Category Archive for ‘Teaching’ at The Core Knowledge Blog

Archive for the 'Teaching' Category

The Cradle of Differentiated Instruction

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 3, 2008 in Education Practice and Teaching. 0 Comments

Today we call it differentiated instruction. Back in the day, it was called the one-room school house. Is it an idea whose time has come around again? At Pajamas Media (hat tip: Joanne Jacobs), Charlie Martin costs out what it would take to bring back the one-room school house…in midtown Manhattan. Martin built his scenario using the average cost of about $14,000 per year that it costs to educate a New York City public school student.

We assume 24 students in Manhattan, and a one-room school built in quality office space in midtown. I laid out a floor plan and discovered we could fit it nicely into 1,050 square feet; equip it with good quality desks and chairs and with one iMac computer for every two students, plus one for the teacher and a Mac Pro as a classroom server; and add Internet connections and $1,000 per student for books and supplies. How much remained to hire a teacher? $230,000. Almost a quarter of a million dollars.

“I think we’ve solved the problem of recruiting good teachers,” Martin dryly comments. “For $230,000 a year, it would be the rejects from elementary teaching who would go to Harvard.”

Martin concludes of his own thought experiement that we spend amazing amounts of money per student, struggle to pay teachers well enough to keep them, while outcomes decline. “We’ve seen that we could go back to the model of a hundred years ago. It’s not only possible, it would make teaching into one of the most well-paid jobs in the country, even the world, and still save money,” Martin concludes. “As a close friend put it, ‘where is the money going?’”

Hit for Teacher

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 2, 2008 in Teaching. 1 Comment

A Louisiana school board member is calling for tougher measures against students who hit teachers. Ricky Pitre, who serves on the Terrebone Parish school board, wants the school board to hold hearings before students expelled for hitting teachers can return to class. Sounds reasonable.

When I was punched by a 4th grader last year, the student was back in his classroom within minutes. When I had the temerity to question her judgement, I was lectured by my AP for being insensitive to the difficult lives of the children in my South Bronx elementary school.

Neither was any action taken against the parent who hit me during our school’s 5th grade “moving up” ceremony several years ago. Of course, in that case, I was clearly out of line and deserved to be smacked. I had, after all, told the woman’s son to tuck in his shirt.

The Limits of Good Intentions

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 1, 2008 in Teacher Training and Teaching. 0 Comments

Another example of the limits of good intentions, and the very real hurdles new teachers face in driving student achievement in our toughest schools. Baltimore Sun columnist Dan Rodricks writes about Ed Morman, a mid-career switcher who entered the Baltimore City Teaching Residency, but is now admitting defeat and quitting the field.

“The [teaching] job was the hardest I’ve had, by far,” Morman wrote, “but the potential for job satisfaction was far greater than I’d ever felt before. I told the kids that I quit teaching because I needed to make more money. This isn’t true. … I quit because of the stress I felt. The main cause of the stress was the kids themselves. I could never rise above the feeling of humiliation that I felt each day when I tried to address 20 or 25 kids and might find none of them paying attention to me. I seethed when I asked a student to stop talking and heard the response, ‘Get out of my face.’ So often I stood in the classroom wishing I could be anywhere else.

“I try to get a class to come to order while one kid is jumping on a second, a third calls out my name asking me for a pencil, a fourth demands that I let her go to the bathroom and a fifth needs to go see Miss Smith, while a sixth needs a pass to the nurse’s office and a seventh starts making silly, repetitive noises. … One day a cheap calculator hit the wall just above my head. Another day, it was a Jell-O cup, whose contents dripped down the wall and stained the picture of Harriet Tubman I had hanging on a bulletin board. …I had a meltdown after seeing how poorly my kids did on a standardized test.

Typically Morman shoulders the blame himself for his failure. “One thing I absorbed from my otherwise inadequate training is that it was up to me to make a difference,” he notes. “And I did make a difference, but not enough to sustain me through the nonsense.”

A sad, achingly familiar tale.

Verbal Abuse: How Widespread?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 29, 2008 in School News and Teaching. 3 Comments

For the second time this week, a ghastly-sounding story of a teacher verbally abusing a five-year-old child. And this time, it’s on tape. The parents of an Indiana kindergartener sent the child to school with a tape recorder in his pocket after suspecting problems:

I’ve been more than nice to you all year long and you’ve been ignorant, selfish, self-absorbed, the whole thing! I’m done!” Indiana teacher Kristen Woodward says to Gabriel on the tape. She continues: “Something needs to be done because you are pathetic! If me saying these words to you hurt, I hope it does because you’re hurting everyone else around you.”

Gabriel can be heard crying on the tape. Over at Joanne Jacobs, commenter Barry Garelick asks a question that’s probably on a lot of parents’ minds after hearing about this and a similar tale earlier this week: “I wonder how prevalent such abuse is; could this be more widespread than it looks?”

“Why You’re Not Going On The Trip”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 29, 2008 in Students and Teaching. 1 Comment

Great post by teacher blogger Jose Vilson (hat tip: Joanne Jacobs) on giving kids what they need, instead of what they want. This is what enforcing classroom consequences looks like. Or should.

I care for you, and that’s why you’re not going on the trip tomorrow. Other teachers may protect you at their leisure. They may argue that you need the attention, and that you’ve deserved it academically, and to an extent they’re right. Yet, something makes my head itch at the thought that I’d let a repeat cutter attend a trip with students who truly deserve it. And of course, we know it’s not just you. The crew you hang out with influences your decisions to miss out on my afternoon announcements, my calls to you for better behavior and respect for all teachers, not just the ones you feel like respecting.

Read the whole thing here. First-rate stuff. I hope his administration backs him up.

Kindergartner Voted Out of Class

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 27, 2008 in School News and Teaching. 6 Comments

A Port St. Lucie, Florida parent is threatening to sue after her son’s kindergarten teacher led his classmates to “vote him out of class.”

After each classmate was allowed to say what they didn’t like about Barton’s 5-year-old son, Alex, his Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo said they were going to take a vote, Melissa Barton. By a 14 to 2 margin, the students voted Alex — who is in the process of being diagnosed with autism — out of the class.

Barton filed a complaint with the school resource officer, who investigated the matter, according to Port St. Lucie Department spokeswoman Michelle Steele, who said the teacher confirmed the incident took place. The state attorney’s office concluded the matter did not meet the criteria for emotional child abuse, so no criminal charges will be filed, Steele said. The district is investigating, not surprisingly.

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 26, 2008 in Core Knowledge, Curriculum, Educational Policy, Homeschooling and Teaching. 0 Comments

Our weekly roundup of the week’s most important news, information and blog posts about curriculum, teaching, education policy and other items of interest to the Core Knowledge community.

Core Knowledge

Learning Essentials
By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo, Education Week
Core Knowledge prizes content across the disciplines, bucking a trend toward a narrower, skills-based approach to learning.

Best of the Blogs

Revisiting AERA, Bill Ayers, the Weather Underground and Public Education at Matthew K. Tabor
Just what the title says. The definitive post.

Redefining intelligence at Joanne Jacobs
Yale psychologists are trying to develop new tests of intelligence that measure “practical, creative, and analytical skills.” One goal is to identify more black and Hispanic children as “gifted.”

Could a Parrot Pass the New York State ELA Exam? at Eduwonkette
What’s worse, the question students are asked to write about? Or the anchor paper?

Beating My Drum: Education, Economics, and Entitlement at The Gonzo Diner
America is not only experiencing an economic crisis, it is experiencing an education crisis, and there are more connections between the two than many think.

Compromised Competitiveness at The BoBo Files
The replacements for America’s retiring work force are less knowledgeable and less educated, less skilled and demotivated, disinclined to learn and prone to shortcuts, weak in science and math, and possess poor reading proficiency.

Teacher Voice From Washington…And, Is The AFT Going All Sherman Over Michelle Rhee at Eduwonk
What’s happening inside the teacher’s union?

Teaching and Curriculum

No Crisis For Boys In Schools, Study Says
By Valerie Strauss, Washington Post
A new study on gender equity in education concludes that a “boys crisis” in U.S. schools is a myth and that both sexes have stayed the same or improved on standardized tests in the past decade.

Great education debate: Reforming the grade system
By Steve Friess, USA TODAY
A handful of schools nationwide have set off an emotional academic debate by giving minimum scores of 50 to students who fail.

Bill to protect PE, arts classes vetoed
By Matthew Benson, The Arizona Republic
Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoes a measure intended to protect gym classes and the teaching of music and the arts from K-12 budget cuts.

Georgia Throws Out State Test Results
By Laura Diamond, Alan Judd and Heather Vogell, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The state throws out the results of two social studies tests and education advocates question the validity of eighth-graders’ abysmal math scores.

Sent home: The suspension gap
By James Walsh, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Black students are far more likely to be suspended from school than are their white classmates — and Minnesota’s disparity in suspensions is twice the national average. Why? What are the consequences?

Education Policy

States Starting Slowly on NCLB Proficiency Goals to Face Crunch, Report Says
By Christina A. Samuels, Education Week
States that established modest goals for themselves in the early days of the No Child Left Behind Act may need to make nearly impossible improvements in student performance to reach the law’s target of 100 percent proficiency by the 2013-14 school year.

Fixing the Flaw in the ‘Growth Model’ And Helping Schools, States, and NCLB in the Process
By David P. Sokola, Howard M. Weinberg, Robert J. Andrzejewski, & Nancy A. Doorey, Education Week
Why not craft the reauthorized NCLB to foster innovation and improvement in the field of assessment, rather than to prevent it?

Homeschooling and Parenting

Home-schoolers, unite and take over
By Melanie Wilson Daniel, Athens Banner-Herald
Home-schoolers solidarity comes from awareness that they’re rebels, outlaws - and that there are those out there who’d like to make them criminals.

Brown, Schwarzenegger rally behind homeschoolers
by Chris Rizo, Legal Newsline
California Attorney General Jerry Brown is urging a state appeals court to reconsider a ruling that parents must hold teaching credentials to homeschool their children.

Et Alia

Education drives democracy
By Diane Cameron, The Albany Times Union
Jefferson and the other founders valued education not so that the United States would someday lead the world’s economy, but to ensure longevity for the form of government they were birthing.

Study probes RFID use in schools
By Dennis Carter, eSchool News
Radio-frequency tracking technology would be ideal for equipment but could violate privacy laws if applied to people, researchers say.

A Memo to Wendy Kopp

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 22, 2008 in Education Leadership and Teaching. 16 Comments

To : Wendy Kopp, CEO and Founder, Teach For America
From: Robert Pondiscio, The Core Knowledge Blog
Re: Taking TFA to the Next Level

Dear Wendy:

First of all, congratulations on the huge surge in applications this year, and that New York Times editorial praising the impact of Teach For America’s teachers. TFA is hot, hot, hot! You’re well on the way to establishing the premier brand in education reform. Heck, you’re already there. That’s why you made this year’s TIME 100 list of the most world’s most influential people. It’s a good time to be Wendy Kopp and Teach For America. You’ve earned every accolade.

Because of all this success, you have built up a boatload of political capital. You’ve earned the right to innovate and really move the needle for our most disadvantaged kids. Now it’s time to break the mold and deploy your corps members in a way that could take TFA’s impact—already significant—to new heights.

You and I both know that the big knock on TFA is always going to be that its teachers are “two years and out.” Sure, you’ve got data to show that your smart, well-trained new teachers improve student outcomes. That’s great stuff. We also know that a third of corps members stay past their two-year commitment, and that’s even better. Even those who teach for just two years often go on to leadership positions, both in and out of education, deeply affected and energized by their experience. Bonus! But the more cache TFA gets, the more it’ll be used by some as a blue-chip resume item to catch the eye of recruiters on Wall Street, in the best law firms and corporations, and in top grad schools. Face it, that’s already an issue. These kids are no dummies, after all.

So here’s how we solve the “two and out” problem and kick TFA’s impact into the stratosphere: Instead of throwing TFAers into the worst teaching situations in the cities you serve, place them in some of the best, highest-performing schools. (Stick with me, Wendy, here’s the beauty part.) Place them in that high-functioning school for two years as pinch-hitters for some of our best, most experienced teachers, and send those master teachers to the same schools to which you’re sending TFA corps members now. We can call it the Teach For America Fellowship, and throw in a nice extra chunk of change to incentivize those master teachers without worrying about whether it’s merit pay.

Here’s why it makes sense:

Continue reading ‘A Memo to Wendy Kopp’

Retention Deficit Disorder

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 20, 2008 in Teaching. 0 Comments

Teacher blogger TMAO’s surprise announcement last week that he was resigning from his school was the edublog equivalent of LBJ announcing he would not run for re-election. Today he posts the reasons that were NOT behind his unexpected departure.

It’s not that he wasn’t prepared, successful, supported or paid. TMAO is basically burned out, conceding “I’m not happy unless I’m being the teacher I see in my head, but the process of finding that guy and living as him no longer makes me happy.”

Having been in TMAO’s shoes less than a year ago, I’ll say what I said then and many times since. Teaching in a struggling school is the easiest job in the world to do badly—but the hardest job in the world to do well. Setting high standards is something you do not just for students but for yourself. It’s not (and this, frankly, is something too many people who’ve never been in classroom will never quite get at a visceral level) about test scores or data. It’s so easy to take that first step down the path of least resistance. No one knows but you. Some make peace with it. Others — and it sounds like TMAO is one of them — simply can’t abide not “being the teacher I see in my head.”

This inevitable inability of even the most earnest, energetic young teachers to keep it up for more than a few years portends many things for education reform. None of them good.

Update: Corey Bunje Bower, a consistently thoughtful ex-teacher blogging at Thoughts on Education Policy weighs in candidly on the TMAO story and his own reasons for quitting.

Go Big Mo!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on May 19, 2008 in Teacher Training and Teaching. 0 Comments

Speaking of Teach for America (see below), Eduwonk has a guest blog piece by former TFAer Maureen Miller, who looks behind the surge in the organization’s recruitment numbers. I’m kvelling. She was my grad student a few years ago.

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