This Is Not News

I’ve been trying to find a good way to help my ethics students learn about John Stuart Mill and utilitarianism. I put together this combination of reading and reflection questions to get everyone to think through the content, and every so often while the students are working independently we’ll stop and have a class discussion so that students can share and develop their responses. I’m not trying to cover every detail, but I want to bring up a few key points: 1) a general definition of utilitarianism; 2) Mill’s method of measuring the quality of pleasures; 3) the need to protect the minority from abuse by the majority.

Any suggestions for things to rewrite, different questions to ask, or resources to use are welcome.

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I was working on a writeup of the ethics class I’m teaching, but then I started to wonder if that was a productive topic. Before I could make up my mind I found myself looking through some material by Zac Chase, currently doing graduate work in education at Harvard. I met Zac at a session at EduCon last year that I really enjoyed, and I’m getting a lot of vicarious education from following his work at HArvard on his blog, Autodizactic, and his Twitter feed. This will probably result in some interesting thoughts from me later (I hope), but for now, go check out Zac’s thoughts if you haven’t already.

In the ethics class I’m teaching, I’m trying to set up the idea that sometimes we have to make choices that will lead to the least-bad outcome. Such choices are where our values really get tested, because there’s no easy or safe choice. To think through the problem, I modified an exercise given to me by a colleague. Here’s what I gave the students:

Remember, you are likely to have to spend a lot of time in the shelter before the radiation levels go down. It could be years before the area is safe. These people are asking to enter:

• A Catholic priest, age 60, Hispanic male
• A medical researcher, age 40, African-American female, lawyer’s wife
• A lawyer, age 42, African-American male, medical researcher’s husband
• The researcher and lawyer’s daughter, age 16
• The researcher and lawyer’s son, age 10
• A commercial fisherman, age 36, Caucasian male
• A social worker, age 50, Caucasian female
• A college student, age 20, Hispanic female
• A musician, age 38, African-American male
• A city councilwoman, age 42, Japanese female
• A registered nurse, age 29, Saudi Arabian male
• A restaurant cook, age 34, African-American female

Choose which eight people you would save and briefly say why. Do not consult with anyone about your answers.

We got a really good discussion out of it, and it was interesting to hear the students discuss and disagree about what was important. Keep a family together? Select people with useful expertise? Save the young? Save the elderly?

Next we’re going to look at Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron to discuss whether equality is always a good thing.

Had a chance to spend some time brainstorming with my colleagues about things we can do during the year to reinforce each other and help students see connections across our different subjects. I talked about the tools that I’m going to emphasize in trying to help students work through their readings. One of those tools is cause and effect relationships, and the science teacher said that she might wind up giving the students a different definition than the one that I would use. We went back and forth a few times before I clicked in to what she meant.

In history, we talk about one thing causing another, but we are almost never giving an exhaustive description of the causes. Human events are so complex that there’s never a single cause, and getting a comprehensive explanation for one event can take up a healthy portion of a graduate seminar. When you have one week to spend on the entire Renaissance, you’re not going down to that level of detail. So you focus on the big causes, but you don’t always have a chance to focus on the little details that make a situation unique. You might say “The citizens rebelled because the government raised taxes very high,” but you’re not asserting that every time a government raises taxes the citizens are going to rebel. It’s more of a general guide than an absolute rule.

Science tends to be looking more for the absolute rule. Exceptions are the sort of thing that can falsify a hypothesis. So when my science teacher colleague talks about causes and effects, she’s using a stronger standard. You don’t just say “Heating water to 100 degrees Celsius causes it to boil,” because there are times when you can heat it that high and it doesn’t. You have to introduce the concept of air pressure in order to more fully understand the cause and effect relationship at work.

Once we had talked through this, we realized that rather than seem to contradict each other, we could support each other’s definition by explaining the different level of detail and specificity that each class was looking for. That helps the students build a level of adaptability into their thinking, and I think that’s useful on top of the other skills we’re trying to build. And we would not have had that insight if we had not had that time to trade ideas. One of the best things about being a teacher is getting to talk to other teachers every day.

I am on an email discussion list for one of the universities where I have been an adjunct. There’s currently a discussion about the need for paper syllabi in an era where most of these documents get posted on a course management system and many students tend to discard or even ignore paper documents. One of the arguments against electronic versions is that some teachers do not allow students to use laptops in their classes because the laptops make it too easy for students to be distracted by using the Internet.

I understand the logic here, but I don’t think I can agree with it. Yes, it is true, many people today think that they can multitask and so they don’t concentrate on one thing. But in the end, if students aren’t concentrating on what the teacher is focused on, it’s because they don’t want to focus. It’s not like students suddenly discovered how to focus on something other than the teacher when the laptop was invented.

I still have many of my notebooks from undergrad and grad school. I can figure out what my favorite songs at the time were, because I often wrote the lyrics in the margins while trying to pass time during a lecture. Notebooks can also be used to do homework or start writing papers for other classes. Or writing notes to someone else in the room. Or starting that story you wanted to write. Or making some kind of doodle to amuse yourself and your neighbors. Should we ban notebooks from classrooms? Of course not. Even if you did, there’s still staring out the windows.

We’re not going to be able to teach students how to live in a world of multiple-tab browsers by creating an artificial zone with only one focus. We can’t create such a zone, and even if we did, it wouldn’t be helping students live in the world. We have to create a space where they see the value in choosing to focus on one thing, so that they will continue to use that skill once they graduate.

Especially at the college level, I believe in letting students take responsibility for their learning. Either they will succeed or they won’t based on their choices, and hopefully they’ll learn something either way. Some students interpret this as me being “easy” or not caring what they do, but others commit themselves to doing well and make the most of the opportunities I give them. I’ll take that tradeoff because the engagement of the second group creates an environment where we all can get something from the conversation.

So yesterday I talked about why I dislike most current merit pay proposals for teachers. In short, I don’t think that these systems, which advocates say are meant to reward and retain good teachers, properly identify good teachers. I don’t think I gave a full picture of what we would see when we look at a good teacher. So what I want to do now is set out my own goals for the upcoming year. This is what I will expect to see from myself and my students in order for me to say that I was a good teacher this year. I figure it will help with the conversation I started yesterday, and keep me focused on my self-improvement while I’m at it.

Power to Students: This is the make or break issue. Education has to give power to the learner. I don’t mean that the students control the classroom. I mean that by improving their ability to identify a problem, gather information, and conceive a solution, what we do in the classroom should make students into more powerful citizens. The ability to identify what they think, articulate those beliefs, and listen to other people do the same gives students the power to build networks and communities. Someone who walks into my classroom or talks to my students should see them building this power.

How am I going to do that? Well, that’s where I have to be on top of my game as a teacher.

Strong Lines of Communication: If I expect students to demonstrate progress throughout the year, I need to make sure that they are able to build on their previous work in order to make their next effort better. That means giving concise but specific verbal feedback during classwork and class discussions. It also means returning work promptly and keeping students updated on how their work is being reflected in their grade. I’m setting a goal of returning any classwork or homework within two school days and any minor or major projects within five school days.

Giving clear instructions is another key part of communication, but I’ll have more to say about that in a minute.

Parents and guardians have to be kept in the loop. That means using phone and email to keep in touch and using resources like wikispaces so that parents have access to the info they need.

Strong Planning: Not only does each day’s lesson need a clear structure, I need to make the whole more than the sum of the parts. Each lesson should be more than a simple content objective; each day should build toward a larger conceptual goal and a way for students to demonstrate that they can use these concepts to think about their world. In addition to my daily lesson plans, I’m going to try to write overall unit plans. I have a tendency to see so many connections that I don’t always make them explicit, and I think it will be useful to articulate exactly how I see everything fit together. If I do, I increase the chances that my students will as well.

High Expectations, with Support: No matter what kind of assignment a teacher devises, there are going to be some students who look to follow the letter, rather than the spirit, of the rules. It’s often possible to answer a question without thinking about the question. My students need to know that that’s not acceptable – the process is just as important as the destination. And that process needs to start on day one. But if I’m requiring deep thought and understanding, I also need to provide support. I need to be able to answer questions. I need to be available after school for extra help. I need to provide access to materials that will help my students fill in gaps in their background knowledge.

Every Voice in the Conversation: It is so easy to rely on volunteers to keep a class conversation moving. But the danger in that is that some students will remain hidden behind the volunteers. Some will choose to hide, and some will just let it happen. I have to structure the class participation model so that everyone gets involved, even if that means ignoring some raised hands. And I can’t forget that talking in class isn’t the only way to participate. If I give meaningful assignments, that’s a way for students to have a different kind of conversation. And if some students look like they’re getting ahead of, or falling behind, the main conversation, I need to find ways to loop them back in or launch a meaningful side conversation. (That last sentence was far easier to type than it is to accomplish, but it’s one of my big goals for this year.)

Go Beyond the Curriculum: There are a lot of facts in the World History curriculum. There are more facts than my students are going to be able to remember at once. Heck, there are more facts than I am able to remember at once. A student isn’t successful in World History just because he can tell me why the Third Estate launched the French Revolution or because she can tell me who Gandhi was. What matters is that they know why they should know. I know why, but I am a history geek. They need to be able to bring those facts to bear in conversations about the world we’re making right now. And that means that I have to let those conversations happen, and find ways to start them when they’re not happening naturally.

So that’s what I hope to see this year. In June we’ll check back and see how I did. If you think I’m missing something, please feel free to chime in through the comment system.

One frequent proposal for “reforming” education is the idea of “merit pay” for teachers. Traditionally, teacher salaries have been determined by seniority and educaton level. To some people, this is a silly way to set someone’s salary. If Bob’s doing a better job of teaching than I am, why should I make more money than Bob because I’ve been around for a couple of years or because I have a Ph.D? Instead, why not give good teachers the compensation they deserve, so that they are recognized for their good work and are more likely to remain a teacher?

It sounds like a perfectly reasonable idea, but where it has the potential to fall down is: who decides who the good teachers are, and how? Right now, a majority of merit pay proposals appear to be tied to test scores. But there are a lot of things that a good teacher can do that don’t directly show up in test scores. And any particular student’s test scores are going to depend on what that child has done and experiences up to that point, so you’d have to find some formula that isolates the specific teacher’s effect. Even that can be difficult because many subjects have a cross-curricular component. If I spend time helping students identify causes and effects in a reading assignment, and that skill helps them in English class, how can a test trace that? Likewise, if the English teacher is so skilled that she helps students understand the historical context of something like Anne Frank’s diary, how is an English test going to demonstrate that skill?

This goes back to Dewey and his vision of education – true education gives you tools and understanding so that you can navigate the problems and questions that you run into while you’re trying to live your life. There’s no way to measure that in an objective test, any more than you can show you’re a qualified driver by taking a written test. You have to show that you can drive the car by driving the car. As a teacher, I need to keep that in mind when I develop my assessments. I can’t just give a bunch of tests, or even a bunch of papers, and assume I know what my students know. I have to talk to them. I have to see them solve problems. I have to see them adapt and transform the information presented into something that has meaning to them. And by the time I’ve done that for ten months, then I have a sense of who has learned what. If someone is going to evaluate me and tell me whether I am being effective or not, then I expect that evaluator to put at least as much effort into it.

To some extent, we have systems for this in public education right now. My colleagues can recognize when my students connect content in English or science class to some kind of historical information. My principal reads my lesson plans and observes my classes. When I started teaching high school, there were plenty of points along the way where people could say, “Dave, you’re just not getting the job done right now.” But they also followed that with, “And here are some things you can do to get better,” and they worked with me until I improved. That’s a process that’s ongoing, to put it mildly, but I can look at myself in the mirror and say that I’m a good teacher with a straight face. And other people can say it too, because they know me, they know my students, and they know what we do. If those systems for identifying good teachers were the ones that were being modified to implement a merit pay system, I think there would be less controversy.

There would still be some, of course. There are good reasons for the current system. I have a good relationship with my principal and I trust her judgment when she says I’ve fallen short and when I’ve done well. Not every employee has that rapport with his or her boss, and if a teacher and a principal aren’t in sync then the evaluation process can get hairy. An objective system is supposed to prevent that kind of abuse. There is also a logic in saying that teachers with more experience and more training will be better, so it’s good to reward these things. Nonetheless, I think that there are ways for administrators, principals, teachers, and communities to work together to develop a system that honestly identifies and rewards the excellent teachers. But if all we talk about are test scores, we are not going to find it.

Yesterday I wrote about the way that lack of respect can affect the way that teachers do their jobs, and at the end I mentioned that this sense of disrespect isn’t just felt by teachers. I was thinking about the reaction within parts of the community to Arlene Ackerman’s decision to step down. A meeting of the School Reform Commission yesterday turned fairly chaotic, as many speakers accused the board of unjustly blaming Ackerman for mistakes made by other people. The word “lynching” was used to describe the mayor’s and the school commission’s actions. It’s clear that this is not a situation that will be resolved easily. What’s the source of all the pain that was unleashed at that meeting?

When a community feels neglected, it wonders why it should respect the system that won’t respect them. Many inner-city communities, whose schools are underfunded for a number of reasons, have felt that neglect for years. Ackerman wanted to address that sense of neglect and show communities that the district was serious about change. That goal motivated the creation of Promise Academies, schools with different rules and added resources. It’s a laudable goal. Unfortunately, the execution left something to be desired. There are numerous reports that students did not attend the extended hours and Saturday sessions, meaning that the district was spending money on facilities and teacher salaries for instructional time that was not efficiently used.

Then Philadelphia got hit with a double whammy. Federal stimulus funds came to an end, and Ed Rendell’s term as governor came to an end. Pennsylvania changed from having a Philadelphia-based governor whose top priority was increased education funding to having a governor whose electoral base is outside the city and whose top priority was cutting spending. The district needed to cut expenses, and that included layoffs. The Promise Academies, with their added spending and teachers with low seniority, were targeted on both fronts.

So I can only imagine how a parent in one of those communities would react, after finally being singled out for attention and resources, to being told it all had to end. Those who can least afford to sacrifice seem to be being asked to bear the brunt of the burden, and the person who tried to change this system is the target of powerful forces. I can get how that would feel like a slap in the face. I can talk about the flaws in the execution. I can talk about the inefficient use of resources. But when people are stinging from that disrespect, they don’t want to have a wonkish conversation about execution. They want to believe that there’s someone who cares about them, who is looking out for them. And I fear that the events of the last few months have made it harder for us to create that bond.

One of the things that has damaged the School District of Philadelphia recently is an investigation into possible cheating on standardized tests at many schools. Philadelphia is far from alone in this problem. A Daily Kos post describes the ongoing controversy about former Washington, D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee. But I’m obviously following the story closer to home. Now, I have worked at two high schools in the School District, and in both cases, the staff was meticulous in following testing procedures. But as this story from The Notebook indicates, that is not the case at every school in the city.

This is one argument that’s used against the reliance on standardized tests. Once you make the test important – whether it’s important to students who need it to get into good schools, or important to teachers and administrators who need it to avoid penalties or earn rewards – then you are going to change behavior. Some of those changes are not against the rules, but they do distort what the test was supposed to measure in the first place. One example would be a student who enrolls in a test prep program to practice taking tests and learn strategies designed to boost the score. Another example would be teachers altering their curricula or lesson plans in order to emphasize areas that will be covered on the test. Other changes are going to violate the rules of the system, such as the instances mentioned in the Notebook story.

I think it’s a little dismissive of human beings’ ethical capacity to say that incentives will inevitable lead to massive rule-breaking. Society gives us plenty of incentives to have money, but we’re not all robbing banks. It’s certainly part of the picture – indeed, one need look no further than bankers to see the effects of incentives on people’s willingness to follow rules. But I don’t want to condemn all bankers any more than I want to condemn all teachers.

There is another level at which the current emphasis on testing can lead to cheating. Let’s say that you are a teacher and don’t believe that the standardized tests, as constructed, are a valid gauge of a student’s ability. Your judgment about what your students have learned is being superseded by a test developed by strangers. Your skill as a teacher is going to be measured by how your students do on this exercise. Your students will be judged to be proficient in reading or below basic skill level, and the results for your entire school community are going to be broadcast to the world. You could possibly accept all of those potentially harsh judgments and results if you believed in the validity of the test, if you believed that the struggles of today would lead to a success in the end.

But if you don’t, how can you accept it? How can you keep pushing forward to make yourself better when the system above you does not respect your efforts? How can you keep pushing your students to make themselves better when the system above them does not recognize their individual needs, challenges, and triumphs? When you feel ignored, abandoned, and disrespected, and then the system comes and asks you to follow all of their rules and help polish the boot that’s about to kick you in the backside, why should you go along with it?

I think that sense of disrespect and abandonment poisons the atmosphere in the national conversation we’re supposed to be having about education. It poisons the relationships between administrators and teachers. It poisons everything we try to achieve for the students we’re supposed to be here for in the first place. And it poisons the systems we rely on to make our judgments and decisions. As I look around my district and the nation today, that poison is everywhere – not just within the ranks of teachers or principals but in parents and voters and throughout the community. We’re never going to get anywhere until the poison is extracted, and we have a long way to go.

One thing that I am hoping will happen as the School District of Philadelphia transitions to leadership is that we re-examine and rewrite the district’s mission statement. You see it everywhere, posted in school buildings and on our website.

Children come first.
Parents are our partners.
Victory is in the classroom and facilitated by a strong instructional leader.
Leadership and accountability are the keys to success.
It takes the engagement of the entire community to ensure the success of its public schools.

I have been looking at that statement, especially the third sentence, for two and a half years and I still don’t know what it means. Victory is in the classroom? What are we fighting? How does one facilitate victory? And when did I become an instructional leader? I like being a teacher.

You know what is nowhere in this statement? How a good school and a good education helps our students. Not a word about helping them think clearly about their problems. Not a thing about preparing them to take responsibility for their lives. Nothing about building connections that will help them take their dreams and make them real. Nothing about building bonds that will make our city and our nation a stronger community. How can we talk about victory in the classroom if we won’t even articulate what a successful classroom looks like?

I don’t know if that’s the sort of thing you can put into a mission statement. It’s probably not something that could survive a bunch of committee meetings and draft versions. But then that makes me wonder what this mission statement is supposed to accomplish in the first place.