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.

Read my lips: reform requires taxes

In today's news, Illinois Schools Superintendent Christopher Koch pointed out that funding cuts are bad for education reform. Now, I wasn't a huge fan of the Illinois reforms to begin with (the big focus was on preventing teacher strikes and paying teachers for high test scores), but Koch is right that education reform is going to take some serious funding.

Real reform, like the suggestions from Iowa's roundtables and the initiatives AFT president Randi Weingarten highlighted last week at the AFT Teach conference, will require real funding. Selling this reality to parents, pundits, politicians, and private sector CEOs will be the biggest challenge we'll face in achieving the long-term goal of improving the US education system to rival those of Finland, Singapore, and South Korea.

While we work on the mid-term goal of selling folks on the idea of higher taxes to fund real school reform, we could act in the short-term to divert funding away from unproven and disproved reform efforts, such as bonus pay for high test scores and developing standardized tests for preschoolers.

More links:

Evansville Courier Press on Koch's funding frustration

AFL-CIO blog summary of Weingarten's remarks

AFT Quality Education Agenda for evidence-based, equitable, scalable, and sustainable reform

Raise up your staff, part 1

As efforts continue to make schools run more like businesses, the job of principals is becoming more like the job of CEOs. Balancing school budgets and making large purchasing decisions used to be the purview of school boards and school districts, but principals are increasingly expected to make the short- and long-term decisions about the business aspects of the schools they head. In response to this shift, some new preparation programs are focusing heavily on the business and management side of running a school.

In 2008, Rice University, an elite private school with no education department, introduced an MBA program for aspiring school leaders. The program focuses on developing the business skills of principals, while de-emphasizing the role of principal as instructional leader. The directors of the Rice Education Entrepreneurship Program (REEP) are explicit about thinking of principals as CEOs. Being a good principal means being a good manager -- of employees, data, and financials.

According to REEP, it also means bringing new ideas to the field of education. Traditional preparation programs focus on developing instructional leaders who are well-versed in education theory and history, like super-teachers who can help their faculty develop as educational professionals. In contrast, programs like REEP seek to develop leaders who challenge accepted education theory and are willing to try new approaches to get better results.

I respect the efforts of programs like REEP (including the New York City Leadership Academy) to prepare principals for a job that increasingly requires business management skills. I also agree that the public education world needs big thinkers and innovators to face the challenges of educating an increasingly under-resourced student population to participate in an increasingly technology-driven business world. But I think it is a mistake (and such an easy mistake for people coming from a business paradigm) for the directors of these programs to position themselves as competition for traditional principal preparation programs.

The reality is that today's schools need brilliant instructional leaders, capable of connecting with and supporting students and teachers, and excellent business managers, able to collect, analyze, and utilize data to make decisions about staffing and budgets. I wonder if it's possible, or wise, to expect principals to handle a job that big and varied. According to a 2009 NY Times article on the uncertain success of the NYC Leadership academy, Amy Ellen Schwartz, director of the only independent study of the Academy so far, has her doubts. The article quotes Schwartz saying, "It may be that it's an impossible job.... You're asking for things that don't often come in the same person."

Next Monday is Independence Day; tune in for Celebrating independence, Ed Nerd style.

Getting connected and staying unstuck

The idea for this blog came out of a conversation with a friend about how easy it is for teachers to feel disconnected from the larger world of education, including advocacy groups and policy makers. I originally planned to blog about education news happening right here in New York; after all, New York is so often a testing ground for education policies and practices.

On second thought, I realized that it is easy for those of us here to become insular. It is easy to get stuck. What is happening in education in New York? A lot of talk, a lot of change, and not a lot of large-scale progress. Despite the mayor's claims about narrowing the achievement gap, the data don't bear out that narrative. To solve the seemingly intractable problems of education here in New York, we cannot limit our focus to local pockets of success, thriving against the odds. Analyzing those pockets can be useful, but if we want to achieve success on a larger scale, we are going to have to look outside our own city for examples of how to go about it.

This blog will feature exciting and inspiring education news from around the world, with commentary about how to apply the lessons learned from others to our own education system here at home.

Next post: Take me to your leader