In a state struggling to get better at teaching all students, every reform has a glaring omission. Some reforms want to pay special teachers more. As if there are Blackwater mercenary teachers out there, ready to storm the castle and kick down the achievement gap.  They even tried this to the extreme in New York, luring in teachers with $100,000 salaries to get the cream of the crop. It didn’t really work. A University of Vanderbilt study, the most extensive on performance pay, concluded there was no correlation between closing the gap and performance pay. They value purpose more than profit. Teachers do not sit around all day brooding upon what their colleagues may or may not make. They deserve professional pay, but teachers are neither mercenaries nor missionaries some folks want to reform how we pay teachers. They pay no attention to reforming how they teach.

         Some leaders want to change how long we teach. What we are doing now is not working for all students. It’s not working, so let’s do it for an extra hour or all year round? The idea is ludicrous unless it is attached changing how we teach. There are very successful year round and extended day Saint Paul public schools right now, but their staff of teachers and principles changed how they taught as much as how long.  The modern reformers think changing how long will magically cure education, without changing the how.

        Some reformers want to change who teaches, as if teachers are born out of whole cloth and not made through hard work. Again, they do not address how we teach. There are reform programs that take this to the ultimate extreme; giving recruits a five-week boot camp on how to teach, and then putting them in the classroom. Alternative licensure programs are rich in value. We have career engineers and business folks coming to the teaching profession. Bringing a treasure trove of real world experience. The problem is that modern reformers want the credentials without the teaching. Again, they address who teaches, but not how.

        The reformers want to change where we teach. If we could just set up a system where there are winners and losers, things will improve. Instead of focusing on how  we teach, we’ll just close down schools we do not like. Granted, those schools will always be in poorer neighborhoods.  The educations disrupted will always be those students with the least voice. Instead of fixing a struggling student’s school, we will tell them to start all over somewhere new. Build relationships all over. Travel to a new neighborhood. Ride a bus longer. This will improve your education.

        None of these modern reforms address, in the least, how we teach. I will let you in on a dirty little secret: this is intentional. You see, the folks making the rules benefited from how we have taught for the last two hundred years. For two centuries, we have had a model where teachers, working independently, shut their classroom doors and ruled over their own classroom kingdom. This model worked for the people who are successful. It has never, ever, worked for all kids, or even most kids.

         The leading reformers of this country had a twelve-year internship in an education style that worked for them. They now believe they are experts in how to teach. We don’t even have to change how we teach because that part served them well. We just have to change where, how long, how we are paid, and who we hire. Forget about addressing how we teach.

So what do we do? Read on.
 
           Obviously, real reform has to change how we teach. The teacher as independent contractor ruling over his or her own kingdom has to end.  The difficult thing is that the reformers reinforce this antiquated, dysfunctional model of teaching. At a time when teachers must come together, the reformers want to pit teacher against teacher in some sort of gladiatorial battle of test scores. I will state again for emphasis, the reformers want to reinforce a style of teaching that worked for them and few others. That is why teachers and principals are hardly ever brought into the debate on reform. The reformers already know how to teach. They just want to change everything else.

             What is working in schools is a complete paradigm shift from our past, teachers working together on all students. Instead of disaggregating my students versus yours, teachers are forced to get out of their classrooms and work together where my students are your students and all students are our students. No longer can we get our keys in September, go in and teach, and not see anyone until we turn our keys in June. This is a hard change to make for teachers who have been successful in the same broken paradigm as our leaders. It is even harder when our leaders try and keep us divided in competition instead of healthy collaboration.

            How does this paradigm shift work? Teachers are given time each day to get out of their classrooms and work together on students. There is a laser-like focus on student data. The reformers focus on data as if it is the end of a marathon and they are looking for winners and losers. The real focus on student data needs to be weekly or even daily.  Instead of just looking at the finish line, data needs to focus on the day-to-day training.

           When teachers work together on students in this way, they can make changes in time. If the data shows that my students didn’t get a concept on Monday, my colleagues will see this immediately, and together we can work out a better way to teach it and do better on Tuesday. The alternative is to sit in my classroom by myself. Do the best I can. Wait until the test results come out in June and hope we meet AYP and that I “beat” the other teachers.  Instead, we know weekly what we need to improve, and we lean on each other to constantly change how we teach.

            Real reform like this is not flashy like closing a school. It is not big and bold like firing an entire staff. It is not heart wrenching like forcing a thousand students to find a new school. Real reform doesn’t satisfy our cultural need for competition, with winners and losers. However, reforming how we teach works. If we want to close the gap, we have to change how we have taught for the last two hundred years. We have to let go of the silly idea that one teacher is the only one affecting a student.

  We have to support teachers working together, teaching each other. There can be no greater accountability measure than having to share student data with fellow teachers. Having to show my colleagues my student data every single week can be scary, but it is the professional thing to do. It holds us accountable, and makes us better. I trust my colleagues to help me when I falter, and I help them when they do. Set us in competition against each other and that goes out the window.

   The other reason why reformers do not focus on changing how we teach is that it is expensive. The reform I speak of is based on the very successful Lesson Study model used in Japan. It requires that teachers meet on a regular basis, during the school day. It costs money to staff classrooms while other teachers are meeting to discuss student data. It is not cheap, but it works. If we want to close the achievement gap we have to change how we teach. Changing where, when, who, how long, how we are paid, are all flashy rearrangements of deck chairs on the Titanic.  

    What is Rheeform? It is a catchall for the market based, destructive reforms that have become vogue since No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Michelle Rhee became the darling of the movement, gave it a personality, and a “liberal” that the plutocrats could hide behind.

   The defining characteristic of market based Rheeform is what it does not do. Rheeform does not try and change how we teach. They want to change where we teach. How long we teach. What we teach. How we are hired, fired, and compensated. Who is allowed to teach. All of these are part of Rheeform, except, of course, how we teach.

   This approach is not an oversight. The way we have taught for the last two hundred years has benefited and worked for almost all in power. The idea of a solitary teacher making a difference worked for them. The model of a teacher as some sort of independent contractor operating in an isolated classroom kingdom was effective for our politicians, business leaders, and school leaders themselves. As far as they are concerned, how we have taught is just fabulous. It worked for them after all. There are some real reforms with real promise that change how we operate as teachers, but that is a discussion for another day. Rheeform not only do not change how we teach. Rheeform reinforces a two centuries old model that failed most students. The consequences of focusing on the profit motive to guide education instead of the education motive, are obvious and inevitable. After the break, I will list my Top 10 outcomes of the Rheeform movement for 2011.
In no particular order    

1 Washington D.C. caught cheating.

D.C. was the epicenter of Rheeform. This is where Michelle Rhee got her start, closing schools, firing teachers, and stirring the pot. Competition, they said, will cure all of our ills. The problem with market based competition is that someone, or even most, have to lose for someone to win. Rhee may not have been directly responsible for the D.C. cheating, but her philosophies had the obvious outcome. Most of her touted schools cheated. The odds they did not cheat were said to be akin to winning the lottery several times.

2. Atlanta Cheating Scandal An investigation started in 2009 concluded rampant cheating in Georgia’s largest school district. Superintendent Beverly Hall denied all knowledge. Unlike Rhee, Beverly Hall spent forty years fighting the good fight in urban schools. She actually might be blameless, but is just another casualty of the inevitable outcomes of Rheeform.

3. Another Georgia county caught cheatingNot content with one major Rheeform cheating scandal, Dougherty County, Georgia got into the action in 2011. With no union protection, teachers were told by administrators to give students answers. Who were they to report to? their boss? It is no coincidence that most most of these scandals are happening where teachers have nowhere to turn when they are told to cheat. Destroying a balancing voice has its benefits for those in charge.

4.Rheeformed D.C. schools have the largest black-white achievement gap
Oh, also the largest Hispanic-white achievement gap. On the fourth grade math test, the D.C. gap was more than twice the national average gap. Our nation as a whole has a terrible gap, but theirs is twice that. Rhee’s biggest bragging point about D.C. is that she increased dramatically the amount of charter schools. You see, the market based goal of expanded competition is a goal in and of itself. When schools are closed under Rheeform, it is always the poor and underprivileged who have to move and find new schools. That is what competition does. It forces the kids who have the least to start over somewhere else, instead of making where they are, better.

“If what we’ve done in five years is to grow the enrollment and diversify the enrollment and brought the achievement levels up, but [when] we look at low-income black kids’ scores, they are no different than when I got here, then I would say I have failed,” Michelle Rhee

5. Milwaukee free market voucher Program no better than public schools After twenty years of public spending, the Department of Public Instruction finally decided to test Voucher School students in the same manner as public. It turns out the thing vouchers do best is siphon money from traditional public schools. They certainly don’t do any better at educating them. Even more importantly, the voucher schools do not educate the most costly students, the learning disabled, emotionally behavior disordered, or English Language Learners. The market based answer to the failed voucher program? Quit testing them and expand the program.

6. Success of Online Charter Schools I say success in the sense that they are fabulously profitable for the owner operators. This is at tax payer expense of course.

  Once again, the voracious beast that is the profit motive has superseded any societal motive to education. You see, online charter schools are failing our students. That is why we must expand them. They are wonderfully efficient. The free marketeers drool at the prospect of one teacher teaching a thousand students. Less labor, and enrichment for a publicly traded company. All funded by us. To complete the incestuous cycle, Pearsons Publishing just bought the second largest online school, with $190 million in revenue. I wonder which text books Peasrons will require for its students, at taxpayer expense of course? Like choosy vultures, these online schools set up in the poorest districts because those districts can get the most state and federal aid.

A Stanford University group, the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, tracked students in eight virtual schools in Pennsylvania, including Agora, comparing them with similar students in regular schools. The study found that “in every subgroup, with significant effects, cyber charter performance is lower.”

Successful indeed. On Wall Street.

7. The synergy of Billionaires and Plutocrats Bill Gates funds a great study on which states have the best teacher policies. By great, I mean for cheap labor. You see, according to the Gate’s funded study, the states with the best teacher policies just means “right-to-work” states. the top Gates states are actually pretty poor when it comes to educational outcomes. Once again, the market motive makes them rank high even when the educational motive shows them lacking. Then Gates bankrolled the corporate front group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for them to write education policy favorable to those folks who don’t like to pay taxes.

8. Students literally tagged with test performance
In California they branded students with color coded ID’s based on test scores. What better way to motivate students than through humiliation. Those with the wrong ID’s had their own special lines. Privileges went to those with the correct ID. I wonder if they had separate drinking fountains. Market ideals.

9. Teaching Profession Relegated to Trash Heap
Wisconsin teacher retirements doubled after union rights were destroyed in Scott Walkerstan. The combined wisdom and knowledge drain was unprecedented.

   States after states are using public workers and teachers as the tool to balance their budgets. In an economy ruined by private market players, rights are being taken away from teachers in order to fix our problems. The professional incentives for becoming a teacher are almost nil. These incentives have little to do with salary. They have to do with professional respect and appreciation.

10. Pay for Performance Doesn’t Work In the largest study of its kind, Vanderbilt University showed conclusively that pay for performance had little effect on test scores. This is obvious to those who understand human motivation. We are motivated to fulfill our basic needs first, but once we have achieved those, purpose is more important than profit. This is not to say that money is not important.

  It is important to fairly compensate highly educated professionals. However, past a certain threshold people don’t obsess about money. Very few folks are actually motivated by money once they reach about $60,000. Money has been shown to motivate for menial, repetitive tasks, but not creative and intellectual tasks. Professionals just don’t sit around brooding about how much or how little their coworkers make. It’s just not something that matters day to day. Pay teachers fairly, but performance pay is a waste and insulting.

      Is it any wonder that the teaching profession no longer attracts the best and the brightest talent? With an achievement gap that is a national shame, we need to gain and then retain the most qualified teachers we can. Our kids need great teachers. Focusing, almost exclusively, on getting rid of bad teachers while ignoring the problem of keeping good ones does not serve our children. No one argues that ineffective teachers have to go. The equation has two sides though. Recruitment and retention, almost universally ignored by these “reformers” is the other side.

      The latest onslaught against the teaching profession comes from the group Put Kids First Minneapolis. These are progressive, noble, heartfelt folks. They are trying to do noble, progressive, heartfelt things. They are also pounding another nail into the teaching profession with their contract on teachers. The contract, has several good ideas, but there is no context or balance.

    Put Kids First comes off as just another group trying to reform the human resources office, not the education classroom. They arrogantly claim that teacher contracts have always put adult needs ahead of kids. They say this as if support and well being of teachers can be divorced from their ability to teachers.

   Imagine there are three major problems with the teaching profession. One, attracting top quality and talent of new professionals. Two, retaining those top professionals. Lastly, getting rid of inefficient teachers. All three problems need solving. Of the three, which will have the biggest impact on our kids? Which one should we focus on?

    There is absolutely zero correlation between due process rights, collective bargaining, and seniority rules and student achievement. Zero. On the other hand, there is a huge correlation between teacher turnover and student achievement. There is also a strong correlation between expert teacher staff and student achievement.

   For example, “For instance, black and Hispanic students are twice as likely as white students to be taught by out-of-field teachers (Education Trust 2008)”. It’s all well and good to get rid of bad teachers, but there is obviously not a flood of qualified teachers trying to get into these urban schools. You can treat teachers like indentured servants, and force them to teach where they don’t want to, or you can entice them to. Right now, the reformers are making it almost insane for anyone to want to teach in the toughest schools.

   Kids First claims to have the research, so let’s take a look. My claim is that there is zero correlation between unions and achievement, therefore there is no good reason to try and diminish teacher rights. I make no claim that unions cause achievement, but they certainly have not harmed achievement.  
This is from Harvard Educational Review:

Comparison of standardized test scores and degree of teacher unionization in states found a statistically significant and positive relationship between the presence of teacher unions and stronger state performance on tests. Taking into account the percentage of students taking the tests, states with greater percentages of teachers in unions reported higher test performance. (Contains 95 references.)

States with more unions had better test scores. Why make unions the focus of your attacks? How about finding ways to get the best teachers, while still working on getting rid of the bad ones?

   Andy Rotherman, of Bellweather Education Partners says, “Sweeping statements one way or the other on this should be viewed with suspicion.”

   I would go as far as to say that the “reformers” relentless pursuit of human resources office reform is harmful to student achievement. The environment for teachers is acidic. Wisconsin just experienced a massive brain drain because of the way they treated teachers. Why is it so hard to understand that how you treat teachers affects students too?

   Teacher turnover in our toughest schools is 20%. According to Forbes Magazine research, teacher turnover has substantial costs, and undermines at-risk schools. At-risk schools could recoup these costs by better teacher retention. The costs approach seven billion. At-risk schools are twice as likely to have inexperienced teachers.

  I have taught for ten years in at-risk, large, urban schools. I have been through three NCLB restructurings. Each time I have been selected for retention because I am good at what I do. Each time I have stayed because of the kids. However, it is becoming harder and harder to be a teacher. There is no respect for the profession any more. It hurts even more when it comes from historical allies and fellow progressives. It is not evil for teachers to fight for good working conditions. It is not even harmful. I wish folks would quit trying to reform the labor movement and focus on our kids and educational issues.  

Districts that are seeking to raise achievement should consider seeking teachers with the observable characteristics that are associated with effectiveness: Certification, academic credentials, and experience. In addition, districts might consider consciously placing teachers who are likely to be effective in schools with low-income and minority students.

 from the Center For Public Education

These are schools with more than 90 percent of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, more than 90 percent are minority students, and more than 90 percent of students met high academic standards on the state’s Standards of Learning tests.

  Where are these mythical 90/90/90 schools, what are they doing, and why aren’t we doing it? The first two answers can be found in the article, “High Performance in High Poverty Schools”. The last answer is a little trickier. You see, our urban schools in Minnesota are trying to implement the strategies from the 90/90/90 philosophy.

   The headline of this article is somewhat misleading in that the 90/90/90 strategies are not a silver bullet. They take time, and they are not a one shot deal. It is a way of operating in a consistent, and habitual manner with a laser focus on high student achievement. The biggest hurdle to this program is that it requires an entire paradigm shift in how we operate as professionals.

  For centuries, literally, teachers have operated as autonomous contractors in their individual classroom kingdoms. Principals have operated as building administrators, not instructional leaders. If we are going to make big changes, the very fiber of what it means to teach is going to have to change.

  The problem is that today’s “reformers”, progressive and conservative, Democrat and Republican, are all stuck in a 19th century paradigm of teaching. What works in these 90/90/90 schools are teams of teachers working in collaboration where all students belong to all teachers.    

  Meanwhile, the reformers want us to go back to the days when we pretended each teacher had “their” students, as if no other teacher had an impact on the child’s education. Teachers have to change, which is hard enough as it is, but the reformers want us back in our isolated classroom kingdoms, where we are ineffective. Teachers working in collaboration is the most powerful reform to come around in a century, yet we want to focus on the individual.

Please continue reading after the break.
   There is no hero teacher waiting to Stand And Deliver success. There is no Dangerous Mind saving our urban schools. That stuff only happens in movies and corporate think tanks. Queen of reform Michelle Rhee has even said that collaboration is “over rated”.  She believes in the “Super-man” myth, when what we need is a “super-team”.

In trying to improve American public schools, educators, policymakers, and philanthropists are overselling the role of the highly skilled individual teacher and undervaluing the benefits that come from teacher collaborations that strengthen skills, competence, and a school’s overall social capital.
Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society

   There is zero evidence linking achievement to collective bargaining, seniority rules, or due process rights. There are mountains of evidence that teachers working in collaborative groups can over come great, great odds. Putting the focus on the individual teacher is how we have always, always done it. It doesn’t work.

   Why aren’t the reformers focusing on groups of teachers helping groups of kids? Well, it costs more. You must pay extra staff so teachers can have time to meet. However, if you talk to most principals and most teachers, they will agree it is worth it. Can you imagine, labor and management all believe this is the way. They all want to paddle in the same direction. The people who do this for a living all agree this is the way.

   Secondly, teacher collaboration is not visceral or sexy in a political sense. Attacking the big, bad union dragon is sexy. Blaming teachers gives us a visceral release. In a society driven more and more by fear based reasoning, finding a villain and a white knight (Rhee) makes us feel safe. Finally, if we cannot even agree how to assess individual teachers, how an we assess groups of teachers.

    When teachers meet in collaborative groups, the synergy makes them all stronger. They plan out each week, and then check up on each other to see how they are doing. It is almost impossible to be a bad teacher when you have the pressure of exposing yourself every single week to your peers. There is no higher or more constant accountability. When you are struggling there is no better professional development. Meeting with a wide range of teachers every single week to learn from young and old alike is critical. There is no higher or constant way of doing teacher development.

   The reformers have good intent. What they say sounds great on the surface to the uninformed. Kind of like, “Tax Cuts Make Jobs,” “Bad Teachers are killing kids.” It’s a zombie myth. Support kids and you support teachers. Support teachers and you support kids.