Teaching in 2030

by Robert Pondiscio
April 15th, 2010

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Posted in Curriculum, Education Practice, Teacher Training | 21 Comments »

In “Classroom Teaching in 2030,” Dan Willingham “looks back” at 20 years of evolving classroom practice to describe four “mental obstacles” teachers face that make their work needlessly difficult–impossible, really–and depress student achievement.  The backward glance conceit, of course, is a clever way of describing what ought to be done; it invites a kind of,  “Yeah, why do we expect teachers to do all this” perspective on current classroom practice.

Why, for example, do we expect teachers to write their own coherent curricula?

“Selecting the most important concepts in a field and putting them in an order that will make sense to students requires deep knowledge of a discipline—knowledge that most teachers or administrators simply did not have.  In the absence of such knowledge, teachers could (and did) write curricula, but many of them were likely less than optimal. This problem was all the more challenging for elementary teachers, who were expected to provide foundational knowledge on which later teachers could build and to do so for multiple subjects.

Similarly, teachers are expected to write their own lesson plans, “cope with enormous diversity of student preparation,” and effectively handle chronically disruptive students, Willingham writes.  They are also expected to “improve their craft without any opportunity to practice.”

“One damaging misunderstanding was the confusion of ‘experience’ with ‘practice.’ These are not the same thing. For example, my driving improved substantially during my first six months behind the wheel because I practiced driving. But during the subsequent thirty years I haven’t improved much, although I’ve gained experience. Practice differs from experience: when we practice, we actively try to improve. We note what we are doing wrong and seek alternate ways of doing things. Practice also requires expert feedback; it’s hard to spot your own mistakes. A teacher may recognize that students are bored, but she may not always see why. In 2010, no procedures were in place to make practice part of a teacher’s job. Teachers worked in isolation and so could not provide feedback to one another.”

From his imagined vantage point 20 years hence, Willingham describes how the eventual creation and adoption of national standards, curricula and tests conspired to create the conditions that allowed some of these mental hurdles to be cleared, creating conditions that favored wide collaboration among teachers.

“Although the changes of the last twenty years have been described as the removal of mental obstacles for the teacher, it should be borne in mind that the changes have had important consequences for students: classrooms that are less chaotic and instruction that follows a sensible, structured sequence within and across years, delivered via methods that have been tried and shown to work,” he concludes.

<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=oVYZQ-PWfyA">http://youtube.com/watch?v=oVYZQ-PWfyA</a>

Willingham’s clever piece is one in a series of essays by members of the Hoover Institution’s Task Force on K-12 education titled American Education in 2030.

Alternative Class for Disrupters?

by Robert Pondiscio
November 30th, 2009

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Posted in accountability, Teaching | 13 Comments »

Schools won’t improve, a Florida teacher argues,  unless there are alternative classes or activities ”for those who don’t care to learn or can’t, or won’t, let anyone else learn.” Until these needs are addressed,” writes Junie Rabin in the Sun Sentinel “do not expect changes in drop-out rates or second-class education. Forget your headlines promulgating new accountability standards, forget “no child left behind,” forget bonuses and self-serving plaques on the wall.”

Rubin cites a familiar litany of issues–indifferent students who are not academically prepared, but have been passed along, for example–but the worst, she says are the disrupters “who turn the best lessons into a fiasco. Equally impossible is transferring them out. Evaluate my performance, how I inspire my students, with the addition of the new parolee whose judge decreed he either goes back to school or back to jail,” she writes. 

One wonders what Ms. Rubin would make of this New York Times editorial.

Classroom Management Problems? Hire a Bouncer

by Robert Pondiscio
November 8th, 2009

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Posted in Education Practice | 17 Comments »

At Ed Policy Thoughts, Corey Bunje Bower looks at a letter to the editor in the New York Times from a former teacher, who suggests the way to improve public education is to hire a ‘bouncer’ for every classroom to handle disruptive students.  Corey is skeptical about the bouncer idea but points out “discipline was, far and away, the biggest problem in my school . . . and the main reason I left teaching.” 

Frequent commenter Brian Rude suggests teachers sometimes need extra help with discipline in the classroom just like a stalled car sometimes needs a wrecker.  “The wrecker provides a source of external power when needed, power in abundance, but only on those occasional times when the car cannot rescue itself,” he writes.  “So applied to classroom discipline, a wrecker would be some way to bring in an excess of control from an external source to impose very tight control of a class once in a while when needed.”

Elsewhere, writing in the Montreal Gazette, high school teacher Freda Lewkowicz observes that the ability to effectively discipline students and control the school environment is the difference between private and public schools.  Public schools, she writes, should have the same right as private schools to expel students.

Public schools don’t expel, even after repeated serious offences, while private schools do.  Parents need to ask themselves why only private schools have this right to create a positive, nurturing and safe learning environment for all. All students deserve this, don’t they? The manacles thrust on public schools forbid them to use tough love….Most parents are pro-discipline, pro-safety, pro-high standards and anti-bullying. Public schools should be allowed to free themselves from the shackles of ineffective discipline and deliver these goods for free.

In U.S. schools, of course, discipline is reflexively viewed through its impact on the disruptor, rarely the disrupted.  I’ve long wondered if the ability to control their learning environment isn’t the X Factor that allows high functioning charters to do so well.  This, to me, was one of the unwritten lessons of David Whitman’s Sweating the Small Stuff:  Getting the school environment right matters, and that’s hard to do without the ability to expel.   The usual counter-argument is that “no excuses” charters have low expulsion rates, so that’s not what’s happening.  I’m not sure I agree.

The real power of consequences comes not from their execution, but from the certainty that they can and will be used.  This simple premise explains why we never had a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union and why KIPP expels so few students.  The change in behavior comes from the the potential bad actor’s knowing he won’t get away with it.  Deterrence works.  If the price to be paid is too high, a rational decision can be made that chronic misbehavior is not worth it. 

Student discipline will probably never become the issue in ed policy that some teachers–and lots of ex-teachers–might wish.  But it should be recognized as a major impediment to student achievement.  The homily that effective instruction engages all learners at all times is lovely, but doesn’t reflect the reality many teachers face.  Indeed, I have long believed that the achievement gap is in large measure a time on-task gap.  Countless hours in chaotic schools are lost to disruption.

One Bad Apple

by Robert Pondiscio
May 12th, 2009

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Posted in Education Theory, Educational Policy, Research and Reports | 19 Comments »

bad-apple Children from troubled families perform “considerably worse” on standardized reading and mathematics tests and are much more likely to commit disciplinary infractions and be suspended than other students, according to a new study.  Writing in Education Next, Scott Carrell of UC-Davis and the University of Pittsburgh’s Mark Hoekstra offer evidence that  “a single disruptive student can indeed influence the academic progress made by an entire classroom of students.”

Carrell and Hoekstra, who are both economists, examined confidential student data from Florida’s Alachua County school district, consisting of observations of students in grades 3 through 5 over an eight-year period. The pair also had access to disciplinary records for every student in their sample, which they cross-referenced to domestic violence data from public records.  What emerged was a compelling set of data that indicates children exposed to domestic violence have more disciplinary problems at school, underperform academically and have a negative effect on peers–resulting in lower test scores and increased disciplinary problems in others.  In essence,  a ”one bad apple” syndrome.  Carrell and Hoekstra title their piece “Domino Effect.”

“A majority of parents and school officials believe that children who are troubled, whatever the cause, not only demonstrate poor academic performance and inappropriate behavior in school, but also adversely affect the learning opportunities for other children in the classroom,”  observe Carrell and Hoekstra.  The pair cite a Public Agenda survey which found that 85 percent of teachers and 73 percent of parents agreed that the “school experience of most students suffers at the expense of a few chronic offenders.”  The study largely validates those concerns. 

Our findings have important implications for both education and social policy. First, they provide strong evidence of the validity of the “bad apple” peer effects model, which hypothesizes that a single disruptive student can negatively affect the outcomes for all other students in the classroom. Second, our results suggest that policies that change a child’s exposure to classmates from troubled families will have important consequences for his educational outcomes. Finally, our results provide a more complete accounting of the social cost of family conflict. Any policies or interventions that help improve the family environment of the most troubled students may have larger benefits than previously anticipated.

Poll teachers in struggling schools, and I will wager a substantial amount that classroom disruption is identified consistently as the primary barrier to student achievement.  Yet it is consistently glossed over or dismissed, typically attributed to a teacher’s lack of classroom management skills.  I have long believed that the time on-task lost to disruption and behavior problems is almost certainly one of the under-discussed root causes of the achievement gap.  This study does a great service by confirming what many teachers and parents have intuited for years: disruption matters and has a negative effect on all students.

School and classroom tone matter enormously–perhaps more than any other factor.  Get it right and everything seems to work.  Get it wrong and nothing does.  This study holds out the promise of sparking a very important discussion about the rights of the individual in the classroom versus the rights of the community.  It’s long overdue. 

(Image via Digital Eargasm)