School Registration: I'm scratching my head about a few things

Last week was school registration in the Ann Arbor schools, and it left me--and my husband--wondering about a few things.

First of all, the timing of registration is problematic. Registration is in the middle of the day, and there is no evening registration alternative. In addition, the "make-up" day is during the same week as the regular registration. Most people take vacations Saturday to Sunday, and most camps run week-by-week, so: why don't they set the make-up day(s) during the following week, on the theory that if you are out of town on Wednesday you will probably still be out of town on Friday?

Second of all, my daughter (like many of her classmates) came home with a schedule that made no sense. Sure, she was able to laugh about the fact that she was given two sections of the same exact class. She was able to laugh about the fact that she was given two classes during the same class period. And she was able to laugh about the fact that she was given Mandarin Chinese Level 2, despite the fact that a) she's never taken any Mandarin Chinese and b) she didn't have any Chinese class on her list of possible electives.

I admit--I laughed about it too. Until my husband said to me, "Don't they use computers for these things? Can't they program the computer so that it is impossible to assign someone two classes in the same class period? Can't they program the computer so that it is impossible to assign someone two sections of the same exact class?"

Um, good point. Yes, I'm pretty sure they could. If they would.

And while they're at it, if a student has a blank class period, why don't they fill in that period with a class the student requested? If that's not possible, the computer should just leave the space blank! If a class is not on a student's list of possible electives, why does the computer automatically fill in the blank--with a class the student has no interest in taking and possibly no qualifications to take? I think they could probably fix that too, with a little programming.

And really, I don't think it's a lot of programming. If we were to compare the amount of programming time it would take to the alternative (not programming), it would be obvious that the up-front programming time would be worth it. 

Because you might be wondering--what happens when students get these kind of cockamamie schedules? Well, the counselors get hundreds of change requests, and those all have to get dealt with manually. In other words, counselors are spending hundreds of hours on this.

In the meantime, the class counts for those mis-assigned classes are completely wrong.

Scary: This is the Future of Wisconsin Education (and Michigan?)

Read this post:

New Berlin: This is the Future of Wisconsin Education.

Transportation Redux

If you've been following Ann Arbor's transportation issues, you know that:
1. Back in the spring, the powers-that-be suggested cutting all high school transportation in order to save money.
(There was a Big Outcry.) 
2. The upshot was, that the Board of Education decided to establish "common" bus stops--for the most part at elementary schools and in some areas on the edge of the district.
3. (There was another Big Outcry.) This was from people who are just now realizing that their kids are going to have to get up super early and walk to a bus stop at a school, perhaps a mile or more away from their house (the district walk zone is a  1-1/2 mile radius). There may not be sidewalks; by late fall it will be dark; and if the bus pickup is a 6:45, they may need to wake up at 5:45 a.m.

You can read more here.

I'm all for common stops--but who thought up that they should definitely be at existing schools? In the case of concentrated subdivisions, it might make more sense to have them there. Is there any data from last year that could tell us about actual usage patterns?

Right now the district is saying:
a) We'll meet with parents again on Thursday, Sept. 1 at 6 p.m. in the cafeteria of Clague Middle School.
Great! The early meetings have been populated largely by people from Arrowwood and Foxfire, but I highly doubt those are the only parents concerned about this.

b) There's a video from the new superintendent on the Ann Arbor schools web site where she says that all decisions will be guided by safety concerns.

Great! This shouldn't be a popularity contest. I have to put in my two cents here: first of all, safety concerns are different in the morning and the afternoon. In other words, I would be concerned about my daughter walking a mile, by herself, in the dark, at 6:30 a.m. I wouldn't have those same concerns at 3 p.m. So potentially, stops could be added in the morning and not in the afternoon.

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Second, there are some other safety concerns if you're enforcing walking to school. For instance, this past year in March, there was a 1/4 mile of Maple Road--near the roundabouts, between where school property ends and houses start--where the sidewalk was unplowed and piled high with snow from the road--for over a month. Yes, you can see it on the map. Students faced a choice of slogging through two feet of snow or walking in the road. I couldn't figure out who owned this property... (the city? the road commission?) but I'm sure it's just one example. If we really expect kids to walk to school, we need to enforce sidewalk clearing.

c) Last, the district says, they won't make any decisions until after school starts.
What?! Why not?! If you are being guided by safety concerns, then those safety concerns exist on day one. 

Finally, it's worth noting that I don't believe that the district has yet received--or released--any information about whether their privatization switch to the WISD saved them money, and if it did, how much. I hope we'll get to see those numbers soon.

What Else is Math Good For?

Yup--art.

Check out the work of Sol LeWitt, on display at MassMoCA, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, until 2033--so you've got plenty of time to get there. It is beautiful art, but also mathematical masterpieces.

View this, or this, or this, or this.

About LeWitt's work:

"LeWitt—who stressed the idea behind his work over its execution—is widely regarded as one of the leading exponents of Minimalism and Conceptual art, and is known primarily for his deceptively simple geometric structures and architecturally scaled wall drawings. His experiments with the latter commenced in 1968 and were considered radical, in part because this new form of drawing was purposely temporal and often executed not just by LeWitt but also by other artists and students whom he invited to assist him in the installation of his artworks.
Each wall drawing begins as a set of instructions or simple diagram to be followed in executing the work. . . " From About the Artist, MassMoCA. Emphasis added.

If you read his instructions in the piece below (taken from here), you can see how math can be used to create art. 

 

Charter #2: Arbor Preparatory High School

My initial idea in writing about the charter schools in the county was that I would provide the same information about each charter school, and that I would go alphabetically. Well, I'm sticking to my plan of going alphabetically, but that basically makes it impossible to provide the same information for each school, because this next school has not even opened yet! It does, however, allow me to provide some very basic information, and make some observations.

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Arbor Preparatory High School is a charter school that is part of the for-profit National Heritage Academies (which has two other established Washtenaw County schools--Fortis and South Arbor--and one other school that is set to open this year on the same site as Arbor Prep--East Arbor). It is set to open in the Fall of 2011 with up to 250 ninth and tenth grade students, at the corner of Merritt and Hitchingham Roads.
One thing that is very interesting about the development of this school is that it is only the second charter high school in the county that is really focused on high school students. The other is Washtenaw Technical Middle College, which is chartered by and run in concert with/on the campus of Washtenaw Community College. Two other schools--Eastern Washtenaw Multicultural Academy and Central Academy--have much smaller numbers of high school students.

The school is part of the National Heritage Academies and is being run by a charter management company, PrepNet. The newly-appointed principal, Matthew Hudson, was formerly an assistant principal at South Arbor. The web site looks very bare at this point. The only parts that are fairly well filled out are the athletics and college planning sections, and I assume those are basically boilerplate from PrepNet. As with all National Heritage Academies schools, there is a "moral focus curriculum," and they offer art, music, library, and physical education.

If you want to see the proposed budget, you can find it here. Operations and Maintenance is over half the budget! Only about 1/3 of the budget is devoted to instructional services. This may be a function of the fact that they are moving into a new building, but I'm not sure if this is the building budget or not.

In the annarbor.com article about the principal, there was a lot of discussion in the comments about why all these schools have "Arbor" in their names, when they are actually located in Ypsilanti. It's a good question, and I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

The school itself is chartered by Bay Mills Community College, which is Michigan's first fully-accredited, tribal (community) college, and if you're wondering how or why a small community college that doesn't certify teachers is in the business of chartering schools, I think the answer is: money. When Michigan first started allowing charter schools, they put caps on the number of schools that could be chartered. Bay Mills is on Indian land, and is therefore not subject to state law--so they didn't have a cap. So would-be schools were interested in Bay Mills because there was no cap, and Bay Mills was interested in the schools because the schools pay an administrative fee to the charterer. Based on the Bay Mills web site, it appears to me that other chartering authorities do a much better job of supervision. The role of Bay Mills as a charter authorizer has been a matter of some controversy, deserving of its own post.

This is also where I tell you that unlike my search of the EMU web site for chartering documents when I wrote about Ann Arbor Learning Community, I could find very little on the Bay Mills Community College web site (no charter documents). Nor could I find information about the charter on the state web site (when I looked a few weeks ago) because at that point it was still showing up as a "proposed" school.

And because I'm still a little bit murky on the corporate behind-the-scenes information (and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be easy to find this information or not), I can't tell you very much about PrepNet or about the proposed school. However--I'd be interested in tips on how to research our local charter schools, so if you know, please do tell--either in the comments or via an email message.

What I can tell you is this: there are two kinds of charters--non-profit and for-profit. Ann Arbor Learning Community, Washtenaw Technical Middle College, Honey Creek. . . they are organized as nonprofits with local boards of directors. In contrast, Arbor Preparatory High School is part of a much larger, privately-held, for-profit venture.

I have to tell you that I am completely and totally murky on why we permit for-profit ventures in education. Fundamentally and philosophically, that seems wrong to me. In charter schools, some of the profit may come at the expense of teacher salaries, which are lower than other public schools--but the same could be said of many non-profit private schools where tuition is significantly higher than the per-pupil allowances of public schools. In other cases, I don't even understand how the profit accrues. In any case, if there is "leftover" money in education (a.k.a. surplus or profit), then we should plow it back into the education of students.

That does not mean that there won't be demand for Arbor Preparatory High School, or that it won't be successful. (I believe that the other local NHA schools have waiting lists.) Feel free to come back to this post in a month or two and write about your experiences with the school.

It's Art! It's Math!

I doodled my way through high school, so I found this fascinating, even had no idea who Hilbert is. (Find out who he is here.)




[So this is what math is good for! Doodling! I never doodled so symmetrically.]

Technology and (Lots) More

OK, I know you've been wondering where I've been...hey, it's summer!

I have been working on some longer posts, but in the meantime, here are some updates.

1. Tuesday, if you're like me you'll be keeping an eye on the recall elections going on in Wisconsin. At their core, they are all about how public employees are treated. On twitter I think you can search #wivotes or #wiunion for up to the minute information. I blogged about my experiences back in February at the rallies in Madison.

2. Also Tuesday, the Ann Arbor school board will be discussing the possibility of putting a technology millage on the ballot. It's a special meeting to discuss this--I'd encourage you to share your opinion, either by going to the board meeting (Balas, 7 p.m.) or by emailing the board at boe@aaps.k12.mi.us. I wrote about my concerns about whether this is a good way to pay for technology, in the post How should schools pay for technology? I also haven't heard much enthusiasm for the idea from anyone except school board members, so I wonder--why pursue something and spend so much time and energy on something that is going to be voted down anyway? And if I were in the teachers' union, I might consider opposing this. Why? Well, it was only a couple of years ago that the Saline superintendent threatened to eliminate the high school math department and move completely to on-line learning. (Yes, it was a dumb idea--and likely mostly a bargaining tool--but still--why support that kind of thinking?)

3. And this article, Michigan teachers continue to leave for other states,  has really gotten a lot of play. It's not a big surprise to anyone that there are very few teaching jobs in Michigan, and that we are training too many teachers. I wrote about that a short while ago. It would be nice if teacher training institutions consciously chose to reduce their class sizes and upgrade the quality of their incoming classes. Will they? I bet not nearly enough, because teacher education is their bread and butter...

4. The Ann Arbor district did a nice job sharing information with Ann Arbor Open parents when the fire happened in the building (it was an electrical problem). 

5. I'm quite sure Governor Rick Snyder isn't interested, but nonetheless I'm going to put out here, for my gazillion readers, two thoughts about how the state could raise more money. First, let's turn I-94 into a toll road, and dedicate those funds to improving the roads. (I grew up on the east coast. Most of the roads are tolled. People who use them, pay for them.) Second, let's look at what mobile home owners pay in lieu of "property taxes." The last time I checked, it was something like $15/year and was set in the 1950s. Maybe it's time to raise them.

6. Ypsilanti Schools have unveiled a new design for their website at www.ypsd.org. Let them know what you think!

7. I was a little sorry to see that Stone School got renamed Ann Arbor Technical High School. It reminded me of a line from a Grace Paley poem, "I gave away that kid like he was an old button." I admit, it's not exactly "giving away the kid," but did we have to lose the name? And if we did, couldn't we think of something less...boring...trendy...I mean, we've already got New Tech High School, and Washtenaw Technical Middle College...and is the name really going to change the reputation?

In case you are wondering, the original Stone School is now a cooperative preschool, at the corner of Packard and Stone School roads, and the building is 100 years old, this year.

8. About Ypsilanti's New Tech High School--A couple of weeks ago, I was checking out of a store, and because I was buying a backpack, I started talking about schools with the cashier. Her child has been going to New Tech. She thinks it is fabulous, that it has rekindled his interest in learning. Now, she said to me, he's thinking about college. She said, "Well, he was behind in school, and he's still behind, but now he's interested in catching up." I thought that was very high praise for a brand new program. And apparently they were just named a national demonstration site, too, so that is promising. (Now, I would link to the New Tech web site, but I guess ypsd.org still has some work to do, because the link is broken...if it gets fixed I will update it.)

Schools and the Means of Education Shall Forever Be Encouraged

In case you missed it, the Ann Arbor Chronicle has a lovely piece by John U. Bacon, thanking teachers.

Here it is.

I took the title of this blog post from Thomas Jefferson's Northwest Ordinance (as cited in the article):

“Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

To Form a More Perfect Union

The Lincoln Consolidated Schools were consolidated from thirteen smaller schools. 

Dusty Diary has a really great picture from the archives.

Cheating

Two weeks ago, I spent the weekend at a kids' baseball tournament. In a shocking turn of events, one of the teams got expelled for playing a young man who was two years older than the rest of the kids. Yes, that's illegal according to the rules of the tournament and the league.

It's also stupid, in my opinion. These kids were not even playing for medals, let alone money or athletic scholarships! And--as two coaches on two of the other teams voiced to me, "What kind of message does that send to the kids?" That you kids need an older kid to help you out because your team wouldn't be good enough otherwise? That cheating is ok?

Sometimes we don't have very much clarity about what "cheating" exactly is. I recall letting a friend copy off of me during a high school French test. I didn't think of it as cheating, because I wasn't the one copying...

In college I got more clarity. My college had an honor code, and exams were unproctored. (How is that for trust? I once saw someone go up to another student and say, "I saw you cheating. You can turn yourself in, or I will turn you in." They turned themselves in.) In any case, at the end of a test, we had to write the words, "I have neither given nor received aid." So apparently, giving aid (letting someone cheat off of you) was still cheating.

What surprised me about July's baseball cheating incident wasn't that there was cheating in baseball. Every baseball fan knows the story of baseball's infamous 1919 Black Sox. But that was the World Series! The stakes were high! No--what surprised me about the tournament cheating episode was that people cheated even though the stakes were so low--no money, no prizes, just being named the winner.

Maybe that shouldn't have surprised me. After all, if my friend had failed that French test, she probably still would have had a B in the class--it wasn't a big test!

But when the stakes are higher, can we expect more cheating?
Apparently the answer is yes.

And it's not the kids, but the ADULTS, who are cheating. Those principals and teachers are setting some kind of crummy example.

Look at these national educational scandals, focused on test results and whether a school is making adequate yearly progress.

Atlanta

Philadelphia

Washington, D.C.

Miami

At the same time, let's not forget that some of the educators refused to cheat. (Although I still wonder why they didn't turn their colleagues in.)

In a 7/17/2011 article, the New York Times writes:

Principals, in turn, humiliated teachers. At Fain Elementary, the principal, Marcus Stallworth, had teachers with low test scores crawl under a table, according to the report. At Parks Middle School, teachers who refused to join “changing parties” that were organized by the principal, Christopher Waller, to doctor answer sheets were isolated or let go, the report said.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution printed this column by Robert Schaeffer of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing,  APS cheating scandal reflects U.S. trend, which says in part:

The Atlanta cheating scandal is likely the largest in scope in U.S. history in terms of the number of people implicated. But it is hardly an isolated incident.

For more than two decades, the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), has tracked reports of cheating from across the nation. The number of cases has exploded in recent years, with new reports nearly every week.
In the past few months, improper test score manipulation have been uncovered in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando and many smaller communities.
The Georgia Office of Special Investigators’ report on the Atlanta scandal provides a particularly cogent analysis of the causes of the problem. If politicians who mandate school policies heed its findings, it should have powerful implications for both federal and state testing requirements.
Here’s what the Georgia investigators found:
“Three primary conditions led to widespread cheating on the 2009 CRCT. The targets set by the district were often unreasonable, especially given their cumulative effect over the years. Additionally, the administration put unreasonable pressure on teachers and principals to achieve targets.”
Unreasonable score gain targets coupled with unreasonable pressure on educators is standard operating procedure for testing programs across the nation. Independent analysts conclude that nearly all public schools ultimately will be declared “failing” under the No Child Left Behind mandate of 100 percent proficiency. Teachers and principals face stern sanctions, including job loss, if they do not boost scores.  “A culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation spread throughout the district.”

Read more about ways to make evaluation better at the National Center for Fair and Open Testing's web page, FairTest.org.

How Should Schools Pay for Technology?

About 25 years ago, I wrote one of my first grants. It was a request from a local nonprofit to a local funder, and the grant request included some small amount of staff time. The main reason that we wrote the grant was to get a computer. We wanted the computer for word processing and for layout purposes. The only computer for our office of ten people was an Apple IIe. We needed something better, but we didn't know how to finance the computer.

Fast forward a few years, and the price of computers has come down quite a bit. At the same time, our reliance on them has increased concomitantly. Twenty years ago, if a computer went down in an office, it was annoying. It might have been used for billing and it was probably a standalone computer. Now, if a computer network goes down in an office, it is a crisis. It affects scheduling, billing, electronic records, databases, email, word processing...

Most of the workplaces I know--whether nonprofit or for-profit--no longer think of computers as special capital expenses, unless they are extremely specialized pieces. Instead of thinking of them as capital expenses, they are treated as operating expenses, as a part of doing business. Depending on the business, they might be replaced every three, four, or five years, but ultimately they are items that need regular replacement.

And that explains why I was a little bit surprised to see that Ann Arbor's school board is considering a .5 mill technology millage for November.

First of all, they are proposing to use bond money (a long-term fund) to pay for a short-term expense. At this point, I think school districts everywhere need to think of technology expenses as items with a relatively short shelf-life; items that need regular replacement and need to be budgeted for within operating expenditures. Most people finance their houses with long-term mortgages, but if they need to replace the dishwasher or the hot water heater, that money really should come out of operating (ongoing) funds, and not be paid for with long-term financing.

Second, even if I thought this were a good idea--and let's say that at this point I could perhaps be convinced--I think the board is going about this the wrong way. Why don't they ask some likely voters first whether this would be supported? And here's a hint: don't ask your most ardent school supporters (for example, PTO Chairs). Do some focus groups with a mix of taxpayers. If it won't be supported, don't waste precious political capital.

I know that many people think technology is really essential. I admit that it has changed my life in ways that I think are both good and bad.

But I was thinking the other day that if I had ever become an engineer (a career path I never considered), I definitely would have chosen civil engineering, because I'm fascinated by the civil infrastructure--water pipes, sewer pipes, water towers, transportation systems--that underlie our cities. And I'm sure that computers make the lives of civil engineers a whole lot easier.

It's worth remembering, however, that the Romans had an elaborate aqueduct system before anyone could print multiple copies of books. It's worth remembering that today's water system and subways in Manhattan were largely built over 100 years ago, by people who had no computers, and many of whom had no college degrees. [See maps of the NYC subway system here.]

In the last few years, I've seen many more high school courses offered that integrate technology. But it's worth remembering that those of us who learned to "keyline" text and "kern" typefaces in the days before computers still learned the principles of graphic design. It is eminently possible to teach most of what we need to know without computers. I don't believe that students would learn any less.

Is it a case that we "must" teach technology? Or is it the case that we "have" the technology so now we want to use it?

If we only use technology to do the same things that we could do without technology (for instance, use an interactive whiteboard to write the same things we would write on a chalkboard), then the technology is being wasted. If we can't afford all the technology that we have, then maybe we can identify areas where we can use less of it. (For instance--could we take all computers out of the K-2 curriculum?)

You may think that I'm wrong; that technology is essential to education today. And if you do, then I would ask you to argue that we need to treat technology as just another operating expense. And for the most part, that means--put technology expenses in the operating budget, and expect to upgrade that technology regularly.

John Dewey: Great Philosopher. Great Teacher?

If you spend any time at all in education school--which I did--you will surely end up reading something of John Dewey's. He was a great educational philosopher, and his works feel timeless when you read them.

[Want to try something of his that is relatively short, and eminently readable? Try Experience and Education, published in 1938, and coming in under 100 pages. It feels like Dewey could have written it in the last few years.]

But I've been thinking about what makes a good teacher, and what makes a bad teacher. Therefore, I was extremely interested to find an article about John Dewey--who was actually a teacher at the University of Michigan--and even more (delightedly) surprised to find that it tries to answer the question: was Dewey a good teacher?

John Dewey in the 1880s

In 1998, Brian Williams wrote an article for the Bentley Historical Society (Bulletin No. 44, July 1998), Thought and Action: John Dewey at the University of Michigan.

John Dewey started out as a high school teacher, and as happens with so many school teachers, he decided that it wasn't for him.

Following graduation he embarked on a brief teaching career at the high school in Oil City, Pennsylvania. But his true interest was philosophy, and in 1881, he left Pennsylvania after arranging for a year of private study with his philosophy instructor at the University of Vermont. This period of study prompted Dewey to enroll as a graduate student in the philosophy department at Johns Hopkins University in 1882.  (p. 5)

Dewey was on the faculty of the Philosophy Department for most of the time period of 1884-1894, leaving for the University of Minnesota for a short while. He left and went to the University of Chicago, where he was able to found the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in 1896. (Yes, when they lived in Chicago, the Obama girls went to the Lab School.)

According to the article, Dewey came to Michigan at a time of change in educational methods.

The seminar method of teaching, introduced earlier at Michigan, was increasingly employed as a means of instruction, and students were offered a wider selection of elective courses to choose from and greater voice and freedom within the curriculum. The classical curriculum was giving way to the scientific curriculum, and chapel services, which previously had been mandatory, became voluntary, a nod to an increasingly secular society. Admission requirements were changing as well. Students from accredited high schools were now allowed to enroll on the strength of their diplomas rather than through the traditional formal entrance examinations, a move that dramatically altered the means by which students gained access to education. (pp. 3-4)

 Dewey wrote curricula.

Together, Dewey and Morris overhauled the Department of Philosophy, making it one of the leading centers of German scientific philosophy. They also established the modern foundations of psychology instruction at Michigan. (p. 5)

He accredited schools and evaluated teachers, including Ypsilanti High School.

Although Dewey was not formally affiliated with the pedagogical department, which held the departmental designation of the Science and the Art of Teaching, he was deeply interested in educational issues. He took an active role in high school accreditation visits and helped to found the Michigan Schoolmasters’ Club, an organization that united college-level instructors with their high school counterparts. The fact that Michigan was the first American college or university to create a permanent chair in education, in 1879, was not lost on Dewey.  (p. 15)

Dewey’s reports are flavored by his experience as a high school teacher and are suggestive of his future writing on education and schools. In June 1888, he inspected the high school in Ypsilanti, Michigan, visiting several classes and observing the instruction and the response of the students. His observations of the instruction in Greek are particularly insightful: “Mr. Hopkins’ methods are somewhat slow and at times tedious, and he spends much time on points rather finer than the average high school teacher devotes himself to; but the slowness does not arise from any lack of interest as he is personally enthusiastic about his subjects. While the class’s attention would at times be held better by less detailed attention to minutiae, I am bound to say that I thought Mr. Hopkins’ work if judged by results was more than ordinarily effective. The students upon the whole, were accurate and thorough in their work.” (p. 18, emphasis added)

 About a high school in Corunna, Michigan, he had this to say:

Dewey’s report on Corunna noted that there were two teachers, one he rated “medium or below” and the other “fair.” He went on to record that the school was “rather demoralized” and “altogether too large for two teachers.” He discussed his findings with members of the school board and related his impression of the superintendent as “straight forward and well meaning but not very energetic.” Observations made by Dewey during these inspection visits become significant when viewed in the context of the importance he placed on schools and education as instruments of change. (p. 18, emphasis added)

 But was Dewey himself a good teacher?
As it says on Facebook about some relationships--"It's complicated."

As with so many teachers, there was a lack of unanimity. Those who said yes, said:

Throughout his lifetime Dewey was known as a rather shy and unassuming man. His manner won him praise in the classroom. In 1890, an anonymous writer for the student newspaper the Chronicle, described Dewey as “modest and retiring” but noted that his “method of instruction is excellent” and he “is one of the most popular, most satisfactory class room lecturers in the University.” The writer went on to praise Dewey’s “easy, earnest and unconscious manner before a class” and the “utter lack of any spirit of pedantry.” In his classroom, Dewey fostered a sense of equality with his students and was praised for placing a “higher premium upon a single attempt at original, intelligent thought than upon the parrot- like repetition of whole volumes of other men’s thoughts.”56 William Warner Bishop, a former student and later librarian of the University of Michigan, writing over fifty years after being a student under Dewey, favorably recalled, “He was by far the ablest lecturer under whom I have studied; never dictating, he was clear and unmistakable in expression. You could get the whole of his talk, in contrast to the very little one often received from speakers who were more fluent.” (pp. 22-23)

 Those who said no, said:

An anonymous author in the student annual the Oracle offered some “specimen definitions” from the “Sophster’s New Dictionary.” One of the definitions read “Dew(e)y.- Adj. Cold, impersonal, psychological, sphinx-like, anomalous and petrifying to flunkers.” Student publications contain several sarcastic jabs at Dewey and the deep and heavy nature of some of his courses. His courses in psychology prompted a twelve-line poem in the Michigan Argonaut about “a girl who died Taking Dewey’s Psychology.” (p. 23, emphasis added)

Psychology

O what is the matter with you, lank girl,

A pale and wild and haggard she,

Oh, don't you know, the old man said,

She's taking Dewey's Psychology.

Once she was fair to look upon,

Fair as a morning in June was she,

And now the wreck you see to-day

Is caused by Dewey's Psychology.

A year had passed, again I strayed

By the Medic's hall; what did I see

But some whitened bones of a girl who died

Taking Dewey's Psychology.

Poem about Dewey's psychology course appearing in the student paper Michigan Argonaut, Vol. 7, No. 6, November 10, 1888. Taken from Thought and Action: John Dewey at the University of Michigan (1998)

With this nuanced view, I think you get an idea of what makes teacher evaluation so difficult. What, exactly, do you value?

The Schools of 2020

According to Jen Sorensen...

Slowpoke Comics: The Schools of 2020

It's not all that pretty, is it? The nice thing about future thinking is that we can rewrite the future.

Bumper Sticker of the Month

Available from the Syracuse Cultural Workers.

The Tenure Bills: They're About Testing More Than Tenure

I just received this action alert from Michigan Parents for Schools. As usual, it's a clear explainer of how the tenure bills would work--and I've bolded and typed in red the parts I think are especially problematic. I hope you will join Michigan Parents for Schools in taking action. I know that my representative (Jeff Irwin) is opposed to these bills, but it's also true that legislators like to hear from you when you agree with them, and not just when you disagree with them. So please do share your opinion with your legislators! And by the way--MIPFS makes it easy to take action. Just scroll down to the last line, "Take Action Now," and follow the links to their legislative action center, where you can send a personalized e-letter to your legislators.

Tenure isn't the real issue; meaningful evaluation is what's at stake

 Dear friends,
Because you're a supporter of public education, I know you've heard from us about the "tenure bills" now before the Senate - and I'm sure you've heard from a lot of other groups, too. This is the first time we've felt we had to go in a different direction than some of our allies, and I wanted to explain personally why we're asking you to oppose these bills.

[Read our action alert here!]

People who support public schools can be split on this issue, so it helps to understand what the issues really are. Lots of folks who support these bills are focused on the need to reform teacher tenure. They want to make it less cumbersome to remove teachers who shouldn't be in the classroom. And that's perfectly reasonable, as long as there are protections to make it fair.

But that's not what these bills are really about. These bills are about setting up a state-driven teacher evaluation system that relies heavily on standardized testing, gives very little leeway for local districts to develop their own systems, and provides absolutely no funds to make sure evaluations can be done right. A lot of the text seems to have been written by national "reform" groups who have been spending big money in our state drumming up support for these bills. To top it all off, the details of the evaluation system were bolted on to these bills moments before the Senate Education Committee sent them to the full Senate. They were lifted entirely from a separate bill in the House that has barely had a single hearing. The "days of testimony" people talk about never addressed this evaluation system, because it wasn't in the bills at the time!

At MIPFS, we DO support strong and collaborative evaluation systems that are designed to help teachers improve their practice and focus on evaluating the full range of their responsibilities. Adding even more "bubble tests" and calling it "accountability" just won't cut it. There are real, live, functioning systems that work - the Peer Assistance and Review systems used in many districts around the country are a good example.

These bills won't get us there.

• I've written elsewhere about the problems with using standardized tests to judge individual teachers. [Read the article here.] These bills enshrine their importance.

• Good evaluations, and helping teachers grow as practitioners, takes skilled people and time. And that means money. Where will that come from?

• Systems that work need buy-in from all sides, but teachers would be locked out of the process because they will be forbidden from bargaining any of these issues. That is not a recipe for success. We need local collaboration, not more state mandates.

Finally, we're worried that the bills will end up encouraging administrators to judge teachers by how expensive they are, not how well they educate our children. We've talked with administrators who see these changes as a way to cope with shrinking budgets. But these good folks have been in the trenches so long that they are more worried about how to cut their budgets than about asking why the budgets should get cut every year. So we're back to school funding, and how it does not work for Michigan children or communities.

Please take a moment to review our arguments for quality evaluations and against these bills. Then, contact your Senator to ask them to work with all of us to make quality evaluations possible, not just write into law the half-baked ideas of some outside, big money "reform" groups. We need to do what's right for our children! Take action now!

Thanks for reading,

Steve Norton
Executive Director

Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" and Physical Education

Probably because I've been thinking about the cuts to Ann Arbor Public Schools' sports teams, I particularly noticed this article in Health Affairs Blog: Michelle Obama's 'Let's Move" Is Losing Its Footing. In this article, Amitai Etzioni argues that while Michelle Obama's 'Let's Move' program is predicated on both nutrition and exercise, most of the reaction to it has focused only on the diet/nutrition piece.

And here is the shocking part:

Thus, as the program evolved, the focus turned to caloric intake and not expenditure.

We were unable to find much evidence about implementing the exercise parts of the Let’s Move initiative. This is particularly relevant because of the scaling back and cancellation of physical education classes due to budget cuts. In 2006, only 3.8 percent of elementary schools, 7.9 percent of middle schools, and 2.1 percent of high schools provided the minimum level of weekly physical activity as recommended by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (150 minutes per week for elementary-school-aged children and 225 minutes per week for middle and high school students). [NB: The 2010 report says only one state meets this benchmark.] Only eight states require that students take physical education every year from first through twelfth grade. [NB: The 2010 report says five states.]  22 states (43 percent) allow required physical education credits to be earned through online courses. Less than one-third of all children ages 6-17 engage in “vigorous activity” (physical activity for at least 20 minutes that makes the child sweat and breathe hard.  [Commentary added in brackets.]

As Etzioni says about 'Let's Move,' "One cannot help but wonder how and why a program that started so well is leaning so heavily in one direction, when it would do much better if it moved on both legs."


Well, I think it's pretty obvious. I had P.E. every year and every term in middle school and high school, four days a week--and I couldn't get out of any of it thanks to my afterschool sports. Right now in Michigan, students need to get 1.0 of high school credit in physical and health education (that is the equivalent of one class for two semesters), with the recommendation being to split that 50/50. Districts and schools can permit students to substitute the P.E. credit for interscholastic sports, JRROTC, and marching band or cheerleading.
Read more about Michigan's regulations here. In case you're wondering, we don't meet the benchmarks for the amount of exercise per week or for the requirement that students take physical education every year.

Athletics in AAPS: Safety, Title IX, Process

I think this message from Liz Margolis and the Ann Arbor Public Schools is so important that I am sharing it in its entirety. I suggest that you read through to the end, at least in part because that's where I put my comments.

Dear AAPS Families, This message explains high school athletic changes for next year due to budget reductions.  

AAPS High School Athletics  2011/2012

            The Athletic Directors at all respective High Schools in Ann Arbor have been pondering budget reductions.  The economic reality facing the Ann Arbor Public Schools are a result of continued State Budget Reductions. AAPS is reducing the 2011/12 budget by $15 million. Last year the district reduced by $18 million and the previous years reductions of $35 million occurred. Funding from the state continues to impact all areas of public education, in the classroom and on the athletic fields.
            These cost cutting measures translates into fewer resources to effectively operate all of our athletic programs resulting in the elimination of teams/programs.  We can no longer provide adequate resources for all 35 programs and are forced to reduce the athletic budgets.  We will be sharing the following information with parents and students via an email in the next few days. Please review this information. It is very likely that you will get questions from parents. We all need to be consistent with our response. Always know that you can direct any questions to me.

Budget Reductions:
All three high schools will contract with an outside agency (Michigan Rehabilitation Services) for athletic trainer services.  Each school will receive two certified athletic trainers who will provide the services we currently have in place.
Reduction in half time secretary in the athletic office
Coaches who are not employed by the district in another capacity will be paid through a third party management service.  The coaches will remain the same but employed by the outside services.
Ice hockey teams at each school will be responsible for the first $12,000 for ice time rental.  Skyline will implement this system when hockey is started in 2011.

Since 1990, freshman teams as well as the following sports have been added to the Ann Arbor Public Schools Sports Menu.
Men’s and Women’s Bowling (all high schools)
Crew (all high schools)
Figure Skating (Huron and Pioneer)
Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse (all high schools)
Dance (Skyline)
Men’s and Women’s Track received a third assistant coach position
The following programs will no longer be funded by the Ann Arbor Public Schools.

All Freshmen Sports with the exception of Freshman Football.  Safety issues were a major concern with the freshman competing in football at the junior varsity or varsity level, thus we will continue to run a 9th grade football program.
Fall Crew is eliminated.  (All high schools).  (Crew was the only sport to have two seasons funded).
Dance (Skyline)
Cheer (Huron)
Figure Skating (Pioneer and Huron)
Field Hockey (Second J.V. team at Pioneer/Huron will no longer be funded).
Men’s and Women’s Bowling (All high schools).
Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse (All high schools).
One assistant track coach (Huron and Pioneer as Skyline was not yet fully staffed).
Transportation to schools in Washtenaw County with the exception of Football and Track.  (Equipment concerns).

Options for Club Sport Status
A club sport is defined as an athletic program participating in interscholastic competition operated directly under the supervision of the high school building principals and funded outside of the athletic department budget.  Club sports originate only with the approval of the building principal and athletic director.

Requirements to achieve and maintain club status shall include
1.Demonstrate adequate student interest, defined as double the minimum squad size.
2.If the faculty sponsor is not the coach, the building principal and/or athletic director will approve a qualified coach.
3.There will be no minimum number of opponents or contest required to achieve or  retain club status.
4.It is not necessary for all district high schools to offer a given club sport for that club sport to be offered at one of the high schools.
5.Club sports and coaches will comply with all Michigan High School Athletic Association and Ann Arbor Public Schools rules and regulations.
6.Other factors to consider are costs, safety/risk, and Title IX participation.
7. Varsity letters will be awarded by the school and paid for by the club

Athletic Club Team Sign - up
1.     Draft a charter and have it approved by the building principal
2.     Provide the building principal with a proposed budget, which must be approved by the principal – It is recommended that the club become a 501(c)3 organization
3.     Be sponsored by a faculty member
4.     Provide the building principal with an approved transportation plan and insurance plan
5.     Complete an annual program reports
6.     Adequate administrative resources and physical facilities be available
7.     Turn in (4) copies of eligibility list (divided by team)
8.     All club members must have current physicals
9.     All club members must meet the Districts eligibility requirements
10.  All club members must pay an insurance fee
11.  All expenses are to be paid for outside the Ann Arbor School System, for examples;
                        Coaches Salary                                    Rentals          
                        Transportation                                        Awards          
                        Supplies                                                Uniform
FAQs
1. Were all the cuts consistent across all three high schools? Yes
2. Can a Varsity sport that's been cut move to club status? Yes –if funds are raised to support the fees and the requirements are followed. See above
3. How much of the overall school budget is athletics? 1%      
4. Once a team is a club can they go back to funded status? Yes
5. Since the JV coach quit can I fill that spot without having to interview? No, interviews must take place for any open coaching position including open club sport positions.
6. Whose decision was this?
The Athletic Directors were instructed that the school athletic budgets were to be reduced by $475,000. Athletic Directors were asked to assess the reductions and make recommendations to administration. These cuts are just part of the $15 million AAPS is making in response to the decrease in funding from the state.                                              8. If a team is a club do they have to pay the "pay-to-participate" fee? No, if the sport now has “club” designation participants do not have to pay the  “pay-to-participate” fee.
9. How much money has been cut from athletics over the last two years? $1.6 million has been reduced from athletics over the past two years, which  includes all three high schools.

I understand the need for most of the cuts, and some of them--such as cutting freshman sports, now that we have a third high school--make sense to me. But as is so often the case, I'd have to say that I don't agree with the process that was used. Where were parental and student input? I--even as a parent of a current athlete--didn't hear a word about this until today. I wonder if the parents of some of the teams that are being cut (e.g. lacrosse, bowling, figure skating) had been consulted? How convenient to share this after the schools have essentially closed for the summer. 

On the transportation issue, I foresee a lot of problems with cutting transportation to all school competitions in Washtenaw County. That includes schools that are nearly 20 miles away, and will require parents to take time off from work to transport their kids.  The alternative (for at least some kids) is to let them drive their friends.
In the past few years I've had two children get their drivers' licenses. However, between child #1 and child #2 the Michigan rules for younger drivers changed. The new regulations:

Prohibit a driver with a Level 2 graduated driver's license (GDL) from operating a motor vehicle carrying more than one passenger who is under 21 years of age, unless:
    a. passengers are members of the driver's immediate family, or
    b. travel is to or from school or a school-sanctioned event.

Now, admittedly, these student-athletes would be driving to and from school-sanctioned events, so they aren't asking students to break the law. But as a parent, I have to ask the question--would this law have been enacted if it was safe for teens to drive large groups of kids? [Don't be a smart aleck and answer, "Well, maybe, given our legislature!"] Statistically, it's not nearly as safe. Just ask the Centers for Disease Control. Their Teen Drivers fact sheet says:

The risk of motor vehicle crashes is higher among 16- to 19-year-olds than among any other age group. In fact, per mile driven, teen drivers ages 16 to 19 are four times more likely than older drivers to crash.⁴

Among teen drivers, those at especially high risk for motor vehicle crashes are:

• Males: In 2006, the motor vehicle death rate for male drivers and passengers ages 15 to 19 was  almost two times that of their female counterparts.¹
• Teens driving with teen passengers: The presence of teen passengers increases the crash risk of unsupervised teen drivers. This risk increases with the number of teen passengers.⁵
• Newly licensed teens: Crash risk is particularly high during the first year that teenagers are eligible to drive.⁴

(My auto insurance company seems to know these facts, too--my insurance is a lot higher than it used to be.) I don't want to be overly melodramatic about this, but on the other hand, I'm not interested in risking kids' lives.

There are some significant Title IX concerns embedded in these decisions. First, I think it's more likely that the reason they are continuing transportation for track is that football is only a boys' sport, and if that was the only sport being privileged by transportation "safety concerns" they felt they needed to balance that with a sport that serves both girls and boys. The track teams are a natural choice because they are large teams, and they have both genders.  

Should basketball retain the freshman teams? They field the smallest teams and often "cut" the most kids at tryouts.

Second, I wonder if the cuts to all freshmen teams except football in any way violates Title IX?
Third, does the fact that they are cutting more women's sports than men's sports violate Title IX? They are cutting 4 women's and 3 men's sports at Pioneer; and 4 women's and 3 men's sports at Huron. (At Skyline, they are cutting 3 women's and 3 men's sports.) Both Pioneer and Huron have been the subject of Title IX complaints in the past--and the district spent lots of money on those litigations.


I also wonder why there were no cuts made to the middle school sports? What about cutting all sixth grade sports? Reducing the number of middle school seasons to three, from the current five?

But most importantly--it's about the process. Why weren't there public meetings, as there were with the rest of the budget, to discuss the proposed changes? I think feedback might have changed the look of this proposal. For all I know, it still could.

Good Teacher, Bad Teacher, Red Teacher, Blue Teacher

I've become fascinated by the discussions around "bad teachers." Over and over, I read articles where teachers get their backs up when people talk about bad teachers, and insist that the problem isn't bad teachers (because, they say, there are so few bad teachers), but the problem (for underachieving students) is actually poverty, uninvolved parents, not enough funding, etcetera.

Well, they're right, and they're wrong. Of course the reasons for underachieving students include poverty, uninvolved parents, not enough funding, dilapidated but it's also some other things, namely:

1) Bad teaching (and note, that's only partly "bad teachers," because even teachers who are generally good sometimes do bad teaching) and
2) Poor use of evaluation to improve teaching performance.

That's true, at least in part, because involved (and educated) parents with access to their own money can combat bad teaching--if the parent doesn't know the material, they can hire someone who does...

When my oldest son was in the lower elementary grades, a parent with several older kids said to a group of parents, including me, "Well, you'll have good years and bad," and I thought, "WHAT?! That's not going to happen to my family." Well, she was right. We've had good years, and bad years. Sometimes it was due to the circumstances in my family, but sometimes it was due to bad teaching. 

I've experienced my share of bad teaching, and so have my kids. For the sake of this argument, I'm going to ignore the bad teaching that we've experienced when teachers have themselves been dealing with serious health issues in their own lives or the lives of their family. After all, teachers have their own lives--and if a parent is dying and they are distracted, it is going to affect their classroom performance even if they are usually at the top of their game. So even though I'm ignoring this issue (for right now, and only sort of) I want to point out that it is one of the most common reasons for bad teaching, and that there's lots of educational research suggesting that if students experience bad teaching more than one year in a row, their performance really suffers.

The other piece of the puzzle is whether, or how, evaluation happens. I know that I've had jobs where I did most of the work well, but there were areas where I had room for improvement. I think that is true for most of us. I've also had jobs that didn't suit me at all.

A continuous feedback loop would allow teachers to learn from their mistakes--which is exactly what we expect students to do. In my opinion, most principals have not been taught how to effectively evaluate staff, and if you ask me, schools would do very well to get feedback from parents and students. I am quite sure that my kids can tell you exactly what their teachers have been doing well, and not so well--and very thoughtfully, too.

So here, as a thought experiment, I am going to present some examples of bad teaching. All of these examples have been experienced by myself or by people close to me. I'm interested in which of these you think are irredeemably bad, and which of these would point to a teacher that would need more coaching. Genders and subjects may have been changed to protect the unknowing.

In no particular order...

1. A teacher who has very deep knowledge of her subject (middle school math) but little control of her classroom.

2. A teacher who has moderate knowledge of her subject (high school math) and is very kind to the students, but who has little capacity to share and teach advanced math concepts.

3. A teacher who has moderate knowledge of her subject (high school science) and is therefore afraid to deviate at all from her teaching plan in order to answer questions.

4. A teacher who is extremely knowledgeable about her subject (elementary music) and has very innovative teaching techniques, but who has anger management problems with the end result that students learn music very well and remember it for years, but are unwilling to continue in the subject.

5.  A teacher who has limited skills in his subject area (English) but a wonderful relationship with the middle/high school students he teaches and is really able to provide a "safe space" for them.

6. A teacher who has limited skills in his subject area (English) and writes so poorly it is unclear how he got certification, but who encourages discussion of literature and makes class enjoyable.

7. A teacher with strong skills in his subject area (English) but who is so boring that students fight to stay awake in the class, and who "kills the joy" in the subject.

8. A teacher (elementary) who is very strong at teaching reading, math, and history, but who knows very little about science and therefore doesn't teach it at all.

9. A teacher (elementary) who has interesting ideas and curriculum plans but is disorganized and often doesn't follow through to make sure students do the work they are assigned--and therefore, many students don't do the work.

10. A writing teacher who accepts regular assignments but doesn't provide feedback or request rewrites, even on materials that were submitted as drafts.

11. A middle school teacher who never rejects an assignment that was poorly done.

12. A high school social studies teacher who is an expert in his subject matter and an entertaining lecturer but who belittles and picks on some students, playing favorites with others. 

13. A high school chemistry teacher who is competent in his subject but calls some of the girls "princess" and "helps" those girls on tests.

14. An elementary art teacher who develops interesting activities and then stifles all creativity by requiring students to replicate them exactly the way she set up the example.

15. An elementary teacher who goes to have lunch with two children on a field trip, leaving the other 28 with a single teacher's aide who is technically assigned to one of the class's students.

16. A teacher who effectively teaches social studies, but doesn't respond to emails and phone calls from parents.

The world is a complex place. People are complex. All of these teachers are doing some bad teaching. Which of these teachers needs evaluation and coaching to work on specific problems? Which of these teachers need to find another career?

(Feel free to respond with comments specific to some of these examples. And I'm curious--what percent of teachers in your average school do you think is doing bad teaching, or is a bad teacher?)

Poem for a Graduating Senior

Be safe.
Have fun.
Call me.
I love you.



Note: I wrote this last year. I wonder why it took me a year to publish it?

School's Out!

Enjoy your summer, whether you end up juggling soccer balls, lying on a beach, swimming in a Great Lake, hiking a steamy trail, or reading a favorite book.

A Boy Juggling a Soccer Ball
by Christopher Merrill
after practice: right foot to left foot, stepping forward and back, to right foot and left foot, and left foot up to his thigh, holding it on his thigh as he twists around in a circle, until it rolls down the inside of his leg, like a tickle of sweat, not catching and tapping on the soft side of his foot, and juggling once, twice, three times, hopping on one foot like a jump-roper in the gym, now trapping and holding the ball in midair, balancing it on the instep of his weak left foot, stepping forward and forward and back, then lifting it overhead until it hangs there; and squaring off his body, he keeps the ball aloft with a nudge of his neck, heading it from side to side, softer and softer, like a dying refrain, until the ball, slowing, balances itself on his hairline, the hot sun and sweat filling his eyes as he jiggles this way and that, then flicking it up gently, hunching his shoulders and tilting his head back, he traps it in the hollow of his neck, and bending at the waist, sees his shadow, his dangling T-shirt, the bent blades of brown grass in summer heat; and relaxing, the ball slipping down his back. . .and missing his foot. He wheels around, he marches over the ball, as if it were a rock he stumbled into, and pressing his left foot against it, he pushes it against the inside of his right until it pops into the air, is heeled over his head--the rainbow!-- and settles on his extended thigh before rolling over his knee and down his shin, so he can juggle it again from his left foot to his right foot --and right foot to left foot to thigh-- as he wanders, on the last day of summer, around the empty field.