The 21st Century Principal

I think I have been fairly clear. I am no fan of Race to the Top. I have never been due to its over-reliance on standardization of education, over to the top emphasis on testing, and its hyper-focus on competition. Just like its older cousin, No Child Left Behind, at the end of the day, Race to the Top will most likely go down in the history of education reform as just another failed and misguided educational reform. As someone who has worked in trenches with teachers since its inception, I have seen no improvement in education, but I have seen a great deal of deterioration in working conditions of the schools.

The biggest problem for those of us working in the schools brought on by Race to the Top has only brought is the enormous amount of new regulation, new restrictions, and new mandates that take more of our valuable time that could otherwise be used teaching and working with our students. For example, in North Carolina we now spend even more time prepping students for tests and administering tests, because in our state we subject our students to more standardized tests than has ever been done in state history. The education practitioners in the schools are also having to spend an enormous amount of time learning new software and data collection programs, purchased with Race to the Top funding, and these programs still are not fully functional and are too often causing data errors and more work staff in the schools. Because of constant glitches, staff have to take even more time trying to make this technology work. The constant failures of all this technology only adds to the burden our teachers  face in the classroom. This added technological burden comes at a time when teachers have more students in their classrooms than ever, and less instructional materials and text materials than ever, all because of a governor and state legislature unwilling to fund education in North Carolina. I scratch my head in wonder, because the philosophy behind charter schools, for which Race to the Top advocates, is to allow schools to operate with less red tape and less restriction because that is somehow better, yet our own government and state department of instruction turns around and heaps more regulation, more state mandates, and more red tape on how we operate. If that regulation is so bad, then why keep pushing more and more of it? Go figure! Ultimately, what Race to the Top has done to those of us in the schools is heap a ton of new rules, a gaggle of new mandates, a host of floundering new software and data systems, and an extra large dose of standardization and testing on our heads. 

In a time when we should be emphasizing the personalization of education in North Carolina, we're still trying to turn our schools into efficient factories to churn out students with high test scores. Somehow our leadership has come to believe that high test scores is the only equivalent to being college and career ready, when in fact, such thinking may only mean students are good test-takers. Instead to pursuing the false promises of standardization, we should be turning our schools into places where innovation, creativity, and collaboration thrive. Such schools are the opposite of standardized, one-size fits all schools we currently have.

What is the answer? The answer is, perhaps its time to let go of this fetish that if we somehow test students more and hold teachers accountable to those test scores no matter what, our students will learn more. We keep ramping up the testing, changing standards, but we cut instructional materials and professional development funding. We keep thinking that if we make the test stakes high enough, somehow teachers will miraculously rise to the occasion. What's happening instead is teachers are saying, "I quit," leaving the profession and/or moving to other states in increasing numbers. As a school leader, it becomes harder and harder to promote teaching as a career opportunity.

What our state leadership does not fully understand is that this massive increase of teacher turnover in North Carolina isn't just about pay; it's the working conditions too. With all this standardization, testing, and mandates coming down from Raleigh due to Race to the Top, it is getting less and less fulfilling to be a teacher and educator in North Carolina. Teachers are being treated more and more like factory workers whose job is to work on a assembly line and churn out students with high test scores. If they don't, then they're branded less effective or worse. Teacher professional judgment has been slowly replaced with test scores and systems of test data. In a word, being a teacher in North Carolina has become less about being a professional, and more about being an assembly-line worker, and if production isn't met, then you're out! The working conditions caused by Race to the Top and our state's efforts to meet its mandates has made being an educator in North Carolina much, much less palatable.

What then is the way out? In years past, these kinds of reform measures usually run their course and those pushing it move on to other things, then they slowly die out. This time, my fear is that our public education system will not survive. Race to the Top's push to standardize, its push to elevate testing to an even higher level of importance than No Child Left Behind, and its incessant focus on using competition to try to better education is leaving our schools tangled in a mess of new testing. It is leaving our teachers demoralized and dejected. It is turning our students off to schools and education. It is turning our schools into places of discord and competition instead of collaboration. It is making it much more difficult to personalize and meet the needs of students because we are too busy trying to meet the needs of latest federal or state mandate. I can only hope that our public education system survives it all.

The country rankings indicated on the PISA international test scores should not be used like the current lineup in a NASCAR race to determine who's currently in the lead in the educational "Race to the Top" because these rankings by themselves tell us absolutely nothing. So when our Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan begins his tales of woe and gloom and doom, be sure he's just using these to promote his own agenda. Sadly, this has been the practice a many of politician in recent times. Much of what Duncan has used to support his reform agenda has been a combination of half truths and what I would call benders because they either simply the real data or they ignore or dismiss other data just because it doesn't fit his propaganda. Sadly, we as educators still are letting Duncan and the media say these things without response.

In a blog post entitled "Reading the PISA Tea Leaves: Who Is Responsible for Finland's Decline and the Asian Magic," education scholar Yong Zhao points to an important point about all those Asian countries stacked at the top of the ratings. He states,

"The recipe for East Asian success is actually not that magical. It includes all the elements that have been identified as the symptoms of the GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) by the great Finnish education scholar Pasi  Sahlberg: Competition, Standardization, Frequent Testing and Privatization. In East Asia high performing systems, these ingredients are more effectively combined and carried out to extreme to result in societies devoted to ensure youngsters become excellent test takers."

Zhao points out further than while many of the East Asian countries are at the top of these international test rankings, they are "not at all happy with the outcomes of their education systems." They are producing some great test-takers, but they are not producing students capable of creative, innovative and entrepreneurial thinking. So even if the rankings mean something, the question becomes, "Do we want a nation of good test-takers? Or, do we want students capable of innovative, creative, and entrepreneurial thinking?" Zhao points out that these systems designed to facilitate a "Race to the Top" of national rankings are not going to provide the kinds of students capable of tackling the many problems we face.

Today, I stumbled across the video below that provides a fairly good perspective on these PISA scores. Admittedly, the video is produced by the American Federation of Teachers which may give one pause to consider its content, it still does get many things right about the misappropriated use of these international scores that is so commonly done by current education policy leaders.

One sad fact about public education in North Carolina is that the Holiday season comes on the eve of our state's massive semester testing push, at least in high schools. In North Carolina this year, we're testing students with state tests more than has ever been done in history. It is pretty clear that the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's new philosophy of education is: "If it moves, and breathes, then test it."

While we in North Carolina are state-testing students more than ever, there are also all those state mandates that come with all those tests, that districts scramble to try to fulfill. These are those types of mandates that policymakers and accountability at state and federal levels come up with, but never really see the effects. They never see the pain and struggles people go through to implement these near impossible mandates. Take for example the simple idea that every test administration must have a proctor. Though our state education leadership has created this new creature of accountability and testing called a "Roving Proctor" to ease the almost impossible task of finding proctors, they still don't understand that schools only have so many sources of breathing human beings to put into classrooms. There's not exactly a line of community volunteers out there who are willing to spend three or four hours of their lives staring at kids as they fill in bubble sheets or stare at computer screens. Perhaps the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction think "Proctors grow on trees!" Sadly, they don't, so many districts are having to shut down almost everything to move bodies around to cover all of the proctoring. That alone is a sign of how absurd all this state testing has become. Perhaps everyone in Raleigh, from our state superintendent down to the janitors in the education building in Raleigh should fan out to schools across the state and serve as proctors.

No matter, how you stack it, many of us in high schools see Christmas vacation as the eve of semester testing, and season of testing is like a black cloud moving into position over our schools. In addition, no matter what rhetoric comes from Raleigh, we are subjecting students to more state tests than we ever have in history. Somehow our state leaders believe that changing the name of some of these tests from Measures of Student Learning to Common Exams to what they now call North Carolina Final Exams somehow means they aren't state tests. They are, and testing  has grown into a monster that drives almost everything we do at the local school level. No wonder there are places in other states where parents are saying enough is enough!

"There is no association between test scores and national success, and, contrary to one of the major beliefs driving US education policy for nearly a half a century, international test scores are nothing to be concerned about." Keith Baker, "Are International Tests Worth Anything?" Phi Delta Kappan October 2007

Do the PISA international test scores really mean anything? No, according to Keith Baker, who once worked as a researcher for the US Department of Education. Diane Ravitch quoted Baker in her post at the Washington Post, "Four Lessons on the New PISA Scores." Ravitch, who certainly knows more about the history of international test scores than Secretary Duncan, points out, if anything, these PISA scores show that "the billions invested in testing, test prep, and accountability" have not done anything to raise our international test score standings. Duncan's mythical connection between international test scores and economic success is a tired one, and as Baker points out in his article, "Are International Tests Worth Anything?" it is wrong.

Besides, it appears that this data isn't all it is cracked up to be. David Stout at Time magazine points out in "China Is Cheating the World Student Rankings,"  that the Chinese, unlike the United States and other countries did not release all their scores. They only released the scores for ShangHai. As Stout points out, Hong Kong does not count for the Chinese, because they send in their own data because of their level of independence from China. Naturally, policymakers and media pundits interpret the scores as representing all of China when they only represent a portion. Makes one wonder what other games other countries are playing to manipulate the scores.

This illustrates a BIG problem with this international score carnival. There's no way to be sure that we're comparing apples to apples as they say, so these comparisons are meaningless. These rankings are worthless because they tell us absolutely nothing about the state and conditions of our schools. They only serve as a political talking point for a Department of Education still pushing a failed standards-testing-accountability policy that's failing because it does not address the real issues in our schools. And, if you disagree with them, then you're defending the status quo. I hate to break the news to them, but methinks they're actually perpetuating the status quo. It's really sad that Arne Duncan and his Department of Education would use these scores for propaganda purposes to continue to push his failing education agenda, but he's living up to his true calling: he's a politician, not an educator.

Yesterday, the media continued the tradition of sounding the alarm: "Our schools are doomed according to the latest PISA, or Program for International Assessment, scores." NPR chimes in with this one, "PISA Test Results for US Students Are Sobering," and Huffington Post has this headline, "US Test Scores Remain Stagnant While Other Countries See Rapid Rise." NBC news echoed Huffington Post with this one, "US Teens Lag in Global Education Rankings as Asian Countries Rise to the Top,"  One has to question when this incessant obsession with international test scores is going to stop. Why all this fuss about being first in test scores? Do they really think that somehow, magically, our nation will be transformed and educated when we suddenly move up the rankings?

Then there's Education Secretary Arne Duncan who is "Crying-Wolf" once more, when he says, "We're seeing a Picture of Educational Stagnation" as he pointed out at Townhall.com. About the only thing stagnant is his incessant droning about these test scores every time they come out.  Duncan hasn't learned the old wisdom that says "If you cry wolf too many times, people stop listening to you." Perhaps its time we do just that. He, no doubt, will use these scores as an opportunity to push his educational agenda of National Standards, National Testing, and tying teacher evaluations to test scores. His playbook of propaganda has become all too transparent over the past several years.

The truth is out there though. As Diane Ravitch pointed out in her new book Reign of Error, and as she points out in this Washington Post op-ed, "The myth persists that once our nation led the world on international tests, but we have fallen from that exalted position in recent years. Wrong, wrong, wrong." Ravitch points out that "THE UNITED STATES HAS NEVER BEEN FIRST IN THE WORLD, NOR EVEN NEAR THE TOP, ON INTERNATIONAL TESTS."

So why this continued obsession with being first? We have never been first since international assessments were first given in the 1960s or 1970s. Does that mean we haven't ever been economically competitive since? I think the history of business and industry shows that the economy did well during various times even when our international test scores were in the tank. The fact is, OUR ECONOMIC VIABILITY IS NOT TIED TO TEST SCORES and I would add, being first on international assessments isn't going to change our economic fortunes.

Perhaps it's time we, as educators, stopped accepting this mythology perpetuated by Arne Duncan and his Department of Education. It's time for us to demand that the media quit participating in this absurd obsession with test scores and comparing our students' performance with other countries, when we know that other countries game the system and test only more selective students.

Arne Duncan has not yet learned that apples do not compare to oranges, except perhaps in the narrow world he lives in. Educators at all levels need to start countering and questioning this Duncanesque perversion of the truth, and quit buying-in to the false mythologies his department of education is perpetuating. Sure, our schools sometimes struggle. We who are in the schools fight to reach students every single day. We teach our hearts out, and we have Duncan's Doom and Gloom constantly bellowing from Washington.

As far as I am concerned, he has "Cried Wolf" for the last time. He has nothing else left to say worthwhile. So I am no longer listening to him. I can't remove him from the Department of Education, but I can choose to stop listening to his blather. The sooner the Obama administration moves on and Duncan moves out, we can hopefully stop chasing myths and get down to the real business of improving education.

The truth is we are not going to test our way to economic prosperity, so it's time to realize that.

How can we engage students in high, quality substantive discussions on profound topics? One potential way to do this might be to adopt a tradition like our school has practiced since its founding: it's our "the Chalk Talk" tradition.  It is called that because our original "Chalk Talks" were done on a true blackboard and chalk located in our main hallway. Now, we use a large white board that extends several feet along the wall in our main hallway.

The philosophy behind our "Chalk Talk" is simple: We want to to give our students opportunities to engage in profound questions and ideas. Using our Chalk Talk board, our students take the lead by writing the question on the board, and as students walk through the building during the day or after school, they respond to the posted question and to each other's responses. After several days, the end result is a graffiti of student responses, many of them demonstrating much deeper and more profound thinking than what they show in other settings.

One recent question really got students to thinking on the nature of religion in society and in their own lives. That question was, "Does society need religion?" While educators often avoid these kinds of questions like the plague due to the controversial nature of possible answers, if we're going to really get students to thinking in-depth and critically, then we can't wall off the topics and questions just because they make us uncomfortable. In fact, I submit that much of the polarization in our society exists because we don't know any longer how to engage in civil discourse on the controversial and simply be tolerant. This "Chalk Talk" gives us an opportunity to teach students that they can disagree civilly and respect other's beliefs. We can agree to disagree.

Perhaps the "Chalk Talk Principle of Substance and Civility" is best illustrated by an incident where a student recently asked me, "Does it ever make you nervous about the questions we post here?" I thought for a moment, and then answered, "Not really. I might find myself having to answer some parent or community concern questions, but as long as I can defend the civility and substantiveness of the activity, I have no problem with it." We teach students how to respect differences and diversity by not enforcing conformity, but by our willingness to allow students to engage the what is often uncomfortable and that might cause an administrator to be nervous.

Here's the process for our Chalk Talk:

1. A student writes a substantial question on the Chalk-talk board. There are no guidelines or rules posted on what the topic should be about. The communicated expectation is that it must be substantive and require thought and debate as well as response.

2. Once the question is posted, any of our students, and staff (they often like to engage in the discussions too, not control them) post responses. Students simply use the white board markers left at the board for this purpose to write their responses to the question or to other responses. The only rule we have is that we must be respectful, considerate, and tolerant in our postings. Being civil and tolerant in word and deed is the rule.

3. A question may stay up for a week or two, or just a few days. Nonetheless, students are in charge of the entire process for the most part. Occasionally, a staff member will post a question too just to join into the discussion. Students are free to write responses as they pass by the board throughout the day.

There are some who would ask, "Why don't you post some kind of discussion board online instead? It would be much easier for students to access and post." My answer to that is simple. Having a physical board in the hallway means more. Often, it's common for student responses on this board to spill into what we call extended hallway chalk talk discussions. I for one found myself engaged in one the other day with staff members and students. The discussion was extremely profound, and I suggest that I learned as much as the students. The physical board serves as a kind physical place, not unlike a city square or like a Roman forum, where the exchange is with ideas not goods or services. An electronic space could not provide this experience. Besides, high-tech does not always mean better.

If we as school leaders want students really engaged in substantive talk and discussions, we have to realize we can't control the conversation. We can provide the environment. We can encourage respect and tolerance and model civility, but we can't wall off everything that makes us uncomfortable and tell students they can't talk about that. Chalk Talks are a means to foster a true sense of learning community.

Chalk Talk Board in Action

For those still holding out hope for that merit pay will be the salvation of public education, here's yet another study that points out that such practices are a waste of time. Roland Fryer from Harvard University and the National Bureau of Economic Research, has a study entitled "Teacher Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from New York City Public Schools" that is to be published in The Journal of Labor Economics.This study once again affirms that many of us who have spent our lives in education know full well:

Merit pay schemes are a waste of effort and time.

In this study, Fryer points to these findings about merit pay:

• No evidence that teacher incentives had a positive effect on student achievement. In fact, in this study, STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT MAY HAVE DECLINED.
•  Incentives did not change student nor teacher behavior.

"Rewards can perform a weird sort of behavioral alchemy: they can transform an interesting task into a drudge. They can turn play into work. And by diminishing intrinsic motivation , they can send performance, creativity, and even upstanding behavior toppling like dominoes." Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

I would send a copy of Drive to our state legislators and even our governor, but I'm not sure they read books.