Unacceptable

Today I'd like to introduce you to John Kuhn, superintendent of the Perrin-Whitt Consolidated Independent School District in North Texas. Kuhn is a life-long advocate of public education and public accountability. This weekend, at the National Save Our Schools Rally in Washington DC, he spoke passionately about the vital need for great public schools, the critical importance of a no-excuses public attitude toward educating America's kids, and what it will really take to create the equitable education system our great country deserves. For now, as we work toward those goals, Kuhn says, "I stand before you today bearing proudly the label of unacceptable because I educate the children [private schools] will not educate.... I am unacceptable and proud of it!"

Make no mistake: unacceptable as he is according to current educator grading methods, Kuhn is not an apologist for bad teaching; he is only asking for appropriate systems of evaluation. In April, Kuhn appealed to his state legislature for a two-year moratorium on high-stakes testing. When one representative asked Kuhn why he thought teachers shouldn't be graded, he wasn't prepared with his answer. However, he recognized that this is a question that keeps coming up for educators, and being unprepared to answer makes us look, in his words, "like [we] are just whiners who don't want to be held accountable at all." So he thought about it and developed an articulation, not of why teachers shouldn't be graded, but of how the state has become a bad teacher and, thus, an irresponsible grader.

His emphatic and empathetic response to this question provides a useful starting point for all of us who believe teachers should be graded, but fairly. It's only a starting point, as some folks pointed out in the comments. It is up to the rest of us to develop our own articulations of how to create better forms of teacher accountability, how to fairly evaluate teachers and push them toward achieving greatness. Until we put meaningful teacher evaluation, support, and development systems in place, we must join Kuhn in proudly bearing the label of unacceptable.

A question of values

So if the returns on this country's economic investment in public education show up in our industries, how much is a good teacher worth? NPR's Planet Money recently hosted economist Eric Hanushek who attempted to address that question in a study on the subject. Using test scores as the measuring stick, and following his own weird correlation-implies-causation train of thought, Hanushek claims that replacing, by removal or retraining, the "bottom" 5-8% of teachers with "average" teachers (as measured by student test scores) would result in a 100 trillion dollar boost to the GDP.

Without reading the study (available only by paid subscription), I can't comment on the particulars, but I can recommend Diane Ravitch's excellent, well-researched, and thorough response to studies like Hanushek's that focus on "Value-Added Analysis": The Pitfalls of Putting Economists in Charge Of Education. Her piece appears on one of my favorite education blogs, Bridging Differences, where she and Deborah Meier (another beacon of sanity and thoughtfulness) write back and forth about their different perspectives on issues in education today.

Beyond the high error rates, multiple ethical issues, questionable methodologies, and wide-reaching policy implications of "Value-Added Assessments," the bigger problem with these evaluation methods is the dangerously nebulous definition of value in education and society. Before we can evaluate teachers and schools, we must clearly articulate our values and develop appropriate ways of assessing the extent to which our education system embodies and promotes those values. This work requires us to look beyond the economic purposes of education to focus on the civic, moral, and ethical implications of our efforts and actions with regard to public education.

Ready for some good news out of Congress?

A few senators on both sides of the aisle spoke some sense about education in a Senate Appropriations Committee meeting, today, where Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appealed for an education budget increase. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) agreed in principle, saying, "It is wishful thinking to expect improvements in school quality when we are laying off teachers."

In the same meeting, Senators Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Jack Reed (D-RI) criticized competitive grant programs including Race to the Top (RTTT) and Promise Neighborhood (PN) grants. Shelby expressed concern that RTTT ensures inequitable funding and threatens states' rights by introducing a de facto requirement for states to support charter schools. Reed cautioned that funding should not be allocated to "untested" competitive grants, while being stripped from research-based programs.

The senators gently couched their concerns in party rhetoric, but my hope is that this is a sign of a larger political shift away from trying to apply competition-based business strategies to an education system that is supposed to provide equitable education to all. With increasing attention to the way this country educates its children, it seems more folks are starting to understand that the economic purpose of schools is not to turn a profit, but to ensure strong profits, over time, across all industries, by providing a skilled, knowledgeable, creative, and capable national workforce.

Links:

Reuters on the Senate Committee Meeting

HuffPo on the Senate Committee Meeting