First Network for Public Education Conference

I will add to this post as I experience
more of this historic conference.

I had the pleasure of attending the first Network for Public Education Conference in Austin, Texas.

I see this as a historic event because it is the official organizing of the grass roots movement by people who see public education not as a private interest but as a public good.

I see this conference first and foremost about reclaiming public education from those who 

Here's what I thought of as I listened to Julian Vasquez-Helig:

• There are two kinds of education reform. One is for the affluent and the other is for the poor.
• Education reform in the United States is really educational apartheid.
• What if public education perpetuates some of the worst injustices and inequities of our society? What if inequity and poverty are advanced, rather than stifled, by public education? What if public education is really the great divider?
• Too often progressive educators who oppose Corporate Education Reform are accused of supporting the status quo -- when really they just oppose Corporate Education Reform. Progressive educators want to reform Corporate Education Reform.
• The Network for Public Education is a movement of progressive educators who believe in public education as a public good.

Here's what I thought of as I listened to Anthony Cody:

• Public schools are under assault by philanthropists and privateers.
•  Teachers who join the Network for Public Education have fought and condemn the status quo of public education - they oppose the inequities and poverty that are strangling the life out of our democracy and our public schools.
• Teachers' Unions and Associations are critically important in organizing a collective resistance to test and punish, corporate reform.

Here's what I thought of while listening to a panel with Katie Osgood, Deborah Meier, Karen Lewis and Robert Peterson:

I got to meet Deb Meier.

Deborah Meier

• Deborah Meier started teaching over 50 years ago. Chicago. Boston. 
• Some teachers are their own worst enemy -- we are passive and allow others to talk down to us in a humiliating manner that alienates teachers and marginalizes them.
• Teachers need to stand up for themselves.
• Teachers need to be outraged by the outrageous.
• Too often teachers wait for someone else to lead the push back against the assault on public education. If teachers want others to be outspoken and lead, they have to be willing to follow and support.
• If teachers won't stand up for themselves, how can we trust that they will teach students to stand up for themselves?
• Poll after poll, despite all the teacher bashing by politicians and privateers, teachers are trusted by the public. 

Robert Peterson

• Rethinking Schools is a wonderful publication.
• Wisconsin has been a petrie dish for how governments are de-professionalizing teachers and stripping them of their collective bargaining rights.
• What's disgusting? Union busting!
• Three years ago, teaches walked out and students followed in support of them. Public sector unions in Wisconsin are being destroyed.
• Only 59% of students in Milwaukee go to public schools.
• Conflict is the midwife of consciousness. 
• The issue is to gain political power for the 99%.
• If we want to save public education, we have to address more than just education.
• Milwaukee is the largest city to defeat attempts of Mayoral take-over of public education school boards.
• We must re-imagine our teacher unions. Unions need to be far more democratic and participatory that takes up social justice for the community. Unions must not simply represent themselves -- unions must represent the students that they serve

Katie Osgood

• Many teachers find their Tipping Point of Outrage when they see the assault on public education hurt children.
• Lack of resources, test and punish accountability and school closures are pushing teachers to speak out and become outspoken activists for public education.
• Katie's students are children admitted to the hospital for mental health problems. They are the first victims of the assault on public education. 
• Children need teachers who know what they are doing and are well educated. Teach for America does not do this.
• Unions need to partner with their community. 
• Teachers need to use social media to organize and network. Twitter, blogging, Facebook are tools made for grassroots movements such as the fight for public education.

Karen Lewis

• When people threaten us, that tells us something. 
• When it comes to education, there is only one party in America - The Party of Wrong.
• Teachers are used to following directions, but now the directions we are being told to follow are unethical.
• Teachers are not afraid of accountability -- but they do oppose being held accountable for things out of their control.
• Accountability for public education has been hijacked by a deficit model - test and punish.
• Teachers are not afraid of accountability, but they are acutely aware of the costs of standardized testing and their cancerous effects.
• The new normal: "You should be happy you have a job." This 
• People who are frantically distracted and live in fear are easily manipulated.
• Value-Added Measurements (VAM) is junk science. 
• We are in the Data-Driven Dark Ages. The Opt-Out movement is the achilles heal of Corporate Education Reform.

Real educational status quo is not opposing accountability via standardized testing -- the real status quo is found in the long time reality that the affluent and powerful get one kind of education while other people's children get a different kind.

John Kuhn

• Public education is a promise to all children -- and that promise is under siege by 
• Corporate education reform is code for "we will educate those we choose to and leave the undesirables to public schools."
• Focus too much on "career-ready" and "college-ready" and they won't be ready for life.
• If our schools are sick it's because our society is sick. Schools are a reflection of our society's priorities.
• Public education is our trust-fund -- no *one* gets to have it.
• Free-market schools have no mandate to educate all children. 
• Competition does not breed excellence -- if it did, our fast-food chains would serve the healthiest foods.
• Milton Friedman's legacy in education is one of failure.
• Teachers are the real education reformers. Those venture capitalists and distant authorities are corporate school reformers.

Karen Lewis

• Chicago teachers are continuing the Opt-Out movement.
• Corporate school reformers will say that poverty isn't an excuse and that poverty shouldn't matter -- which would be nice -- but they do.
• Corporate School Reformers keep teachers, parents and students in a constant state of fear so that they can be easily manipulated.
• Jobs contradiction - Corporate school reformers demand children be career and college ready and then 
• You can't be neutral on a moving train. When you are silent to power, you side with power.
• President Obama has nominated Ted Mitchell as the #2 in the US Secretary of Education. Mitchell is the CEO of The NewSchools Venture Fund. This is indicative of who is hijacking public education.

Here is what Education Hell looks like

Chicago is getting ready for a standardized test called the ISAT. Here's a 1 minute video of an Inservice session to help teachers prep for "The Vocabulary Matrix".



I have four quick points:

1. Roller coaster of emotions. I experienced a roller coaster of emotions as I watched this apocalyptic video. First, I was in shock. I couldn't believe this was happening. Second, I was angry. I couldn't imagine sitting in that classroom chanting without speaking up or walking out. Third, I was profoundly sad. If this is the nature of education reform and the future of our schools then I want nothing to do with it. Lastly, I am energized and hopeful. The only thing that cancerous education policies and practices need to survive is for good teachers to say and do nothing. Silence is not only assent to these soul-sucking test and punish practices -- silence is also betrayal to our democracy, public education and ultimately our children. This is why I'm attending the Network for Public Education Conference this weekend in Austin, Texas.

2. This is not Professional Development. This is at best a very poor inservice. Professional development is for professionals to determine their own growth and learning. This is precisely why teachers need a powerful Union that has a strong Professional Association focus to make sure that teachers have control over their own professional learning.

3. Teaching or testing? Teaching to the test and excessive test preparation invalidates inferences that can be drawn from the scores – yet they are the inevitable response to pressure to produce good test scores. Classroom time is devoured by not only the tests themselves but also practice tests, pre- and post-tests, field tests for the tests, benchmark tests, teacher tests, district tests, and state or provincial tests. Because testing is not teaching, this ultimately leads to a loss of opportunities for students to have a broad range of educational experiences, and the first things to go usually end up being the arts and physical activity – which do not lend themselves to be easily tested.

4. This is not how to teach children to read. Things are at their worst when we associate learning to read with taking a test. If you want to see what learning to read looks like, check out this post.

One last bonus horror: Is this being done to the teachers to encourage them to return to their classrooms and do exactly this to their students?

What can we learn from Malawi's teachers and schools?

Esnart is a teacher from Malawai

Here is my first contribution to UNESCO's #TeacherTuesday. You can find all of my posts for #Teacher Tuesday here.

Esnart is a teacher in Malawai, Africa. She has taught for 21 years. As I read Esnart's story, I was struck by a couple of key points:

• Class sizes in Malawai are enormous. Some classrooms have more than 200 students and only 1 teacher. Esnart has taught a class of 230 children under a tree because there was no classroom. This is despite a Government target of 60 pupils per classroom.

• Some rural schools have less than 4 teachers in a school of about 1000 children.

• Teacher shortage is a major problem.

• Poverty is rampant.

Esnart's story is an important one. 

Here are 4 BIG IDEAS that I take away from Esnart and Malawai.

1. Class size matters. I wish we didn't need to debate class size. I wish it was a universal understanding that we should try and keep class sizes as low as we can -- but alas, some people have been lured by "research" that shows if you reduce education to chasing high testsandgrades then you can justify stuffing 30, 40 or 50 (or 230) kids in a classroom (or under a tree); however, if you care less about teachers raising scores and more about teachers raising children, then it makes little sense to suggest that class size doesn't matter. It's wrong for children in Malawai to have classes of 200 and it's wrong for children in Canada to have classes of 30 and 40. In Alberta, Canada, we have 11,000 more children in our public schools this year and yet the provincial government has cut 14.5 million from school board's budgets, so urban areas in Alberta like Edmonton and Calgary have schools that are busting at the seems. In Canada, the Alberta Teachers' Association works hard to keep class sizes low. Class size doesn't matter unless you are one of too many students or the only teacher, and when people say class size doesn't matter, they are talking about other people's children. Esnart's working conditions are her students' learning conditions.

2. The problem is poverty. Whether we are talking about Malawai or Canada, the number one problem plaguing public education is poverty. The inconvenient truth about standardized testing is that socio-economic status is responsible for an overwhelming proportion (50 to 70 percent) of the variance in test scores. The strongest predictor of student performance on achievement tests is socio-economic status, which is why it is a mistake to believe that the scores tell us about school quality when really they are reflecting affluence or poverty. If we are not careful, we risk misinterpreting the scores, and instead of waging war on poverty and inequity, we end up waging war on teachers like Esnart and their schools. Teachers like Esnart can do a lot of cool things but overcoming poverty is not one of them -- teachers require the support of an equitable society.

3. Quality Education is complex. There is likely no one way of defining a quality education system, and yet I think Unite for a Quality Education are on to something when they identify three main criteria: (a) quality teachers (b) quality tools (c) quality environments. It's like a three-legged chair -- all three legs require our limited time, effort and resources. Focus on anyone of the three too much and we risk neglecting the others -- which leads to a broken chair. In North America, some people want to focus with laser-like proficiency on teacher quality. Don't get me wrong, teacher quality is incredibly important, and I blog about how teachers can change and improve their craft. Inside the classroom, the teacher is the most important influence on student learning; however, even a teacher like Esnart's influence is dwarfed by factors outside of the classroom. A teaching profession full of Esnarts is necessary but not sufficient in creating a quality education system in Malawai. 

4. Strong, sustainable schools have home grown teachers. It might be tempting for well intentioned but inexperienced people from a first-world country to try and help Malawai by showing up and saying "we're here to help". Such an idea is not that different from programs such as Teach for Canada where well intentioned but inexperienced people show up in Aboriginal communities that have a hard time attracting and keeping teachers. While this may be tempting, it rarely leads to sustainable improvements. The best schools have a stable and well-educated teaching profession, not a revolving door of graduates who see teaching as a bullet on their resume before they move on to bigger and better things. Esnart might be an excellent teacher for all kinds of cool reasons, and one of those reasons is that she calls Malawai home.

I taught them but they didn't learn

This is from David Wees. The original pic can be found here.

#TeacherTuesday: 10 teachers. 10 countries.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is hosting a project called #TeacherTuesday where over the next 10 Tuesdays (starting today), UNESCO will feature 10 teachers from 10 different countries who will share their stories, motivations and challenges in their schools. The picture below shows the 10 teachers who will be featured.

Each week I will briefly reflect on a different teacher and provide a link to my post below:

Esnart from Malawai

Natelee from Honduras

Mohammed from Syria

Margaret from Kenya

Cees from Netherlands

tbc from Bangledesh

Russell from Australia

Shape from South Africa

Shafiqa from Afghanistan

Regifted Reading

This was written by Stephen Krashen who is professor emeritus at the University of Southern California. This article first appeared here. Stephen Krashen's website is here, he blogs here and he tweets here.

by Stephen Krashen

here is overwhelming evidence that those who live in poverty have little access to books at home, in schools, and in public and school libraries, and that the lack of access to books impacts literacy development and also results in less knowledge of the world. Research, in fact, strongly suggests that lack of access to books is the major reason for the literacy “achievement gap,” the difference in reading ability between children coming from higher- and lower-income families.

Someday, e-books might be available at a reasonable cost for everybody. But until this happens, I would like to suggest one way we can help close the access-to-books gap. It requires no special funding from the government or the Gates Foundation, no paperwork, and no sacrifice. In fact, we can do it in a way that benefits everybody.

Most middle-class people have extra books in their homes, books they would like to give away. We often do this by donating to Goodwill-type organizations, but there is a problem: there is no way we can ensure that the books get to those who really need or want them.

An organization called BookMooch, founded by John Buckman, has solved this problem. Bookmooch (BookMooch.com) is a book swap club. You list the books you want to give away. Another BookMooch member can claim one of these books. You then send the book to the person and pay the postage (media mail). When you do this, you get one point. You can then use this point to claim somebody else’s book, and they pay the postage. You can thus get books you want for only the cost of postage. (You get more points for mailing to another country and pay more points when ordering books from another country.) There is no cost to join or use BookMooch.

And now the interesting part: Bookmooch lists charities you can donate your points to if you have some left over. Those of us BookMooch users who have built up huge book collections always have a surplus of points. Bookmooch supplies a list of “worthy causes”: they include school libraries, classroom libraries, public libraries, and prison libraries.

Bookmooch members exchange about 2,000 books a day and donate about 2% of their points to charities, about 10,000 books a year. As of 2012, BookMooch had about 25,000 active members. If BookMooch had 2.5 million active members, this ­­would mean that the charities would get about a million books a year, assuming that 2% of members’ points are donated. If BookMooch members get a little more generous and donate even a mere four points a year, with a million members this would mean ten million books given to libraries and therefore available to those who really need them but cannot get them elsewhere.

The crucial fact is that the BookMooch charity libraries can order precisely the books they want: they can select ANY of the half-million books listed on BookMooch.

There are about 50 million people living at or under the poverty line right now, 50 million people who can’t afford books and who are dependent on libraries. An extra million books a year will not completely close the access-to-books gap, but it will be a big help, especially because they will be the books these libraries need for their members.

And now the advantage to you: you get to clean up your home library. As your children and grandchildren get older, you can give away all those wonderful children’s books to libraries so that children in poverty can enjoy them just as much as the children in your family did. You can give away that extra copy of that Jane Austin novel that has been on your shelf for ten years, or that popular romance or spy novel that you know you don’t want to reread.

You also will have the satisfaction of knowing that your book will go to somebody who wants that particular book and that you have made a donation to a real charity.

Finally, as a BookMooch member, you will have access to many books you might want or need at very, very low cost.

PS: I got on BookMooch because I read light fiction in other languages, mostly in German and French. Other bookswap groups I looked at are not international. Bookmooch keeps me well supplied. This is particularly important for foreign language teachers who are not native speakers of the languages they teach — light fiction is an easy, pleasant way not only to keep their competence but actually improve when native speakers are not around (and even when they are).

One of the best videos on education reform

Take less than 15 minutes and watch this video on education reform and the landscape of assessment in schools.

It's that good.