In his annual address to secondary school heads, John Dunford, the general secretary of the U.K.’s Association Of School and College Leaders, acknowledged yesterday that a culture of instant gratification has made the job of teaching today’s youth harder than its ever been.

“Success appears to come instantly and without any real effort,” Dunford told the conference audience. “It is difficult for teachers to compete. Success in learning just doesn’t come fast enough.” 

Well said, Mr. Dunford, but hardly revolutionary.

For years now, I’ve heard from teacher friends and seen from site visits how much teaching has become by necessity almost entertainment like; we must engage the students by making lessons fun and relevant.

One teacher told me recently that she has to convince high school students that learning basic math concepts like multiplication and  division are necessarily skills in life, even employing popular rap stars and their lyrics about money making within her arsenal.

That’s sad … but is it inevitable given how prolific and accessible technology and media are and make everything seem? Not only do we have 24/7 media, we have an endless supply of fame-seekers willing to broadcast their lives 24/7.
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Photo courtesy Gates Foundation

Want to hold onto your best teachers? Put good principals in your schools.

For years, teachers have been telling me that a good principal—someone who is supportive, focuses on improving instruction, and creates a healthy school climate—is the single most important factor in their choice of schools to work in.

Now a national survey of 40,000 teachers confirms my anecdotal-based opinion.

The survey, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, found that 68 percent of teachers said  “supportive leadership” is essential for retaining good teachers, as opposed to only 45 percent who rated higher salaries as important.

That comes as no surprise to me. Without a good principal or an enlightened central office, a school can become a lousy place to work. No teacher is going to sit in a classroom every day if the principal won’t intervene against student misbehavior in hallways or classrooms—or can’t inspire a sense of meaning and progress to the work teachers do.

Conducted in conjunction with Scholastic Inc., the survey findings, Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on America’s Schools, offers some other insights into the minds of teachers:
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Photo courtesy Stockvault

There’s a reason school districts still rely on the same teacher evaluation model that’s been around for half a century.

Many are not ready for anything more ambitious.

Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of local school leaders who do a great job of evaluating teachers.

It’s just that, with everything else there is to do in today’s public schools, the teacher evaluation process can get lost in the shuffle. You just assume it’s working fine.

That’s why there are principals out there who are not adequately trained to evaluate their faculty. And why there is little money out there to provide that training.

And why lots of mediocre teachers get a “satisfactory” rating each year—because principals don’t feel qualified to make hard judgments or prefer to avoid the hassles of dealing with a struggling teacher.

Of course, there also are those schools that just avoid the issue altogether. That reality was revealed in a new report that concludes the Boston Public schools “routinely neglect a basic task: evaluating teachers.”

According to the Boston Globe, the report, commissioned by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, found that “half the city’s approximately 5,000 teachers have not received an evaluation in the past two years, and a quarter of the city’s 135 schools have not conducted evaluations during that period.”
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More than a year ago, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., head of the House Labor and Education Committee, began probing the use of seclusion and restraints in special education classrooms. At the time, those acts seemed to be rare and isolated.

But new research has, unfortunately, proved otherwise.

Not only are many schools and teachers frequently and improperly using those methods to punish students—sometimes for seemingly trivial behavioral issues— but also a handful of incidents have resulted in students’ deaths. And state and federal policies are lax in addressing the issue, which can leave districts unable to fire abusive teachers or reprimand inappropriate acts.  

In a story for the March ASBJ, I spoke to researcher Joseph B. Ryan, who was concerned about the training teachers are receiving. As part of a study that was used by Miller’s staff, he interviewed teachers and found that many had only received training on how to restrain, not when. Others, when asked about the prevalence of the use of restraints, cited policies and school rules, but when he examined incidence reports he found that the use of restraints was much more widespread than they acknowledged.

“It becomes a cultural situation—this is why parents and advocates are up in arms,” he said. “It’s an inappropriate response in the majority of times staff use it.”

Miller’s bill – which was passed by the House committee by a vote of 34 to 10 earlier this month — would create minimum safety standards for schools and require states to set and enforce policies. It prohibits a number of types of restraints deemed dangerous and requires schools to notify parents of incidents and report data to the U.S. Department of Education.

Since the story was published, NSBA has given another resounding endorsement to the measure.

“We believe that this legislation will meet our safety and other goals for students and school personnel while providing sufficient authority and flexibility to schools and school districts in training school personnel based on their unique needs,” NSBA associate executive director Michael A. Resnick wrote in a Jan. 25 letter to Rep. Miller. “The legislation is strategic and balanced in dealing with such factors as training, prohibiting the use of certain practices, and promoting positive learning supports.”

Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor

Photo courtesy Stockvault

My high school physics teacher had a doctorate in the subject and was obviously brilliant.

But, oh, was she boring.

In college, I took a course in 19^th century European philosophy, taught by a young professor with a positively encyclopedic knowledge of the subject.

And that’s what his lectures sounded like — like somebody reading the encyclopedia.

Just because you have great content knowledge doesn’t mean you can teach. It’s something the teachers unions have been saying for years in an attempt to defend the kind of pedagogical training they get in education courses.  But among today’s “reformers,” such arguments are often dismissed as empty defenses of teacher colleges, some of which, to be sure, are horrible.

Just take bright college graduates with good content knowledge, these reformers say — all those young people armed with surplus enthusiasm and no baggage — and let them work their magic.

Indeed, the idea sounds enticing to me and a wonderful quick fix — until I stop to remember my own student experiences. Now, according to a recent story in Education Week, researchers are questioning whether teachers who majored in math significantly improve students’ math skills at the elementary and middle school level.
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I’ve been told before I am a natural teacher. But I know better than to ever try it for real. Hearing my friend’s frustrations within her son’s school confirms my suspicions.

Jay just started kindergarten but has quickly excelled as a star student, earning a student of the week recognition in the very first week. And he has an excellent teacher, who will keep him challenged. I hope his enthusiasm for learning remains, and knowing his mother she’ll make sure it does. But he’s up against some mighty distractions. Poverty is hard to ignore … and to pinpoint.

Because is poverty what led a five-year old boy to have a complete meltdown at the end of the day, swinging at my friend when she attempted to retrieve the costume she’d let him borrow for the school’s Halloween party? Is poverty what led another kindgartener to declare earlier in the week that she was ugly? Is poverty to blame for an older student not only failing to apologize for literally walking over my friend’s youngest son during the school’s release, but responding to her protest with an obscenity.

But I think the story that bothers me most is of a child I’ll call Bill. He’s five and he already has vacant eyes. Unruly and insolent, he has an utter disregard for adult figures.  He ignores them most of the most time. Throws attitude and acts out the rest of the time. How does a child so young get like that, I wonder? Parents, my friend, surmises. 

The school’s PTA roster is woefully thin. Parent participation on everything, even something as simple as a classroom Halloween party, is absent. When my friend realized the costume she’d brought for the boy in order to participate in the school’s Halloween parade, might have been the only costume he had and not just an oversight on his parent’s part, she felt immediately contrite and offered to let the boy keep it. But it was too late, the teachers advised. His outburst needed to be corrected. 

But really the true correction needs to happen at home. And without it, teachers and schools can only do so much. It’s a shame how often these stories probably play out across the country. And it’s no wonder why teachers become disallusioned so quickly. I think I would be one of them.

Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor

Time is running out to read ASBJ’s September cover articles on teacher quality for free. If you’re a subscriber, you can continue to access the articles. If you’re not (and why aren’t you?), then you’ll have to pay to download the articles.

Next week, October goes online with a cover package on STEM and a special report on facilities and construction.

Kathleen Vail, Managing Edior

Courtesy of StockVault

Here’s a great way to test the accuracy and rigor of your state reading and math tests: Fill in the multiple-choice section of each test by answering at random.

Leave the rest of the test (such as essay questions) blank, and then use the test’s scoring key or raw score conversion table to see how you fare.

If you live in New York City, you’ll score well enough to be promoted to the next grade.

How is that possible? It should be obvious. Some states have dumbed down their exams so they can show improving student proficiency, keep voters happy, and avoid sanctions mandated by No Child Left Behind.

People have complained about the dumbing down of state tests for years. But, let’s acknowledge that, even with the best of intentions, state education officials need years of effort—with constant tweaking—to maintain a sound accountability system that accurately measures student progress.

But whether deliberately or accidently, education officials sometimes trip up spectacularly. That appears to be the case in New York City, where Daily News reporter Meredith Kolodner found this summer that “the number of correct answers needed to score a Level 2 to get promoted has sunk so low that a student can guess on the multiple choice selection and leave the rest of the test blank.”

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 Two days after Walter Cronkite’s death, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt passed away earlier this week at the age of 78. I was fortunate to interview them both. You can find my Q&A with Cronkite here  and my January 2006 interview with McCourt below.

 McCourt’s childhood memoir, Angela’s Ashes, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997. The sequel, ‘Tis, sold millions and remained at the top of the bestseller lists. In November, he added a third chapter: Teacher Man, a memoir of his 30 years in New York City’s schools.

Teacher Man, like its predecessors, pulls no punches. And neither does McCourt, who called teaching “my mission.”

After two successful memoirs, why write a third book?

You retire from teaching and you have time for reflection. When I look back on 30 years, one of the things that emerges is the reputation and status of teachers in this country. We have a patronizing attitude toward teachers. People think of it as the profession of failures. We have respect for movie stars and football players and CEOs, but the teacher doesn’t get respect. I find that appalling.

I don’t understand why there is such hostility. The public doesn’t know what the teacher does in the classroom, what sorts of varied roles you have. I certainly didn’t know it when I went into the classroom, and I certainly had to fumble around until I learned what I was doing.

You didn’t write Angela’s Ashes until you were 66, and in Teacher Man, you say that you didn’t read much because you were so busy grading your students’ work. What did you learn from reading their work?
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When an editor here asked me to interview “The Rappin’ Mathematician” for the August ASBJ, I rolled my eyes. And the CD sat on my desk for a week before I finally decided to listen to it while running errands one day.

“This is going to be bad,” I thought as I slid it into my car’s CD player.

But it actually wasn’t. And after a couple songs I found myself humming and tapping to the beat.

Alex Kajitani, a San Diego math teacher, says a lot of people have that same initial reaction when he tells them about his work. Kajitani was recently named the 2009 California Teacher of the Year award and was a finalist for the National Teacher of the Year after he gained fame for his work as a math rapper at his Escondido, Calif., middle school.

He says the concept was born out of survival for a struggling, first-year teacher in a tough urban school. His students wouldn’t remember the basic concepts he taught, but could memorize the words to a rap song the day it came out.

Kajitani, who goes by “T.R.M.” (The Rappin’ Mathmatician) on his songs, began making up rhymes to teach his lessons, and despite getting laughed at on his first try, he soon saw his students’ test scores jump. Now, not only does he use rap music to teach math, he tried to incorporate positive, anti-materialistic messages in his songs. 
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