Reader comments roundup: NYC's Wylde Wylde West

Dear anonymous 1:55AM, Norm, Sol, Robert, more anonymous people, holden, and world,

My apologies for the impasse in responding to comments. You left a number of thoughts about the NYC Department of Education’s attack on Diane Ravitch via Kathy Wylde – here’s the post that spurred them. Anonymous 1:55AM wrote:

You say the NYC administration isn't concerned with "figuring out what works for New York City kids." I'm assuming you just don't agree with their approach, because you can't seriously suggest there's a shortage of ideas being tried up there.

It’s not that I unequivocally disagree with their approach, if by approach you mean ideas. If academics do nothing else well, we see the world in shades of grey. When many of their reforms were first presented – i.e. a standardized curriculum featuring the reading/writing workshop approach or supply-side reform via small schools – I was encouraged.

When I was confronted with classrooms full of high school kids who couldn’t read or write, I had turned to Lucy Calkins’ and Nancie Atwell's books. And I found this model to be successful in moving struggling readers and writers forward. But I also know that the implementation of this curriculum in NYC stressed compliance rather than instructional support and capacity building. At the end of the day, teachers haggled with supervisors measuring their rug size and the dimensions of their word walls. This certainly didn't support their professional growth as educators, and goes against the spirit of these approaches.

By the same token, as someone who began studying education policy during the Annenberg Challenge, I thought small schools had enormous potential. And hopefully they still do. But as many first wave small school movement participants have pointed out, the essential ethos of that movement – a focus on serving the most disadvantaged kids and seeing them as whole people, on nurturing teacher collaboration, and on building school communities – has given way to an obsession with producing good stats. So anonymous 1:55AM, many of these problems are not “idea problems” as much as they are "approach/implementation" problems.

But you’re correct that I disagree with NYC’s approach as exemplified by the Wylde affair last week - and it is this approach that precipitated the downfall of some good ideas. Figuring out what works requires a willingness to seriously evaluate NYC’s reforms, to acknowledge failures when they occur, and to change course accordingly. It would also require a willingness to listen and to engage critics. Instead, what we’ve seen are incredible displays of hubris and rhetoric that are reminiscent of the “coalition of the willing” charades that preceded the Iraq War. When faced with dissent or tepid results, this administration has fired its critics (see the Monday Night Massacre response to their social promotion plan), personally discredited them, or launched advertising campaigns (see the Evander Childs affair here).

Anonymous 1:55AM also critiqued the critics’ lack of an alternate reform vision. Norm Scott took this comment head on, responding that critics do have a reform vision that includes attention to the context of teaching (i.e. class size reduction), attention to the non-academic needs of kids, and a commitment to building collaborative school communities where teachers have a real say. Sol added to Norm’s post, writing that some of the best ideas come from the master teacher in the next room over, and effective reforms should leverage that expertise. I agree with Anonymous 1:55 AM’s sentiment that critics should offer alternatives, but I don’t see an absence of alternatives being offered by the NYC Department’s critics. Nonetheless, my one-woman “What Works Clearinghouse” will take Anonymous 1:55AM’s comments to heart in the coming weeks and offer some alternatives.

Robert Pondiscio provided sage advice about the need for reform movements to listen to critics, writing:

Have we come to the point in the education revolution when we will devour our own? Let’s hope not. The battle is nowhere near over. We need all the ideas and constructive criticism we can muster.

Let’s hope that the folks in charge – from Bloomberg/Klein to Margaret Spellings – take that advice seriously.

Finally, Holden pointed out that in the vast sea of poor evaluations, the Policy Studies evaluation of NYC small schools may be among the best:

I've been looking for an NYC education charity that can compellingly demonstrate that it makes a difference. Aside from the Mathematica study of Teach for America and one randomized study by LEAP, I've seen nothing whose methodology tops this New Visions report (so, nothing better than a B-). For a complex issue like education, it's tough for me to have confidence in a charity under these circumstances. Can you point me to anything I'm missing?

I'm having a hard time coming up with any. As long as foundations don't require (or fund) such evaluations, we're not going to see them. If someone can identify an educational organization in NYC that rigorously evaluates its work, please post it here.

Thanks for these comments, everyone. Keep them coming.

Reader comments roundup: Performance Pay

Dear jack phelps, andromeda, roger sweeny, anonymous (x2) and world,

I like you. I hope you keep writing comments, because you said some important things that forced me to think through my posts this week.

First things first. Anonymous 7:14AM – I can’t even stand to read this blog at 7:14AM. So hats off to you. You wrote:

The change theory seems to be "only if the best teachers help their colleagues identify challenges and improve will entire schools succeed and will teachers then become eligible for more pay. This will encourage individual teachers to do their personal best. It also will encourage collaboration and teamwork, as teachers share both responsibilities and rewards." Looks like capacity-sorting to me; how does this incentive build teachers' capacity to collaborate effectively?

Agreed - collaboration in a school is something that needs to be nurtured – it takes time, organizational structures, and clear attention to building a process of feedback and continuous conversation into everyday school life. In some of the best schools I’ve visited, the schedule builds in additional prep periods that have specified purposes – i.e. planning together or going over this week’s lessons to forge interdisciplinary connections. One of the best collaborative structures I’ve seen in junior and high schools is “kidtalk,” where a team of teachers gets together to raise issues about kids, have conferences with individual kids as a team, and share strategies for helping each kid learn. It’s an amazing process to watch and it produces good results in addition to fostering rapport among the teachers.

The trouble is that organizational structures cost money. If we cost it out on an hourly basis (5 additional hours a week at $30/hour, which is a low-ball number), we’re talking about $5400 per faculty member. Even if we assume that $3000 is delayed payment for this work, we’re not getting anywhere close to compensating teachers for this additional time. And the truth is that struggling teachers don’t just need common planning, but someone in their classroom on a regular basis to observe and coach them – which also requires money. So anonymous 7:14AM, I agree that this incentive plan is largely a capacity sorter.

jack phelps was not convinced about capacity sorting. (great post, btw – I’m happy we have you on the education team now instead of the banking one. everyone, read his whole comment.)

I'd say that sure, your average 1st year teacher is working his or her ass off just to get the kids focused. Among 1st years, pay might be a capacity sorter. But you think that as they get married, start saving for retirement, have their own kids and family to look after--basically their own, outside set of issues--most teachers still "give their best" not just while they're required to be in class, but in planning activities, developing content, reaching out to students or parents, and even analyzing quiz results to see which questions are weak and should be thrown out? There are a host of marginal efforts teachers can make outside their 47 minutes of class time (where, I agree, they probably give their best), and additional performance pay may encourage them to do so. And it's ridiculous to say that a teacher trying to retire won't work a little harder his last few years to make sure he's saved as much as possible!

So you’ve convinced me that performance pay could produce marginal efforts in teachers at different life course stages, but I want to add a “for whom” statement here – for teachers for whom the aggregate of small additional efforts put their schools in the running for getting performance pay. What proportion of teachers this involves depends on how high the standards are for getting performance pay – we’ll know more about this as details of the NYC plan become available.

andromeda, a teacher in a private school in Massachusetts, is thinking about leaving the profession because of the lack of merit pay. She writes:

It's not that I want to be paid a lot of money -- if I did, I wouldn't have gone into teaching (and private school at that). What rankles is that one of the major ways respect is expressed in this society is money, and I want to be respected if I'm good at what I do. I want to be rewarded if I work hard and do a good job. The way the system's set up, I can't….I'd like my employers to say, in a meaningful way, that they appreciate my contribution….And I'm really starting to think, maybe I'd be happier in a corporate culture that values me.

I definitely hear you - you do a hard job, and you deserve to be recognized when you do it well. And schools absolutely need to develop structures to do this - and I'm okay with these rewards being financial. The question is about how we decide who gets these rewards; I'm partial to the kind of holistic evaluation that happens in other sectors (anonymous #2, check out yesterday's post on this question), rather than a test score-based system, but am skeptical about the capacity of schools to perform these kinds of evaluations given limited supervisory resources.

Finally, Roger Sweeny wrote:

Just about every school system pays its teachers more if they take additional education courses. Most teachers complain that these courses do little or nothing to make them better teachers. If teachers didn't respond to financial incentives, very few of them would take any of the courses. But many, many do.

Good point, Roger - I didn't mean that teachers were unresponsive to financial incentives, but perhaps less responsive than private sector workers. I like the idea of looking at increases in masters degree enrollment in the past (i.e. when financial incentives were tied to degree attainment) as providing insight into just how responsive teachers are.

Keep the comments coming, everyone. I'll try to respond once a week.