Public School Performance Discussions Have Become ‘Theater of the Absurd’

The never-changing focus of public school advocates – ‘holding elected officials responsible for insufficient funding’ via ‘the grass is greener’ elsewhere examples, constantly seeking additional excuses for repeated failures and then adding new responsibilities and corrective staff/programs, eliminating/discrediting performance/accountability goals and measures, misleading/ignoring parents and the public, reducing staff workloads, adding more coordinators to coordinate added programs and experts, adopting a never-ending litany of fads, ignoring best practices and higher pupil achievement at less cost in successful public schools in other nations and leading U.S. charters, complaining about unfair competition and bemoaning the lack of an education-centered plan/world that addresses every societal issue. Credible and repeatedly replicated research findings that discredit major public school expenditures are also ignored whenever they lead to more accountability, more work and/or less funding.

How many poor-performing public school teachers are pushed out/year – less than 0.1%. Yet, credible researchers has shown that pushing out the lowest 5 – 6% in an established faculty and replacing them with average teachers would quickly close the gap between public school graduates and their peers in other nations.

Educators purport to be experts in learning. Yet, what do they propose to fix failing public schools? ‘More of the same’ – Einstein’s definition of idiocy! 

One of the simplest ways to learn is to study the successes of others – eg. charters such as SUCCESS Academy (NYC), KIPP and BASIS, along with highly-successful public schools in the Far East. Instead, public schools turn up their noses – ‘We’re different!’ (Yes, there are differences, but these competitors are predominantly the same/similar. Eg. Sam Walton often studied Sears. )

The only way public schools compete is to maximize inputs – numbers of staff, pay and benefits. NEVER on maximizing outcomes. Who would buy/use ANY product/service produced with a similar focus, especially one outperformed/lower-priced via innumerable alternative sources?

Enough – I propose some thought experiments:

1)Would you go to a doctor who rejected the major findings of numerous credible researchers because they caused too much added work and/or boosted accountability? Eg. handwashing, testing, educating patients on the value of lifestyle changes, prescribing antibiotics, testing for sore throat, coronavirus, etc.? (Public schools reject the findings of numerous credible researchers because they cause too much added work, boost accountability – rewarding additional experience beyond the first three years, rewarding additional coursework, degrees, certifications, reducing class-sizes/workloads beyond the first few grades all have been repeatedly shown to have little/no impact on boosting pupil achievement.)

2)Would you care that there were no credible ratings of your doctor, or prefer one in a highly-selective faculty such as Mayo Clinic? (few public schools have objective data on who it’s excellent/best teachers are, nor is it interested in finding out.)

3)Would you fly a commercial jet knowing the pilot was NOT regularly or rigorously tested and observed, or if he/she was, had 2-3 years to improve? (It’s hard to get fired as a teacher at public school.)

4)Would you fly a new commercial jet when its components had received little/no testing? (Toyota revolutionized process management/quality control partly by implementing IMMEDIATE testing after each  step, whenever possible. Public school teacher unions fight ALL testing.)

Proposed Real-Life Comparisons:

1)Compare the ‘value-added’ gains/pupil in classrooms led by ten of your local public school’s highest-paid randomly-selected teachers vs. BASIS’s ten lowest paid randomly-selected teachers (with at least three years experience), same fields of instruction and grades.

2)Compare the accomplishments and knowledge of any PhD/EdD. from a College of Education applicant to your local public school vs. Eva Moskowitz (SUCCESS Academy founder), either of the Blocks (BASIS founders) – the latter three having never taken a College of Education course that I’m aware of. Also, compare your public school applicant selectee with any randomly-selected Broad Academy/Yale School of Management graduate with at least three years of experience. (No College of Education courses there either.)

What are public school advocates really trying to do? The ONLY positive conclusion/assumption is that they believe ‘happy workers provide better services/pupil outcomes,’ and that retention/happiness equates with ever-higher pay and benefits, with less and less accountability and workload. Test that hypothesis vs. the bankruptcies/disappearance of American major manufacturers, all our legacy airlines, G.M./Chrysler, our fumbling Postal Service, bankruptcies in NYC, Detroit, Stockton and multi-billion pension-fund deficits in Ohio, Georgia, Florida, Missouri, Virginia, Texas, Alabama, California, Maryland, Louisiana, Michigan, Indiana, Minnesota, New Mexico, Arizona, Mississippi, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and Kentucky. 

Then there are the public-employee city pensions threatened with insolvency, including San Francisco, Honolulu, Philadelphia, Chicago, and NYC (again).

It should be clear by now that unions, especially teacher unions, are nothing but serious trouble – more pay, less work, no accountability, poor performance and a mortgage on your children’s future. The latter is particularly onerous and insulting – given the poor preparation teacher unions and their members provide America’s children. The SEA is the 21st-Century version of Barbarians at the Gate, and the Trojan Horse.

O.K. – I’ve laid my version of reality. What’s your alternative reality?

America’s Public Schools Must Dramatically Improve Pupil Achievement – NOW!

America’s economy and standard of living lead the world. Both, however, are stagnating and threatened by increasing global competition.

Our public schools are the only large economic sector that has not significantly improved productivity and/or quality in the last nearly 50 years – despite new research findings and new technology. Instead, they’ve been immersed in constant turmoil – arguments over funding levels, racism, teaching methods and emphases such as socio-emotional vs. academics, Phonics vs. whole-word, power struggles with self-serving teacher obstructionist unions over tenure, testing/accountability and most everything else, administrators and local politicians, and innumerable other fads. During that period overall U.S 17-year-old pupil achievement has stagnated – despite increasing inflation-adjusted per-pupil funding 125+%. Similarly, despite spending more/pupil than all other nations except Luxembourg and Norway, our U.S. pupil achievement remains at middling levels vs. other developed nations.

U.S. students have performed poorly vs. other nations since first assessed (FIMS) in 1967. Far East nations spend far less/pupil than the U.S., and their students now now lead the U.S. by 2 – 3 academic years and also exceed our graduation rates. Together, those nations recently turned our U.S. manufacturing centers into a ‘Rust Belt,’ and now they’re targeting our high-tech sector.

Our public schools ignore key education research and basic management precepts. Instead of confronting reality and taking corrective actions regarding our poor comparative performance, we respond by either ignoring the data, constructing numerous mostly false excuses’ – eg. they have ‘higher suicide rates,’ lower graduation rates,’ ‘less poverty’ and/or ‘cannot match our pupils in criticial thinking,’ or create our own meaningless and largely useless state/national standards.

China now plans to use its rapidly growing/improving STEM skills to dominate Artificial Intelligence and other high-tech areas by 2030. Brookings Institute predicts “Whoever leads the world in A.I. in 2030 will lead the world until 2100,’ amd Vladimir Putin has made a similar prediction. A.I. is also predicted to eliminate or down-skill nearly half of existing jobs.

America’s more favorable entrepreneurial environment and universities, combined with other nations lacking infrastructure and basic manufacturing skills have protected us to-date from our comparatively poor pupil performance. They no longer can.

Fifty-years of ‘More of the same’ has not improved the performance of our public schools; we’re now #25 overall and #37 in Math. Of particular importance is the proportion of top scorers – 8% for the U.S., 44% in China. Similarly, in collaborative problem-solving, U.S. pupils were ranked #22, Singapore #1, Japan #2.

China’s leading educators, already far ahead of the U.S., are now also pursuing further improvements via Artificial Intelligence. Maintaining our standard of living requires that we innovate to match their expected new performance levels.

1)Fast-paced immediate-feedback A.I.-assisted instruction objectively linking rewards and recognition to results would create a much more attractive environment for high-talented intrinsically-motivated individuals to become teachers. It would also help objectively and immediately identify low performers – for additional training or replacement.

2)Neophyte, misled, and uninformed school boards and legislative meddling would be eliminated and replaced by national expert direction focused on national priorities –> no more teacher-dominated elections, misled meddlng mothers, time wasted selecting curricula, tests and textbooks 14,000+ times nationwide, constantly comparing and chasing ‘competitive’ pay scales and inability to credibly assess/compare performance from one teacher, school to another.

3)Teachers, principals, pupils, parents and Central Office administrators could receive immediate, regular information on pupil performance (actual vs. expected gains) for every class, grade, school and teacher – without taking away from normal teaching time.

4)Certification requirements would be eliminated and Colleges of Education closed – new teachers would simply require about two weeks of training.

5)Ineffectual traditional pay based on additional years of experience beyond the first 2 – 3 years, added teacher coursework, degrees and certification would be replaced by much more objective, effective merit pay that takes into account key pupil/home conserations.

6)Class sizes could be increased, as well as # of course offerings; construction and oprational costs reduced.

7)Pupils culd be automatically identified as Gifted or Special Ed. Coordination issues between Gifted, Special Ed. and Mainstream work would disappear.

8)Counselors and therapists could be largely replaced with software that also facilitated parental input.

9)Extending the school-day and school-year would become more feasible.

10)All teaching could be conducted using up-to-date information and best presentations.

11)Classes taught by substitute teachers made much more productive.

12)Textbooks would no longer be needed; updates would occur immediately and without cost.

13)A.I. systems could provide ‘flash-card’ quick review study aids.

14)Pupils would automatically receive homework assignments, immediate grading, and assistance from the computer (eg. Grammerly).

15)A.I. could constantly conduct valid scientific experiments and improve learning performance.

16)Teacher roles would change from the traditional ‘Sage on the Stage’ to that of ‘Computer Assistants in the Aisles.’

17)Costs/pupil could drop as much as 50%.

18)Unrecognized potential Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musks would be more likely recognized and nurtured.

19)Overhead positions could drastically decline – improving accountability, motivation, job satisfaction, and construction costs.

20)Teacher ‘busywork’ (taking attendance, grading) would decrease.

21)Impact of interruptions caused by adverse weather and pandemics could be reduced.

22)Multilingual teaching needs could be relatively easily addressed.

23)Classroom synchronization would make Professional Development more useful.

China is already doing this – Squirrel AI, Homework Together, and Hangwang Education monitor classes, assign/review homwork and teach math in a large number of schools. In the U.S. we have Rocketship Charter Schools, Kahn Academy and others.

Our schools also should revise curricula to better match today’s existing A.I. advances. For example, programs/applications now exist to provide immediate translations –> decreased value to teaching languages. That time should be redeployed to eg. helping pupils understand and better use A.I. China added AI to the high school curriculum in 2018.

The bad news, however, is that China’s head start and far larger/more comprehensive pupil databases gives it an important advantage. Far East nations are also advantaged by having national curriculums, highly-competitive college admissions, stronger parental support, higher average IQ scores, a Confucian ethic that values education, longer school days and a school year, more homework, far fewer reservations about data privacy, and competent central managements pursuing national priorities.

Lunching this revolution will require strong leadership from our President, Governors, and high-tech leaders, constant monitoring and follow-up, and repeatedly remininding Americans of the need for drastic improvements in our education system.

Loyd Eskildson, former Chief Deputy Supt. @ Maricopa County School Supt. Office, Phoenix Arizona

America’s Schools Don’t Need More Money, They Just Need Basic Management!

The U.S. already spends more/pupil than any other developed nation in the world – except Luxemburg, yet achieves only middling results in international pupil achievement tests. It also has nearly tripled inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending since the early 1970s, with very little to show for it.

Regardless, any news about American education is almost always about needing much more money, and/or information about some new purported plan (eg. preschool) that will bring major improvements – just add money. Almost never do we here how poorly schools are managed – so not surprisingly, nobody is interested in that important topic.

Fortunately, I’ve developed a list of essential managerial improvements that would finally move America’s schools forward, and would very much like to see them implemented.

 Therefore, I’d support more money for public schools, even though we already spend more/pupil t han every other developed nation except Luxemburg – IF

1)we set challenging, credible, and relatively near-term goals for improving pupil achievement, starting at the state level for each grade, and then deploying those goals in a consistent fashion down to every county, district, and school,

2)encouraged the achievement of those goals with substantial financial rewards linked to their accomplishment – on an individual teacher, principal, and superintendent level,

3)lengthened the school day (Asian nation pupils go as long as 12 hours on some days),

4)lengthened the school year (Asian nation pupils attend up t o 240 days),

5)implemented computer systems that allow easy intra-year pupil testing during the year (quality isn’t possible if only checked once a year) and quickly (2-3 days) analyzed pupil gain results vs. goals, and then aggregated the data for each teacher, principal, and superintendent. Such a system should also be used to evaluate curricula and textbook selections, and all subsequent significant spending programs – including facility rebuilding/major non-safety or comfort renovations, A separate record for each pupil would include his/her prior achievement, age, district, a teacher identifier, primary language spoken at home, Free Lunch status, and Special Education classification – the purpose being to isolate ‘value-added’ from ‘expected’ progress,

6)ceased wasting money creating smaller class-sizes, and instead paid high-performance teachers to voluntarily take larger classes (the research is clear – it provides very little/no benefit except possibly in the first few grades),

7)ceased wasting money paying teachers for added years of experience and additional coursework (again, the research is clear – little/no benefit), and

8)implemented overhead spending limits.

The preceding would improve pupil achievement. More money for more of the same hasn’t worked for over 40 years and there’s no reason to believe that would change.

Education Lessons From Los Angeles

Former Los Angeles Unified Schools Superintendent John Deasy resigned in mid-October of 2014 after three and a half years. His tenure was most notable for a court case that struck down teacher tenure laws in California (Deasy was the prosecution’s star witness – testifying that layoffs according to state-law-mandated seniority could harm students), as well as controversy over teacher evaluation and the rollout of a $1.3 billion iPad program. There was also uproar over the introduction of defective $130 million software intended to track pupil attendance, grades, and schedules – causing pupils to go without schedules and possibly transcripts at a time when many were applying to college. Board members also expressed concerns over Deasy’s  considerable out-of-district travel time and expenses.

Deasy had been brought into the district as deputy superintendent in August 2010 by former mayor Villaraigosa with backing from philanthropist Eli Broad. (Deasy was a graduate of Broad’s superintendent-training program; Broad himself favors teacher evaluations based on pupil test scores.) The intention was to grow the area’s charter school system, confront the teachers union, and change teacher evaluations. At the time the district was facing a $142 million deficit.

Under Deasy’s leadership, the projected graduation rate for the 2013-14 school year was 77%, and increase of 12 percentage points over the prior school year, and almost 30 points higher than the rate for 2008, and the  suspension rate has dropped from 8% in 2008 to 1.5%, largely the result of a ban on suspensions for ‘willful defiance.’ Since 2011, Los Angeles’ 4th graders achieved the second-highest gain (4 points) in reading of 21 urban districts taking the NAEP. Los Angeles also attained the highest gains (15 points) in reading scores for 8th graders, compared with other districts over the past 10 years, while their math scores increased 13 points – higher than the national average. On the negative side, enrollment in charter schools grew from about 70,000 students to over 101,000.

Deasy wanted as much as 30% of a teacher’s evaluation based on value-added pupil test scores, and for poor scores to directly contribute to dismissal. (Value-added ratings make up 40% of evaluations in D.C., 35% in Tennessee, and 30% in Chicago.) Classroom observations and other factors would also be part of the evaluation process.

There was also opposition to Deasy’s proposal to restructure low-performing Crenshaw High School by converting it into three magnet schools. The school had experienced an enrollment decline, with many area students choosing other district schools or charter schools. Community members contended they were not included in the development of the plan.

One commenter on The Atlantic article wryly noted, ‘No one is serious about making real improvements in public schools is going to get away with success,’ and another noted ‘Turning broken schools into better schools necessarily means confronting a lot of things that made the schools broken in the first place. Name, teachers, administrators, parents, and students.’

 

The preceding material was widely taken from a 2014 article in ‘The Atlantic.’

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/10/why-did-the-los-angeles-superintendent-resign/381588/#article-comments

America’s Educators Have No Clothes!

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has referred to schools of education as a ‘Bermuda Triangle – students sail in, no one knows what happens to them, then some succeed as teachers (sail out) while many do not (drown). Others refer to classroom teaching as a ‘black box’ within which we have little knowledge of what is actually happening. Per author Elizabeth Green (‘Building a Better Teacher’), both proponents of increased teacher accountability and teacher autonomy assume that good teachers know what to do to help their students learn. That’s just not the case.

Most everyone has heard teachers complain of how poorly their college of education training prepared them for the classroom. Harry Judge, an Oxford professor, toured American colleges of education and then concluded that their typical approach covered ‘anything but pedagogy.’ Green adds that in 1984 Harvard’s Graduate School of Education listed only one seemingly pedagogical course with the word ‘teaching’ in its title – today it’s still only 19 out of 231 courses. The esteemed Jerome Bruner (Harvard, Oxford, New York University) also emphasized the problem in his 1996 ‘The Culture of Education:’ “It is somewhat surprising and discouraging how little attention has been paid to the intimate nature of teaching and school learning in the past decades.” Francesca Forzani, associate director of TeachingWorks, is more acerbic and specific – university courses on ‘how to teach’ consist of e.g. ‘learning how to help children dress for recess.’

Many Americans believe that ‘practice teaching’ provides teacher trainees with the opportunity to apply education theory under the watchful eye of an experienced teacher. Green, however, reports that these ‘learning’ efforts are often led by a district’s weakest staffers – those needing help to simply maintain order. Regardless – one should not expect valuable lessons to be learned in practice teaching either. Thanks to the pervasive freedom of teachers to 1)utilize their own approaches to teaching, 2)avoid sustained observation by others (principals, peers), and 3)the extreme rarity of credible value-added measures of individual teachers’ effectiveness, very little is actually known about ‘What works’ in the classroom. It’s a ‘black box.’

‘Unbelievable!’ – you say? Actually, that conclusion is supported by decades of competent research – dating as far back as the early 1960s (‘The Coleman Report’). Researchers have repeatedly found that a)certified teachers perform no better than non-certified teachers, b)additional post-graduate courses/degrees do not improve teacher effectiveness, and c)additional years of experience (beyond the first 1-2 years) do not improve teacher effectiveness. The preceding conclusion is also consistent with 50 years’ of research and experience that have shown that more money does not, and has not (a 240% increase in per-pupil inflation-adjusted funding since the early 1970s), brought improvement in pupil outcomes.

So, why don’t we identify those teachers who consistently produce outstanding results (eg? Jaime Escalante in L.A., the 3rd-grade teacher in rural Arlington, AZ. whose pupils regularly topped the rest of the state in 1980s reading results, those identified by Eric Hanushek and Thomas Kane as ‘outstanding’ educators using value-added measures), and emulate their approaches? Per Green, education faculty themselves voice strong doubts that there is any way to identify best teachers, much less discern what made them succeed. On top of that, the teachers’ unions strongly oppose any effort to compare and evaluate teachers – ‘would undermine cooperation,’ ‘too difficult,’ etc., etc.

It’s now apparent that most public school educators have ‘clothed’ themselves in abstruse knowledge woven from years of study and experience. Turns out that this garb can only be seen (appreciated) by (wise) men and fellow educators. Not wanting to appear stupid, we’ve mostly played along with this nonsense – especially rubber-stamp school board members and other ‘pillars of society.’ Fortunately, thanks to Jerome Bruner, James Coleman, Arne Duncan, Francesco Forzani, Elizabeth Green, Eric Hanushek, Harry Judge, Thomas Kane and many others, we now realize that the abstruse knowledge most public school educators wear around them does not exist! The profession’s foundation is little more than a pompous fraud!

Another important implication – American education lacks a systematic approach to improvement. Simply having teachers take more courses and accumulate more experience, reducing class size, renovating buildings, adding support staff, etc. does not and has not worked – per research and the last 50+ years. Education improvement requires goal-setting, establishing accountability for results (eg. principals, curriculum experts/leaders), timely feedback and follow-up, and linking rewards to results. America didn’t place men on the moon, help win WWII, build the world’s most successful economy, etc. by simply assuming that spending more money and placing those with the most education and seniority in charge would likely succeed – neither will it, nor has it, improve education.

Third, it makes America’s public schools extremely vulnerable to attack by outsiders (charters, private schools) who believe that some teachers have developed techniques that are far more effective than those of others, that those more effective teachers can be reliably identified via value-added outcomes measures, and seek to maximize school effectiveness through careful recruitment, frequent monitoring and helpful suggestions, use of objective evaluations and rewards, and when necessary, quickly removing poor performers.

Significantly improving American education outcomes especially demands the latter. Dr. Thomas Kane (Harvard Professor of Education, and former member of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisors, found that students assigned to bottom-5% teachers in California are deprived of 9+ months of learning every year compared with students assigned to average teachers. Similar, though less dramatic differences, have been found by other researchers – eg. Eric Hanushek. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how a rigorous program of recruiting, assisting, and retaining the best could dramatically improve outcomes for American pupils.

Fourth, it invalidates the use of disadvantageous pupil backgrounds as an excuse for educators’ inability to improve pupil outcomes. Improving the practice of teaching can make enormous differences and could be done at little/no additional cost.

Fifth, it raises a new key question – ‘What teacher behaviors/techniques are the most effective and should be emulated?’ We already have some tentative answers – provided by Doug Lemov’s video documenting the specific actions of highly effective teachers. (‘Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College’) Don’t like Lemov’s work – then use the lessons learned from research by Kane, Hanushek et al. What makes Kane and Hanushek different, and especially valuable is that both first obtained a very strong background in economics and research methods, and then applied those skills to evaluating K-12 education.

Sixth, it invalidates any rationale for education’s strong protections for non-performing teachers, rewarding teachers for experience and additional coursework beyond a B.A., and barring those lacking certification from the classroom.

Seventh, and last, it provides additional rationale for envisioning computerized adaptive learning (CAL) as the future of education. Well-designed CAL systems revise their presentations in response to pupil answers, as well as providing immediate assessments to teachers etc.

The good news in all this is that, after 50+ years of nearly non-stop ineffectual fads, we now have a data-driven, structured approach that can substantially improve pupil performance. All that’s required is to replace education’s half-a-century’s worth of failed ‘black-box magic’ with data-driven training and decision-making.

Loyd Eskildson
8/5/2014