Play Dead by Nancy Flanagan

from Teacher in a Strange Land by Nancy Flanagan (see original post at http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2012/03/play_dead.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TeacherInAStrangeLand+%28Teacher+in+a+Strange+Land%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

A group of folks I greatly respect, over at Cooperative Catalyst, has been blog-bouncing the concept of play around: the loss of play from ordinary early-childhood curricula, the diminishing role given to play in an era of test-based accountability, the common lack of understanding of the vital importance of play in making learning stick. It's a big, juicy topic. And of course, I want to play.

Here's my thinking: Play is not just for little kids. And it's not just about recess (although eliminating recess is a bone-headed policy that's not only mean-spirited but counterproductive on all meaningful indicators of academic success).

Another thought: Everyone says play is a great thing. Create! Invent! Put a ping-pong table in your lobby! But once the classroom doors close, many teachers are fearful of play. And rightfully so. Not only because their professional evaluations and livelihood are now legally linked to a mandate to produce satisfactory hard numerical data-- but open-ended play is not generally The Way We Do Things.

Unless they're teaching pre-school (and sometimes not even then), any teacher who focuses on play as regular pedagogical strategy is suspect. So much core knowledge to be absorbed and squeezed back out, so many discrete skills to be tested. Who has time for laughter and playing games? And isn't play...inefficient, as a means of learning?

In schools, and in the grim, we're-behind education policy discourse, a teacher who encourages students of any age to poke at ideas, learn from mistakes, and approach established disciplinary content as a treasure chest to explore is seen as disorganized. Non-linear. Ineffective. Look at the Common Core Standards' recommendation that students stop reading so much useless fiction. Why would teachers waste time reading children stories, when they could be transmitting important, testable facts?

I am a music teacher--theoretically a creative art--but can state categorically that music, as traditionally taught in secondary schools, is not very imaginative or playful at all. Ironic--since what do kids do in the band room? Play. School music programs tend to become performance-oriented only, however--and often rigorously competitive.

Granted, there is an important body of information and skills in music. The more of that disciplinary knowledge students have mastered, and the more proficiency they develop, the greater their ability to capably perform interesting and satisfying music. But--as anyone who's ever weaseled their mother into quitting piano lessons knows-- there is a distinct line between just having fun with music and being compelled to practice, perform or excel.

The trick in pushing children to develop musical competency is to balance acquisition of new skills with pleasure--to keep having fun. Why should I memorize scales (or multiplication tables or narrative genres)? Because the joy of playing music with others, problem-solving, or writing a story is enhanced. Practicing skills--creatively playing with your new abilities-- is vastly more important than evaluating or comparing them. Adding a dash of pleasure embeds learning, too.

There's a increasing reluctance among teachers to offer students materials and ideas as tools for experimentation, as stuff to play with, with no graded assessment product expected. The National Standards for Music Education include composition, often overlooked in school music programs focused on replicating already-created music with a high degree of perfection. Hey--I'm in favor of pursuing excellence, and exposing students to diverse, high-quality musical literature. But too much of what we do in education revolves around reproducing and reiterating, rather than playful creation.

Why? Because teachers feel confident about teaching to clearly defined, measurable content standards with fidelity--and uncertain about how to make a productive space for student creativity. It's nerve-wracking to turn kids loose to create. How do you structure that lesson? What's the subject matter takeaway? What if your students create inferior products (as they certainly will, at first)? Must you grade them?

I say this from personal experience. It took lots of experimentation to figure out how to teach composition to middle schoolers, which I was inspired to do by--yes--national standards. I had to deal with "just tell me what to do" and "I don't get this" and "can't I just do a report?" We persisted, however. And eventually, it was fun, playing with our acquired musical skills, creating new music--recording it on audio, video, electronic keyboard discs and paper.

Some students performed their compositions live, including a fabulous little rock trio, playing the blues. One of my students asked if she could choreograph a dance to a song she'd recorded on the Clavinova, then perform it for her class.

As she was dancing, the principal walked in. The class was seated, quietly, around the cleared center of the band room, watching. When she finished, they gave her a sincere round of applause. And the principal called me out into the hall. What's going on? he said. You having a little talent show? A reward for good behavior or something?

I explained that I was teaching composition. Melody, harmony, style, improvisation, rhythm and creativity. It's in the standards, I said. I felt defensive. Hmmmph, he said.

What's happened to play, in your classroom?

Matthew Resnick: Great Principals: Leaders, Learners, Innovators

from Education on HuffingtonPost.com by Matthew Resnick posted in the Huffington Post at

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-resnick/post_3123_b_1348042.html

The age-old question of "What makes a good leader?" is making its latest debut on the education front in New York City. With all the recent developments regarding teacher evaluations, the discussion of principal evaluations has emerged. In order to improve education, every aspect of a school must be addressed -- including the principal. Principals, like any other type of leader, have a lot of responsibilities. The main job of a principal is to ensure that the students in their school are receiving an effective education, and they must do whatever it takes to ensure that that happens -- no excuses.

What are the qualities of a great principal?

1) Providing constructive feedback to teachers

At an event hosted by teacher group Educators 4 Excellence, 64 percent of teachers in the room said that their principals do not provide meaningful feedback. This is a scary statistic. As a student, I am constantly being evaluated and given feedback -- this is how I know where my weaknesses are, and how I can improve. Teachers need the same type of support from principals.

2) Accepting feedback from teachers, administrators, and students

An effective leader must receive feedback from those they are leading -- and respect it. Being a principal should not be a solo job -- every part of the school community needs to speak up, and be heard. A principal needs to take both praise and criticism constructively. If something is going right, build on it. If something is going wrong, find out why, and fix it.

3) Being accessible and consistent

A principal needs to be available to teachers, parents, and students as often as possible. A principal can't spend all their time cooped up in an office, or outside the school building, rather a balance of in the classrooms and in an office. A principal needs to be present to ensure that what is supposed to be happening is happening, and ready to address any concerns that may arise.

4) Facilitating meaningful communication and collaboration between teachers

Communication is a fundamental concept across the board -- from personal things such as relationships to worldwide issues. A school is no exception -- the teachers and administrators must work together to improve classes, and the school as a whole. Students working together is no foreign concept. Group projects, peer tutoring, and other methods of student collaboration have existed for quite a while, and research has shown that this is beneficial for the students. Teachers can learn a lot from each other, even across the disciplines. Mr. Dimitri Saliani, principal of Eleanor Roosevelt High School, recognizes the importance of continued learning, even as an educator: "I pride myself on being a learner, not just an educator. Every teacher is a learner and has obviously enjoyed learning in their lifetime, hence their career choice, so I wondered how else we can learn from one another at ERHS." Mr. Saliani implemented a system that allowed teachers from all disciplines to attend his classroom visits with him -- regardless of the subject. I saw math teachers in my history class, history teachers in my science class, and so on. He concluded by stating, "It has invigorated the faculty and myself to learn from one another, to think about employing new teaching and learning strategies, and opened the door to new opportunities for collaboration." A great principal goes beyond the simple teacher meetings, and creatively develops innovative ways for teachers to collaborate.

5) A constant effort to innovate and improve

A great principal knows that there is always room for improvement. A principal should wake up every morning and ask "How can I make my school better?" Principals need to be creative, and develop unique ways to engage the teachers and students. Principals must be willing to take risks sometimes -- a school cannot be run the same tried-and-true way forever. Evaluators: keep this in mind -- measure a principal not just using pre-established rubrics and methods -- but on creativity and innovation, two things that don't always end up on paper.

A short, numbered list doesn't cover all the qualities of an effective principal -- a principal should have years of experience to complement the qualities I highlighted. In a release by Educators 4 Excellence, Evan Stone, Co-Founder and Co-CEO states, "As school leaders, principals play a key role in evaluating and supporting teachers and we need to make sure that they get fair and useful feedback that will ultimately benefit teachers and students." The bottom line is that in a school, everyone has a job to do, and everyone needs useful feedback in order to create the best learning environment possible. Principals are no exception.

Everybody, speak up! Share your thoughts on what makes a great principal, and how principals should be evaluated.

How Charter Schools Can Hurt

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR to NY times at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/opinion/how-charter-schools-can-hurt.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

By LUCINDA ROSENFELDPublished: March 16, 2012

MY daughter is a kindergarten pupil at P.S. 261 in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. She started there in September, and she loves everything about it: her friends, her teachers and her school-related activities, like Girl Scouts. Intense excitement accompanied both the post office project earlier this year and the Halloween Day Characters Parade, in which her class dressed up as the Three Little Pigs.

A few weeks ago, for three days in a row starting at 3 p.m., a representative from the Success Academycharter school that is scheduled to open this fall in adjacent Cobble Hill stood outside the doors of P.S. 261, handing out fliers and attempting to recruit its students. On day two, outraged teachers asked the man to leave. He refused. On day three, a loose group of teachers, parents and students occupied the sidewalk next to him. Heated words were exchanged. It wasn’t until the next day, when a schoolwide rally unfolded in the front yard — and cameras from NY1 arrived — that the representative vanished. I can’t help wondering if this is the educational future that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had in mind when, in his State of the City address earlier this year, he called for 50 new charter schools to open in the next two years.

Here in the Brownstone Belt, most elementary schools are overwhelmingly populated either by poor minorities or middle- to upper-middle-class whites. P.S. 261 is one of a minority of Brooklyn primary schools that manages to be truly diverse — racially, ethnically and economically. While 35 percent of its student body qualifies for free lunch, it also attracts and retains children from professional families of all races and creeds, who work in law, media and the arts.

If Success Academy succeeds in luring away even a fraction of 261’s students, however, it could well create a snowball effect in which its middle-class population ends up fleeing. In New York City, school budgets are determined in part by the number of students who attend. So fewer kids at P.S. 261 would mean less money for the principal to spend on everything from teachers to class trips.

At the moment, P.S. 261 is doing pretty well. Just recently, the Trust for Public Land selected the school to have its playground renovated, while a science teacher, Carmelo Piazza (otherwise known as “Carmelo the Science Fellow,” a Brooklyn legend in his own right), received a $10,000 grant from AT&T to refurbish his lab, which will soon be filled with small reptiles.

For reasons understood only by the statistics-mad New York City Department of Education, P.S. 261 recently received a letter grade of “C.” It was also designated as a “school in need of improvement.” But so far, in my book, considering budget cuts that have wiped out close to a million dollars in three years and forced the school library to close for lack of a librarian, the place deserves an A or A-minus.

Other schools nearby could use help as well. Instead of sending taxpayer funds to another Success Academy, why not use that same money to try to turn some of Brooklyn’s less popular elementary schools into institutions that, like P.S. 261, attract parents from across the socioeconomic spectrum? In studies, a mix of rich and poor has been shown to lift up those at the bottom of the economic pile. As for the children of professional families, it’s surely better for them not to spend their entire lives around people exactly like them.

The apparent reason for opening a charter school in a gentrified neighborhood like Cobble Hill (or the Upper West Side, where a Success Academy opened last year) is to bring more middle-class and upper-middle-class families into the publicly funded charter system. But if the Success Academy succeeds in its mission, it could well end up destroying schools like P.S. 261 that already succeed in attracting these families. My daughter’s new friends include the children of both marketing executives and maintenance workers. At drop-off recently, I watched as she and a friend who lives in a nearby housing project walked hand in hand down the hall. In its promise of a more just world, the sight made me almost teary-eyed. I wonder how much longer those kinds of scenes will prevail.

The communities of Boerum Hill and Cobble Hill overwhelmingly do not support a charter in the neighborhood. (The same is true in Williamsburg, where, despite a huge outcry, another Success Academy was recently rubber-stamped.) This has been made abundantly clear at both community meetings and those for the Panel for Educational Policy. Perhaps the mayor believes he knows better than the thousands of families who have come out to voice their opposition. But then, wasn’t the whole point of the “school choice” movement to give power back to the parents?

There’s nothing wrong with providing families with options. When charters open in their own privately financed, state-of-the-art buildings in poverty-stricken neighborhoods where they’re welcomed by the community, there may be reasons to celebrate. But when charters co-locate in mixed-income areas, choice is only half the story.

The existing schools in which they set up shop suffer both in terms of resources (only so many kids can fit in the lunchroom at one time) and morale. If the Cobble Hill Success Academy opens as planned in the Brooklyn School for Global Studies, which also houses a second high school and a special-needs program, in five years the building will be at 108 percent capacity — unless, of course, the other schools shrivel up and die.

Call us paranoid, but parents like me are starting to wonder whether Mayor Bloomberg’s larger goal isn’t to privatize the entire New York City public school system. Why else would he be foisting charters on communities that don’t want them? And how else can he justify diverting tax dollars to organizations that employ people to blanket neighborhoods with advertisements and try to poach students from public schools that are already thriving?

Lucinda Rosenfeld is the author of “I’m So Happy for You.”

Teachers Around the World No Longer “Asking For Permission”

March 18, 2012 by twalker

In conversations about Finland’s stunning success over the past decade, many education leaders look at what makes the system work so well – the high bar for entry into the teaching profession, the absence of standardized tests, the embedded professional development and support systems, to name just a few – and ask “Why can’t we do this in my country?” But what makes Finland even more unique is that education policy is largely free of politics. Whether it’s the status and prestige of teachers or the problem of educational inequity, these are matters on which politicians on the right and left agree.

But that’s Finland. Where does that leave so many other countries, including the United States, whose national conversation over education is tarnished by divisive, partisan politics and competing interests? How can public education advocates cut through the noise of grandstanding politicians and bad research and lead in transforming the teaching profession?

NEA President Dennis Van Roekel

It’s time for the public to stop listening to those who have never been in front of a classroom and who espouse ideas that undermine public education, says NEA President Dennis Van Roekel.

“You have to remember that many people who are talking about reform are not really talking about education, as in what’s really works for teachers and their students. Their interest is something else – privatization, for example. We know what works and we need to be out front.”

“The status quo is not acceptable,” Van Roekel said. “And we can change it. But the idea now is for educators to stop asking for permission.”

Van Roekel made these remarks on a panel of international teacher leaders at the Celebration of Teaching and Learning in New York City on Friday. The topic was how unions around the world are taking the initiative in defining the teacher profession as it faces serious challenges inside and outside the classroom. Joining Van Roekel was Mike Thiruman, president of the Singapore Teachers’ Union, Eva-Lis Sirén, president of the Swedish Teachers’ Union and Angelo Gavrielatos, president of the Australian Education Union. Linda Darling-Hammond, professor of education at Stanford University, moderated the panel, which followed the completion of the second annual International Summit on the Teaching Profession.

Angelo Gavrielatos, president of the Australian Education Union

Each panelist brought a different perspective based on the position and status of their county’s public schools. In the United States, the nation’s schools have been bogged down by budget cuts, rising inequality, and a harsh, ill-conceived “high-stakes” culture that has scapegoated educators. Australia faces similar issues – a situation Angelo Gravrielatos blames partly on his country’s importing America’s bad education ideas. (“Why are we emulating the nations we outperform, and not those who outperform us?” he asked.)

Sweden is a system in transition, following a decade of decline. Singapore, on the other hand, is, like Finland, a country thriving – thanks to robust funding and rigorous teaching standards and professional development programs.

The overwhelming consensus of the panelists was that educators have to take on strong leadership roles inside and outside the classroom – to step up and own the profession and be more aggressive in changing the direction of the public dialogue.

“We need to reclaim the language,” Gravielatos said. “We can’t wait around for a paradigm shift in the politics.”

Eva-Lis Sirén, president of the Swedish Teachers' Union

Van Roekel said that while a game of defense is essential – particularly in fending off ongoing attacks on workers rights – he said that unions have gone on the offense. Last December, NEA announced a plan called “Leading the Profession” to transform the teaching profession and accelerate student learning.

In Sweden, the teachers union is undertaking similar strategies. A new public campaign called “It All Starts with a Good Teacher” aims to raise the status of teachers and steer the debate toward how empowering teachers can improve achievement.

“Sweden has high ambitions for education,” Eva-Lis Sirén said. “But we’ve lost our place over the past ten years. To get it back, we’re making the case that teachers are the ones to lead. Developing strategies to improve teaching is not something others should do. That is our responsibility. We are in charge.”

Teachers in Singapore, on the other hand, have less political and public battles to wage. Education funding, for example, is not an issue.

Mike Thiruman, president of the Singapore Teachers' Union

“We devote between 17-20 percent of our national budget to education,” Mike Thiruman told the audience. “Even in recession, we actually increase funding. Everyone agrees it is common sense – both educationally and economically.” Thiurman also spoke about how teachers in Singapore are entitled to 1000 hours of professional development every year.

It is this climate that allows Singapore’s union to focus on supporting teachers at the school level and take ownership of what happens in the classroom.

“We are creating a strong community of practice so that we have evidence about what really works in the classroom – evidence that we can showcase. It is not for others to dictate.”

But in countries such as the United States and Australia, where educators have a steeper hill to climb in regaining the advantage in the public debate, Van Roekel and Gavrielatos said playing a strong political role is a responsibility for all teachers.

“We all have personal and professional reasons to be educators,” Gavrielatos commented, “ but we all have to embrace the third ‘p’ – the political. We do have a political role to play – even just to be rigorous in pointing out the absurdities of the ideas about teaching coming out of the so-called reform movement. We must not shy away.”

Telling students it’s okay to fail helps them succeed — study

Posted at 11:41 AM ET, 03/14/2012 at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/telling-students-its-okay-to-fail-helps-them-succeed--study/2012/03/12/gIQAxTwxBS_blog.html?wprss=rss_answer-sheet

By Valerie Strauss

Telling children that it is perfectly normal to sometimes fail at school can actually help them do better academically, according to newly published research.

The results of three experiments by French researchers are not definitive but they are intuitive; kids who don’t feel overwhelming pressure to do well all the time are more likely to feel free to explore, take academic chances and not fall apart if they make a mistake.

The first experiment explains how the three were conducted: 111 sixth-graders were all given very difficult anagram problems. A sub-group of the students who were told that learning can be hard and that they should expect to sometimes fail did better on a test measuring working memory capacity than students in two other groups who did not have the same failure-is-okay discussion. Working memory capacity is said to be a good predictor of reading comprehension, problem solving and other aspects of academic achievement.

The findings are explained in article called “Improving Working Memory Efficiency by Reframing Metacognitive Interpretation of Task Difficulty,” by Frederique Autin and Jean-Claude Croizet of the University of Poitiers and the National Center for Scientific Research in Poitiers, France. The article was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General by the American Psychological Association.

In a news release about the article, Autin was quoted as saying: “We focused on a widespread cultural belief that equates academic success with a high level of competence and failure with intellectual inferiority. By being obsessed with success, students are afraid to fail, so they are reluctant to take difficult steps to master new material. Acknowledging that difficulty is a crucial part of learning could stop a vicious circle in which difficulty creates feelings of incompetence that in turn disrupts learning.”

And Croize was quoted as saying, “People usually believe that academic achievement simply reflects students’ inherent academic ability, which can be difficult to change. But teachers and parents may be able to help students succeed just by changing the way in which the material is presented.”

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DCPS budget: IMPACT’s impact

Posted at 08:39 PM ET, 03/06/2012

By Bill Turque

There’s plenty for DCPS stakeholders to dislike in the newly releasedschool-based budget allocations proposed for 2012-13. While they reflect a two-percent increase in the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, they will still mean larger class sizes--as in, fewer teachers--at the middle and high school levels, along with cuts in positions such as special education coordinator.

One of the drivers of this unpleasant news is the projected exhaustion of the private foundation money that has underwritten IMPACT bonuses for “highly effective” teachers under the terms of the 2010 collective bargaining agreement. After the current school year, the annual cost of the bonuses--about $7.2 million for the first two years of the program, according DCPS--will be borne by the individual schools.

For FY 2013, those bonus obligations will be loaded into the average cost of a classroom teacher, which will rise from $90,681 to $95,574.

DCPS was clear in 2010 that this reckoning was coming. The $64 million pledged by the Broad, Arnold, Robertson and Walton foundations was a three-year ride set to end in the fall of 2012. What was largely unexpected was to see these costs passed down to the school level.

At the time the contract was approved, then-Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and other officials said that savings and efficiencies achieved elsewhere in the school system--such as reductions in private special education tuition and transportation --could be used to help sustain the contract. But we’ve since learned that at least some of those savings have gone elsewhere, including the Department of Disabilities--to offset the loss of a federal grant--and economic development in Ward 7 and on the Southwest waterfront.

Where the rest of the $64 million has gone is not clear. I’ve asked for clarification from DCPS. A District study at the time of the contract’s approval estimated that without continued private help, the annual cost of supporting the 2010 contract was about $30 million.

Look for another contentious budget season.

By Bill Turque | 08:39 PM ET, 03/06/2012

Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers

Co-Au thored by Scholars Convened by

The Economic Policy Institute:

Executive summary (click here to go to entire document)

Every classroom should have a well-educated, professional teacher, and school systems should recruit, prepare, and retain

teachers who are qualified to do the job. Yet in practice, American public schools generally do a poor job of systematically

developing and evaluating teachers. Many policy makers have recently come to believe that this failure can be remedied by calculating the improvement in students’ scores on standardized tests in mathematics and reading, and then relying heavily on these calculations to

evaluate, reward, and remove the teachers of these tested students. While there are good reasons for concern about the current system of teacher evaluation, there are also good reasons to be concerned about claims that measuring teachers’ effectiveness largely by student test scores will lead to improved student achievement. If new laws or policies specifically require that teachers be fired if their students’ test scores do not rise by a certain amount, then more teachers might well be terminated than is now the case. But there is not strong evidence to indicate either that the departing teachers would actually be the weakest teachers, or that the departing teachers would be replaced by more effective ones. There is also little or no evidence for the claim that teachers will be more motivated to improve student learning if teachers are evaluated or monetarily rewarded for student test score gains. A review of the technical evidence leads us to conclude that, although standardized test scores of students are one

piece of information for school leaders to use to make judgments about teacher effectiveness, such scores should be only a part of an overall comprehensive evaluation. Some states are now considering plans that would give as much as 50% of the weight in teacher evaluation and compensation decisions to scores on existing tests of basic skills in math and reading. Based on the evidence, we consider this unwise.

Any sound evaluation will necessarily involve a balancing of many factors that provide a more accurate view of what

teachers in fact do in the classroom and how that contributes to student learning.