AssortedStuff

It’s spring so, as with most years, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about TSIP.

For those of you from outside Virginia, TSIP is the Technology Standards for Instructional Personnel, a legislative requirement for all teachers enacted about ten years ago.

Everyone with a teaching license must complete the TSIP requirements, either during their first year in the state or in order to renew their license.

Unfortunately, the requirements haven’t changed in a decade and generally conform to what a college advisor called the “inoculation theory of professional development”: you need it, you get it, you never have to bother with it again.

One shot and you’re done.

My thinking on the whole TSIP concept today just happens to coincides with a call from ISTE and other organizations for people to blog and/or tweet about the lack of any ed tech funding in the proposed federal budget.

However, I’m not entirely sure that’s necessarily a bad idea.

I’m willing to bet that most of the half billion dollars allocated this year had very little impact on instruction anyway.

Most likely it was spent at the state or district level to buy expensive packages from educational conglomerates like Pearson (along with plenty of consultants, of course), promising “solutions” to whatever problem is at the top of your list.

But more to the point, I wonder if there’s really a need for “educational” technology anymore?

Does the artificial classification of hardware, software, web applications and the rest as “instructional” (with the inevitable conclusion that rest of the stuff is not) just get in the way of the basic idea that almost any technology could be used for learning?

And does the process also gives some in our profession the cover necessary to ignore anything considered “non-instructional”?

You know, all that tech the kids play with when they’re not with us or when we’re not looking.

We say we want students to be able to communicate and collaborate, to develop critical thinking and problem solving skills, and to become creative and innovative in their work.

Do we really need special “edtech” to make that happen?

Or just a better understanding of how people in the real world are using all kinds of technology to improve their personal skills in all those areas and how to help our students learn to do the same.

Maybe, just like our tech standards that linger from the previous century, the whole concept of “educational technology” is outdated and obsolete.

budget, edtech, government, technology

Back to the continuing budget mess here in the overly-large school district.

The superintendent and others have been holding meetings with employee groups and community members (and distributing poorly worded surveys) to get suggestions on what programs and people should be cut to make things balance financially.

However, he’s asking the wrong question.

Instead the discussion needs to be framed around what we are all willing to pay for.

Just about anywhere you go in the US, it’s pretty much a political given that no elected official would even talk about raising taxes.

And around here, they would likely also be tossed out at the next election for suggesting that schools, or anything else, are more important than adding more asphalt and concrete for people to drive on.

Given those constraints (more like a straightjacket), the larger community should, instead of talking about cuts, be addressing the very difficult question: what will you pay real money for?

Do you want full-day kindergarten? Do you really believe art and music programs are essential or are they just a frills?

Will you pay for the training and support necessary to keep “well-qualified” teachers in every classroom or is that just something we can only afford during good times?

Is technology really a priority or is all that talk about the “future” and “21st century skills” nothing more than nice sounding decorations for political speeches?

Because in many ways, this money discussion is all about the future.

And that that brings me to the title of this post, which is stolen from a recent edition of the Business Week cover story podcast.

In that program a reporter makes the observation that, during economically rotten times like we have now, corporations are “cutting the future” through drastic reductions in their research and development budgets.

We do the same thing as a society with public education.

We slice things that will make future classrooms better – teacher training and technology being prime among those – in order to make administrators and politicians look good now.

So, maybe the bottom line question that needs to be asked about the education budget is: what are you willing to cut from the future to make the status quo look better?

I wonder how all those folks who keep sending me political crap mail and want my vote tomorrow would respond.

Probably not the way I would.

21st century skills, budget, education, future

With just a few word substitutions, last Sunday’s Dilbert struck me as a great commentary on how teachers are often treated.

Especially the last two frames.

Obvious, indeed!

budget, dilbert, funny

This being the overly-large school district we are, the economic mess now in progress means that we get to go through yet another round of armageddon-sized budget cuts.

To give you some idea of how large, the amount we’re supposedly in the hole is about the same as that spent annually by more than a few much smaller systems elsewhere in Virginia.

So, what gets hacked and what do we keep?

As is usual in these situations, the school board directs the superintendent to come up with a list of proposed “savings” and then all the different constituents muster whatever pressure they can to save a particular program.

However, there are two big problems with this particular political dance.

Almost everybody, even those with no K12-aged kids, claim they want “good” schools in their neighborhood (good for property values).

And almost none of them want to pay the bill.

It’s not just schools.

Too many people in this country expect the government to provide them with all kinds of services (even most in that super-hypocritical government-is-evil crowd), while at the same time demanding that someone else pay for them.

Leading that hypocrisy parade are politicians like the candidates in this year’s gubernatorial race, along with most of those for other offices, who make all kinds of promises about improving education all over the state (when they aren’t sliming each other, that is).

While at the same time swearing that they will not raise taxes. Or reduce them.

So, we come back to the real question in this mess: when it comes to public schools, what are you willing to pay for?

Unfortunately, we never seem to get around to having a serious discussion on this issue.

Instead our so-called leaders lie to all of us and display their hypocrisy by way of sound bites, 30 second television ads, and those useless he-said-she-said debates on the talking heads channels.

budget, hypocrisy, olsd, politics, virginia

Paul Krugman is a Nobel-prize winning economist and someone who sees a direct connection between education and the economic success of the US.*

He also says that our national “educational neglect” has led to “a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position” in the world.

And the current financial mess is only feeding that neglect.

But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis — its effects exacerbated by the penny-wise, pound-foolish behavior that passes for “fiscal responsibility” in Washington — deals a severe blow to education across the board.

His focus in this column is on college-level education but much of what Krugman says also applies to K12.

There’s no mystery about what’s going on: education is mainly the responsibility of state and local governments, which are in dire fiscal straits. Adequate federal aid could have made a big difference. But while some aid has been provided, it has made up only a fraction of the shortfall.

As a result, education is on the chopping block. And laid-off teachers are only part of the story. Even more important is the way that we’re shutting off opportunities.

Certainly money is never the sole solution to all our problems, educational or otherwise.

However, an excellent public education system, one that provides an excellent foundation for every child no matter where they live, cannot be done on the cheap.

The longer we wait to provide adequate funding for that system, the larger the number of children who are shut off from those opportunities.

* BTW, I’m one who believes the economic connection is NOT the most important reason for creating a strong public education system.

budget, economy, education, paul krugman

Virginia is an odd place, at least when it comes to politics. Among other things we have an election for Governor and much of the state legislature in this so-called “off year”.

And since the Governor can only serve one term, we get to choose between two largely unknown characters.

When it comes to education, the area in which I’m most interested and one where state policy carries far more weight than even the federal government, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between the candidates.

Both claim they want to put more money into schools and recruit better teachers by putting salaries “on par with the national average” along with some of the usual incentives for those in “hard-to-staff subjects”.

They both like charter schools, in vague, non-specific ways, and are also pushing various approaches to merit pay schemes, none of which have any evidence that they actually, you know… work.

However, the absolute worst idea in the mediocre mix of educational improvement ideas being pushed by either side, comes from the Republican candidate, who has reached into the recycle bin and brought back the “65 percent solution“.

This is the overly simplistic concept that was popular several years ago requiring districts by law to spend at least 65% of their money on students in the classroom.

Which sounds like a wonderful idea until you read the fine print that excludes from that arbitrary number such wasteful spending as librarians (and their books), speech therapists, administrators, school busses, and pretty much anything else designed to support teachers in their work.

A plan which reinforces the traditional, and incredibly stupid, idea that teachers work in isolation in their classrooms and that their success depends on no one else outside of those four walls.

budget, education, politics, reform, stupidity, virginia

About a month ago, our superintendent presented next year’s budget to the school board. Consistent with the current economic times, it was not exactly happy news.

His proposal is full of small cuts to programs, supplies and services and, of course, no one around here is getting a pay increase.

But the line item that produces the largest single reduction is the one that increases class sizes. Right now the plan adds .5 student per classroom but everyone expects that will be higher when the final accounting is done.

That may not sound like much, but in an overly-large school district, a small change like that decreases the need for hundreds of people, which, of course, is the largest expense for a business like education.

However, the real problem next school year won’t be that teachers will have more students in their classrooms or that they will have less support.

The biggest problem will be that our administrators, parents, and community will expect nothing to change.

Teachers will still be expected to give the same numbers of assignments and tests, and then grade them all in the same time frame as before, while giving each student the same amount of individual attention as before.

Actually, since No Child Left Behind continues it’s relentless march, the expectation will be that test scores will improve and that schools will cross an even higher AYP threshold on the way to 100% in 2014.

So, people will expect to get more while paying less, which sounds pretty much like the basic philosophy of American society in the 21st century.

Give me lower-than-low prices but I still want high quality products like toys with no lead paint or peanut butter free of salmonella.

Chop the price of that $499 50″ TV but still offer free tech support catering to people too dumb to read manuals.

Cut taxes and get rid of all that nasty government spending, but don’t you dare touch any program that provides my family with a service I need/deserve/want.

Somewhere along the line, if we keep rolling back prices, we’ll find ourselves living in the aisles of Walmart.

budget, economy, government, schools

The headline basically tells you everything the article is going to say: “Budget woes force cuts in summer-school programs”. It pretty much sums up what happened here in the overly-large school district this year.

However, what the writer doesn’t discuss is how summer school is really an anachronism in the American education system, something illustrated by this thought.

“Summer is a time when affluent kids advance and low-income kids suffer huge setbacks,” said Ron Fairchild, executive director of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Summer Learning. “If kids aren’t engaged in ongoing learning activities, they lose ground academically.”

Of course kids need “ongoing learning activities”. But who says it needs to be in a school building, most likely using the same instructional format used during “normal” school?

And is it possible that low-income kids fall behind over the 2-3 month break while affluent kids don’t for reasons that have nothing to do with summer school?

So maybe, rather than just cutting back on summer school programs (and restoring them when the economy improves), we should take this opportunity to kill it altogether.

We start that process by rejecting the concept that learning has distinct starting and ending points (September to June), can be compartmentalized into chunks of roughly nine months, and that all kids of a certain chronological age must fit in the same compartment.

Oh, and that we can squeeze those nine months of learning into six weeks if the teaching didn’t stick the first time through.

I know… that kind of thinking will also lead to many more changes to our educational system that go far beyond the simple alteration of the calendar.

But we’re way past the time to admit that our cookie cutter, assembly line approach to teaching and learning has failed and needs replacing.

budget, education, reform, summer school

Yesterday I paid more than $50 for a tank of gas for the first time. Ever.

Ok, I know there are plenty of people who arrived at that milestone (and beyond) long ago. But it was still a unique experience for me and my credit card.

I only bring up this very minor bump in the universe because I hope our school board will keep statistics like that in mind when they vote on the budget tomorrow night.

At that meeting they likely will decree that the increase in the cost of living this year is 2%.

Just like it was last year. And the year before. And the year before. And…

Apologies for being a greedy teacher.

budget, cost of living, school board

In this country we seem to be in love with simplistic, sound-byte solutions to every problem. Take, for example, the “65% solution”, which supporters say will make sure that tax money is spent on students in the classroom, not on that evil, nasty infrastructure stuff that supports teachers.

Like library books.

This incredibly stupid approach to school funding has reared its ugly head in Georgia where the General Assembly is considering a bill that would mandate the program for all state schools.

Gov. Sonny Perdue and Republican leaders are pushing a controversial mandate through the Georgia General Assembly that would force school systems to spend nearly two-thirds of their funding on “direct classroom expenditures” — a definition that excludes nurses, guidance counselors, librarians, principals and other school staff.

Under Senate Bill 390, benefits and salaries of teaching assistants would be included in the 65 percent allowed for classroom expenses, but those of principals would not. Field trips would be covered, but the costs of running buses between homes and campuses wouldn’t.

Construction paper, glue, markers and other supplies would fit the bill’s definition, but not library books. Neither would heat to warm classrooms or electricity to light them.

Electricity for classrooms? What a waste!

The primary force behind the 65% plan is an outfit called First Class Education run by a Republican consultant named Tim Mooney. To support the concept, he claims that “top-performing states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress also spend the most in the classroom”.

Except that he’s wrong.

Both Maine and New York [the only two states to top the 65% threshold] scored above the national averages on the NAEP reading exam in 2003. But so did dozens of other states [which spent less than his formula], many of which matched or beat their scores.

I’m not going to tell anyone that there is no waste in school spending in this country. You could go into most districts and find some budget items that make no sense and could be cut. But nurses, librarians and busses do not qualify.

This plan which tries to set one magic number for every classroom is just one more example of the one-size-fits-all assumptions about American schools and students that seems to be driving educational policy these days.

65% solution, budget, education, school reform