involved in the process,” he said.

So--GO!

Here are some of my questions, but I'm sure you have others.

Ask about how the funding will work. Will it really be cost-neutral?
Ask about why they are doing this project.
Ask whether these kids will be research guinea pigs and what protections they will have.
Ask what kind of projections they are using for enrollment. Do they really need two schools that can together fit over 1000 kids? Why not just use Scarlett? Why not make it a single K-8 school?
Ask about who will be teaching the classes.
Ask about special education integration.
Ask about how you can opt-in if you want a year-round school, even if you are not from that part of the district.
Ask about how you can opt-out if you don't want a year-round school, and you are in that part of the district.
Ask about whatever else you can think of....

Evaluation, Part II: The World Languages Partnership

Three weeks ago, I promised a second post about evaluation. The first post can be found here. I said at the time that I wanted to do this because the Ann Arbor schools are considering an alliance with UM for a "lab school," and since we already have a partnership program--the Ann Arbor Public Schools Languages Partnership--it is worth taking a look at how it is being evaluated, who is doing the evaluating, and what is being evaluated. This might offer some valuable insights for the future. As I wrote before,

The point of assessing the assessment is decidedly NOT to point fingers at what is not working, and it is NOT to praise what parts of the program are working. The point is to see what is being evaluated, who is doing the evaluation, and whether and/or how those things that need to be evaluated are being examined...

In other words: I am not evaluating the program itself. I am evaluating the evaluation process and product.

I've posted the documents, which I received from the district, on the web site Ann Arbor Area Government Document Repository, and this is the documents link. This is a very cool web site where people can post files they have acquired from local governmental units and make them widely available.

What I got was an assessment of third graders who had gone through the partnership program. There is a "CEFR grid," which lays out the broad, overarching goals of the program based on an internationally-recognized standard. There is a sample of the assessment tool that the students filled out.  And there is a summary of the students' assessments.

Was what was done, done appropriately? Done well?
For instance--is it appropriate to use the Common European Framework guidelines? Absolutely. That reflects an international standard for language learning.
Was the assessment the students filled out appropriate for third graders? I thought so! Take a look:

It seems age appropriate to me. Later on in the survery there were some places where students had an opportunity to write more. The summary document describes that 1,034 students were surveyed, and shares items such as "60% say they learned most of what was taught."

So--that's fine. It seems like an age-appropriate, large-scale survey of 3d graders.
There's only one problem, and that is that this survey is as far as it goes.

Although this is a fine assessment of how the students felt about learning Spanish, it is a terrible fail as far as assessing the Languages Partnership Program.

Let's remember that this is a new program. 
Before we expand it, isn't there more that we want to know?


NOTE: Since this was my written request, "Can you please send me copies of any evaluations that AAPS has done about the Ann Arbor Languages Partnership," I'm going to assume that what I got is all that there is at this point. It is certainly possible that there is other material out there.

On the academic side:
It's really nice that 60% of the students say they learned most of what was taught, but does any independent assessment--say, by their teachers--bear that out?
If some students are not learning, who are those students? 
Does this appear to decrease, or increase, the achievement gap?
It's really nice that a majority of students feel their teachers (who are for the most part, I believe, pre-student teachers) teach "very" or "pretty" well, but is there any other assessment of that? By university supervisors, AAPS mentors, or principals?
What about the students' regular teachers--do they feel that this program is value-added, or that it takes away from other activities? [I think this is important to know, as the program gets expanded.]
What about the school principals? Do they feel that this program is value-added? 
If school time is at a premium, and it is a zero-sum game, do we lose anything by adding Spanish? If so, what is it? If teaching a language is important, did we give enough time to it or should we give more time?
How much repetition should teachers be expected to do as we expand the program to fourth and then fifth grade? Will they be doing numbers and colors over and over again?
What did we do with students who already know Spanish from their homes? Were they classroom helpers? Were they given other things to do? How did that work?
Does it work to use pre-student teachers? 
What happened at the end of April when the UM winter term ended? Did the lessons end then?
Were the apprentice teachers responsive and responsible?
Were community members used, and if so, did that work well, or not? If not, what were the roadblocks?


On the financial side:
What was the original budget? Did we go over the budget? Under the budget?
Did either the University or AAPS have unexpected costs that they had to cover, and if so, what was the cost?
What lessons did we learn about the financing?
Is this program sustainable going forward?


On the partnership side:
Is the partnership working overall?
Were there any surprises? What were they?
What parts went smoothly and what parts did not?

And two more things...
First, from the A2LP web site:

While classes this year were taught in the Media Center at each school, and Media Specialists served as mentors for our ATs, in the 2010-2011 school year, classes will be held in students’ regular classrooms, with classroom teachers as mentors.

Under which setting do things seem to go more smoothly...in the media centers or in the classrooms? Do the classroom teachers feel prepared to be mentors for Spanish language apprentice teachers?

Second, from the A2LP web site:

Future research studies will include the perspectives of community members, whether or not they are parents of students participating in A2LP.  While many community members expressed their opinions at board meetings and in online discussion forums prior to the program’s start, the Partnership is interested in formally documenting the response to the program after several months/years of operation.

In fact, the A2LP brochure specifically states:

The Partnership will be advised by a community committee, which will be chaired by the Superintendent and the University’s Director of Teacher Education.

 But when I asked about the committee, I was told that:

There is not a committee as of yet. There is a plan to initiate the committee in the coming months. The main goal of the committee will be to help secure funding for professional development and promotion of the programs.

 Uh-Oh. As far as I'm concerned, that's a piece of the assessment that I can comment on: Fail. First of all, the program is a year-and-a-half in (if you include planning time, it's more), and there is no community committee yet. Second, the goal of the committee is no longer advising, but securing funding?

[It's no accident, I think, that I signed up for a committee during the budget forums last year, and have heard nary a word about them yet.]

On the AAPS web site, the Ann Arbor Languages Partnership program information is embedded in the World Languages page. There is a fuller description on the UM web site. The UM one closes with these words:

The program is the first of its kind in the School of Education and we want to ensure that its development is data-driven.

From the AAPS side, don't we absolutely agree? In order to make our work data-driven, our evaluations cannot simply be about students' assessments of themselves. They must be about the program operations as well, and they should be reflective in nature so that the partners know whether the program is working and/or financially sustainable, how well it is working, and what could be done to make it work better.

Is THIS the price of bullying?

HURON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Samantha Kelly endured merciless taunting from classmates after they learned that the high school freshman had accused a senior of rape.
The weeks of harassment eventually became too much. Samantha went home from school Monday and hanged herself in this community southwest of Detroit.

UPDATE, 11/11/10: After I posted this (I wrote it last night), I thought about a book that can be taught in middle school and high school. At the time I read it, I didn't like it. I thought it was too much in the genre of dealing with current problems (yes, that is a genre--I just don't remember what it is called). I'm inclined to prefer nonfiction for this kind of issue.

And yet--last night--falling asleep, I wondered: would Samantha Kelly have been helped by reading Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak? Or had she read it, but it wasn't enough?

As Audrey Clark notes, "Rape is not a word that falls freely from the tongue."

Means of Production

I was on my way to Gallup Park today and I passed a street with lots of signs opposing any privatization of the Huron Hills Golf Course.

Which made me think about the proposed privatization of City of Ann Arbor composting, where--in addition to privatizing--they want to consider an out-of-state company over an in-state company that would save the city more money.

Which made me think about why it is that when I get a City of Ann Arbor parking ticket I have to send it to New York state. Is there no local company that could process parking tickets?

Which made me think about the privatization of school bus transportation, and why it is that it is not working out so well for Ypsilanti, which now has to shell out up to $180,000 more to cover routes that aren't being covered properly, despite previous assurances by the WISD that they would ensure proper coverage.

And that made me think about Karl Marx. No, I'm not a Marxist (except maybe for the Groucho kind), and I'm definitely not a Marx expert, but I believe that Marx was on to something when he said that we should be concerned about who controls the means of production.

In the case of the golf course, the land itself is the means of production.
In the case of the compost, the compost and the composting technology are both the means of production.
In the case of the school buses, the buses are the means of production. (Marx's idea of means of production separates out human capital, so it's not the drivers.)

In the case of schools, the schools themselves are means of production--even when it's not an assembly-line education.

And we the people should be careful about giving up control of the means of production...it turns out to be not so easy to get it back, sometimes.

On a related note (well, I thought it was related), you might be interested in Mark Maynard's post: Bill Moyers on Plutocracy.

Roundup: Dexter, Ypsilanti, Howell

From the Dexter Schools web site:

All who are interested in learning more about the IB Diploma Programme are invited to attend one of the informational parent meetings scheduled for Nov. 10 and 18.  All meetings will begin at 7:00 p.m. and will be held at the Media Center at Dexter High School.  The IB Diploma Programme is an esteemed and rigorous two-year course of study that spans the high school junior and senior years and is intended for university bound students.

Dexter is doing an International Baccalaureate program on its own. (In my earlier article, To IB or Not to IB, one of the commenters had gone to a very small IB school and had a successful experience.) Several other school districts s are "consorting" with the WISD. 

I wonder how that will work? Today I read that the Ypsilanti schools, which started out "consorting" with the WISD for transportation, in order to save money, are now spending up to $180,000 additional to pay for a private company to provide more transportation. Some savings, huh?
(I actually saw one of the Trinity buses today in Ypsilanti, and I wondered why the bus said Trinity on it. I thought maybe it was a Catholic school. But now I know.)

Now it is time to ask for some more accountability and evaluation from the districts and the WISD, regarding the actual (not projected) savings from this privatization project.

I don't usually comment on schools outside the county, but I did find this news item very interesting. In the Howell district, a teacher got caught up in issues around bullying, LGBT rights, and religion. He got a two-day suspension, and now a protest of the suspension is planned at the school board meeting. Here is the Detroit News article, which ends with this information: "The district has planned a diversity forum for 7 p.m. Nov. 15 at the Howell High School Freshman Campus." Hey, maybe I have some readers from Howell...

And back to Dexter, where I just saw in annarbor.com that apparently an 8th grader has committed suicide. I don't know anything more, except that it makes me sad, and there is help for those who need it. 

Awesomely Beautiful Murals

While looking up the information about high school theater productions this fall, I came across this little note on the Lincoln Schools web site:

During the Depression years as part of a WPA project three large murals were painted by brothers Leon and Bronislaw Makielski. The murals depict the development of our rural community from the pioneer days to the industrial days of the 1930’s. The murals are still present in the rooms above the Senior Citizens Center. (November 2010)

I'm pretty sure that the high school I went to was built by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration,  so I was curious. And I found this web site. (You can read about the Chelsea murals there as well.)


Boy are these murals beautiful. I'm inserting one of them here--photographs by Einar Einarsson Kvaran. Go to the web site to see the rest of them.

"No Bow Lesbo," or Straight Pressure

A friend recently reported to me that--not so much in Ann Arbor, but in some other parts of southeastern Michigan, it is common for girls who play high school softball to wear bows in their hair. And if you don't?

Then you might be tagged a 

"No Bow Lesbo."

In other words, if you don't wear a bow in your hair, you must be a lesbian. Since kids generally don't want to be tagged a lesbian by others (whatever their personal identity)...the pressure to wear bows is on.

And it's this kind of insidious pressure...this semi-conscious use of name-calling...that is emblematic of the ways in which issues around sexual orientation are not just about BULLYING.

I mean, I wouldn't call that bullying. But is it name calling? Yes. Is it a culture of respect? No. Is it wrong? Yes. What are we doing about it?

Technology Lesson

I do really miss teaching, BUT it is not every day that I read or see a piece of information that makes me think of a bunch of lesson plans I could teach based on that piece.

This evening, though, I read Dusty Diary's post:
Percentage of Rural Homes with Four Technologies: 1930-1950.
Yeah, it's about the Census.

You might think this would be dry, but the numbers just hint at the story, and Dusty Diary's questions at the end are thought-provoking.

5. Last, a mere seventeen years before DD was born, a 62% majority of homes in areas like Augusta Township did not have a phone. Contrasted to today, that is astonishing. How were people's lives changed by this absence, compared to today? Were their minds quieter? Were their lives calmer? Did things move more slowly? What else might have been different?

So--history teachers, technology teachers, teachers trying to teach kids to turn dusty archives into something new...I hope Laura Bien's post gives you some great ideas.

The Theater Moon

Last Saturday night, with a double bonus of occupied children and no plans, we ended up at the UM ice hockey game--and it was fun.
However, if that same scenario happened this coming weekend, or any other into early December, I might have made a different choice, because we are now entering

High School Theater Month!

Yes, folks, between now and early December, you have your choice of many high school plays--some of which, based on past experience, will be truly excellent. Truly, it is an embarrassment of riches.
And the fun begins...this weekend!


Ann Arbor Huron High School: The Huron Players are presenting The Crucible by Arthur Miller, October 29 and 30 and November 5 and 6, at 7:30 pm. This play is a favorite play of mine, and it is about the Salem Witch Trials--a time of great shame for the accusers, as far as I am concerned. 
Look for A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare) in the spring.

Ann Arbor Pioneer High School: Pioneer Theatre Guild is putting on the musical Hairspray, November 6th, 7th, 12th, 13th, and 14th. (Sunday shows are matinees.) Hairspray takes place in 1960s Baltimore, and includes a focus on integration. Keen observers of the high school theater scene might know that high schools around the country have been waiting, and waiting, for the rights to put on Hairspray. This is the first year the play is available to high schools, so guess what--more than one local school is putting it on. It will be the spring production at Skyline. Go to both and compare!
Look for Seussical (based on the works of Dr. Seuss) in the spring.


Ann Arbor Community High School: CHS Theatre will be presenting Little Shop of Horrors, December 3d, 4th, and 5th. In a departure for CHS, they are doing a musical. In what is not a departure, it's going to be "non-traditional," yet maintaining the original's "wry blend of humor and tenderness." It's a small theater, so you will need advance tickets. I don't know about a spring play.


Ann Arbor Skyline High School: Skyline Theatre Guild is presenting Shirley Lauro's A Piece of My Heart, November 19th and 20th at 7:30, November 21 at 2:30. This play is a very unusual play (I think) for a high school production--it's about women nurses in Vietnam, and I am totally excited about it. This is the show for you if you have relatives who were in Vietnam, Korea, or Iraq and Afghanistan. I do have a child at Skyline, so of course there is a little more promotion of the Skyline play, but I think I would promote it anyway because it is such a great subject. 
In the spring, you can watch the second coming of Hairspray.


Chelsea High School: Chelsea Theatre Guild is doing a high school classic, Bye Bye Birdie, November 11, 12, and 13th at 7 p.m. Typically, they don't do a spring play.


Dexter High School: Dexter Drama Club is putting on another high school classic, Our Town, (Thornton Wilder) November 18th, 19th, and 20th.  Look for Guys and Dolls in the winter (see below--you can compare it to Lincoln's production), and Alice in Wonderland in the spring. 

Lincoln High School: Lincoln Drama Club is putting on the high school classic Guys and Dolls November 18, 19th, 20th, and 21. Look for Nevermore: The Final Mystery of Edgar Allen Poe in the spring. 


Manchester High School: Manchester Drama Club is putting on The Curious Savage by John Patrick, November 10th (understudy performance), 13th and 14th. This is a comedy about a woman whose husband dies and leaves her $10,000,000. I might point out that $10,000,000 is a lot of money now, but it was way more money back when this play was written sixty years ago. I don't know about a spring play.


Milan High School: Milan High School Drama is doing a Holiday Musical that features arrangements from the TV show Glee, December 2, 3, 4, and 5. I don't know about a spring show.

Saline High School: Saline Drama Club has also chosen an interesting play this year: The Giver, based on a book by Lois Lowry. Actually, I have no idea if the play is interesting, but the book is--and it is very frequently assigned to 4th to 7th graders to read.

Are you wondering about Whitmore Lake, Willow Run, and Ypsilanti? Whitmore Lake does have a drama club, but I couldn't find any information about a fall performance. I've been told by Emma Jackson, Ypsilanti Public Schools communications staff person, that the Ypsilanti High School fall show fell victim to budget cuts several years ago, and there will be a spring show but it hasn't been announced yet. I couldn't find any evidence of a drama club in the Willow Run schools. So that makes me a little bit sad. 
I haven't even mentioned that most of these schools do interesting one-act plays in the winter for theater competitions. I know, it's hard to believe that you can compete in theater, but you can, and they do--there are rules for set-up and take-down, costumes and length of the play. Read about the competitions, and the Michigan Interscholastic Forensic Association, here.


So, now that I've solved your weekend entertainment problem...

In the Meantime

Part II of the Evaluation piece has been delayed by technical difficulties, so in the mean time, I'd like to share some informational links and comments.


Regarding LGBT issues and the Saline schools:

There's a contested election for the Saline school board. The two candidates on the ballot are against the addition of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression, but there is a write-in candidate (Marian Faupel) who is in favor of their addition. You can watch the video of a school board debate here. (The candidates are all a mixed bag though, if you read their opinions about privatization and unions, among other items.)

Here is an article about a Saline resident who wants the school board to reconsider its vote, and is starting a PFLAG chapter (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).

Child-psych.org is blogging about why a gay-blind approach to bullying won't work.

 Ypsilanti schools: unions, homecoming, voting and more

There's a contested election for the Ypsilanti school board too. WEMU has coverage of this here and here.

WEMU also has coverage of the teachers' union contract: concessions, concessions, concessions.

I felt bad for the students that Ypsilanti's Homecoming Dance was cancelled. According to a friend of mine in the district, it was the right call because there was a fight Friday night (the night of the Homecoming football game), with non-students fighting, and one of them (the one who hadn't been captured) reportedly had a gun. First of all, students do spend money and make plans around Homecoming, so I feel bad for them. I also couldn't find any reports regarding whether the bozo in question was captured. Combining the Homecoming and Halloween dances is just not the same--and I say that as someone who never went to Homecoming or Prom.

I'm very curious to hear more about how New Tech High School is working out. (Anyone with direct experience who would like to send me a note, I will post it.) I did know that the New Tech model is a national model, but I didn't really realize that the New Tech High School model involves lots of project-based learning.

Willow Run: Is there news?

News from Willow Run has been mighty silent. But I did pick up that Joseph Yomtoob (former Superintendent, many years ago) is now serving as the middle school principal.

I also noticed that new teachers who start in Willow Run are starting at just over $33,300 (if you have a BA), and around $3,000 more if you have an MA. I'm pretty sure that is lower than most of the surrounding districts.

At the end of their last approved board meeting, they went into closed session to discuss negotiation strategies. Didn't they just reach agreement with the teacher's union?

Still not a peep about Count Day. Anyone know how their numbers have turned out?

Career Choices

There is a fascinating post over at Teacher, Revised about prostitution and high-stakes testing.

Part I: What Is Evaluation and Why Does It Matter Anyway?

Once upon a time, when I first started working for a nonprofit, I didn't think evaluation really mattered. I mean, sure--it mattered for outside funders, and if I needed to convince you that the sky was red, I could probably write a report that convinced you. If I couldn't quite do that, I usually could explain to you why the program plan to turn the sky red hadn't worked. I could do pre- and post-tests, I could analyze data. I could convince you that a program had worked, or come close to working, but what I couldn't do is tell you why evaluation should really, truly be important to me.

The dawning of the age of Aquarius...by which I mean my understanding of evaluation as critical to doing good work, came in a graduate school class where I finally understood how you could create a theory, and test that theory's outcomes mathematically. In other words, if you embed evaluation in the beginning, you can really understand whether you are getting the effects you want. And in the spirit of scientific inquiry, you have to be open to the idea that your hypothesis is just an idea, a theory. . . and it might or might not be doing what you want it to do. 

For instance, the drive to get women to have mammograms rests on the premise that mammograms save lives through early detection. But do mammograms save lives? This question sounds simple, but turns out to be pretty complicated!

Anyway, back to education.
Typically, teachers develop lesson plans in a "student will be able to do x, y, or z," and evaluation of a lesson would relate back to that plan.  
 

Example: Students will be able to write all 26 letters in lower case and upper case.

Now, that's an easy example, because you either can or can't do that. And obviously, process objectives are harder to measure--those small steps along the way that allow you to finally master a skill.
It's not always so easy, anyway--if a student does poorly on a test or other evaluation, does that mean that the teacher did a bad job teaching? Was the test simply too difficult? Did the student run out of time?

And then there is the question of the value of what is being taught. My friend told me today that her grandfather used to drill her at the dining room table over the fifty states and their capitols. Is that important? (Because if it is, we are doing a lousy job teaching it! I will bet most kids don't know them.) But we can certainly argue about whether or not this is an important concept.

So, that's about evaluating the student. But what about evaluating the teacher? My kids have asked me why bad teachers get to be teachers. Was it because they were good teachers, and now they are bad? Was it because a thorough an honest evaluation of them was never done when they were student teachers? [Schools of Education don't like to give up on student teachers.]

And then there is the question of the organizational evaluation--in this case, the schools. Some things could be useful for the students, and working for the teachers, but not working for the organization. For instance, plenty of programs have been cut because they were too expensive for the organization--even though they appeared to be working for both students and teachers.

What bothered me twenty years ago was that evaluation seemed like a waste of time and money. What I think now is completely different. I think now that it can save time and money if you are doing the wrong thing--or give you peace of mind and let you know you're on the right track if you are doing the right thing. But I think that most people, and most organizations, are in the place where I was twenty years ago--doing evaluations to prove a point that has already been pre-determined to be correct, instead of using evaluations as a way to improve.

You might think this was kind of long-winded. I have a feeling, though, that if we (by which I really am referring to all schools, but Ann Arbor schools in particular) had used rigorous evaluations, we would have found out a lot earlier that many of the programmatic attempts to reduce the "equity gap" were not working.

The point will become clearer in Part II, where I take a look at the assessment of the Ann Arbor Public Schools Language Partnership Program, a program that I discussed a few weeks ago. Think of that as a case study. The point of assessing the assessment is decidedly NOT to point fingers at what is not working, and it is NOT to praise what parts of the program are working. The point is to see what is being evaluated, who is doing the evaluation, and whether and/or how those things that need to be evaluated are being examined...

And the reason for using this program as a case study is this: the Ann Arbor Public Schools are in serious discussions with the University of Michigan about setting up a lab school in Ann Arbor. Aside from the fact that they are doing this without a community planning process (which I have a BIG beef about, and blogged about last month), I would like to use this mini-cooperative program (the Language Partnership Program) as a lens through which we can see how evaluation of a larger cooperative program might work.

UPDATE 11/14/2010: Part II can now be found here.

When Does It Cross The Line?

All of this discussion about bullying (see, for example, the It Gets Better Project) has had me thinking about what it takes to feel bullied, and when is a behavior--or in the case I'm going to describe, a non-behavior--bullying?

I started thinking about a girl in my high school, a girl in the same grade as me. She was a head taller though (and I was never short), which makes me think that she might have been held back at some point. She had long curly hair, and a tough-looking jean jacket. (We all wore jean jackets, but hers--to me--looked tougher.) DM, as I shall call her, fought with other girls--especially another girl with the same first name! Cat Fight!
DM used to proclaim, loudly, to teachers, that her boyfriend Frank was in jail, but when he got out...

DM used to walk home the same way as me, through the same graveyard shortcut. To be honest I never had any idea where she lived (though obviously near me). I never looked behind me if I knew she was there. I was terrified that she would notice me there, and threaten me or beat me up. If she was ahead of me, I would slow down so I could put some distance between us.

I'm not sure she ever noticed me, and strictly speaking, it wasn't bullying. At least, she wasn't directing any bullying attention at me. But I felt terrified when she was in the same hall as me.

When does it cross the line?

P.S. And since October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, I will note that child witnesses to domestic violence have some of those same issues, sometimes feeling that they have personally experienced the domestic violence. It didn't physically touch them, but they felt it anyway.

Could These Ideas Save Local Schools Money?

I spent last weekend in the Boston area at a bat mitzvah and seeing my family. My sister's children go to a public school system that--size-wise and demographically--looks a lot like the Ann Arbor school system. I heard about two things that this school system does that might be worth implementing locally.

1. For elementary school children, Tuesdays are an early dismissal day (12 or 12:30, I don't remember). For teachers, Tuesday afternoons are time for planning meetings and professional development. Professional development days are not scheduled throughout the year, and local child care settings (including the public school's own) are set up to accommodate the short Tuesday. That would seem to simplify things for parents. Would it also save money? Sometimes subs are hired for planning or professional development.

2. In the elementary and middle schools, substitute teachers are called on for both short-term and long-term assignments, as they are here. But in the high school, it's a different ball game. The only subs there are long-term subs. If a teacher wakes up with a sore throat, she or he calls in sick, but no substitute is called, no emergency lesson plan called upon. For the students, that class is cancelled. Instead, students go to study hall. The study hall is a large room (fits about 100), supervised by one teacher (teachers apparently take turns like you would for lunch duty). Overflow goes into the commons (although I believe that 11th and 12th graders are allowed to leave campus). My niece tells me a class is cancelled for her approximately once a week, and she likes it because it gives her extra study time.
Think about it--how much do substitute teachers, there for 1-2 days, actually teach? Based on my experience as a high school sub, precious little.
The cost savings, I would imagine, are pretty significant.

What Oman Can Teach Us

My favorite piece of this Nicholas Kristof essay:

The pattern seems widespread: Everybody gives lip service to education, but nobody funds it. 

For me, the lesson of Oman has to do with my next stops on this trip: Afghanistan and Pakistan. If we want to see them recast as peaceful societies, then let’s try investing less in bombs and more in schools.

I'm so disappointed

...that the Saline school board voted against adding the non-discrimination language protecting sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. The vote was 4-3. I'll post the names when I know them.

Updated 10/13/10: According to annarbor.com, this was the vote breakout. Please do thank the three who supported the change--

Weeks of meetings culminated in Tuesday's 4-3 vote, with trustees Lisa Slawson, David Medly, and President David Friese voting in favor of the change. Board members who voted against it were Amy Cattell, Chuck Lesch, Paul Hynek and Craig Hoeft.

Dan Savage, founder of the It Gets Better Project, will be speaking at EMU tomorrow evening tonight. Free.

Dan Savage, author of numerous books and columnist for The Stranger's sex advice column, "Savage Love," will visit EMU Oct. 13, 7 p.m., Grand Ballroom, Student Center. Savage will present a lecture, followed by a question-and-answer session. The event is free and open to the public.

I hope--for the Saline Schools--that THEY get better. At creating a diverse and welcoming community.

MICHIGAN: Granholm vetoes legislative spending plan for federal education dollars (2010-10-12)

MICHIGAN: Granholm vetoes legislative spending plan for federal education dollars (2010-10-12)

 Why don't we plan well? Who loses? Kids...oh yeah, but kids don't really count, do they?