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Over half the states have now agreed to implement the Common Core standards as their own. I think it is now time to think about how quickly we can expect these standards to be met.

We are told that Common Core is a high quality, rigorous set of standards for K-12 education, far more challenging and explicit than what most states have been using as their own standards. I am going to accept that that is true.

If states could immediately begin to implement Common Core in the classroom (i.e. if we had the curriculum, unit plans, materials and lesson plans ready for September), there would still be problems. There is no way that today’s students are ready for those more rigorous standards. Today’s 12th graders obviously are not up to the high bar that Common Core sets for 11th grade work, because last year they were only operating at the level set by their states’ lower standards. So, next year’s graduates will not be up to the level of Common Core.

Similarly, next year’s 11th graders are not ready for Common Core’s highly rigorous 11th grade work, because their 10th grade work was only at the level of their states’ less rigorous old standards. And if they can’t do 11th grade Common Core level work this year, then they will not be able to do Common Core 12th grade work the following year. So, the high school graduating cohort of 2012 will not be up to Common Core’s standards. (more…)

What is the point of merit pay for teachers? Isn’t that the first question we should be asking? And then, given that answer, do we think that it will work? Let’s take a look!

(Let me be clear here: for the sake of this discussion, I am talking about some sort of compensation structure by which individual teachers get bonuses and/or raises based on their own students’ performance on some sort of test or measure.)

One possible reason to adopt merit pay is that it seems more just, in a way. That is, it would be only be fair if better teachers should be paid more money. I mean, who wouldn’t think that better teachers — even if by “better teachers” we mean “teachers who get better results” — deserve more money? We could argue about which outcomes and measures are meaningful, but the basic idea has a lot of appeal.

There is another big potential reason to adopt merit pay — a far more compelling possibility. If a merit pay program would somehow lead to improved outcomes, who would oppose such a thing? But I wonder if that result is even plausible, given the realities and details that so many people want to ignore. So, let’s think about what the theory of action (i.e. how/why such programs lead to the desired outcomes) might be. How could a merit pay program lead to improved outcomes? I have three big questions. (more…)

Last week, I explained why I no longer think that charter schools are public schools and asked for comments from GothamSchools readers. I’ve given a lot of thought to the ideas that others have presented.

First, no one has come close to rehabilitating the argument that charter schools are public schools simply because they accept public funds. Many organizations have their operations paid for — in whole or in part — by public funds, and not all of them are public in the way that “our public schools” are. If charters are public schools, this is not why.

Second, I raised the issue of democratic accountability. To what degree do elected officials and their appointees have authority over arbitrary aspects of charter school operations and staffing? For example, years ago Mayor Bloomberg required all schools to hire parent coordinators. Under mayoral control, Bloomberg can mandate curriculum and spending decisions, and any spending not controlled by existing contracts. Generally, elected officials and their appointees can even remove principals and other administrators for arbitrary — though not discriminatory — reasons. (Because New York City principals have a union contract, this authority is severely constrained. But this is unique to the city and could be negotiated out of the contract.)

There have been many arguments raised against this point, but they generally fall into two camps. (more…)

In the past, I have been very careful to talk and write about “charter schools” and “traditional public schools,” the latter of which is often abbreviated TPS. I have even tended to favor others’ claims that charter schools are, in fact, public schools. But I’m afraid that I was wrong. I have tried to be more thoughtful about this question and I simply cannot find a compelling argument that they are, and can find too many that they are not.

First, let’s acknowledge what charter schools are. They are publicly financed schools that are run by private – usually nonprofit – organizations. Sometimes they are independent, and sometimes they are part of larger charter school organizations or chains.

The primary argument that charter schools are public schools is that they are paid for out of government funds. While they do get most of their budgets from tax dollars, that is not enough to render them public schools. There are many other organizations that pay for operations with public funds but are still private organizations. Defense contractors receive enormous sums of money from the government to provide design and manufacturing of weapons systems, but they remain private corporations. Blackwater provided labor, training and services to the Department of Defense and the State Department, but it remained a private organization. (more…)

We all know about strong and weak regulation. In this era of economic crisis we debate stronger regulations, and decry the weakening or loosening of financial industry regulations.

We all know what that means. Stronger regulation means some combination of more laws, more controls, closer scrutiny, stricter limits, etc.. Strong price controls would be strict, and weaker regulation of the airline industry has lowered prices dramatically.

And yet, many charter school proponents have twisted the language around 180 degrees. They think that having few charter schools is “weak,” and having multiple authorizers (each of whom might have its own criteria) is “strong.” They think that freedom from preexisting school regulations makes a “strong” charter school law, and many believe that imposing strict requirements on schools as a condition for them to remain open after their initial characterization period is “weak.” (more…)

The reauthorization of NCLB should require states that accept Title I money (i.e. all of them) to require all public school teachers to get buzz cuts. Seriously*. This would benefit our schools and our students.

Think about it. With buzz cuts, teachers could get ready for work faster in the morning, and spend less time touching up their hair each day. That might give them an extra 10-30 minutes each day (fact**), time they could spend meeting with students, giving students better written feedback or creating better lesson plans. Not only that, but it would actually be like giving them a pay raise!!

Think about it. Our nation’s most efficient public service is the military (fact***). It requires all recruits to get a buzz cut (fact***). It is the strongest military in the world (fact). We want our schools to be the best and most efficient in the world, right? Why not follow the military’s model? This also returns us to traditional values for teachers, in this case discouraging their dating (fact). The time they are not spending on dating, preparing for dates and thinking about dates could then be poured into their teaching, as it should have been in the first place (fact***). (more…)

Did you see Michael McCurdy’s post this week in the Community section on what a kindergarten report card — at least for a G&T student — looks like? Apparently, there are nearly 100 criteria — I count 98 — each which gets rated on a scale from one to four.

That is stunning, or at least it is to me. 98 criteria!! Do you know how many marks a high school students gets on his/her report card? One per class, something like six to nine, total. That’s less than one tenth the feedback that kindergarten students get!

But I do not think that high school students — or their families — get even that much feedback. I mean, what do grades really mean? Mr. McCurdy’s post drew me back to an old thought of mine. What does a B or B+ mean, on a report card? (more…)

Did you see that the state wants to evaluate teacher training programs by their graduates’ students’ test scores? Of course, the usual sources think that this is a great idea.

Did you see Michael McCurdy’s post this week in the Community section on what a kindergarten report card — at least for a G&T student — looks like? Apparently, there are nearly 100 criteria — I counted 98— each which gets rated on a scale from one to four.

Of course, high school students’ report cards are far simpler. Just one grade for each subject, something like six to nine marks total. It’s amazing that in nine years schools gets so much simpler and less complex that reporting can be simplified by a factor of ten or more.

Of course, this proposal would rate teachers’ programs even more simply than that, at least high school teachers’. Some teachers would be rated on a single test, and others rated on no test whatsoever (i.e. art, gym, electives). So, a truly a great way to judge teacher preparation programs, no? Remarkable how as we get older, our tasks get so simplified that others need look at less and less data to evaluate how well we are doing, isn’t it?

In Horace’s Compromise, Ted Sizer problematizes* our understanding of what constitutes a good high school. He questions how much learning is really going on in our good schools (i.e. our suburban schools that send kids to fancy colleges). The compromise the title refers to is the deal between students and teachers, in which the students agree not to give the teachers any real trouble, so long as the teachers don’t give them any real trouble – or maybe it is the other way around. Schools don’t really challenge students with truly difficult lessons, and students agree to jump through the hoops that have replaced real and deep learning. In Doing School, Denise Pope makes clear what this looks like from students’ perspectives. She shows different strategies that teenagers might take to be a good student.

* Sorry. I really like that word.

But what really makes for a good student? Sizer and Pope make clear what our current system has worked so hard to teach kids about what it means to be a good student. But what if we could start from scratch? What if we considered the kinds of goals we really want our schools to aim for? Principally, what if we made learning – rather than achievement or attainment – the center of schooling? (more…)

Ted Sizer was a critic and trouble maker. He looked at our schools, all of our schools, and said in essence, not good enough and we are doing it wrong.

He didn’t mean the bad schools. And he didn’t mean achievement gaps. He meant all schools. He meant the good schools too, even the best schools.

So, who the hell was Ted Sizer? He was a visionary educator and critic of our schools, a real giant who was influential enough to get a 1000+ word obituary in yesterday’s New York Times and numerous other tributes and articles this week.

His doctorate was in the history of education, and I believe his disseration was about how the high school credits thing evolved. Forty years ago he was the Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. After that he was the Headmaster at Philips Academy in Andover, Massachuetts. Then a professor of education at Brown. He also helped found a charter school in the middle of Massachusetts, and late in his life was co-principal of it with his wife Nancy. He had credibility in the most powerful of circles. (more…)