Op-ed

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Waiting for Something

by John Merrow on Mar 9th, 2010

“I’m going to fire somebody in a little while,” the young school superintendent declared. “Do you want to see that?”

In the world of film documentary, the word ‘see’ means ‘video tape,’ and Washington DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee was actually inviting us to run our cameras as she fired one of her employees.

Michelle RheeMy colleagues Jane Renaud and Cat McGrath accepted the invitation on the spot. As Jane recalls, “She told us to come back at a specific time, and so we got a sandwich, returned to her office, set up the equipment, and shot the meeting.”

Jane and Cat had spent the morning with Chancellor Rhee, filming her meetings with parents, and with community groups and principals. Rhee was a dynamo, moving easily from meeting to meeting, and from scene to scene, and always seemingly unaware of the presence of our cameras, including the scene where she fires a school principal.

Our film of that event was broadcast nationally on PBS NewsHour and helped to illuminate the persona of Michelle Rhee as a fearless and determined reformer who puts the interests of children first.

Now an Academy Award-winning filmmaker has inserted the footage into his new feature film, without our permission.
For me it is more than just another spat between filmmakers. It is a matter of principle and respect. (more…)

categories: Op-ed

11 comments  

A Kind of Slavery, But With Term Limits

by John Merrow on Mar 2nd, 2010

The first Merrow to come to America was a Scots highlander named Henry who survived the battle of Dunbar, was taken prisoner by Oliver Cromwell’s forces and shipped to Boston around 1650 where he was sold, at age 25 or 26, into indentured servitude. The term of his service was seven years. The purchase price was 12 pounds.

Henry was for all intents and purposes a slave, but with a huge difference: he knew that he would become a free man on a specific contractual date. He might even gain his freedom before that date if he saved enough. But in either case, each day he worked brought him closer to his freedom.

school exitIs it too over-the-top to propose that this is akin to America’s high schools today? Students are certainly not slaves, but at times they are a bit like indentured servants, who, if they put in their seat-time for a set number of days and years, will receive diplomas and be done with schooling. They will be free.

Back to Henry Merrow; he served out his  term and became a free man. He eventually married and moved to Reading, Massachusetts,  where he raised an impressively large family and prospered. His is a success story, but I find myself wondering if some indentured servants simply became fed up with the system and ran away before their terms were up.

It sure happens a lot today in our schools. (more…)

categories: Op-ed, oped~reform

3 comments  

Unlearning Bad Science

by John Merrow on Feb 24th, 2010

The annual reports of the so-so performance in science by American students on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) cause hand wringing, but I worry that the news will lead to more testing. I believe that would make matters worse, because more testing would inevitably lead to more rote teaching of the material that lends itself to multiple-choice questions. It could lead to dumbing down the science curriculum, which will drive competent teachers either to distraction or to other occupations. Junk Science by Bill Keaggy

The big picture isn’t much brighter, what with some school districts embracing “creation science” as deserving of equal billing with evolution.

All of this is obscuring what may be a greater challenge – unlearning bad science.

A few years ago I watched a teacher at Cary Academy in North Carolina ask his science students which organism had the most chromosomes per cell: mosquitoes, corn, broad beans, cats or humans? The kids picked humans, which is correct, because we have 46 chromosomes, while cats have 38 and mosquitoes only 6. Then the teacher expanded the list to include horses, chickens, goldfish and potatoes. Once again, his students confidently chose their own species. At that point he told them that even potatoes, with 48 chromosomes, beat us humans, and goldfish had 104 chromosomes, more than twice as many as humans.

The students were stunned (as they are every year). How could they be less evolved than a potato? Or a horse? (more…)

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Passing Our Students By

by Learning Matters on Feb 16th, 2010

Because I’ve been trying to finish my book, “Below C Level,” write proposals for funding and report from New Orleans for the NewsHour, I missed blogging last week.
It’s the latter story that I am compelled to write about now.
cheating
Valerie Visconti, Jane Renaud and I filmed in two alternative schools in Paul Vallas’ Recovery School District in New Orleans, including one school for what educators call “overage students,” which is their benign term for kids who have fallen three, four or five grade levels behind. Being “overage” means you are 16 or 17 years old and testing at a sixth- or seventh-grade level. Your peers are in high school, but you are going to middle school!

How does that happen?  How does a kid who hasn’t learned enough to be promoted get moved up anyway?

Here’s what I have been able to figure out. Louisiana administers a state test called LEAP in the fourth and eighth grades, which students must pass to move into fifth grade and ninth grade, respectively.  The teenagers at Booker T. Washington Alternative School passed the fourth-grade LEAP — that much we know.

But what happened next?  Somehow they were promoted THREE times by their teachers and their schools. It might have happened a FOURTH time if the state hadn’t checked up again in eighth grade. Only then was someone held accountable.

And guess who was held accountable?  The students, not the adults who had let the kids fall through the cracks.  The students were told that they were deficient and could not move on to high school.  Are some of these young people angry?  Wouldn’t you be?

To her credit, principal Rosemary Martin — in her first year there — is candid. “We understand that somewhere along the road someone dropped the ball,” she told me.

She said that she tells students it’s not their fault and urges them to focus on the future. “I tell them,” she said, “’’We know that some things happen.  But we want to take you to where you need to be.  Allow us an opportunity to take you where you should be at, at this point.’  And most of them will say, ‘Okay.’”

I pushed her. “Are you willing to acknowledge that these kids got screwed?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Yes, we have to acknowledge that.  That’s the first step, acknowledgment.”

I am not a fan of cheap bubble tests, but, when you hear stories like this one, how could anyone argue against LEAP or tests like it?  If some adults in our schools are going to find excuses for promoting students whose skill levels are inadequate, then we need more LEAP-like tests, not fewer.

I am familiar with the arguments in favor of social promotion, that kids need to be with their age group, that their self esteem suffers when they are with kids who are four, five and six years younger, and that the younger kids can be victimized by the older youth.  Some teachers are under so much pressure with overcrowded classes and such that they end up having to triage.  Or perhaps they decide to promote a kid when they realize the alternative is to have him in their class again next year. Whatever the reasons, I think that “retention versus social promotion” is a false dilemma. Neither option is a good one.

The only viable option is to track progress carefully and intervene right away when kids start falling behind.  We need regular testing, we need to trust teachers and their evaluations, and we need to provide the resources those teachers need. It shouldn’t take a state-mandated test to “prove” that some kids need help.

And finally, the adults who let this happen must be accountable for their failure. They should not be allowed to collect a paycheck for their mediocre work. (That, by the way, is the argument of my new book.)

cheating
When you see the NewsHour piece, I think you will be inclined to approve of what Vallas and his team are trying to do for these “overage” youth.  Booker T. Washington middle school seems to have become de facto “ungraded” in that no one reminds the students that they are still in, say, sixth grade rather than eighth.  Rather, the kids know that they must pass the LEAP test and, when they do, they move on to high school.

The school has what amounts to an anger management class, which it needs.  In the piece you will meet one terrific young teacher who uses a so-called “smart board” to make basic grammar, spelling and punctuation a fun game.

But I walked away wondering why school systems create alternatives only after years of failing at the same old stuff.  Talk about being ‘overage’ learners!

categories: Op-ed, oped~reform

1 comment  

The Super Bowl, A Sea of Media and Control

by John Merrow on Feb 2nd, 2010

Several seemingly unrelated subjects have been floating around in my head lately.  The first involves New Orleans, a city that’s gone crazy about its football team’s first appearance in the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 7th.

Saints

Some school districts and private and parochial schools around New Orleans have canceled school for the Monday after the game, reasoning that most students would be partying hard all weekend and wouldn’t show up anyway.

Call me an old fogey, but I find closing schools to be irresponsible behavior on the part of the adults. Are the 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders going to be worn out from partying? What are working parents supposed to do, or are they also exempt from going to work?

Worse, however, the educators are bypassing a remarkable teachable moment, a chance to connect learning with the city’s obsession with the Saints. (more…)

categories: Op-ed, oped~teaching, parents

4 comments  

What’s Ahead in 2010

by John Merrow on Jan 26th, 2010

If you don’t mind, I feel like patting my colleagues on the back this week–in public.  Here are three reasons:

#1.  Last week the PBS NewsHour aired our piece about what the federal government is calling the Race to the Top, the $4.35 billion competition for education dollars.  It aired the night 40 states and the District of Columbia filed their applications.

#2.  We’re rolling out a bonus web video and two podcasts that feature a lot more information about the Race. This bonus video with Race director Joanne Weiss (below) will give you a better sense of the woman Arne Duncan hired to run the huge grant program.  In one podcast, you hear Colorado’s Lieutenant Governor Barbara O’Brien try to persuade teachers and other locals that more state and federal involvement is a good thing.  Finally, representatives from Maryland and Delaware and Weiss herself talk about one of the elephants in the room, the Gates Foundation and its $250K grants to some—but not all—states competing for Race to the Top dollars.


#3.  And we are also releasing parts five and six of our 7-part series about Teach for America.
These are short video profiles of rookie teachers in New Orleans, vivid pictures of the highs and lows of what it’s like to be on the front lines in urban education—with barely two months of preparation.  (There’s also an 8th part, an interview with TFA founder Wendy Kopp.)


That’s 12 (TWELVE) separate productions in the space of a few weeks.  Sounds like the work of a small army, doesn’t it?
But there are only nine of us at Learning Matters

Watch the credit roll for a news program or a documentary sometime.  If you can, count the names as they scroll by.  Quite a few, aren’t there?

Our work continues.  We’re planning another segment about the Race to the Top, looking at the judging process and digging into the skepticism coming from right and left.  I’m in New Orleans now with two colleagues, working on the next installment of our series about this city’s attempt to rebuild its schools, under the leadership of Paul Vallas.

These are remarkable times in American public education. The federal government’s role grows ever larger, economic pressures on schools seem to increase weekly, and foreign competition is a growing threat.  In these circumstances, schools can be forgiven for battening down the hatches in hopes of surviving the storm.  It’s perfectly understandable—but it’s probably bad strategy.

Holding onto the old ways almost never works. It hasn’t worked for newspapers, it isn’t working in journalism, and it probably won’t in public education either.

But what will emerge?  Is Race to the Top just the breath of new energy that’s required in public education, or is it a last gasp, akin to breeding better, faster horses for the Pony Express?

We’ll do our best to report these stories for you.

categories: Op-ed, oped~TFA, oped~reform

2 comments  

Race to the Top: A New “Diet” for Schools?

by John Merrow on Jan 19th, 2010

To understand the Race to the Top, think of Education Secretary Arne Duncan as a diet doctor and public education systems as obese, out of shape individuals in need of a better nutrition program.  But here’s the catch: state-controlled school systems are not Secretary Duncan’s children. They are independent adults, and ‘Dr. Duncan’ can’t just order them to eat better and work out regularly. He has to cajole and entice them into behavior that he is certain is in their best interest.  And so he’s offering rewards ($4.35 billion) to those who come up with the best ‘diet’ of education reforms.Arne Duncan

Make no mistake about the educational shape our schools are in—it’s bad!  More than one million students drop out of school every year, costing the economy billions of dollars. International comparisons are downright embarrassing.  Only 1.3 percent of our 15-year-olds scored at the highest level of mathematical proficiency, putting us 24th out of 30 nations participating in PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment.  By contrast, 9.1 percent of Korean and 6 percent of Czech 15-year-olds scored at the highest level.

Duncan believes he knows how states can shape up.  For openers, they have to step on a reliable scale.  In education, that means a transparent data system that tracks students’ progress throughout their school years, and it means common standards, so that everyone is using the same weight measures.  (Today each state chooses its tests and decides what constitutes passing.)

His plan for better nutrition, educationally speaking, includes a diet of charter schools, publicly funded but independently run institutions.

Losing weight requires more than better food.  Serious dieters also work out sensibly, focusing on the parts of the body that need attention.  In the gym, one might use the Stairmaster to tone up the legs and thighs and free weights to develop upper body strength; in education, that means putting the best teachers in the lowest performing schools.  It means paying the best teachers more money.

Another key to getting in shape is getting rid of bad habits, whether it’s smoking, snacking or eating a big dessert just before bedtime.  The bad habit that education’s diet doctor wants eliminated is the failing school.  Duncan wants states to close down their persistently bad schools, perhaps as many as 5,000 of them across the country, and reopen them only when there’s a serious plan for improvement.

Most states have just submitted their ‘diets’ to Washington, which will review them and decide which deserve a big reward. This spring some states could receive as much as $700 million.

But winners won’t get the money all at once.  Duncan plans to monitor their ‘diets’ over the next several years and will dole out the money only to states that stick to their promised education reforms.

Will Arne Duncan’s nutrition plan, his ‘Race to the Top,’ be successful?  Will school systems across the country lose weight and get in better (educational) shape?  If it does, it will be the exception to the rule, because, as nearly all of us know from personal experience, most diets fail.

categories: Op-ed, oped~reform

8 comments  

Teaching for America or Learning on the Job?

by John Merrow on Jan 12th, 2010

To what extent is classroom teaching a skill?  How long does it take to learn those skills, and is there a best way to learn them?

Teaching for AmericaThese are important questions at any time, but I submit they are of particular importance today, with Teach for America (and other alternative routes into the classroom) growing in popularity.

No doubt about Teach for America’s ascendancy.  During the presidential campaign both candidates spoke favorably about the program, and President Obama often speaks highly of it.  (more…)

9 comments  

Drugging Kids

by John Merrow on Jan 5th, 2010

“Ring out the old, ring in the new” is a popular refrain on New Year’s Eve, but, unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of ‘déjà vu all over again,’ in Yogi’s memorable phrase, particularly when it comes to medicating children.

RitalinIn mid-December the New York Times reported that poor children are four times more likely to be given powerful antipsychotic drugs than their middle-income counterparts. One study cited in the reporting indicates that poorer children also receive these strong drugs for less serious conditions. Why? Several explanations are offered: Medicaid pays less for psychotherapy and counseling than does private insurance; fewer counselors are available for the poor; and drugs are easier. As one co-author noted, “A lot of these kids are not getting other mental health services.”

That’s today’s news, but for me it literally is déjà vu all over again, because I have reported on this same issue twice, first in the 70’s and again in the mid-90’s. (more…)

categories: Op-ed

19 comments  

Two Years of Michelle Rhee and More in 2010

by John Merrow on Dec 22nd, 2009

All this week the PBS NewsHour is broadcasting slightly-edited chapters of our coverage of the troubled public schools in Washington DC.  Put another way, it’s a Michelle Rhee Film Festival.Michelle Rhee

We’ve been following the efforts of this dynamic young leader since she took office in June 2007.  When I read about her appointment that spring, I called her up, introduced myself, and invited her out to dinner. Our senior producer, Murrey Jacobson, joined us, and I made a pitch: “We’d like to chronicle your efforts on the NewsHour. What do you say?”

Her immediate reaction was notable for its candor: (more…)

categories: Op-ed, oped~reform

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