Back on track

If you hadn’t noticed, it’s been a few days since my last post. Aside from applying for jobs in NYC (anyone have any leads?), I’ve been spending the week trying to catch up on all the articles I was behind on. I subscribe to 19 education news sources to get you the best tidbits from around the blogosphere and further, so after being in Israel for 3 1/2 weeks, I was behind by about 700 articles. I’ve managed to finally catch up, so I figured it’s time to get back to my article every day or two that I had going before.

There are a few  topics that I would like to cover. Tomorrow’s post will be about the recent selection of organizations that won grants to develop assessments aligned with the new CORE standards. Very exciting. I’ll also give you my thoughts on the scalability of the Locke High School turnaround, a school to which I have a personal connection.

Tonight, we’ve got  a local LA headline (from yesterday): John Deasy, deputy director of the Gates Foundation’s education division, has been hired as the new deputy superintendent for LAUSD. Not only that, but with a salary of $25,000 more than what Ray Cortines (the current superintendent and his boss) is making, there is speculation that he will take over for Cortines within two years. Before his stint with the Gates Foundation, Deasy was superintendent for Prince George’s County Public Schools from 2006-2008 and Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District from 2001-2006.

Deasy has been picked as the new deputy superintendent for LAUSD.

What does this mean for LAUSD? First of all, it could possibly be a strong step in the right direction. Under Cortines, the district has by-and-large bent to the will of UTLA, not wanting to ruffle any feathers. While I am sure Deasy intends to work with the union, rather than against it, his track record shows he is a big proponent of some policies that they have adamantly fought against. Most notably, he arranged a bargain in his Maryland district to incorporate performance pay into the teacher contract. Other policies he has advocated include data-based decision making, staff development, fair evaluations for both teachers and administrators, and revenue sharing by richer sections of the district with poorer ones.

Of note is his performance in his previous districts. While Deasy made large gains with Prince George’s County, he left after less than three years with the district still the second worst in Maryland. I doubt he’d leave so quickly from such a big project as this, but you never know. There is certainly a lot on the line for him if he is to step in after Cortines, who at the age of 77 is expected to retire within the next two years. One thing is for sure, it will be no easy task with so much dysfunction and so many budget problems both at the district and state levels.

Can Ed Schools Keep Up?

I have had quite the busy week. I’ve been preparing to go to Israel on Sunday night to lead a group of college students on a tour with Taglit-Birthright: Israel. What does that mean for you? Well, the most obvious impact is that I will not be able to blog quite so often. I will attempt to get a few in, but from May 17-27, I will be out of commission for the most-part. For the two weeks following, I will be in Israel still, but should have regular internet access, so I am hoping to be able to continue on a regular basis. No guarantees until June 10, though.

Anyway, I promised on Tuesday that I’d write about an article from Monday’s LA Times that talks about how schools of education need to adapt in order to catch up to the alternative certification pathways that have recently been taking root. Better late then never, right? In the article, Jonathan Zimmerman, a faculty member at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development does something that few in “traditional” programs have done: admitted that the crop of students that ed schools get stinks. I read an article in The Economist a couple of years ago (Aren’t subscribed to The Economist? You can find a bootleg version of the article here.) that pointed out one of the big differences between countries that are successful in educating their students and those that aren’t. Future teachers in countries like South Korea, Singapore, and Finland are the top students and are given difficult requirements to become teachers. For example, Finland requires all teachers to have a Master’s before teaching.The US on the other hand recruits a large proportion of its teachers from the bottom third of graduates.

Before they became teachers... Image thanks to edweb.fdu.edu

Zimmerman says that right now, schools of education are in a do or die scenario. They must either keep up with alternative certification programs or they are done for. Zimmerman brings up examples of legislation that are pushing this particular envelope, such as the New York Board of Regents’ unanimous decision to allow alternative certifiers the ability to grant Master’s degrees. If other states follow suit, it will force colleges to rethink how their programs work. Alternative pathways are becoming more and more popular. This past year, Teach For America had over 46,000 applicants. Not only that, but it draws top students. Over 12% of Ivy League  seniors applied to TFA this past year. It will no doubt be the biggest employer at some of the best schools in the country as it was last year. Remember how we said the best countries have the best students teaching? Teach For America fits with that model.

So what does Zimmerman suggest? First of all, he thinks the night classes currently offered to Teach For America and other alternative pathway students need to be revamped. Having experienced them myself, I couldn’t agree more. They are often just a big waste of time. What use are theoretical classes when you are a first year teacher struggling to keep 12 year olds from throwing books at each other? This doesn’t seem particularly extraordinary. This past year, Arizona State allowed Teach For America program directors to teach classes themselves, rather than relying on ASU faculty. TFA didn’t even have to wait for legislation to be passed allowing them to grant Master’s degrees – they simply partnered with the school to have more control.

However, changing the classes is small peas compared to Zimmerman’s other idea. His major concept is to start a year early. Have organizations such as TFA recruit college juniors, rather than seniors. Then, the schools of education provide classes during the students’ senior years and have them act as full-fledged student teachers during the entire summer. While intriguing, I doubt that this is particularly practical. First of all, the reason that these students get picked by Teach For America is that they are in rigorous programs already. These students can’t just give up their senior years of college to take education classes. They’re probably already double- or triple-majoring as it is. I know I certainly would not have been able to fit any extra classes into my year. Future Teach For America candidates are too busy not only with classes, but extra-curricular involvements as well. It’s not worth it for a Harvard senior to give up his or her time from their crammed schedules. Even if they might theoretically have the time, students are not ready by the beginning of their junior years to decide what they want to do after college. As it is, the first round of Teach For America selections happens in October and November of senior year, requiring them to make decisions much before many of their peers.

I think Zimmerman is missing the boat with this idea. Rather than taking classes on top of or instead of senior-year classes, training needs to be pushed a semester or a year out.  Ed schools shouldn’t just keep their normal programs and have ways for alternative certifications to pick parts of their programs that they like; they should skim the fat. They need to change their entire courses of study. One model that seems to be taking root and I am hoping will spread is the residency program. You are probably familiar with doctor’s residencies. They go to school for a few years and then spend a few years with partial responsibility, working their way up to a full position. This is the way it needs to be. Some alternative certifiers are already playing with similar models. A friend of mine joined Math for America, a program that requires five years, rather than Teach For America’s two. The first year is just your Master’s classes, which include student teaching.  Then, fellows teach for another four years as part of the program. I don’t see Teach For America switching to a five-year program any time soon, but adding that additional year, similar to Zimmerman’s idea but after college, would be a much more practical solution.

Better yet, partnerships with school districts should allow for a true extended residency. Even so-called residency programs try to cram in their programs into a smaller time-period. The Urban Teacher Residency is one example. Again, they have one year of classes and apprentice teaching. Here is what I would like to see: a first year of classes and student teaching. Perhaps Monday through Wednesday could be classes and Thursday and Friday would be days to come for student teaching. You don’t have your own classroom, so it’s not a genuine experience, but it’s enough to get your feet wet. After a semester or two of that, you get your own classes. However – and this is the important part – you still do not take on a full load. The biggest problem with being a first-year teacher is that it takes much longer to do everything. You have to write new lesson plans and figure out how you are going to grade essays. You are constantly learning new things and having to change your tactics and find what you are comfortable with. It is simply nonsensical for a first-year teacher to have five classes with 150 students like any that starts out in high school. Why not have three or four classes to begin with and add onto that load once a teacher has proven they can handle it? Even in elementary schools, teachers could switch off and only teach part of the day.

Allowing teachers to transition into teaching, rather than taking on a full load at once has a few benefits. Obviously, it allows the teacher more time to get their work done. But it also, gives them time to analyze their teaching. First-year teachers could be given mentors who sit with them every day or at least a few times a week and help them problem-solve. Another added benefit is that newer teachers would thus be teaching fewer classes and, in addition to being better for those students they would have, they’d be  negatively affecting fewer students if they did not have strong skills. A residency such as this could also create a logical salary scale: beginning teachers teach fewer classes and get paid less, intermediate teachers would have a full load and be paid more, and veteran teachers would take on mentoring as well, increasing their pay accordingly.

I have way more to say on this topic, but I think I will continue it at another time, since this entry is already getting to be pretty long. I will say one more thing, though. Education schools need to learn to keep up, but the various parties (schools and legislators included) need to work together on these problems, rather than trying to do their own thing and hope that others conform to them.