Education Reform Starts with Teachers

The Iowa Task Force on Teacher Leadership and Compensation released a $150 million school improvement proposal Thursday. It’s an easy twenty-six page read which includes this prelude to the task force’s six goals:

“If we effectively compensate teachers; recruit and promote excellent teachers and provide support as they collaborate reflectively to refine their practice; create the political will and understanding necessary to remake the status of the teaching profession; give highly effective teachers opportunities to grow, refine, and share their expertise; and develop a clear system with quality implementation, then… student learning will increase, student outcomes will improve, and students will be prepared to succeed in a globally competitive environment.”

One might take issue with the statement’s structure, but it is hard to argue with its premise. Paying teachers more, recruiting high achievers, and improving collaboration and mentoring are worthwhile endeavors. They are hardly groundbreaking concepts. Teachers and non-teachers alike have been advocating these since about the time the first school was built.

The task force’s proposal should be supported, but let’s recognize the document for what it is. It is the latest in a long line of political manifestos written to give politicians an air of being concerned about education. And, it is substantially less than a blueprint for meaningful reform.

Most teachers do not get paid enough. However, it is important to address one undeniable fact before going further. The recruitment and retention of the best and the brightest into the field of education has less to do with salaries than it does with how teachers are treated. For starters, school districts have been firing teachers by the truckload in recent years to balance budgets. We lack the political will to keep education from the chopping block. Many of the very brilliant young people the task force says it seeks became trained educators in recent years only to be severed from the teaching profession by a blunt yet ruthless budget ax.

While the Task Force’s proposals have some merits, Iowa could make significant and more immediate gains if it took the $150 million proposed by this commission and used it to begin restoring the hundreds of teaching positions lost in recent years. Raising the starting pay of teachers is the right thing to do, but it will mean nothing if school districts have to fire teachers a few years down the road because coffers again run empty. We must restore schools and commit to innovation simultaneously.

Collaboration, mentoring, support and continuing education are as important to educators as they are in any profession. However, as long as activities meant to improve education result in teachers spending less time with students, they will bear insufficient fruit. In Des Moines the demand for teacher collaboration has resulted in a silly calendar structure that releases students from class ninety minutes early every Wednesday. These shortened days have an atmosphere of something much less than an actual learning day even before the dismissal bell rings, which leads many kids to call them ‘do-nothing-Wednesdays.’

The 180 day school calendar drives decisions. This has to stop. The better way to get teachers time for collaboration, mentoring and support is to start treating and paying teachers like the professionals we want them to be. Teaching is not a clock punching, do-the-time job. It is the craft of gifted people. Before we begin talk about lengthening the school year, which has merit, we need to lengthen the teacher contract year. A school day should mean students are in class learning. Do-nothing-Wednesdays and frequent teacher days need to end. This change in thinking has to start with teachers themselves and the unions representing them.

OK, I sense I have raised the ire of many teachers with my last comments. Let me clarify, teachers are among the hardest working people I know. They spend long hours at school and many more after grading and preparing lessons. I do not mean to diminish their effort in any conceivable way. On the contrary, teachers need to be paid and treated in a manner that will compel them to cease nitpicking about the calendar and the clock.

Recommendations from any and every education task force will only serve as talking points unless we recognize education reform means committing to spending money to provide teachers the tools, resources, support and ongoing training they need to do the job. This will require more than a onetime expenditure – it means a long-time ironclad commitment to spending.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com 
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register online essay.

Unequal Schools Threaten Future of U.S.

I spent some time researching my genealogy recently. I uncovered some notable ancestors, a number of quiet heroes and a few interesting characters. I learned several surprising things about the people who contributed to my being here. Discovering what many of them accomplished during their time made me realize I have a whole lot of catching up to do.

In one narrow aspect, this exploration confirmed what I already knew. I’m about as White as a person can be.

I’m not ashamed of my lack of color. I am proud of from whom and where I came. There are some brave slavery abolitionists inhabiting my line and I consider myself open-minded and free of racism. I have come to terms with my country’s checkered history pockmarked with racial inequality and would like to think I have helped the effort to stamp it out during my life. I have been willing to speak up against injustice – most of the time. Plus, I live in 2012, for God’s sake. Sure, racism still exists, but I convince myself the day is within reach when racial discrimination is something relegated to history books.

That’s why I winced when I heard Jada Williams read her essay. The 13-year-old from Rochester, New York had written a book report on The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass in which she had the temerity to say little had change from the days of slavery – “just different people, different era” and “the same old discrimination still resides in the hearts of the white man.” Who does this girl think she is?

Williams said this about her mostly White teachers; “they are in a position of power to dictate what I can, cannot, and will learn, only desiring that I may get bored because of the inconsistency and the mismanagement of the classroom.”

My knee jerk reaction was to dismiss Williams as a hothead quick to play the race card, but something nagged me and I listened to her read her essay again. It is well written, but it has the undeniable voice of a 13-year-old, albeit a bright one. She has picked up some education along the way belying the charges she leveled at her school. Then I heard Williams say, “the reality of this is that most of my peers cannot read, and therefore comprehend the materials that have been provided.”

Aha! Surely she twisted a fact to make her point. Quick, to Google to prove she is exaggerating to dismiss her as nothing more than an overly excitable teen.

Unfortunately, old Whitie (me) finds a report about Rochester City School District, School 3 indicating that only 19 percent of the school’s eighth graders were proficient in language arts last year. A paltry 13 percent were proficient in math. Not only is Ms. Williams correct, I am beginning to think she underplayed the problem by saying most of her peers cannot read. She should have said nearly all of them.

A book about Frederick Douglass inspired Rochester, NY student Jada Williams to write a powerful essay.

Something is clearly wrong when a school has numbers like these. Freedom isn’t reaching its potential in a country where large segments of many communities are not learning, not gaining the tools essential for success, let alone, setting a course to self-reliance. Jada Williams knows this.

The Iowa General Assembly has spent much time this year debating education reform legislation and, save maybe a couple of those elected officials, none of them have made a better assessment of what is wrong in U.S. schools than this eighth grader did. As hard as it for me to admit, Ms. William’s jarring assertions are on target, but we should not stop there. Even in this day and age, race remains a factor, but socioeconomic differences play a role as well. The virulent, festering problem of inequality still threatens.

Much of what is said and written during the education reform debate involves testing and screening teachers. Ms. Williams, too, wants to make those who teach accountable, but she seems to know testing has little to do with the solution. America’s ailing schools will not be cured with more testing and additional rules that tie the hands of those professionals motivated to teach. We must establish a system that trains teaching professionals and lets them guide learning free from the micromanagement of elected officials.

We should heed the call of Jada Williams and fan a revolution. Until we change the culture of our schools and turn them from dismal factories processing children through a series of pass/fail assessments to places that inspire students to learn, Jada Williams, her classmates and countless American children will continue to suffer a clear and present life disadvantage.

Our best national investment is in the creation of schools that motivate the next generation of Americans to reach for a potential their ancestors never imagined. Perhaps the opening lines of our next national chapter on social justice and equality may begin with the words of a thirteen-year-old.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com


This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register blog entry.

Board of Ed Ignoring Danger in Rush to get High School Students Online

Ask any teacher and he will tell you every child learns in a slightly different way. I like to say this is due to the unique way each person is wired, which is why I leave it to professional educators to explain the science of learning. Let’s just say it does not take a PhD in education to understand that just because one student – or the majority of students, for that matter – finds success in a classroom environment where lectures, textbooks and repetition are the standard doesn’t mean all will.

Fortunately, we live in an age when technology can advance education in ways our grandparents could have never imagined. However, Iowans should be skeptical about the Iowa State Board of Education’s rush to expand a program that allows high school students to gain credit for online courses.

Online learning may be the newest, fastest growing educational paradigm, but not everything shiny and new proves to be effective. A little caution is prudent. Many of us remember the classrooms-without-walls schools built in the 1970’s that were supposed to stimulate teaching across classrooms. They turned out to be noisy places filled with distracted students and frustrated teachers. After spending millions of dollars retrofitting walls in buildings coast to coast, most of these environments do not exist today. Online courses, too, have shortcomings to be considered before they are adapted too widely.

I do not mean to diminish the important role online learning can play when it comes to meeting the needs of technologically savvy students. Online courses can provide students with more flexibility. Obviously, student success should be based on what is learned rather than how much time is spent in the classroom. But, academic rigor is all too often lost when a student participates in online classes. Many of these courses are more about completing assignments than helping students apply the subject in the constructive and meaningful way their counterparts in other educational environments are. Talk to students who have taken these courses and you come to understand online classes are more like checklists than they are comprehensive education.

I know a student who struggled with traditional high school Spanish. Yet, She was able to click off the online courses with little effort in a fraction of the time estimated in the course literature. She did not learn Spanish. She instead found a way to get credit in an unsupervised environment without mastering the subject. I recognize this example alone does not condemn online learning, but it illustrates why we should be skeptical about moving students out of the classroom and distancing them from the nurturing assistance of a teacher. Learning is a give and take that is hampered when educators and students separated by computer screens are both judged by the number of completed assignments as opposed to what the students learn.

Board of Education member Max Phillips summed up the Board’s concern about Iowa lagging behind other states when it comes to the number of high school students taking classes online. Phillips said, “Twenty-five other states have more students than we do in virtual learning. We need to learn, but we don’t need to go slow, because our students are already behind.”

Nope. Iowa should not chase Texas because the Lone Star State has more students enrolled online than Iowa does. Iowa needs to develop learning programs that help its students achieve. If another state is doing something to improve learning proficiency, Iowa should learn from it. Processing more students through an automated checklist is not worthy of emulation. Providing the best education for every student is, regardless of how they learn.

Online learning has many benefits especially when it comes to supplementing what is learned in a classroom under the guidance of a professionally trained teacher. However, there is a clear and present danger when Boards of Education rush to embrace a new educational theory like online learning because it is the hot new thing. Replacing the thoroughness of a comprehensive education with an all-too-automated online environment will do more harm than good.

The Iowa State Board of Education needs to focus more on results than expanding the number of students taking online courses for the sake of being in on a fad. Outsourcing learning in cyberspace holds certain risks for Iowa’s students. The Board needs to let teaching professionals drive the educational process by allowing them to utilize all the tools available. Regardless of how each of us is wired, teachers are the ones who are best able to guide students down the path of learning, whether in a classroom or with the aid of a computer. There is a difference between learning and giving students credit for jumping through online hoops.

Des Moines Schools Blame Game with IA Dept. of Ed and DM Register

In my last blog I expressed annoyance with the Des Moines School Board for its apparent lack of knowledge of and, more specifically, concern about the troubling accreditation report issued by the Iowa Department of Education.  I concluded by calling the School Board an impotent body.  It appears I was wrong to single out the School Board.  Unfortunately, the Department of Education does not exactly stand tall with competence either.

My blog caught Superintendent Nancy Sebring’s attention.  Convinced my sole source of information had been the Des Moines Register, she invited me to coffee to lay out the facts saying “you need to know that there were serious factual errors in their reports (and editorial) regarding the accreditation report.”

I accepted the invitation immediately.  We spent nearly two hours reviewing the Iowa Department of Education’s findings, the school district’s responses, the School Board’s involvement and the Register’s coverage.

Dr. Sebring acknowledged the 19 specific areas of non-compliance in the report.  We went through most of them in detail and discussed how the District was addressing or planned to address each.  She wanted me to know the District was taking the matter very seriously.  However, the primary errors she pointed to were not made by the Register, but by the Iowa Department of Education.

Let me be clear, Dr. Sebring told me she believes the Register’s stories and editorial border on slander.  Dr. Sebring carelessly tosses around accusations of slander and conspiracy, but I do not immediately dismiss her charges.  In fact, they demand discussion and I will write more on this later.  Today, I am going to focus on the Department of Education.

One error made by the Department of Education rises above the rest.  Listed in the findings of the Department’s official report the District received on June 22 was Item 11 in the section titled Areas of Non-Compliance:  Chapter 12 mandates Des Moines Schools.  It said the District had yet to submit a signed assurance from the superintendent that two people who were teaching had been “removed from the assignment of teaching…and not paid for the teaching assignment” as of “April 7, 2011, the date the district was officially notified,” because neither person was “endorsed or certified to teach.”  Officially notified?  Perhaps not.

According to Dr. Sebring, an exhaustive search of District Email and paper files, and extensive discussions with staff and former staff indicate the Department never notified the School District two people had to be removed from teaching.  Further, Sebring told me she was baffled as to why the District was cited at all in the case of an assistant teacher who was teaching Chinese in an elementary school.  She claims the District had received oral approval from a state education official to utilize this person as a teacher before the school year began.

It seemed implausible the Department of Education would demand two people be fired without documenting each step of the process.  So, I asked the Department of Education for the dated transmittal documents and the original official demand the individuals be removed from teaching by April 7.  Surprisingly, there are no such documents.

The document the Iowa Department of Education provided as proof it had mandated two people be removed from teaching in Des Moines classrooms.

The Department sent me a copy of the preliminary report the Department claims was transmitted to the District and a copy of a hand-scrawled, undated note from a departing Education employee to her superior.  The note explains where on a computer the preliminary report was to be found and that, “This is the document given to Mike Munoz on 4/7/11.”  Munoz was a District employee who has also left his job.  The note was signed “Julie.”

Holy cats!  Thousands of dollars and countless man hours went into compiling an accreditation report showing 19 disquieting deficiencies in the Des Moines Schools.  In response to the findings, the Department demanded the District fire two employees without notice and the main documentation the Department can provide is a nearly illegible internal note proving nothing.

It’s a classic he said/she said argument of incompetence.

The Department’s apparent lack of internal documentation and controls in this case give credence to Dr. Sebring’s assertion the District might have received oral consent from the Department to hire the uncertified Chinese language teacher in the first place.  After getting a look at the shoddy way the Department of Education keeps records it seems possible.

I have been told Jason Glass, director of the Iowa Department of Education plans to attend tomorrow’s Des Moines School Board meeting.  No word on if he will address the report or the District’s accusations, but it seems likely.  One can only hope both the Department and the District will learn oral agreements and off-the-record chatter cannot stand-in for documentation and controls.

One has to wonder why the District didn’t demand something more than a handshake when seeking an exemption from state law to use an uncertified teacher in the classroom and why the Department would think the District would act on a document so clearly marked draft, even if it was handed to a District administrator as the Department purports.

But, let’s remember, one entity’s ineptitude does not excuse another’s.  The fact the Des Moines School Board had not received or read the State’s report did not stop one board member from saying, “I believe the school district is addressing each and every one of these issues.”

The School Board did not read what the Department of Education had written, and the Department apparently does not put in writing that which needs to be documented.

Looks like education officials in Des Moines and Iowa could both use a Viagra type infusion of competence.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com

This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register blog entry.

Open Letter to Gov. Branstad, re: School Lunch

Dear Governor Branstad:

You asked Iowans for help as you begin your term as Governor.  This is an excellent idea.  Iowans are innovative and willing to do the hard work needed to get the job done.  Recently I submitted the first of a few ideas I feel are worthy of your consideration as you put together the state budget and perfect your blueprint for governing in the years to come.  I share another today.

As a former school board member, I know as well as any that school districts do much more than maintain school buildings and hire teachers.  Public schools run bus networks, manage countless social service and health care programs, and direct massive food service operations.  Some of these services are directly linked to education and others are provided at school because it is the one place where the children in need of these services gather.  It is time to help educators focus on improving education by taking some of these non-instructional items off of their plate.  The pun is intended; let’s start by taking food service out of the hands of educators.

We probably agree it makes sense to feed kids at school.  For many students, the breakfasts and lunches they receive at school are the best meals they receive all week.  However, we must acknowledge that these meals still fall short of what they should be as evidenced by theUnited States Department of Agriculture’s announcement last month that it was raising the standards for school lunches nationwide.  (The fact it will take a decade to implement these standards, meaning that no student in the system today excluding First Graders and Kindergartners will benefit, is disappointing; but I digress.)

We can improve the quality of food served, reduce costs and free educators to do the job we most want them to do if feeding children becomes a service provided in school as opposed to one provided by the school.

Before going further with this proposal, allow me to suggest three guiding principles.  First, federal, state and local government food oversight provide plenty of food safety controls.  Second, school boards and district administrations should be given the ability to assert local control and oversight to ensure the needs of local communities are met.   Third, feeding kids nutritious and affordable meals is the goal – this is not about busting unions or a power grab by one entity or another.

Possible alternatives to school run lunch programs include combining oversight to an agency jointly managed by multiple school districts, and/or county and state agencies with food service needs; outsourcing to private entities that submit to stringent oversight; or seeking other private and or public cooperative efforts.

Admittedly, this idea will induce swift knee-jerk reactions by the self-interested, the entrenched and those fearful of change.  But, it is worth the time and effort to find a solution.  Iowa could save money, children could eat better and our schools could improve because school administrators will have more time to focus on educating.  It is worth the battle.

There are numerous opportunities worthy of exploration.  As Governor, you have the unique ability to facilitate, if not orchestrate, how Iowa’s schools could go about this.  This issue is larger than any school district.  School districts need to focus on the classroom and the state can help them do this by helping them take a step away from the kitchen.  The economies of scale and the statewide impact of how to best move forward should be led by Iowa’s chief executive.

Thanks for listening, Governor.

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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com

This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register blog entry.