Monday
July 30, 2007
Sorry for the lack of posts recently! I’ve been hard at work trying to get the NEW TEN ready for the public.
I’ve also been busy preparing for Golden Apple’s first-ever digital storytelling seminar, which I’m teaching alongside Golden Apple Fellow and award-winning storyteller (and my dad), Syd Lieberman.
Interested in finding out more about digital storytelling? Try this post in our new Resources area.
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Wednesday
July 18, 2007
A cute op ed from a New York Times education reporter on the many strange and amazing skills teachers have that nobody really thinks about. Like giving great instructions:
One of my all-time favorite moments covering the New York City public school system occurred just before Christmas in 2003, at Public School 28 in Harlem. About 50 or 60 second graders, onstage in the school auditorium, serenaded Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein with a perfect rendition of “Feliz Navidad.”
When the singing stopped, Mr. Bloomberg applauded. “Children, that was beautiful,” he said. “Now, what I want you to do is say ‘Merry Christmas’ and ‘Happy New Year,’ first in Spanish, then in English.”
The problem was not a language barrier - nearly all of the children at P.S. 28 are bilingual - but rather the mayor’s notion that he could give four simultaneous commands to a group of 7-year-olds, as if they were his aides in the bullpen at City Hall or executives at his company, Bloomberg L.P.
Still, the students who had just finished singing so sweetly in unison dutifully tried to grant Mr. Bloomberg’s request.
“Meyeow, weow, eowah, eiwash, iwah,” they mumbled. Or something like that.
Working with children looks easy. It is not.
Teachers, much like doctors or other highly trained professionals need to be methodical, careful, and thoughtful. It’s not magic.
This reminds me of a favorite family anecdote. Some of you know my father, Syd Lieberman, who is a Golden Apple Fellow and storyteller. Well, he was in the hospital many years ago, because he’d had a heart arrhythmia. The medication hadn’t worked to reset his heart rhythm, so the doctor said they were going to have to shock him.
Syd: Oh cool! It’s going to be like ER, with everyone running around and yelling “CLEAR!”
Doctor: Mr. Lieberman, you’re a teacher right?
Syd: Right.
Doctor: Have you seen Dead Poet’s Society?
Syd: Of course.
Doctor: Well, is teaching like that?
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Thursday
July 12, 2007
Wow, things are really not getting better for the state budget. The governor and the legislature are at a stalemate, and it’s not clear when or how it’s going to get resolved. The impact on the state’s education system is up in the air.
It looked like school funding reform was off the table for this year after the crushing defeat of the governor’s Gross Receipts Tax proposal. But the IEA and IFT are still working with lawmakers on another proposal. Said IEA president Ken Swanson, “It ain’t over till it’s over, and we don’t believe that the fight is over.”
Some groups are still fighting for a “tax swap” where a slight increase in income tax would allow for a decrease in school reliance on property taxes, the primary cause of school funding inequality in Illinois. Vocally opposed to any general tax hike, the governor has already vowed to veto any plan involving a swap. That leaves the most likely outcome to be “a simple bump in the numbers, which school officials say easily gets eaten away by rising costs.”
Meanwhile, Illinois school districts are left scrambling:
So far, area school officials say the slowdown hasn’t affected their revenue streams. But if legislators don’t approve a budget soon, some districts will enter the school year with very shaky numbers.
“I don’t think it allows us to pass our budget. We’re going to have to do something else unless we have firm numbers (from the state),” said Russell Pietrowiak, chairman of the East Aurora School Board’s finance committee. “(State funding) is too big of a chunk of our budget. It impacts our actual operation.”
This is a critical time. If you’re interested in becoming more active on school funding reform, one very vocal group is A+ Illinois. They’re circulating a petition that churches and organizations can sign and encouraging everyone to call their representatives.
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Thursday
July 05, 2007
The National Council on Teacher Quality comes out swinging in its 2007 State Teacher Policy Yearbook, looking at state progress on teacher quality. They looked at each state and Washington DC, evaluating its progress on a matrix of 27 goals related to teacher quality for a total of over 1,300 separate analyses. What did they discover? “States as a group meet or come close to meeting just 21 percent of the goals, with no state meeting even half of the goals.”
These goals include equitable distribution of quality teachers across the state, professionalization of teacher training and licensure, value-added teacher evaluation, accountability for teacher preparation and alternative certification programs, and improvements to the preparation of special ed teachers.
Some of the specific shortcomings the report sees nationally:
STATES ARE NOT PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION TO WHO GOES INTO TEACHING. States provide significant funding to teacher preparation programs, particularly in state-funded universities, yet there is little oversight of candidates’ academic caliber.
This is interesting vis-a-vis the IERC study from a few weeks ago that found that new teachers with strong academic backgrounds were likelier than others to leave the profession quickly. Could this be related to another shortcoming seen in the NCTQ analysis--that states aren’t doing an adequate job of monitoring the quality of teacher preparation these students are receiving?
The report berates states for not relying on their own licensing tests and allowing teachers to teach for months or even years before having to show competence on a licensing exam, something no other highly trained profession allows. If states don’t rely on the tests and don’t trust them to measure whether someone is minimally qualified to become a teacher, what is their purpose?
Most damning, the report argues that in most states:
THE INTERESTS OF ADULTS FREQUENTLY COME BEFORE THE NEEDS OF THE CHILDREN. Far too many accommodations are made for teachers in the areas of testing, tenure and evaluations, risking the possibility that too many children could suffer significant academic harm from a bad teacher.
This is a BIG report (and this is just the summary! There are full-length state-by-state reports, too), but there’s lots here to think about. To keep it manageable, I suggest focusing on pages 6-11 and then popping over to page 29 to see about Illinois. Hungry for more? Pages 68-121 go through each of the 27 goals in some detail, including listing which states are meeting each goal. (The website also has a neat interactive map that shows a summary of this info).
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