The Hard Problems in Education

A conference was held last week at Harvard seeking to trace out the "hard problems" in the social sciences, following after David Hilbert's famous ranking of the hard problems in mathematics.

I thought it might be interesting to talk about what we think the hard problems in education are. Note that many of the problems Hilbert came up with eventually proved to be unsolvable.

I have two, that will surprise no one who has been reading.

1. How can schooling contribute significantly to the democratic empowerment of marginalized students?

2. How can we eliminate the relationship between the efficacy of schools and the socioeconomic status of the communities they serve?

Note that I refer to "schooling" not "education." Many of our key problems are less "educational" than institutional, related to a particular kind of institutional structure that produces particular effects and limitations.

Of course, each question contains assumptions about what the "real" problem is. (E.g., if we could change the socioeconomic status of communities, the coupling problem would disappear.)

I know many of us are off to AERA (I'm not going) or otherwise buried by the end of the semester, so I listed this as the "monthly forum" to allow people to easily return to it if they are interested.

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This could be a very sad day - I choose differently

this is not policy per se, but it explains about me as a teacher. For those who do not know, Leaves on the Current is the screen name of my spouse. This was originally posted at Daily Kos

1889 the birth of Adolph Hilter
1999 the shootings at Columbine High School

Either could be an occasion to look back - in horror or in sadness.

Instead I look ahead. To the words of a man born around this time - we do not know for sure when, only that he was baptized on April 26.

And for this day, one set of his words seems appropriate, at least in my mind:

When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon my self and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

The rest of this diary will be a meditation on this, one of my most cherished poems.


When in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon my self and curse my fate,


I have, since early adolescence, been prone to depression. I can be very much of a pessimist, seeing all my failures, and how the future may bring events that will dwarf even these. It is easy to look back and weep at the mistakes I keep making, to find myself wondering why I should keep going. When I was younger I had frequent thoughts of suicide, pondering the different methods of disposing of myself. In early adulthood I often felt so alone I wondered that if I died in the small apartments or rented rooms in which I lived if anyone would even notice until my body began to stink.


Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,


I was jealous of others. I was never all that popular. I did not have a single date in my first two years of high school. While later I might be able to start relationships, I could not sustain them. Intuitively I knew that if I wanted friends I had to be a friend, but I did not seem to know how to accomplish that. There were things at which I could excel, and there certainly were things I enjoyed but from which I fled, because they seemed to mark me as different, thereby increasing my sense of isolation.


Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate,

I did seek a magic solution. I imagined that I would encounter the one person, the one relationship, that would make everything perfect. Sometimes when I lived in Brooklyn Heights I would take a cab from the upper East Side bars at which I spent too much time and money and have it drop me off on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge and walk across, somehow imagining that in the hours well after midnight I would encounter that person and all would be well - it was rare that I encountered anyone else walking.

And this seeking of a magic solution in one person was in large part why so many of my attempts at relationships failed.

But I said that I choose differently. That is true today. It became true decades ago. I began to accept myself, in part because I allowed myself to feel vulnerable.

The last six lines of the poem could apply to my relationship with Leaves on the Current, begun on September 21, 1974, when she was 17 and I was 28, eventually leading to our marriage on December 29, 1985. She is my best friend, my most trusted adviser, my truest love. And the words would be true, but they would be an incomplete expression of my understanding of them.


Incomplete, not wrong. Because without that relationship, her love, I would never have had the courage to completely change the direction of my life, to follow what my heart had often called me to, but which i feared doing, despite having enjoyed the occasions where I had tried it. Without Leaves, I would not have left a career that paid decently but left me unsatisfied, and become a teacher.

The four lines before the final two apply as well to my teaching - certainly in my writing about teaching my state sings hymns at heaven's gate.

Many reading this know that I have been honored for my teaching by being my school system's selectee for the Washington Post's Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teaching Award. As news of that has gone around people have gotten in touch with me to tell me how happy they are, to assure me it is well deserved. Some have been parents of current and former students. Some are student with whom I have had little contact since I last taught them. Yesterday I receive emails from two students from years ago. One I taught as an 8th grader in 1996-97, the other as a freshman my first year at Eleanor Roosevelt, in 1998-99. Each message is brief. Each is relevant to my meditation on this poem:

I don't know if you remember me, but I'd like to wish you congratulations on your award. I attended Kettering Middle School in 1996-1997 and remember fondly your history class. I remember how you were always willing to be silly to prove a point. Thanks to teachers like you students like me are inspired to become teachers ourselves.

You may not remember me, but I was a freshman in your LSN Government class for the 1998-1999 school year at Eleanor Roosevelt High School. I am now a 4th grade teacher at Perrywood Elementary School. When I was a student in your class, I enjoyed it immensely! I appreciated your humor and animated teaching style. Being as though history/government have never been my favorite subjects, I always regard your class as my favorite class and you as my favorite grade school teacher. I had a college professor who displayed very similar teaching styles to you at UMCP and because of this, I became his intern for 2 years. Teachers liks you are hard to find, but so easy to appreciate. I am thankful to have had the chance to enjoy your expertise and congratulations again on your recent award! You deserve it among many others! =)

Both young ladies now teach elementary school in our district. I have to admit I cannot picture either one in my mind, although even if I could, I am sure as adult women they would appear very different. I remember both names. I could go to my old computer files and look up their grades, but that does not matter. I do know that I was not especially close to either one, and this is the first contact with either since I taught them.

Perhaps the expression of these two letters might not seem to connect with the final two lines of the poem, but for me they do. Think of the latin caritas which is a caring for the best for the other person, as Paul uses it in 1st Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 13 (and coincidentally I am a triskadekaphile): And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity

If you prefer, you can use the word love instead of charity and then perhaps my application of the final words of the sonnet will begin to make more sense.

Teaching is an exercise in faith - that the young people entrusted to my care will have a future in which they can participate and from which they draw sustenance and in which they can be productive to the society in which they will find themselves, perhaps themselves helping to shape it in a fashion more conducive to love and warmth and leaving the world a better place.

Teaching depends on hope - we as teachers can never know the full impact we have upon those in our care. I know that I make mistakes, but hope that these are outweighed by my intentions and care for those before me, not merely that they may do well in my course, but that they may from having experienced be richer in soul, more believing in their own potential, more willing to be giving of themselves, and perhaps somewhat forgiving to me for the errors I may have committed.

Charity or love - teaching should be full of this. I love the subject I teach because it gives me a window with which to connect with my students. I loved teaching American History - as I did at Kettering Middle - because I could help my students make sense of it, see how it affected them, empower them to make new connections with their own world and lives. Of greater importance, teaching must always include the care of the students before me, wanting to see possibilities for them, so that they can choose who they will be, what they will become.

We can look back at Hitler and see the horrors he inflicted upon the world. As one of Jewish background born in the immediate aftermath of the great war he engendered, living as I did among some who had survived the Shoah of European Jewry, I can never forget nor be unaware at the signs of similar hatred and oppression, in other nations and in my own. As a teacher I can look back 11 years to Littleton Colorado and remember that bullying among adolescents can have tragic consequences, that as a teacher I can not allow a single incident of bullying to go unchallenged.

But I can also reflect upon Shakespeare's Sonnet XXIX, the last two lines of which read

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Certainly I am enriched by my relationship with Leaves on the Current, approaching its 36th anniversary in September, bound for eternity on December 29, 1985. Those words apply to her.

They also apply to all the students who pass through my care. I am richer than any kind because I have the opportunity to affect lives.

And when I receive, out of the blue, communications such as the two I have quoted, I feel richer than Warren Buffett or Bill Gates. I wish both men well, and hope they will use their riches wisely.

I am rich, I am honored, I am grateful, I am overwhelmed. And if I begin again to look upon myself and curse my fate I can stop. I can return to these messages, and similar ones I am receiving face to face from students currently in the building, from parents I encounter in a Starbucks or a Safeway, from my peers in the building - but of course, most of all always from the students, remember the final two lines of the sonnet, and find myself energized for another day, another year in the classroom.

So I choose differently on this day which could be tinged with sadness. I choose faith, hope and charity. And if Will will allow me, I borrow those final two lines of Sonnet XXIX and offer them to all my students, former, present and hopefully for a future with many years yet to come:


For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Peace.

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Pay Kids to Do Well in School? I Vote Yes

For lots of reasons not necessarily laid out here. If we are going to make them do work they don't want to do, why not pay them? We get paid. And if they like it and they get paid, well. . . . And see Sidorkin.

The kids had much in common. In all four cities, a majority were African American or Hispanic and from low-income families. So why did the results vary so dramatically from city to city?

One clue came out of the interviews Fryer's team conducted with students in New York City. The students were universally excited about the money, and they wanted to earn more. They just didn't seem to know how. When researchers asked them how they could raise their scores, the kids mentioned test-taking strategies like reading the questions more carefully. But they didn't talk about the substantive work that leads to learning. "No one said they were going to stay after class and talk to the teacher," Fryer says. "Not one."

We tend to assume that kids (and adults) know how to achieve success. If they don't get there, it's for lack of effort — or talent. Sometimes that's true. But a lot of the time, people are just flying blind. John List, an economist at the University of Chicago, has noticed the disconnect in his own education experiments. He explains the problem to me this way: "I could ask you to solve a third-order linear partial differential equation," he says. "A what?" I ask. "A third-order linear partial differential equation," he says. "I could offer you a million dollars to solve it. And you can't do it." (He's right. I can't.) For some kids, doing better on a geometry test is like solving a third-order linear partial differential equation, no matter the incentive. . . .

So what happens if we pay kids to do tasks they know how to do? In Dallas, paying kids to read books — something almost all of them can do — made a big difference. In fact, the experiment had as big or bigger an effect on learning as many other reforms that have been tested, like lowering class size or enrolling kids in Head Start early-education programs (both of which cost thousands of dollars more per student). And the experiment also boosted kids' grades. "If you pay a kid to read books, their grades go up higher than if you actually pay a kid for grades, like we did in Chicago," Fryer says. "Isn't that cool?"

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Why Are 25 Hedge Fund Managers Worth 658,000 Teachers?

That is the question Les Leopold asks in this Huffington Post entry.

Here is his opening paragraph:

In 2009, the worst economic year for working people since the Great Depression, the top 25 hedge fund managers walked off with an average of $1 billion each. With the money those 25 people "earned," we could have hired 658,000 entry level teachers. (They make about $38,000 a year, including benefits.) Those educators could have brought along over 13 million young people, assuming a class size of 20. That's some value.

Leopold writes

The wealthy will have placed an estimated $2 trillion into hedge funds by the end of this year. (That's about $6,500 for every man, woman and child in the U.S.)

And there is more. . .

It is now tax time, so consider also this: income from hedge funds is not taxed as ordinary income, but as capital gains, 15%. As a teacher at the upper end of the pay scale,my incremental rate is 28%, or almost twice the rate of the income from surplus funds of the rich placed in hedge funds. And of course I pay 7.65% in payroll taxes, making my burden 35.65% compared to the 15% on the earnings from investments in hedge funds.


I think we face a crisis in this country. This year rather than hiring hundreds of thousands of new teachers to teach our young, the future of this nation, schools will be laying off tens of thousands of teachers, increasing class sizes, dropping electives, eliminating support services, perhaps canceling extra-curricular activities.

But in time of major financial crisis for the entire nation, the super rich continue to get rich, without necessarily contributing anything of value to the economy.

And you and I paid for it. Don't believe me? Let me quote Leopold again:

The $1 billion each those 25 hedge fund managers netted (for themselves) was impressive -- but doing it in the year 2009 was also slap in the face of struggling Americans. That's because hedge funds would have earned little or no money at all in 2009 had the government not bailed out the financial sector with trillions in loans, asset guarantees and other forms of financial assistance. It was, in effect, a generous gift from we the taxpayers. Much of that money was "earned" by betting that the government would not let the financial sector collapse. Smart bet.

I know of one manager who put tons of money into bank stocks when they were at their bottom, gambling that the government would not let them fail. The money he invested did not contribute to hiring more people at the banks. In fact, the money he invested did not go to the banks at all. It was our money, through the government, which recapitalized the banks (at the same time they still were restricting loans, and slashing lines of credit for companies and individual's credit cards).

Each hedge fund manager was, according to Leopold, worth 26,320 beginning teachers.

I make more than a beginning teacher. As a public employee, what I am paid by Prince George's County Public Schools is a matter of public record. My base pay is 83,000 and I get 7,000 for being National Board Certified. If I take that 90K and divide it into the 1 billion averaged by each of the 25 hedge fund managers, I am worth 1/11,111 of a hedge fund manager. Restated as a decimal, as a highly regarded teacher who each year is responsible for the learning of around 180 young people, I am worth 0.00009 of a hedge fund manager.

Now, I am not asking to be paid billions, or even millions. But quite frankly, I think I am actually contributing more to the future of this country than is the average hedge fund manager, unless the only value that matters is wealth, in which case, why bother to have skilled, experienced teachers like me at all, since most of students will never enter the rarified air of the very wealthy?

I can look back a few years at the fascination of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. I see our glorification of wealth and of power.

Yes, we will occasionally recognize those who do good works. We smile and say how nice it is that there are people like that, then as a society we move on - will Tiger win this year's Masters? How much is Bill Gates actually worth?

Bill Gates. It is honorable that he is trying to use his wealth to make the world a better place. But why should his billions give him a more influential voice on education than the skilled professionals who have been trying to make a difference for years? Yet it does. Gates and Eli Broad have been driving the educational agenda using their wealth. Similarly, the US Department of Education is now using funds through Race to the Top to drive educational policy without those policies being any more vetted and discussed than have been the initiatives funded by Gates and Broad.

I began this diary with a question: Why are 25 Hedge Fund Managers Worth 658,000 Teachers? My answer is simple - they are not. But so long as we measure primarily by money, our values will continue to be distorted, we will devote resources that could be used to improve the lives of millions for the further enrichment of the already wealthy.

Don't worry. I'm not so motivated by money that I will quit teaching and enter the world of hedge fund management. I would rather see the light go on behind the eyes of a struggling adolescent than be able to add a string of zeroes behind my currently very limited net worth.

The average teacher does more good than does the average hedge fund manager. Too bad our society does not see things that way.

Peace.

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"Dr. Death vs. The Vampire"

Just so people know that us academics are not completely pedantic, my novelette, "Dr Death vs. the Vampire" has just been published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

My wife got very nervous when I had a bunch of different books on how to poison people laying around the house.

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Ravitch: A new agenda for school reform

this was written for and originally posted at Daily Kos. The links to my previous posts are to the Daily Kos versions of those pieces

I used to be a strong supporter of school accountability and choice.

So begin Diane Ravitch in an op ed in today's Washington Post titled A new agenda for school reform. And yes, she hotlinks in that sentence to an earlier Post piece about her new book, a book about which I wrote in this diary.

In today's piece Ravitch criticizes both accountability, telling us NCLB did not produce large gains in reading and math and that choice has been disappointing and provides data to support that assertion.

But Ravitch does more than criticize. After explaining both of the assertions, she tells us

It is time to change course

and that is the heart of her piece.

In case anyone reading this does not know, let me reiterate the following before getting to the heart of the Ravitch piece

1. I am, and have been since 1995, a public school teacher

2. I am on record as having expressed strong opinion of NCLB

3. I have been highly critical of much of what we do in public education

4. I have also been highly critical of the Obama administration's proposals for education, for example in this piece critical of the newly announced Blueprint

5. I have known Ravitch professionally for about a decade, consider her a friend, even though she and I disagree on some key points

Now let's get to the heart of what Ravitch suggests.


She begins by acknowledging that everyone - or should I say everyone sensible - agrees that education must be far broader than the skills tested under NCLB (which are still used in the Blueprint to ascertain the 5% or 5,000 schools still under the gun for reconstitution or worse. She supports " learning history, geography, civics, the arts, science, literature and foreign language. Schools should be expected to teach these subjects even if students are not tested on them." As one who teaches in the latter group of subjects and who majored in another, I agree. I also note, as Ravitch and others (including me) have done elsewhere, that it is often the "softer" subjects such as music, art, photography, phys ed, and the like that are the reasons that some students persist in school, thus giving us the opportunity to work on their basic numeracy and literacy and to expand their horizons.

And she focuses on good teachers. Sh would accept either a major in the subject they teach, or strong background in two subjects, and would require all teachers to pass a test on subject area content, as well as on basic literacy and numeracy. I might quibble some - I would be perhaps a bit more willing to have someone who has demonstrated expertise in one subject to teach that subject. Thus I would not care if a professional artist or photographer had majored in that subject provided s/he can demonstrate the expertise in that subject. Also, I do think that before stepping in the classroom those who teach need some background in things like basic pegagogy, classroom management and organization, human development, and the legal requirements of things like special education. I would accept an intensive 6-10 week training period provided there were ongoing support and supervision during the first 1-2 years of teaching.

Ravitch also focuses on principals. Here, before I quote the entire paragraph on this subject, I need to disclose that I explored an alternative program for becoming a principal, New Leaders for New Schools. I had one final round of interviews in the selection process for DC schools, but withdrew for several reasons, of greatest importance that I realized that I was not sure I wanted to leave the classroom. Thus I am not opposed per se to the idea of alternative routes to educational leadership.

Ravitch offers what I consider valid concerns:

We need principals who are master teachers, not inexperienced teachers who took a course called "How to Be a Leader." The principal is expected to evaluate teachers, to decide who deserves tenure and to help those who are struggling and trying to improve. If the principal is not a master teacher, he or she will not be able to perform the most crucial functions of the job.

As to district level leadership, Ravitch offers a similar set of concerns about Superintendents. She wants them to be experienced educators " because their decisions about personnel, curriculum and instruction affect the entire school system." And of course, they are responsible for picking principals and advising school boards on curricular matters.

The selection of district level leaders is perhaps the most problematic area of American schools. There have been a few examples of those not themselves professional educators who have been successful. There are very much the exception, and certainly should not be used as models. Thus just because a former General, John Stanford, was fairly successful in Seattle did not justify DC hiring former General Julius Becton, who turned out to be a disaster. We are seeing non-educators as the result of two sets of pressures. One is that of mayoral control of schools. Thus we have had Alan Bersin in San Diego (and Ravitch thoroughly explores his tenure in her book) and Joel Klein in New York (similarly covered in the book, and even more in her ongoing writing for newspapers and other print publications). OF course, the critical example is Arne Duncan first in his role in Chicago, and now as US Secretary of Education.

The other is one result of the effort by Eli Broad to use his wealth to reshape American education in his vision. Ravitch explores some of this in a chapter in her book on the Billionaire Boys Club. When it comes to superintendents, Broad has established an Academy which says right on the home page: WANTED: THE NATION'S MOST TALENTED EXECUTIVES TO RUN THE BUSINESS OF URBAN EDUCATION. Except education, especially urban education, is very different than a business. There are aspects of a large school district in which business expertise is appropriate, and having an assistant superintendent with appropriate experience and expertise to address those domains is not something to which I would object. Like Ravitch, I am concerned with district leaders who do not fully understand the nature of education.

Ravitch cannot fully explore the topics she attempts to address in her op ed. She wants better assessments, more than picking one multiple choice answer out of four, the most common form of state assessments. She is in general opposed to labeling schools as failing, noting that many of such schools have a large proportion of the kinds of students who start as low-performing: they are English language learners, they are students

who live in poverty, who miss school frequently because they must baby-sit while their parents look for work, or who have disabilities that interfere with their learning. These are not excuses for their low scores but facts about their lives.

She offers suggestions for how to address their needs, including bringing in inspection teams to exam WHY such schools are not meeting the needs of the students and then suggesting target methods of addressing those needs. Here I note that simply closing the school down and/or firing all the staff neither identifies the causes nor fixes the problems. Ravitch has a standing challenge she often makes when she speaks - please point at a single school or district that has improved performance by an approach of firing all the staff and/or closing a school down. And lest you be inclined to point at examples in Arne Duncan's Chicago, I should warn you that the schools about which Duncan and his supporters were prone to brag did not contain the same student body as had been in the school before it was reconstituted, and thus you do not have an honest comparison or any way of controlling the educational background, readiness and preparation of the new student body.

For Ravitch, there is another reason we should rarely close down schools:

In many poor communities, schools are the most stable institution. Closing them destroys the fabric of the community.

. To this I would add that closing and consolidating often puts children in urban areas at risk, as they have to cross territory of hostile gangs to get to the schools to which they have newly been assigned. That in itself should remind us all that many of the factors that impact school performance are outside the control of school officials. Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone recognizes this. Let me quote from the ABOUT page:

In the early 1990s, HCZ ran a pilot project that brought a range of support services to a single block. The idea was to address all the problems that poor families were facing: from crumbling apartments to failing schools, from violent crime to chronic health problems.

This approach has been expanded:

In 1997, the agency began a network of programs for a 24-block area: the Harlem Children's Zone Project. In 2007, the Zone Project grew to almost 100 blocks. Today the Children's Zone® serves more than 8,000 children and 6,000 adults. Overall, the organization serves more than 10,000 children and more than 7,400 adults. The FY 2010 budget for the agency overall is over $75 million.

Note especially the inclusion of adults in addressing the overall needs of the schoolchildren.

I know my friend Diane will not mind that I have explored some of her points in greater depth than the space the Post granted her would allow, but remember, the exploration is mine, and while Ravitch would agree with much of what I offer, she might will disagree on some points.

Where we absolutely agree is the need to abandon the punitive mindset that underlies NCLB, and which, unfortunately, is perpetuated in the Blueprint and in the demands imposed if one is to qualify for funds under Race to the Top. We both would agree that this is requires a long term effort, that there are no magic bullets nor ready-made solutions that can be taken off the shelf and imposed wholesale on schools and districts.

Her last brief paragraph says it all:

We wasted eight years with the "measure and punish" strategy of NCLB. Let's not waste the next eight years.

Indeed, let's not waste another day in the failed approaches of the last eight years. It is unfair to too many of our children.

Peace.

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