PSSA--The Fallout

I'd like to do a little data collection right here.

I'm in Pennsylvania, and our 3-8th graders just spent a week taking the PSSAs. 

I am the parent of a kindergarten student, yet the testing schedule has had a profound effect on my child's school experience this week despite his not being of the age to participate.

-there was no music this week, no art, and very little PE.

-that means that his teacher missed most or all of her prep periods. 

-the gifted center was not operating this week, so my child and other students missed out on that experience which is also a part of their IEPs.

-all student work was removed from the walls or covered up. 

Please comment here and tell me, if you're a teacher/parent in PA, what effects the PSSA has had on your school climate this past week.

Bringing a flamethrower to the campfire

Today I overstepped my bounds in my own son's school. I attempted to collect data on school culture and safety, not for the purposes of implicating teachers or administration but to get some numbers--since apparently words alone don't do the job when dealing with education administrators--and work with the PTO/PSCC and teachers and admins to craft solutions to the issues of school culture.

My son attends one of the historically "good" neighborhood schools in the district. For years this school has had a great record for minimal, if any, safety concerns, as well as test scores that reflect the fact that the school is comprised of about 50% students who are financially eligible for free and reduced lunch.

Yes, I linked those two items on purpose.

For the past few years, there has been an increase in discipline issues and an increase in the number of students who seem to feel both unhealthy and unsafe in the school. The principal has been there for a few years as well. Of course, she wants the best for our children and wants everyone to be safe, and she understands that all children, not just the ones who are scoring well on the tests, deserve to be educated and need to be nurtured. But she, and everyone else, seem to be asking the wrong questions.

We are treating the symptoms instead of curing the disease.

We are asking, as a parent group and as teachers and administrators, how we can convince these children to behave appropriately in order to suffer through about a month's worth of testing per year. Not counting preparation exercises for the format of the test. We are asking how teachers can get control over classes of 33 kids. We are asking how to get students to behave for substitute teachers when an entire grade level is out of the building for data and testing in-services. We're asking that their backgrounds and level of preparedness for school should be discounted and ignored for the sake of keeping everyone on the same page.  And then we're asking why they're frustrated with learning.

Here's the problem:

The curriculum is developmentally inappropriate in kindergarten. Many kids come to first grade feeling like they're behind because kindergarten calls for so much for which they aren't developmentally ready. The testing format is visually difficult for children. Just because they will have to take standardized tests such as the SAT, ACT, or GRE or GMAT, LSAT or MCAT or whatever else does not mean that they need to do it with such frequency when they are 8 years old.

Time spent on testing is time not spent learning. If you measure your child's growth every day, it won't do anything to help him grow taller (I'm REALLY hoping my oldest is 48" tall this summer so that we can go on the big slides at Sandcastle together, but I haven't measured him in awhile).

Children need to move. Children need exercise and fresh air. I'm sure that part of the problem in the school can be attributed to the horribly cold winter that we had this year. There has also been construction on the playground that couldn't be completed until it was warm enough outside, so outdoor time has been very limited.

It is high time for our school district and its administrators to wake up and realize that we have been chasing the wrong dreams and asking the wrong questions. We need the Play-doh and coloring back in kindergarten, not because we don't want them to learn, but because that IS how they learn. We need the creativity back in third grade, not because we don't want them to work hard, but because third grade is a crucial year where they transition from learning to read into reading to learn. Consequently, we need to take some of the "rigor" out of the primary grades, not because we don't have high expectations, but because grades K-2 are where they need to get those tools for learning and, developmentally, not every child acquires them at the same time or in the same order.

Until we fix the problem, which is that we have to stop living and dying by the numbers on these tests, the symptoms of declining school culture are not going to get better.

Class Size -- Do you think it matters?

Does class size matter?

This is the question often asked right before students are crammed into classrooms that do not have the capacity to hold them.

In order to address this issue, I will ask several other questions:

Which children will be affected the most if their teacher's attention is further divided? Which children will be affected the least?

How is any crowd affected when more people are added?

In considering that students complete individual work for teachers to grade, how much more time is to be spent on the evaluation of student work? Considering that most grading of student work is done "off the clock" on unbillable hours, is it preferable for a teacher to have to spend more time in order to give the additional student work more time, or is it preferable for a teacher to spend less time looking at student work because s/he is looking at more student work per hour?

Why do private schools consistently market smaller class size and more individualized attention as one of their major selling points?

What is the critical mass of students per class that can be considered acceptable? Does it depend on the type of class? Are some subjects more easily taught to larger groups while others require smaller groups?

Does the difference between 25 and 30 students feel more hectic than the difference between 20 and 25 students?


Studies show that reducing class size has an impact.

The links on this page come from scholarly journals. Peer-reviewed research. I'm also going to send you to the National Education Association page on the subject, because their position is well thought out and research-based. The teacher's unions are a professional organization and, regardless of anyone's opinions on what unions do or don't do, they are still professionals advocating for the legitimacy of their profession.

When I attended the community meeting on Monday night, I mentioned that a smaller class could make a difference for a student who doesn't come to school ready to learn (meaning, spoken to frequently, has books in the home, has people ready to pay attention to his/her work), and I was immediately told that class size doesn't matter, that a highly effective teacher is more important than class size.

The large question is, why does it have to be either-or? Why do we say that because a teacher has done a great job with a class of 22 kids, s/he should be fine with 27 or 30? Particularly in a situation where kids don't all come in ready to learn and with proper support? A class of 20 kids where 5 of them have social-emotional and/or learning issues may seem to be just as difficult as a class of 30 kids where only 1 or 2 have those issues, but what happens when, in that class of 30 kids, 3 more of those kids tire of waiting for help and attention and start to give up? What happens when, because a classroom is crowded, the same kids bump into each other one too many times?

Tonight I am attending a meeting about school climate and culture, and I am hoping to formulate some answers to this question. My son's school has a number of wonderful volunteers who help contribute to a positive climate, but it isn't the same as having an appropriate number of students per class. More to come.

Whole Child, Whole Community Conversations

The Pittsburgh Public Schools has been holding a series of community outreach events. There has been one in the south area of the city, one to the west, and this evening one in the east end. Tomorrow, there will be a final presentation at a north side location. Go to pghboe.net for more details.

The format of these events included introductory remarks by the host organization, the superintendent, and her special assistant. Following that, there were three breakout sessions, and each was presented twice so that attendees could hear two of the three.

The session that I did not attend was about budget and living within our means as a school district. I could have, but I figured that since my expertise is in education and social action, and not number crunching, I'd stick with the other two.

Unfortunately for one of the first presenters, despite number-crunching being her speciality, someone thought that she was qualified to work in the office of teacher effectiveness. This presentation, entitled "Investing in People," sought to describe the need for the teacher evaluation system that was crafted with special help from the Gates Foundation. 

The backstory leading up to this system makes a little bit of sense. According to many teachers, there was little accountability, not enough feedback, and not enough meaningful observation. 99% of teachers were satisfactory, and that was that. The Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers made some courses available, but supposedly there was already talk of improving evaluations.

According to other teachers, and understand I don't want to implicate anyone, nor can I credit just one person when I talk to numerous people about this topic, the entire evaluation system was formulated under duress. Teachers had to attach their names to it because participating in this project meant that they'd have a better chance at being looked at favorably. 

Back to the presentation: a young woman by the name of Tara Tucci was the presenter I mentioned. She presented along with Dr. Connie Sims, who is yet another officer of teacher effectiveness...or something...so many admins. Ms. Tucci is a Data Fellow through the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Until just now, I didn't realize that such a person existed. She was speaking in place of Sam Franklin, the head of the Teacher Effectiveness office. Mr. Franklin taught for 3 years through Teach for America: Ms. Tucci was never a teacher. Believe me, I asked her. Not that I really want to be known as a bully but she looked like she was ready to cry when I got to the point of asking her if she was a teacher.

Here's the statistic that got me to the point of raising my teacher voice: 9,000 students were taught by ineffective teachers, and 6,000 of those were students of color. My response: you've got this backwards. By what means are these teachers being deemed ineffective? What schools are these students attending? District hiring policy encourages teachers to transfer to "better" schools. My child attends such a "better" school--many teachers have been there for awhile, and the community emphasis is strong and authentic. Other schools in the district have teachers who transfer out the second they can, or they just give up. As a former admin said, Teach for America would be a step up in stability for some of these schools.

I went on. Oh boy did I go on. I said that in order to encourage teachers to stay in rough schools they need supportive administrators who recognize the need for the right teachers (meaning the ones who are a good fit in these schools) to be supported in their efforts to just show the kids that they can learn and they matter, using the old adage "they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." But instead, teachers are afraid to go to those schools. Not because they're afraid of the kids, but because they're afraid that teaching students who are lower-performing is going to affect their evaluations. 

But in looking back at my tweets from the evening, I realized that even before the whole backwards issue with teacher ineffectiveness, I interrupted Ms. Tucci and put her on the defensive early when I asked why in the world the Tripod teacher survey was appropriate for kindergarten students. When she got flustered and couldn't handle it, Dr. Sims chimed in and claimed that she did administer this survey to kindergarten students before and they did fine. I think people are allowed to lie in public when it comes to stuff like that. It's a 45 minute survey, just like a test. Except that it's about a teacher and it goes into their evaluations. Really. So the fact that she was able to get the kids to complete the survey and was still around to stand in front of me to tell the tale...I guess her students' completing the tripod survey successfully is like saying that the teachers who developed the evaluation system were all completely on board. Similar truth level.

One of the longtime PFT execs said that part of the problem is that teacher scores are being made public. It perpetuates the outward criticism of teachers. Ms. Tucci said that these evaluations were also designed so that teachers would no longer be treated the same way. The implication there is that the union is trying to protect teachers from anyone being labeled as better than another when "everyone knows" (I can picture her saying that but she didn't) that some teachers are better than others.

I prefer to think of it as, teachers are treated the same way and are supposed to move up the pay scale at the same rate, with movement to a new "column" being achieved by additional education, because they all work hard but in different ways and at different times. Some teachers have more difficulty during the day, others after school, some when first starting out, others some time in the middle of their careers, and while there are variations on who works hardest on any given day of the year, you won't find a teacher who says "wow, I worked my whole life as a teacher--what a piece of cake!" The union protects teachers from being punished when someone else happens to have an easier class with fewer extra issues. The union also protects teachers from being punished because an admin doesn't like that person. Or at least that was the case--I've seen a few teachers lose their jobs over very foolish things.

Dr. Sims claimed that evaluations and scores were based on those facets of the school experience that can be controlled. They prefer to shut out what cannot be controlled. Foolish foolish people who make way more money than I ever will. Ugh, seriously, how many people are they paying to tell teachers that they are failures because the kids are failures, and how many actual teachers could they hire with that money? These out-of-school factors inform everything that these kids do!

I get very long-winded about these issues. I'll have to slow it down and summarize.

The second session actually addressed some of these factors and, aside from a brief argument about class size mattering or not, I was glad to see that there are services in place to help those kids who don't have all the advantages to succeed and set their sights higher. After all, public schools are a public good. 

Hopefully enough people heard me raise my teacher voice.

The Meeting With The Elephant

Post from March:

Our school held a Parent School Community Council meeting where, in addition to having the assistant principal and principal present, we had our school board representative there to answer district-related questions and concerns. Our board rep has older children who had previously attended this school, and she lives within easy walking distance. The meeting was loosely moderated and covered many of the usual topics.

First we discussed discipline issues and went back and forth about models for positive behavior and examples at home.

Then the discussion shifted toward family and community engagement. There are many kids at this school who come from rough neighborhoods, who are bussed to school while parents have limited transportation. One parent said something about how "they" need to get more involved, and another corrected that "they" are "us" and that we are all one school community. I spoke out of turn and asked how many families from those neighborhoods were present. Then I apologized for getting rowdy. Another parent suggested that perhaps we have workshops with professionals, to help parents work with their kids. I mentioned, this time after raising my hand, that there are families in our community who may not have had success in school themselves; they feel uncomfortable at school supporting their children even though at this point the parents are adults who won't "get in trouble" at school. Additionally, there may be parents who don't know where the school is located! Other suggestions included partnering families to form relationships and using the RoboCall to remind families of events at the school.

The next question also stemmed from the original question about behavior. A parent of two younger children inquired about children feeling safe, if they are the ones who are victims of bullying or violence? The principal and assistant principal said that while they do meet with those children after an incident and after a consequence has occurred, there are confidentiality issues in play. When kids are not involved but witness an incident, it is difficult for them to get the sense of justice, also due to confidentiality. The principal said that part of the PBI model (positive behavior interventions) is to reteach correct behaviors. They follow up with kids as a group, without using specific incidents, and ask them questions such as "how did we do during transitions this week?"

A teacher (and by the way, I was thrilled to see so many teachers in attendance at this meeting) asked if there was an increase of incidents when students have substitute teachers. She said that in general, more people are needed in the building. Why are teachers being pulled so often? The principal answered that the district pulls teachers by grade level for professional development. She said that sometimes kids are pulled from their regular classes if a substitute is there, in order to be proactive. Sometimes kids will be welcomed into the classroom of a teacher that they had in previous years to do their work and to be an assistant in their classroom. I find that to be a positive and proactive step, even though some may disagree, because it acknowledges the value of the school community. Additionally, this tactic emphasizes the importance of teachers staying in one building in order to get to know the students and have the students feel as though someone has cared about them for several years.

At this point our board representative joined us and in addition to asking some questions about budgets, school closings, and staffing, there was a more aggressive discussion about behavior and severe interventions. The schools all have partnerships with mental health providers (even though students cannot be forced to accept services). Students are experiencing serious issues at an alarming rate! Several parents present were knowledgable and credentialed, including social workers, teachers, researchers, and counselors. They all asked questions that related directly to school climate and healthy choices for kids.

Which brings me, finally, to the elephant in the room.

No one said outright what I was thinking. I just didn't get enough of a chance to articulate it clearly. Imagine me saying this in my outside megaphone voice: THE REASON THAT THE KIDS ARE BEHAVING POORLY THIS TIME OF THE YEAR IS BECAUSE THE STATE TESTS ARE COMING UP! Teachers are under pressure because the tests are being misused in order to evaluate them. Children are under pressure because the teachers are under pressure, and the test data determines far more about their future than it should.  The environment of the school has been taken over by test preparation. When testing occurs, all student work is to be taken down from the walls. Everything familiar is to be covered up. The procedures for testing are so specific and students and teachers are quaking in their boots in fear of deviating from the script.

Related to the panic about testing is the number of times the teachers are taken from their classrooms for workshops on data collection and meetings to tell them that they are being labeled as failures because they cannot solve all of their students' problems. Teachers spend so many days testing, and TIME IN TESTING IS TIME OUT OF LEARNING. Also imagine that last phrase in my outside megaphone voice. The giving of tests to monitor progress is a helpful diagnostic that assesses where a student is on a particular day in a particular mode. Ordinary 20 or 30 minute subject tests at the end of a unit are perfectly appropriate, once the students are old enough to navigate them. Even a standardized test near the end of the year, used as a snapshot, is not so terrible. Giving a review of the test question format and the procedures of the test should take a few hours, total, before the administration of the test.

I was glad to hear so many parents voicing concerns about school climate in a way that could easily be traced back to test anxiety. I was also very glad to hear the backlash against the amount of time taken away from teachers in order to attend professional development, leaving their classes in the care of any number of substitutes. Sometimes, they are in the care of a rotation of teachers who are giving up their preparation time, because there are not enough substitutes. Perhaps if enough people raise that concern, something could be done.

What was not addressed at this meeting was my favorite question: how much are these tests and test prep materials costing us? How many extra tests are students taking that they don't even need, and how many teachers could be hired with that money?

The VAM scam

Teaching is both a science and an art. Teachers and schools have an immense amount of influence on students, and the right atmosphere is essential. However, not every factor that causes positive change in students can be measured. In fact, the positive change itself may be difficult to discern. Students come to school from a variety of backgrounds, and readiness for learning does not happen in a vacuum but is a direct result of what happens before a child even walks through the door.

In searching for a relatively impartial definition of VAM (value-added model) as it directly relates to teacher evaluation, I found this:

Value-Added Models for the Pittsburgh Public Schools

Free free to read the whole thing. Keep in mind while you are reading it that the school district (or maybe the Gates Foundations...who keeps track anymore) paid Mathematica Policy Research to do this. This money could have been used to hire more teachers and reduce class sizes, which DOES improve student outcomes.

What frustrates me about test-dependent evaluations for teachers on the one hand is that the tests themselves are culturally biased, visually inappropriate, and illustrate only how that child performed on those days at that time in that subject matter. On the other hand, the "value added" for my own child is not measurable even if measuring teacher effectiveness by student test scores were valid (which is a conversation I can't believe we're still having).

My child is a kindergartener in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. He entered kindergarten reading at probably a high first grade level. I hadn't had that tested, but this is my estimate as a teacher with other teachers and reading experts as resources. His math skills were similarly advanced upon entering kindergarten, even before meeting his teacher.

His teacher (whose name I won't mention here but I plan to refer to her by name when I write letters to the principal and superintendent), through her presentation of the kindergarten material, has helped him to explore what he already knows in new ways. He takes what he learns in class and runs with it. He multiplies and divides. He adds and subtracts double-digit numbers easily, in his head. He reads at an even higher level than he did when he came into kindergarten, despite the fact that the books covered in kindergarten do not present him with a challenge.

She makes him feel worthwhile, that every new step he takes in his learning is a great one, even if he is surpassing curricular expectations and potentially generating extra work for her. She never holds him back, even though she makes sure that he doesn't dominate class discussion (he isn't a commanding personality, even though he is confident and self-assured) and allows everyone a chance to participate.

She emphasizes the value of self-discipline and positive peer interactions. My son has embraced the routines and procedures that accompany the school experience, and having a teacher who expects his best has also allowed him to blossom both academically and personally.

How in the world can VAM gauge the effects of my son's teacher on his progress when the tests that will be given to him are not on his current level and will not measure what he has actually learned this year? How can VAM measure his teacher's qualitative influence on him when there is no test that measures personal emotional growth? How does VAM account for the fact that my son came in at a high level and has educated parents and grandparents who are very involved in his education? Does VAM also take into consideration the fact that my son comes to school clean and healthy, having had enough food to eat? According to the chart on page 11 of the report by Mathematica, those factors are not considered. "Free and reduced lunch program" is included, but there is a wide range of family income and stability that could be covered under the program. One child receiving free or reduced lunch could be living in a stable home with two parents; another could be homeless or living with a grandparent.

We waste so much money on trying to quantify the effects of teachers. So much money, in fact, that we probably could have restored music and art classes to previous levels and still had enough left over for some useful technology upgrades.

Meanwhile, kindergarten students are taking the Tripod survey.  They can't all read, but they can answer questions about teacher effectiveness?

Something has gone terribly wrong.

We're Little, But We're Loud

Pittsburgh is a major city in that we have a baseball team, a football team, and a hockey team. It appears on those green highway signs when people are headed in our direction.

We are not nearly the size of Chicago.

Today I made a phone call to the Chicago Board of Education, along with many other members of the Badass Teachers Association, to leave a message saying that Chicago teachers should not be punished for refusing to give unfair tests, nor should students who opt out suffer any repercussions. I asked the gentleman on the phone if there had been many calls, and he said that yes, there were quite a few. "Good! Have a good day!"

Chicago is getting attention because its "Democratic" mayor is destroying public schools in favor of privately-run charters. I'll go into that later.

But people against overtesting have made news in Pittsburgh.

Check this front-pager out:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 3/10

Also look out for some national coverage.

As for the title of this post...it's an obscure barbershop singing reference. Go look up The Gas House Gang.

Grabbing The Megaphone

If the public hears the same message over and over again, that message will be accepted as truth.

Until someone grabs the megaphone and changes the conversation.

Are you ready?

To kick off this blog, here's a video of my most recent testimony before the board of the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

I am jumping in with other city residents to support public education. Actual public education. And we have allowed people who know nothing about education to call the shots for far too long. Testing students over and over again is like measuring your child every day to see if he will be tall enough for the cool rides at the amusement park. Punishing teachers for student performance on tests is like penalizing them for every child who is below the 50th percentile in height. Every moment spent testing is a moment that isn't spent on teaching and learning. Every dollar spent on tests--and they're not cheap--is a dollar that isn't spent on adding more staff. Every test battery we buy is a music or art teacher that we cut. Every time we hire consultants or pay exorbitant amounts of money for test-related professional development, we waste money that could be spent on upgrading technology, and we waste time when we underutilize the expertise of the faculty.

Common Core "State" Standards have been presented as a way to raise the bar for students. Outside of my son's classroom is a sign that says "College Begins with Kindergarten." While setting kids on a path of affirmation and positive reinforcement will help them orient themselves toward life goals, asking students to accomplish what is beyond their developmental scope is a guaranteed way to set them up for failure. The Gesell Institute of Child Development, founded by Dr. Arnold Gesell (the "father" of child development, who first articulated that children pass through stages of development but at their own paces), maintains that children have not changed and the rate at which they progress through milestones has not changed. This recent article, Best Practice for Common Core, talks about developmental appropriateness and that students should not be punished for not meeting benchmarks at exactly the same time as peers. And yet, Common Core and its associated high-stakes tests are doing exactly that.

Why has this happened? We must not have been paying enough attention. We, the parents. We, the teachers. We, the city residents.

We need to grab the megaphone and change the message from "Our schools are failures" to "Our schools can be great if they are set up for success instead of failure."

Are you ready?