No changes for NCLB this year

Ever think, “gee, I should probably be following what’s going on with NCLB a little bit more”?  Well, here’s a quick update to round out 2007.

So, what’s going on with NCLB?  The short answer is not much.  The law technically expired in the fall, and the plan was to reauthorize it, possibly with some major (or minor) changes.  But the reauthorization plans got stalled in various committees, and now Congress has give up on doing anything with it until 2008. (The law doesn’t disappear when it expires...it just keeps going as it was before).

Last year I attended the Statewide Conference on NCLB (where I’ll be again this year, presenting on using online teacher communities - i.e. TEN - to discuss NCLB), and one of the presenters basically said we wouldn’t see NCLB reauthorized until the next administration. I’m betting he’s right.

Wondering what kind of changes might be in the works?  The Education Commission of the States has a nice rundown of what most major education groups are recommending.  The Public Education Network has a good collection of articles from around the country that trace the NCLB debate over the last year. And the NEA has a pretty comprehensive collection of recommendations and fact sheets.

If you’re really interested, check out the actual testimony from the initial hearings on the House’s draft reauthorization bill.

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Tips for the first week in January?

Winter vacation is upon us! 

This morning I read an interesting piece in today’s Chicago Tribune on the struggle faced by teachers and districts when their Latino students take extended vacations to visit family in Mexico.

Waukegan high school students with 10 or more absences a semester are given a “no-credit” grade for the course, [Waukegan school administrator Martha] Padilla-Ramos said. Students might not be allowed to return to classes after a long absence.

“The students are losing out,” she said. “The older ones could be coming back in the middle of final exam week ... they could fail their classes.”

Padilla-Ramos estimated that 10 percent of her district’s Hispanic students leave for an extended vacation this time of year.

Regardless of whether your students are taking extended vacations, the first few days back in January can be a little rocky as your students struggle to relearn routines.  Any tips for new teachers who may be feeling a little anxious about this transition?  What works for you for getting your classes on track in early January?

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“Does ‘Donors Choose’ send the wrong message?”

The Teacher Leaders Network is having a conversation on a topic we discussed briefly on the old TEN last year.

Donor’s Choose matches innovative classroom projects with donors who want to help fund them. Most teachers I’ve talked to love Donor’s Choose.  They’ve gotten needed supplies or special equipment and gotten to do exciting projects they would otherwise not have been able to do. Donors love it, too.  It’s much more fulfilling to make a donation to a specific project than to a large organization.  Plus, they get thank you notes and pictures of the class project, which makes it feel that much more personal. (We actually “registered” with Donor’s Choose for our wedding, encouraging our friends and family to fund a project in our name. People loved it!)

But, a few TLN teachers worry, does Donor’s Choose promote the idea that states shouldn’t have to fund schools adequately?  Why should teachers have to go to private donors for things like calculators, books, or markers?

Although I don’t have any beef with the organization Donors Choose itself, when we use money from outside sources like this on a regular basis, we are “cleaning up” for the government, and sending the message that it’s okay that we are not provided with adequate resources to do our jobs—we will find another way.

Does this argument ring true to you?

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Expectations, goals, and working in a school of need

Back in October, after a New York Time feature piece on Teach For America, I wondered if different types of teacher preparation programs yielded new teachers with different sets of expectations about their teaching career.  I also wondered,

Is someone asking teacher preparation candidates questions like,
- Why do you want to be a teacher?
- How long do you intend to stay in teaching?

Yes! Via Joanne Jacobs, a new study from Public Agenda and the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality offers some fascinating insights, especially on the first question.

Comparing traditionally prepared teachers to teachers from three alternative certification programs* (both teaching in high-needs schools), the study found that alt cert teachers were far more likely to say that the very big goal of “putting underprivileged kids on the path to success” was one of the most important factors in entering teaching (71% of alt cert vs. 44% of traditionally prepared).  On the other hand, alt cert teachers were less likely than traditionally prepared teachers to say that “teaching a subject you love and getting kids excited about it” was a major factor (33% of alt cert vs. 43% of traditionally prepared).

I’m intrigued by this contrast, especially because the two groups experienced life in school very differently. Alt cert teachers were much more likely to feel that the school had assigned them to teach the toughest students (64% vs. 41%) and much more likely to cite lack of support from administrators as a major drawback (54% vs. 20%).  They were twice as likely to rate their administration’s instructional leadership and guidance as fair or poor, and much more likely to rate the assistance received from their colleagues as fair or poor.

To me, it feels like the next set of questions that need to be asked would deal with how people judge their own success or failure and how they judge those around them. Questions like:

- Is it easy for you to see small successes, even when perhaps your larger goal wasn’t accomplished or things didn’t turn out as you had hoped or expected?
- How important is it to you to feel that colleagues share your outlook on the world? Does it negatively impact you when others respond to your optimism with negativity?

There are several relevant TEN discussions right now, as Golden Apple Scholars and others struggle with the realities of working in schools of need.  Please visit them (HERE, HERE, and HERE) and provide your perspective, or leave a comment here!

* The study looked at Teach for America, Troops to Teachers, and the New Teacher Project.

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Tough times to be a science teacher in Texas…

From the New York Times:

After 27 years as a science teacher and 9 years as the Texas Education Agency’s director of science, Christine Castillo Comer said she did not think she had to remain “neutral” about teaching the theory of evolution.

“It’s not just a good idea; it’s the law,” said Ms. Comer, citing the state’s science curriculum.

But now Ms. Comer, 56, of Austin, is out of a job, after forwarding an e-mail message on a [pro-evolution] talk about evolution and creationism — “a subject on which the agency must remain neutral,” according to a dismissal letter last month that accused her of various instances of “misconduct and insubordination” and of siding against creationism and the doctrine that life is the product of “intelligent design.”

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The Ledge

Eduwonk pointed me to this amazing blog post from a teacher in California about “the ledge,” the dangerous precipice teachers negotiate, trying not to fall off one side into mediocrity and apathy or off the other side into leaving the profession altogether.

You get up on the ledge as a young teacher when you realize that there is no formal system of accountability anywhere… No one is making sure you do your job well. You’re relatively new to all this, and things can be uneven. Instructional quality tends to fluctuate, but no one’s around to praise the times you bring it, and worse still, there is no one to suggest that uh, you better step it up if you want to make it round here.

You’re up on the ledge when you want to know how to get better, but there’s nothing there. The vast store of practical strategies you took from your alternative or traditional route credentialing program seems to be running a little dry and district PD is either non-existent or an exercise in futility...You do, however, have the opportunity to be told occasionally how great you are because you demonstrate basic competence in the context of repeated failure, and that tends to have the opposite of its intended effect.

That last line really resonates. How many new teachers in struggling schools are only praised when their students are quiet lining up in the halls? How many would give anything to instead hear praise for their facility as reading instructors or the way they inspire their students to love math?

She also hits on my personal hot-button issue around retaining teachers past the 3-5 year mark:

[T]he only lever school leaders have to lean on is the level of caring inherent in the individual teachers, the only thing driving you to do more is to care more. But there’s a limit to your caring, and a limit to the effectiveness of your caring…

[The ledge is] in that space where you know you do it for the kids, where everything is for the kids, where you get paid in appreciations and handslaps and end-of-the-year surveys from the kids, and you love doing it for the kids, and you want to do it for the kids, but why can’t you do it for any of the other myriad reasons available to other professionals?..

The line between necessary and sufficient is terribly blurred when we talk about teaching and caring about kids.  You cannot be a teacher, let alone an excellent teacher, without caring about kids.  But it is not enough. There’s more to it than that and we owe it to ourselves to keep pushing and questioning the system until teaching becomes a profession with clear standards of excellence, clear paths toward achieving excellence, and authentic recognition of excellence.

Read the whole article here.

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No more xeroxing assignment sheets!

Local ed tech expert Lucy Gray mentioned an interesting new online tool in her blog a few weeks ago (here and here).  Diigo allows you to annotate web pages - basically you’re creating online sticky notes.  Others can add their own sticky notes or comment on yours.

Assuming you have access to a lab, or your students have reasonably guaranteed access to computers out of school, this seems like a really neat tool: assign students an article to read, and monitor their comprehension/participation by asking for a response right in the text.  Or, assign an article and annotate it with a discussion question to be answered.  Or, ask students to find articles themselves and annotate them.

I’m picturing HS students, but I bet middle school kids could do this too.  You can make private groups in Diigo, so your class’s annotations won’t be seen by the public.

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