Hiking in Glacier National Park

Part of the trail to Grinnell Glacier, Glacier National Park.

The question for today: Can you fire students with an interest in the world around them? And if you do, will that show up on a standardized test?

When I was teaching American history, I used a number of slides taken on vacations to illustrate important points. One that never failed:

Sequioa National Park in California.
Click to enlarge.

I always put this slide up first for the day. Then I asked students: “How many of you think that’s a big tree?” 

Almost every member of the class agreed it was.

I explained: “That’s a sequoia tree limb.” I said a ranger told my first wife that the limb was 150 feet long when it snapped and fell to the ground, shattering into giant sections.

This simple trick captured student attention and got us started on an excellent lesson about John Muir and early efforts to protect the environment.

I used a variety of slides over the years: scenes from Custer's Last Stand, pictures of lousy Indian reservations and buffalo in Yellowstone. Pictures from Bodie, California, a ghost town high in the Sierras, helped students do a writing assignment centered on the gold rush era.

Bodie once had a population of almost 10,000. By 1932, the town had been abandoned.

Often, I liked to tell seventh and eighth graders that if they never listened to another word I said (not that I was ever boring), they should drive across the United States once in their lives, to see what a beautiful country we have. 

I remember when Laura B. stopped to see me one day after school. She was probably twenty at the time but I had already left for home before she arrived. So Laura left a note, saying she had followed my advice and visited Yellowstone and other great parks out West. When I read that note, I knew I had done my job as a teacher.

Suppose I was teaching today. 

Let’s say: I was teaching health. I’d build a lesson around a trip I took to Glacier National Park. I’d focus on the idea that all of us can get in better shape and focus on the benefits of walking more, or in this case hiking. Maybe I’d throw in a few pictures from my two bicycle rides across the United States. I believe, after all, that you can plant important seeds in the minds of the young. I’d like to plant seeds that might lead kids to develop an interest in getting into shape and staying that way.

After all, I met a 78-year-old women on one of the harder trails in Glacier and she was going strong.

Of course, nothing like this is ever going to be on any standardized test. I’m retired now; but as a former teacher, that makes me profoundly sad. 

Dedicated teachers want to fire the young with passion for learning—and an abiding interest in the world around them.

I’d tell my students today, “If you don’t listen to anything else I say this year, go hiking in Glacier National Park someday.”

If one young person eventually did, I’d have earned my pay.

Buffalo road block in Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park.
Click to enlarge.

Hiking the trail down from Piegan Pass, Glacier National Park.
My wife is 62; and I'm even older than that!

My two youngest daughters at the top of Piegan Pass.

Mountain goat near the trail to Hidden Lake.

That line you see is Going to the Sun Highway, a spectacular engineering feat.

Grinnell Glacier: by 2030 all glaciers may be gone.
That tells us something about climate change.

Hidden Valley Lake.

The Highline Trail is supposed to be the most spectacular in Glacier.
I didn't have time to do this one myself.

Moose dead ahead on the trail.

Also: bighorn ram on the trail.

If I was still teaching I'd show students this picture of Monticello.
Jefferson's home.

If you want students to know what the people on wagon trains faced
this picture works. Not far from South Pass in Wyoming.

I'd try to convince students they could do more, physically than they think.
I used to try to convince them they could do more mentally, too.
Tioga Pass in California.

Lake at the top of Tioga Pass.

More photos from Glacier National Park follow:

My wife Anne took a spill on the Loop Trail.

Action shot of goat (second from right) defecating!

Trail to Grinnell Glacier.

Grinnell Lake.

Start of the Highline Trail.

Lake scene near Many Glaciers Lodge.

Mountain meadow near Logan Pass.

Hikers on the trail coming back from Grinnell Glacier.

Swimming in Avalanche Lake: approximate water temperature: 45 degrees.

Above the clouds at Logan Pass.

Bear grass near the summit of the Loop Trail.

Overlook on the Going to the Sun Highway.

Is Getting Rid of Tenure the Answer? Or Should Teachers Stop Breathing?

I’m just a typical retired teacher. I probably shouldn’t let the flurry of attacks on public school teachers bother me.

But I do.

For that reason, I would like to pose a question that goes to the heart of school reform thinking: Why do so many experts sound so stupid when they talk about fixing our schools?

This question bothers me like a sharp stone in my shoe. I read about what’s “wrong” with American education and end up scratching my head.

Maybe I’m dumb! That’s a thread in attacks on public school teachers today. Supposedly, we’re not smart enough. Finland! Finland is the model we must follow. In Finland only smart people teach! In fact, according to education experts there’s nothing wrong with American education except all the bad teachers.

A typical editorial in the New York Times this week hammered on that point. According to Mike Johnston, who “spent two years with Teach for America,” bad teachers with tenure are the great stumbling block in the path of every child’s academic success.

After spending two whole years in a classroom, Johnston seems to think he learned everything there is to know about teaching. Then he spent six years working as a principal in a Denver public school. And what do you know! 

His school had amazing standardized test results.

(We will not mention here the numerous cheating scandals involving other “amazing” standardized test results. We will also not mention that all the amazing test results linked to No Child Left Behind have now been tossed out the classroom window onto the schoolhouse lawn. Nope. We will keep our teacher sarcasm in check.)

No Child Left Behind is dead. Long live Common Core, instead.

Frank Bruni, who signed the editorial, noted that Johnston’s mother was a public school teacher. Johnston isn’t a teacher hater. (So Bruni says.) Still, he “expresses the concern that we’re not getting the best teachers into classrooms or weeding out the worst performers.” That’s the first line that makes me choke on my morning toast.

You there! The physics teacher pointing out the solution to a complex problem on the white board. You! The one grading those eighth grade Language Arts essays! You! The one talking to the weeping third grader! YOU are not the best person for the job.

You are the PROBLEM. 

If we could get rid of you all children would excel. We can’t get rid of you though. You have tenure. You rat!

So what must be done? Johnston says we need to implement a tenure system that “means something,” a system based on test results. (Even bogus test results? Or results that no longer matter because NCLB is dead?) We can’t continue the system we have now that rewards teachers “just because you’re breathing.”

That’s the second line in the editorial that makes me choke on my toast. If I read this editorial right, asphyxiation is the cure for what ails U. S. education. We simply convince bad teachers to stop breathing.

Ironically, after trashing teachers in a general way, Bruni ends by exhorting readers to support good teachers everywhere. But this is one of many pieces of a similar kind that hint good teachers are few and far between. Hard to find. Kind of like Sasquatch. Or unicorns. “We need to pay good teachers much more,” Bruni adds. “We need to wrap the great ones in the highest esteem. But we also need to separate the great from the bad.”

Now a Colorado lawmaker, Johnston has the last word: “Our focus is not on teachers because they are the problem,” he says lamely, having already said the reverse. “Our focus is on teachers because they are the solution.”

That’s the line that finally makes me mumble a curse.

I loved teaching and had tenure most of my career. I knew what I did truly mattered. So I did the absolute best I could. But unlike the non-teaching experts—or the quick teaching quitters who go on to become “leaders” and politicians and critics—I learned that I wasn’t the solution. No teacher has ever been and no teacher ever will.

If every bad teacher in a classroom suddenly stopped breathing next week critical problems in all our schools would absolutely remain. (In Finland, to cite one example, 4% of children live in poverty. In the USA that figure is 23%.) Good teachers put dents in such problems. Good teachers do that every day. 

Nevertheless, our so-called leaders must face up to the truth. Teachers aren’t the solution and tenure isn’t the problem. H. L. Mencken put it plainly seventy-five years ago: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

The experts offer up simple solutions to complex problems, simple solutions that all to often prove disastrously wrong in the end. If we wish to improve outcomes in schools we have to rest school reform on a solid foundation of good sense. A society has a right to expect teachers to give their best. A society cannot, however, expect them to perform miracles with every child every day.

Teachers don’t need to be lectured, punished, or vilified by fools. They need aid in addressing terrible problems that seep into schools—problems rooted in neighborhoods and homes, problems not of their making, nor within their ordinary human capacities to resolve.

FOR A SEPARATE LIST OF SUCH PROBLEMS, FLOODING INTO SCHOOLS FROM THE OUTSIDE, GO TO THE AUXILIARY POST. 

Problems Beyond Teachers' Control

Problems Beyond Teachers' Control

See if you can figure out which of these problems would be eliminated (or even reduced) if teachers lost all tenure protection:

Approximately 300 American children are murdered annually by parents. Marchella Pierce (as just one example) was tied to a bed, beaten and starved to death by her mother. The four-year-old weighed 19 pounds when she died.

Each day an average of 4.5 U. S. children die as a direct result of neglect.

There are 3,000,000 cases of abuse and neglect reported annually in this country involving nearly six million children.

A "Lousy Parent" Hall of Fame would include but not be limited to:

• the father who put his infant daughter in the freezer because she was crying 
• a father who threatened his daughter (over her grades) with an AK-47 
• a mother who gave her two-year-old marijuana to smoke as a joke
• a mother who sold her two daughters to a pedophile for $30,000
• another mother who sold her daughter in return for Beyonce tickets
• a dad arrested after repeatedly throwing his 23-month-old daughter into the pool to teach her a lesson about safety

At least 1.6 million American kids run away from homes every year. Most are teens. Many are fleeing physical or sexual abuse. Over half of all children and teens living in shelters or on the streets say parents "asked them to leave or knew they were leaving and didn't care."

(We might be able to help them if we spent less on standardized testing and more to hire school psychologists and counselors.)

***

In 1950 only 6% of American children grew up in single-parent homes. Today the figure is 35%. For African American kids the figure is 67%; for Native Americans: 53%; for Hispanics and Latinos: 42%; for Non-Hispanic Whites: 25%; for Asian Americans: 17%. It won't surprise any teacher to know that graduation rates are inversely related to the figures above.

Children raised in single-parent homes are twice as likely to drop out of school.

Nearly three million children in this country live with neither parent.

High school graduation rates for Native Americans, to cite one of a thousand examples, fell to 51% in 2010. You could argue this has much to do with crushing poverty on reservations. (Or you could make some absurd case that bad teachers with tenure gravitate toward reservations.) On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota 61% of children live below the poverty line.

A study by Johns Hopkins reveals that 15% of students miss at least one school day in every ten. Forget ending tenure as a solution. Give teachers telepathic powers so they can reach students sick, and faking sick, at home.)

***

There are 2.7 million children in this country who have one (or both) parents behind bars.

In 2011 roughly 35% of all gang members in this country were 17 years of age or younger. An estimated 1.4 million individuals belonged to gangs in 2009. That means 490,000 gang members were still in schools or roaming the streets.

In 2007-2008, the U. S. Department of Education estimated that 145,100 U. S. teachers were attacked by students.

Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre there have been 74 school shootings in this country, including twenty involving one fatality or more.

This would not include 22 students and staff injured in a stabbing attack at a Murrysville, Pennsylvania high school (April 2014).

Nor would it include Colleen Ritzer, a 24-year-old Massachusetts teacher, raped, stabbed and killed in a bathroom at her school after classes ended for the day. A 14-year-old student in her math class has been charged with the crimes.

According to FBI statistics there were 2,852 attacks in U. S. schools involving knives or other "cutting instruments" in one year (2004).

It might also be difficult for any teacher, with tenure or without, to reach a confused 11-year-old who brought knives, a loaded pistol and 400 rounds of ammunition to a Vancouver, Washington middle school intending to kill classmates. (This attack was thwarted before he could do any harm.)

***

In 2009 alone more than 13,500 infants were born suffering "from a type of drug withdrawal commonly seen in the babies of pregnant women who abuse narcotic pain medications." The rate of such births has tripled in a decade.

Deaths from opiod overdoses in the United States now number 16,000 per year. (One statistical oddity: doctors in Tennessee wrote opiod prescriptions at a rate 22 times higher than doctors in Minnesota.) Thomas Frieden, director of the Center for Disease Control, explained recently: "Prescription drug overdose is epidemic in the United States. All too often, and in far too many communities, the treatment is becoming the problem.”

Meanwhile, 6.4 million American kids have been diagnosed with ADHD and treated with drugs like Ritalin. Frieden recently "likened the rising rates of stimulant prescriptions among children to the overuse of pain medications and antibiotics in adults." (Again, rates of diagnosis vary: 23% of children in Tennessee--only 10% in Colorado. Sorry, we're not really picking on Tennessee.) Even Dr. NeHallowell, who once called such drugs "as harmless as aspirin" and wrote a book about ADHD now calls this situation "dangerous" and admits, "I hate to think I have a hand in creating that problem."

Roughly 23.5 million Americans, many of them teens still in school, or parents of kids, are addicted to alcohol or drugs.

One in fifteen high school students (6.5%) admits smoking marijuana every day. No way of telling whether or not this helped when they took their standardized tests.

***

Finally, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends, for health and educational reasons, that children be limited to watching two hours of television per day. Many moms and dads aren't getting the message. The average American child watches 35 hours per week.

Best Seating Chart Ever

I adopted this arrangement after I read it helped with discipline.
I taught seventh and eighth grades.

Like any young teacher, I found keeping good order in a classroom to be one of my biggest challenges. I had been in the Marines, too.

And that kind of helped.

At the start of my third or fourth year in the classroom, I came across a story about a teacher who did away with typical rows. Instead, he arranged student desks in a horseshoe formation. There were two rows of chairs on each wing, teens facing inward and two rows at the base of the “shoe.” His position was at the open end near the blackboard (in those days). 

This allowed him to roam the center of the classroom at will.

This seating chart proved to be a huge improvement over old-fashioned rows. First, it was popular with students (nearly always a virtue, I think). It allowed them to see each other instead of the backs of their classmates’ heads. This fostered a more intimate atmosphere, especially during discussions.

Equally important, this setup allowed for greatly improved discipline from my end. Suppose, with old-fashioned rows, a child in the back was thinking about poking a neighbor. Or he was writing a note. Under the old arrangement you found yourself far away at the front of the room while the young man studied the distance.

To him it looked safe. He knew you wouldn’t see him poke the cute girl in the back. Or he knew by the time you came down the row he’d have his half-finished love note tucked safely away.

The horseshoe altered this calculation. If you roamed the center in random fashion, it was hard for anyone in the “back” to zone out. If you thought the young man in Seat A was doodling, you strolled in his direction, casually, since no rows impeded. And you stood next to his seat. You just happened to stop by—and asked the girl to his right to answer a question. The boy in Seat A is now alert. 

If a girl in Seat C was being a little disruptive you walked over and without a word gave her your “teacher look” or simply tapped her desk.

Seat B (or its twin on the other side of the room) was a good place to locate any particularly loquacious youth. You surrounded them with quiet or studious types in adjacent seats. It was also easy to stand by them during lectures and tamp down any disruptive impulse.

Proximity sufficed—and cutting down minor problems helped avoid festering sores that could lead to serious discipline problems in the end.

Teachers: Are You Part of the Lunatic Fringe?

Teachers: are you part of “the lunatic fringe?” Considering the results of a recent poll you probably are. Only 1 in 4 Americans said they believed standardized testing had made schools better.

To answer this question yourself a little background information first. If you missed the story early this month, the National Education Association approved a resolution calling for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to resign. Why? The resolution faulted Mr. Duncan for a “failed education agenda,” particularly a “toxic testing push.”

Naturally, this attack riled up Duncan’s defenders. Typically, these defenders never bothered to teach. Joe Williams, the no-teaching-ever-director of Democrats for Education Reform, was quick to condemn. The vote made those (at least to him) calling for Mr. Duncan’s head seem like part of “the lunatic fringe.”

Call me one of the lunatics, then.

But I believe teachers have legitimate reasons to despise standardized tests. In fact, I wonder what Williams would say if he tried teaching for a year or two, or twenty-five years. Here’s what I saw during my career in the classroom. In the late 80s I was there when states created their own standardized tests. Ohio implemented what was known as the Ninth Grade Proficiency Test. If students failed they had multiple chances to retake it and try to pass.

Unfortunately, state tests didn’t do much to improve education. The first problem was that the standards these tests set weren’t all that high to begin. Here’s one of my favorite geography questions from the old Ohio exam:

Not exactly a daunting challenge, right? (Wait: is the answer Z?)

At the same time, Ohio lawmakers in their infinite wisdom decreed that third graders would not advance to the fourth grade unless they could pass a reading proficiency test. This was labeled the Third Grade Reading Guarantee.

Elementary teachers warned that children mired in poverty might be dramatically impacted. Lawmakers didn’t care. Teachers warned that students new to this country and unfamiliar with English might not fare well. Lawmakers didn’t care.

Educators in middle and upper grades added their own warning. If you held a children back in third grade—and any other year during their academic careers—they were almost guaranteed to drop out of school. That was not the guarantee lawmakers had in mind.

Lawmakers didn’t care.

And yet the Third Grade Reading Guarantee died an early death. When actual children failed the test and parents made it clear they would not vote again for knuckle-headed lawmakers responsible for the mess, suddenly lawmakers cared. 

The guarantee was wiped from the books.

Eventually, leaders in education (people who give advice but never teach) realized that state-level testing was doing no good. So: Congress enacted No Child Left Behind (2002). Now the feds promised by 2014 every child in America would be proficient in reading and math.

Bureaucrats in various state departments of education realized how hard achieving academic perfection might be. And since failure to achieve “adequate yearly progress” involved penalties of all kinds, most states decided the path to success was clear. They lowered standards on their tests for the next few years. Then they raised them gradually to “prove” that great strides were being made—kind of a one step forward, two steps back approach to learning, you might say. This turned out to be a lame approach and teachers who had to scuffle to conform to all the rules understood it was a charade.

No one asked them what they thought.

Meanwhile, real teachers wanted to know what would happen if a young man missed 106 days of class in a single year. (I had one student who did.) Would they be “held accountable” if these kinds of students failed their tests?

Yes, the non-teaching education experts insisted, yes, they would.

School reformers—who never taught a single, solitary soul—insisted that real teachers were making excuses if they couldn’t reach every kid. Real teachers inquired anew: Will we be faulted if homeless boys and girls can’t pass the tests? After all, we find that acute hunger has have a detrimental effect on an eight-year-old’s performance in school?

“Stop making so many excuses,” the non-teaching types said.

What else was NCLB supposed to do? Politicians promised that the law would eliminate racial achievement gaps across this great land. But a decade later gaping racial gaps remained. When children were tested in 2012, 54% of white fourth graders scored “proficient or above” in math. For Asian Americans the figure was 64%.

Blacks (18%), American Indians (23%) and Hispanics (26%) still lagged behind.

Classroom teachers tried to point out to lawmakers that poverty really seemed to matter. In 2012, the biggest “gap” in math scores was seen when students eligible for free/reduced price lunches were compared with those not eligible.

Those eligible passed at a rate of 25%.

Those not eligible passed at a rate of 59%.

Scores on the eighth grade reading test showed the same poverty-related achievement gap.

The experts, who never taught anyone, rich child, or poor, told real teachers to quit with all the whining and save every child.

Here in Ohio, politicians decided that if testing in reading and math was good then testing in science and social studies would be better yet. So sub tests in science and social studies were added to the Eighth Grade Ohio Achievement Test. (This test replaced the Ninth Grade Proficiency Test after passage of NCLB.) The social studies sub test was phased in in 2003 and scores first counted in 2005. By 2009, however, the sub test was dead. Too late, frugal lawmakers (the same ones who came up with the idea in the first place) suddenly realized that it would cost large heaps of money to print, administer and grade the social studies sub test.

Besides, there were complaints from all corners of the state—not necessarily from members of the lunatic fringe—that made it clear the social studies sub test was stupid, almost from question one all the way to the bitter end.

On one occasion I headed for Columbus to testify in front of the education committee of the Ohio Senate about a proposal to tie merit pay to scores on high stakes tests. I asked members of the august panel if any of them could provide a definition of “mercantilism.” That was in fact a question asked of eighth graders on the previous year’s test.

Not one member on the Senate committee could.

I inquired next about Songhai trade. That was indeed another question on the social studies sub test of the OAT.

Once more, I was met with uncomprehending stares.

Worse yet, when all the testing was done and students walked across the stage to pick up their diplomas, how much had standardized testing done to improve U. S. education? In reading, according to the National Assessment for Educational Progress, there was zero long-term gain. 

All that money spent on testing and scores would not budge! 
(Well, not unless you count going down.)

And in math, gains were also thin.

Real teachers grumbled—but not because they hoped to evade accountability. They realized you could have had greater impact on reading scores if you had simply taken all the money wasted on testing ($1.7 billion annually) and used it to buy books—170 million per year, at $10 each. And you could have given two to every child in the U. S. public school system and done it every year.

Each spring the tests were given and taken. Teachers had no choice but to play the lousy hands they were dealt. If tests at the elementary level measured only what children learned in reading and math—well, thenit made sense to focus only on that. Technically, if a subject wasn’t tested in your grade it no longer mattered what you taught.

Art? Not tested. Forget art! Music? Who cares! Even time spent on science and social studies declined (ironically, students would be tested later in those very subjects). As for physical education, it was clear the testing companies weren’t going to ask kids to run a mile.

Who cared if kids got fat!

It took a decade—but gradually it dawned on politicians and bureaucrats and education leaders who never taught that NCLB was a terrible flop. Probably every classroom teacher from Juneau to Miami could have predicted this would be the end result.

Then Secretary Duncan stepped forward with a bold new plan. And his plan was sure to work. (That’s what the last guy said.) NCLB would be killed. All those expensive standardized tests tied to NCLB? Use them for scrap paper, kids.

Mr. Duncan would oversee creation of a brand new battery of standardized tests. His tests would be tied to Common Core and this time testing would work!

State after state fell in line. Everyone seemed to love Common Core. And it did not hurt that Mr. Duncan passed out $4.35 billion to states willing to implement his plan—which another reformer (who never taught) dubbed “Race to the Top.”

In Louisiana the legislature voted in favor of racing to the top. Racing to the top sounded good. Governor Jindal was all for the racing. Then Governor Jindal changed his mind and said he would work to defeat Common Core instead. Oklahoma lawmakers were all for Common Core until they were all against it and repealed their consent. Real teachers sadly shook their heads.

So the years passed and new plans came and went and came and went and came and went. Real teachers who had growing and even profound doubts about the mess school reformers were creating did not feel as if they were part of a lunatic fringe. They watched and wondered. Who were these fools pushing all these tests, changing the rules almost as quickly as those rules were written. Did these people have even the whiff of a clue?

Here in Ohio, the bureaucrats and politicians went back to work. They renamed their test. The OAT was no longer cool. The Ohio Achievement Assessments (OAA). That sounded better! And you know what we really needed, they said?

A new third-grade reading guarantee.

This time, lawmakers promised, everything would turn out great.

Finland Has Better Teachers, Better Colleges! And Fluffier Kittens!

Do nations like Finland and South Korea really beat us in education? And kittens?

I’m getting sick of hearing about how this country is lacking when it comes to K-12 education. Oooo, critics moan, “Finland’s schools are way better! Finland has smarter teachers!”

(See: “Teachers: Will We Ever Learn,” New York Times, April 12, 2013).

Today, another article in the Times tries to make the same kind of comparison where colleges and universities are concerned.

One ranking from London credits the United States with having 18 of the top 25 universities in the world. Sounds like we win! A second ranking coming out of Shanghai says we have 19 of the top 25. Sounds like we win!!!

Nope. We can’t possibly have good teachers in this country, preparing good students for success in the future. According to critics everything U. S. public school teachers and U. S. public schools do is terribly, terribly wrong.

You see, on “average,” it turns out U. S. colleges don’t do so good.

There’s even a chart to prove it. The chart shows the average “numeracy” score of graduates (ages 16-29) with bachelor’s degrees. It shows you what so many of these stupid charts show. Finland has better teachers! Finland has better colleges! Finland has children who eat their vegetables. Eat them at every meal. And never complain!

Finland has fluffier kittens! 

It turns out, compared to young college graduates around the world, ours don’t know beans from Brussels sprouts when the subject turns to math. And Finland beats us again:

1. Austria (average numeracy score: 326)
2. Flanders (a.k.a. Belgium—which makes me really hope we beat them in soccer on Tuesday)
3. Finland (average score : 322)

4. Czech Republic
5. Japan (average: 318)
6. Sweden

7. Germany (314)
8. Netherlands
9. Estonia

10. France
11. Slovak Republic
12. Denmark

13. Norway
14. Canada (301)
15. South Korea (297)

16. UNITED STATES (296)

17. Westeros (296; okay, I made that one up)
18. Australia (296)
19. England/Ireland (296)

20. Ireland
21. Poland (you’ll see why this seems odd in a moment)
22. Cyprus

23. Italy
24. Spain (283)
25. Russian Federation (take that Putin, you scumbag; you finished tied for last; 283)

How do we get these scores? We study the results of a brand new test, Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies, (PIAAC) first administered in 2011 and 2012, to adults ages 16-65 in twenty-four countries.

The Times article today has a number of different comparisons—math scores for 15-year-olds on the PISA tests (Program for International Student Assessment)—average reading scores for left-handed people taller than six feet—even kitten fluffiness, has probably been tested.

In all categories the United States purportedly looks bad. But you wonder. In 2012-2013, almost 820,000 foreign students came to this country to attend our colleges and universities. Did these poor devils not know they were wasting their money?

And, by the way, will we get credit if these graduates return home and score higher on the PIAAC tests in the future?

You have to wonder how accurate all these tests are. The PISA test, for example, did not exist until 2000. So how did nations of the world survive until then—without the ability to make fun of their incompoop neighbors? “We might be ignoramuses,” say the Italians, “but at least we’re not as dumb as the Spaniards!”

We’ve all seen in recent years how tests tied to No Child Left Behind failed to measure anything actually worth knowing. (And at a mere cost of $1.7 billion annually!) Here in Ohio, before I retired, we had a standardized test for social studies in the eighth grade. That test proved so lame the State of Ohio had to kill it after only six years. Even the Scholastic Aptitude Test, long used to “measure” the supposed decline and fall of U. S. education has now been found to be fatally flawed and in need of a serious makeover.

Finally, you might notice a number of statistical oddities related to PIAAC results. If you look at PISA scores going back to the year 2000, you notice that South Korea has never ranked lower than third among nations tested—and ranked first in 2009.

Here are comparative math scores (and rankings among nations) for 15-year-olds in the United States and South Korea on all PISA tests:

                              United States                     South Korea

2000                        493 (19^th)                            547 (2^nd)

2003                        483 (26^th)                            542 (2^nd)

2006                        474 (33^rd)                            547 (3^rd)

2009                        487 (28^th)                            546 (1^st)

2012                        481 (33^rd)                            554 (3^rd)

Nevertheless, in some bizarre fashion, South Korea’s huge lead dissipates by the time students move on and get their bachelor’s degrees from college. On one PISA test in 2003, they lead our kids by 73 points. When the very same organization uses the PIAAC test Korean college graduates see their lead in math cut to a single point.

You almost have to ask: Are South Korea’s schools really better? Or Japanese schools? Or Finland’s, for god sakes?

At this point, I’m not even sure Finland has fluffier kittens.

POSTSRIPT: 

Also interesting to note, Australian 15-year-olds beat ours in math in every PISA test given, by 40 points in 2000 and 23 in 2012. Yet on the PIAAC test, their youngest college graduates could only manage to tie ours.

Same with Canada. Their kids supposedly out-performed ours by 40, 49, 53, 40 and 37 points on the five PISA tests; yet at the end of the line, on the PIAAC test their lead was only 5.

Meanwhile, scores for Finland on the PISA test dropped from a high of 548 in 2006 all the way down to 519 six years later.

Is the Teaching Profession at Risk?

It’s not quite right to say a recent link on the Facebook page of Waiting for Superman surprised me.

My reaction was more like: “Holy crap!”

If you’ve seen the movie you know it gives public school teachers, as a group, a black eye, a bloody nose, and maybe knocks out a few molars as a bonus. So I was stunned to see the site express a sudden need to support teachers. The link was titled: “The Teaching Profession is at Risk. Here’s How You Can Help!”

It turns out the profession is endangered because half of all teachers quit within five years. That’s not a recent development, but the link offered a chance to pledge support. I think I was supposed to donate money.

Then I noticed one organization I would pledge to support was The New Teacher Project. TNTP, if you don’t know, was founded by Michelle Rhee.

If you don’t know Rhee—and you really teach—you should. Rhee actually taught three years, herself. (It seems required—if you want to become a famous school reformer—that you teach only briefly, or not at all.) Then she moved up through bureaucratic circles and found herself running the Washington, D. C. schools. In that role and in all kinds of ways since, Rhee has made it clear that she believes public school teachers are the real problem in U. S. education.

Thus the need for The New Teacher Project!

In typical tone-deaf fashion, Rhee once explained why she had no choice but to let 266 of her own Washington, D. C. teachers go. Most had been removed because of poor standardized test results. But Rhee told an audience of entrepreneurs interested in school reform:

“I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn’t we take those things into consideration?”

Why wouldn’t we! Who wouldn’t want to get rid of teachers hitting and/or having sex with children? Of course, almost none of the 266 men and women Rhee axed were hitting anyone or having sex with any children (which would be roughly 260 members of this group). It was a terrible way to justify terminations.

Setting that aside, with a warning to all public school teachers not to trust Rhee, the fundamental question remains. Why do so many new teachers quit? Even worse, why are so many veteran teachers disheartened? 

Is the profession at risk?

The reaction of teachers to the original post only increases my concern. I loved teaching. I’m not sure it’s easy to love teaching today. Here’s what other educators said:

Renee Blanc: I’m going into my 9th year of teaching & Common Core will be the 3rd set of standards that have come down from the powers to be that I’m required to teach. Movies like this [Waiting for Superman] don’t address the issues, like non-teachers writing these standards.

NEWSFLASH—Teachers are told EXACTLY what to teach. How are teachers failing students when we are NOT the ones writing the standards?

Ann Grissom-Wilkins: I don’t need “Superman” or any other super hero. I want a teacher who is allowed to educate the children in order for them to become successful, productive citizens. I want them to be able to think past the answers of these high stakes test. Get rid of all the political mess and educate our children.

Mr. Viall notes: My last year in the classroom was 2008. Members of the social studies department were told we absolutely must prepare kids for the social studies section of the Ohio Achievement Test. The test seemed badly flawed—and I told my principal it seemed like malpractice to teach to such a poorly designed test. 
The following year the State of Ohio came to the same conclusion and killed the social studies test.

I fondly remember state standardized tests in the early 90s, too. Those tests didn’t work either, in part because the “standards” set were so incredibly low. See an example of a “difficult” map proficiency question below:

Not exactly the most challenging question to ask.

Libby Garrett: If society really wants teachers as this post implies, then stop attacking us AND our pensions and pay! Stop making it harder and more costly to retain our licenses. Stop blaming schools and teachers for the ills of society! START taking responsibility for student attendance! START taking responsibility for assignments and studying! START taking responsibility for bringing supplies to class! I was once chewed out over a student who was disrupting my class. The assertion was it was MY fault because I didn’t supply the student with a pencil! And in truth I had a bucket FULL of pencils to loan out but why is it MY responsibility to pay for the basic supplies of my 150 students!?

Viall: The Washington Post recently noted that in Ms. Rhee’s old district 1 of every 5 students had at least twenty days of unexcused absences—and that would not include excused absences in the mix.

Jackie Burns agreed with Libby. Then she added a few other problems to the list:

Also burnout from being harassed, cursed out / threatened by kids, unsupportive admin. Test score focus when most kids only want to make the required grade 70 to pass and don’t want / plan to go to college and lack of parent involvement.

Viall: According to the U. S. Department of Justice more than 145,000 teachers were assaulted at work in one year.

Robin Sechrist: After teaching for 35 years, I cannot in good conscience encourage young people to become teachers. The bureaucracy is just too ridiculous! The system SUCKS! It needs serious reform!

Kathy Booth: Robin I just walked away myself! Common Core is turning public education into prisons!

Tamisa Alexandria: Robin, I feel the same way!

Teresa DiStefano Parasole: Teaching is not what it was when I began my career over 30 years ago. Between pressure of standardized testing, micro managing & teacher bashing & blame for everything; it is not a profession I would recommend for anyone anymore. The creativity & joy has died since the politicians ruined education.

Maryruth Williamson: What a shame—my years of teaching were 32 of the best years of my life. I do, however also enjoy being retired.

Brian JC Kneeland: Been there—done that—the paper work killed me!

Viall: Is it possible we’re headed for a future where schools look like they’re run by I.R.S.? Become a teacher! Fill out more forms!

Dennis Clayton Frymoyer: It’s not surprising that teachers are leaving the profession. They are blamed for most of the ills of society.

Rayna Rogerson: I’m in year 26, and am dismayed by the changes that I’ve seen, especially since NCLB…My administration is great, but they’re stuck in between what they know is best for kids and what they’re being told they have to do by school districts, legislature, etc.

Day Cross: I am blessed. I have a principal I greatly respect, many great colleagues, and only a small number who put race, politics, and personal agendas above KIDS. I really am blessed!

Jessica Terese Torres: To my fellow educators... No one knows how much we love our jobs and kids

Notice that the stress above is on the word “KIDS.”

I posted a few comments and asked if anyone could tell me: Were all the recent changes enhancing learning? Were they harming learning? Or were the changes kind of a wash? I’ve asked dozens of teachers this same question. I keep getting the same kinds of answers—and these answers make me sad.

Robin Sechrist responded as most teachers do. She didn’t say she hated doing more work. She didn’t complain about not getting more pay. She didn’t bitch about students. She focused on what absolutely matters:

Sechrist: It has hog tied my ability to teach my Special Needs students. They do not fit the cookie cutters and pacing guides we are forced to use! Administration does not understand their unique needs! Hence the title Special Needs??? Go figure!

And John, the amount of paperwork is obscene!

Viall: Hey, all this testing has been great: it only cost $1.7 billion annually to try to create tests tied to No Child Left Behind. Now that law is dead and so are all the tests tied to it.

Meanwhile, AD W insisted that unions were not the main problem in education. In Waiting for Superman they certainly are. A gentleman named Jeff (who I think loved the film) claimed in no uncertain terms they are.

For the sake of brevity, I will ignore the matter of unions. My focus—and the focus of AD W and almost every teacher who responded was on what worked best for kids. 

Kids. 

I’m not surprised by that at all.

I know there are bad teachers out there, collecting pay every day, and would be happy to see more effort devoted to removing them from classrooms. What troubles me is the growing trend to treat teachers like criminal scum. Make us all prove we’re doing what we say we’re doing—which is our level best to help the kids. And in the process take time away from good teachers who devote themselves to that all-consuming process every hour of every day.

Someone once said that this approach to fixing problems in U. S. education was like “using a shotgun to fix the kitchen sink.”

You don’t have to be a plumber (or a teacher) to know that this approach is nuts.