Teach For America teacher blogs are on Teach For Us

Technology

amandainthemitten — Wed, 08 May 2013 02:50:16 +0100

7th Grader: "Is that phone a 3G or a 4G?" Me: "It's a zero-G." 7: "Are you serious!?!" My kids are always concerned about my lack of coolness and technology. They normally look at me with a mix pitying looks and judgement when they see my old phone, but I think I completely blew their minds today when they realized it doesn't connect to the internet at all! In other news, I absolutely hate the science fair. I know I am supposed to think otherwise as a middle school science teacher, but unless I do all 70 projects myself it just won't turn out well. I just think there are more important things to focus on when my kids are so far behind. I know, I know... I'm supposed to take ownership and solve the problem. I am trying to make the process go as smoothly as possible... staying after with kids to work, giving them a detailed rubric, etc... I am just still not convinced that it is the cure for the achievement gap. ;)

At some point...

amandainthemitten — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:18:08 +0100

At some point during the year I stopped posting. (You can look at the date for yourself.) Life is crazy and maybe I need to be on here to reflect more... but I am currently on Spring Break at my parent's house in the rural South. I've been going back and forth with myself about teaching for a 3rd year. This year has arguably been more crazy (though the workload does seem at least a bit easier). If you ask me tomorrow my answer may be different, but today I don't think I can teach a 3rd year (at least right away). Isn't it a bad sign when I have to completely leave my state to find somewhere that I can relax? That is the feeling that makes it hard to justify teaching another year. This year teachers have quit my school left and right. Teachers have been fired. Schedules have changed.... over and over again. I am a science teacher. Oh yeah, and suddenly math & reading too. Buildings (and complete grade levels) have closed. My kids have lacked a sense of consistency that they deserve in school. I am not sure if this supports the argument against TFA... being another number that does the 2 years and leaves. But I know this time has given me stronger views on the education system. And I know that because of the support from TFA my students had me for at least 2 years. And sadly, in my school's environment that is a whole lot longer than many other teachers. At some point... I need to actually finish a grad school application. Conflicted.

Educational Hypotheses (and a pathetic chart)

yoteach — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:10:28 +0100

I've been trying for a while now to draw out my thoughts on education reform in a relatively clear way. However, when I think about any subject, I like to think not just in terms of how things are, but rather how they are changing. So, what follows is a hypothesis (or really a series of hypotheses), founded upon theory and anecdotal evidence alone, that I will seek to validate, disprove, and build on in my upcoming academic career. Unfortunately, when trying to map out how a complex system like education is changing, things can get ugly. Combine that with my lack of all graphing/drawing skills, and you have the chart below. On the Y axis I am measuring the order of thinking, primarily the percent of the classroom time when students are engaging in thinking that is higher on the blooms scale (creating, evaluating, etc.). Schools or classrooms with "low order thinking" would therefore tend to spend most instructional time focused on remembering, memorizing, and understanding. This is, of course, all relative, since no school can or should be entirely composed of high or low order thinking. But a high order thinking school will spend more of the day on project/experience-based or exploratory learning, and a lower order thinking school will spend more time in the I/we/you format, which is inherently lower order, since you are learning by remembering or applying steps modeled for you. On the X axis I am measured how tightly coupled a school is. Coupling is a technical term in organizational theory that refers essentially to how easily it is for one person in the organization to influence another (e.g. a principal deciding what a teacher will teach). Schools are notoriously loosely coupled compared to other organizations, due both to the layout of schools into atomized classrooms and the fact that teachers value the authenticity of their interactions with students. A tightly coupled school therefore is more likely to have all teachers utilizing similar pedagogical/management techniques, following similar schedules, using similar curricula, etc. Finally, using color (and a silly equal and unequal sign), I am categorizing schools as either having or not-having a bought-in staff. Ideally this too would be a spectrum, but I don't know how to make a 3D graph...Either way, whether you are in a tightly or loosely coupled school, if your principal or administrator asks you to do something, you can respond in two ways. If you believe in their intentions and expertise, you will probably try to implement that suggestion as best you can. If you don't, then you will most likely superficially do it while they are looking and then go back to doing your own thing. Because of the very nature of schooling (as loosely coupled), I don't think you can have an extremely tightly coupled school without some staff buy-in (unless teachers are surveilled at all times...), but you can certainly have autonomous teachers with or without buy-in to the organization as a whole, as well as teachers on a short leash who do and do not buy into their organizations. With that in mind, here is the chart, which again, is a hypothesis based on pure speculation: Cross-Sectional Hypotheses: 1. Public schools tend to be more loosely coupled than charter schools. This is primarily because unions have fought (rightly or wrongly) to preserve this characteristic, and principals are less likely to micro-manage teachers since it will be harder to fire them if they are noncompliant. 2. The majority of successful public schools are relatively (but not extremely) aligned around higher-order thinking. I believe successful schools have sizable amount of higher order thinking because they tend to hire experienced, well trained, teachers, who have been taught how to do this well and most likely believe in the benefits of this kind of instruction. I don't think your typical, loosely coupled, public school will have an extreme amount of higher order thinking because there will be variance among teachers and without continual feedback (not provided in loosely coupled schools) some are likely not capable of hitting higher order instruction as frequently. 3. To be successful, "No excuses" charter schools require more staff buy-in. This allows for the tight coupling, which then helps to build higher order thinking. 4. You will not find a tightly coupled school that is capable of aligning around extremely high-order thinking. My thinking here is that consistent higher-order instruction requires professional autonomy on the part of teachers, which can't exist in a very tightly coupled organization. I believe that having a loosely coupled school that consistently hits higher order thinking skills requires that teaching becomes more of a profession, wherein teachers are more consistently receiving high-quality training and mentoring from schools of education and exiting the profession if they cannot get accepted into, pass, and thrive after such programs. Such a path to school improvement would require totally rethinking our teacher education system. Longitudinal Hypotheses: 1. As schools respond to the political or market-based incentives that are the foundation of most reform schemes (standardized testing, competition to attract students), they will tend to become more tightly coupled, promote lower-order thinking skills, and achieve less staff buy-in. Essentially, principals and superintendents will tend to respond to pressure by striving for greater control of classroom instruction, to improve instruction, but perhaps more importantly, to seem proactive in the quest to improve instruction. This could mean more interim assessments, observations from administrators, paperwork (evidencing compliance), heavily scripted curricula and bringing in outside consultants or programs. These attempts at making schools more tightly coupled will often result in alienating teachers and lowering the quality, authenticity, and rigor of instruction, which will drive good teachers away, bring in more new teachers (oh hey TFA!), who will require further intervention. And so the cycle will continue. 2. To bypass this likely and scary outcome, there are two general routes. (1) Find ways of improving school organizational capacity so that they respond to these incentives by more successfully modeling the successful charter schools that are capable of maintaing teacher buy-in and rigor. Doing this systemically will be near impossible, but I am confident that more research on school organization and a general shift in attitude towards school leaders, rather than teachers, being responsible for very poor outcomes could help in this process. (2) Try to turn teaching into a profession where teachers are highly trained/skilled/well-selected, and have the professional autonomy to utilize their knowledge base, so long as it fits with current research-based best practices, to improve student outcomes as they see best. This means placing the onus of responsibility for teacher improvement on co-teachers, schools of education, and professional networks rather than school administration, as well as getting schools of education to produce research that is accessible, useful, and relevant to perfecting and growing a knowledge base for teachers. See Ted Purinton's "Six Degrees of School Improvement" for more on this avenue of reform. The most optimistic reading of this fairly depressing (in my view) post is that both of these routes could be complimentary (Schools of ed learn from the examples of Uncommon/Relay, Uncommon/Relay learns that theory/a knowledge base is important for teacher preparation, the most successful charter schools and public schools end up being the ones that treat teachers as professionals, schools in the process of transformation emulate these new examples, etc.). I hope that's true. I'd love anyone's thoughts, or for teachers to place their school on my chart. Mine is certainly in that bottom left corner, boxed in red.

New Book/Article Discussion Series: Ted Purinton's Six Degrees of School Improvement

yoteach — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 21:14:58 +0100

In the fall, I will begin a doctoral program in educational policy. I’m hoping to spend the next few months clarifying my thoughts on schools and education reform, and I think the best way to do that is to read a diverse and influential series of articles and books that challenge and expand my assumptions and beliefs about the best ways to improve schools. Since writing is the best way to reflect, I will use this space to summarize the central arguments of each piece, and discuss how the work succeeds or fails in challenging or affirming my already held beliefs.

“Six Degrees of School Improvement” By Ted Purinton (Information Age Publishing, 2011)

I will start this process with a book I only found through a google scholar search of the thinkers I found most interesting in education. I spent about two months carefully reading, annotating, and thinking about Purinton’s ideas, and can honestly say that I haven’t been so intellectually impacted by a single work since I first read Chubb and Moe’s “Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools.”

Purinton sets out to utilize organization (founded Weick’s theory of schools as loosely coupled organizations) and network theory to diagnose many of the problems plaguing our educational system in a way that transcends the stale choice/markets/standards v professional divide. While his goal is to lay out an agenda for making teaching more of a “profession” in the way that medicine and law are, he believes that much of what the “professionalizers” in the debate have done has been counterproductive to this aim. He argues that because of the complex nature of their work job, teachers must be given the professional responsibility to make decisions regarding their students. They also must have access to a stream of research on best practices that is not diluted by consulting organizations, programs, or administrators. Finally, as professionals, all teachers need a theoretically grounded “knowledge base”, and cannot rely solely on the quick tips from various self-help organizations (i.e. Teach Like a Champion).

Though his aims are the same as professionalizers, he diverges from them for two main reasons. First, he thinks this can (but doesn’t have to) be accomplished in the current educational landscape (with some charters, common core standards, etc.).Second, he believes that teachers, and more importantly teaching organizations (unions, professional associations, schools of education, research universities, and certification entities) have the burden of proving that teachers as a whole are deserving of such professional discretion, by raising the bar of entry to the profession, improving teacher training, and allowing some forms of accountability for both ed schools and teachers. He sees the competition from (imperfect) rival programs (TFA, MATCH, Relay, KIPP, etc.) as useful stimuli for these teacher organizations to be more reflective about their practices and reform themselves to stay attractive to schools and future teachers. But he does not rest his hope with these more reform-oriented organizations; indeed, he makes clear that the complexity of maintaining a skilled teaching profession requires continual scholarly collaboration, not just market incentives.

What I loved about this book most, besides the vast array of literature it pointed me towards, was the way it influenced my thinking on what should be the unit of focus for school improvement should be. My (measly) two years of experience as a teacher at two popular but ineffective charter schools that were driving away their generally effective (at least compared to me) teachers led me to a very firm conclusion: Our schools won't improve from reform unless we get a better understanding of how school organizations respond to various incentives (whether market based or government imposed). Schools need to either embrace their loosely coupled nature and give teachers more autonomy with minimally infringing but relevant performance accountability, or find ways of transitioning to the clan-like organizations that we see with KIPP, UNCOMMON, etc. Unfortunately, most schools attempt the latter and end up being overly punitive and restrictive, resulting in mass exodus, deprofessionalization, etc.

I suspect he would agree with a lot of this narrative, but perhaps not with the idea that we can rest our vision of school improvement on scaling clan-like organizations like KIPP that are able to make schools more tightly coupled. Instead, he convincingly elucidate how a better approach may be to focus on the teacher as the primary unit of attack, but in a way that enhances professional expertise and professional responsibility/autonomy concomitantly. This of course would require schools and school systems to reorganize, but I think in a more feasible and modest way that embraces their loosely coupled nature and allows teachers room to be professionals. I think when this vision is tied to his other ideas for building living, research-based, and highly accessible (bust not diluted) knowledge base, our bar for what an "effective" teacher might look like can be raised dramatically.

Here's where I am less optimistic: Purinton do such a good job of explaining why graduate schools of education, research institutions, professional associations, etc. are incentivized and deeply rooted in the custom of being ineffective for teachers that I am unable to get excited about a plan that revolves around their widespread and much-needed self-induced reform. Since the idea of reorganizing education around more professional teachers requires first and foremost the reform of these institutions to give teachers a stronger knowledge base (and more importantly so that other educational actors will perceive them to be more professional), I am concerned about an approach that puts so much faith in them.

Then again, I believe the spread of teacher-training programs that are meant to circumnavigate traditional ed schools, such as Relay, Match, (I would barely include TFA here, since they are not really in the business of creating master teachers off the bat) are producing more esteemed graduates who certainly have a larger set of practical teaching knowledge that I believe is raising the floor of first year teachers pretty dramatically. I would love to see these institutions provide teachers to non-charters so that their model could compete more with traditional ed schools (since ideally, a strong teacher prep institution could find ways of raising that floor no matter where teachers are placed, since it's easier to have a high floor at uncommon). However, as Purinton carefully argues, building up a profession requires creating a theoretically grounded, continually updated (based on careful research) knowledge base, and these institutions ignore university research and theory, and instead build teaching frameworks from the ground up, analyzing and spreading practices that work consistently. Their graduates may not be able to adapt to schools, standards, or lessons that challenge their very limited pedagogical foundations. Then again, perhaps universities could use this limitation to sell their approach, and use their research capabilities to place these various teaching practices in various theoretical and eventually empirically tested models.

Regardless of my tenuous optimism, Purinton more than anyone else has convinced me that schools of education need to be part of a respected, autonomous, teaching profession. I think many sympathetic to reform should read this book to be reminded of why.

An argument against a teacher bar-exam.

yoteach — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 02:32:42 +0100

In response to the ever-vexing Joel Klein, a couple Atlantic authors released a solid critique of the new "teacher bar exam" movement. No doubt, teaching has definitely solidified for me the idea that "standard resume characteristics -- level of education, certifications or licenses, and experience beyond the first few years of teaching -- have essentially zero power to predict how much students learn from a given teacher. Even raw intellectual ability as measured by IQ tests has only a small positive effect on how much knowledge teachers are able to impart to their students." Translation: I am every day shown up by teachers at my school who probably could not attain my GRE scores, and, unless I am missing out on some universal consensus on the exact kinds pedagogical skills that all teachers learn at grad school, could probably not BS their way through a bar-exam type test with minimal studying as effectively as I could. Why? Because I value these practically useless skills (outside of academia), and they value more useful skills like...teaching well. I worry a bar exam would get more people like me to join the profession and fewer people like them, and damn, they are just better than me. To be persuasive, bar exam advocates need to show that: a. there is a particular set of skills/knowledge that is correlated with student outcomes b. increasing barriers to entry will lead to some cascade of institutional changes in schools that could improve teacher professionalism (perhaps limited supply-->higher pay and more bargaining power for (effective) teachers-->better balance between autonomy/accountability-->more effective teachers wanting in). I'm skeptical. I think it would more likely look something like this (bar exam-->less interest in teaching profession (especially for those not in the top 10% of college graduates or switching mid-career)--> a higher percentage of teachers who don't stay more than a few years and a higher percentage of current teachers who leave due to the implicit insult of having to retake a very challenging exam to do something they've done well for a long time). c. there is some reasonable plan in place to deal with effective (current) teachers who could not pass such an exam (I predict there will be many) and may be reasonably turned off from the profession with its enforcing...and of course... d. this plan is better than the myriad of alternatives for improving the profession. I think this movement needs a better vision of what the ideal teaching profession looks like. I think there is a growing consensus that the teaching profession would benefit from a few characteristics that would be stifled by a bar exam: a. more diversity in positions (full time teachers, teaching assistants, tutors, specialists, coaches, mentors, part-time teachers, co-teachers). The more extreme manifestation of this idea is Rick Hess, who argues that we could further unbundle the "teacher" into instructors, behavior managers, graders, tutors, etc. Regardless of your commitment to the latter vision, I think there is a lot of consensus around getting more people and different kinds of people into the "teaching" profession broadly. This would be difficult and less likely to happen consistently with a one-size-fits-all bar exam. b. A hearty percentage of career teachers. If you are someone aces rigorous bar exams, I would argue that you are less likely to be a career teacher, mainly because it is hard to continue teaching when you know you have a host of easier and more lucrative options available, especially once you plan on starting a family. Plus, many TFA-type college grads who often come from the top 10% are a bit too ambitious and self-involved to limit themselves to helping just one class of students a year (please read the self-loathing-I'm certainly not proud of being predisposed to this way of thinking). Most of us find *bigger* and *better* things. Or probably just things we are better at. Since again, I'm not convinced good grades lead to good teaching. c. A teaching profession that is not expected to have some external authority shoving their idea of "best practices" down our throats. With medicine and law, this is kind of necessary, since the constitution is a pretty solid best practice and I'd rather have my doctors innovate in lab settings and save the proven methods for me. Sadly, as nice as it would be, the teaching profession is different from the medical profession. And that's because it's not a science. I don't think anyone who makes the medicine comparisons is in favor of schools buying standardized, *research aligned* curricula. But the existence of a teacher bar exam would legitimate the existence of such practices, which I honestly believe are the biggest threat to the teaching profession. That's my argument. I like this issue though because I don't think it will fall along the usual corporate hack-union/crony lines (evidenced by the endorsement of Klein and unions).

Coffee Shop

amandainthemitten — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 05:56:01 +0100

After Pro-Sat this weekend I spent some time tutoring a former student who is now at a new high school at a coffee shop in Detroit. Somewhere in between hot chocolate, peppermint tea, and dihybrid crosses I remembered why I am a teacher despite all of the struggles of the past two years. When I leave this field I know that I will carry guilt and lots of memories.

Contradictions

amandainthemitten — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 04:25:27 +0100

Reading about the struggles and worries in my students' lives is heartbreaking. Reading about their dreams and goals is inspiring.

Achievement Gap? How About Achievement Debt?

yoteach — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 19:58:35 +0100

At a recent TFA professional Saturday, someone mentioned that they don't like the term Achievement gap, using instead the term achievement deficit. I've never really thought of what's implied by the term achievement gap, but hearing him say achievement deficit sparked a few thoughts, tied mainly to my understanding of our economic deficits. Deficits come about when we spend more than we take in each year. Therefore, they are inherently short-term. We could pass a one year tax on the rich and that might abolish the deficit. Or we could give a short-term tax cut, and that would add to the deficit. But neither would do much to change the much larger problem--our debt: the combined deficits we've accumulated over the centuries by borrowing/spending more than we are taking in. I would argue that thinking about the achievement gap as a deficit is a mistake for anyone dissatisfied with the status quo. Almost everyone immersed in educational debates would admit that if we increased our spending on education by a lot, in the short-term, the gap would still persist. Tons and tons of studies (google Eric Hanushek if you want twenty examples) show that increasing spending rarely leads to academic growth. But what if we thought of the achievement gap as a debt? Over centuries, we have accumulated great wealth and education, in a large part because we borrowed from the human capital of millions of African Americans. We did this forcibly through slavery, where African Americans were prohibited from attaining any kind of meaningful education so that we could maximize the return to their labor. We then did this through unequal funding and discrimination, up until very recently (and some would argue we have not yet stopped). But in the same way that an economic debt accumulates each year and compounds with interest, so does an achievement debt. Uneducated or less educated parents are much more limited in educating their children, moving to places with better schools, or instilling the benefit of working hard in school. Like our national debt, the problem of our achievement debt cannot be understood cross-sectionally, only longitudinally. Like our national debt, the achievement debt is structural: it cannot be fixed with marginal policies or changes in funding, but rather a complete rethinking of the role of government and the services it provides. Obviously using the word "debt" brings back an unsuccessful reparations movement, but I think if we agree that our achievement gap resembles our debt more than our deficit, there are dramatic implications for how the government must structurally address our educational inequalities.

Whiteboard Messages

amandainthemitten — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 01:03:06 +0100

Whiteboard love messages... the day my kiddos found out the school was closing (and it was their last day). From a new 9th grader who used to get into fights at his old school and whose mother said this was the first place that he actually looked forward to going to school. ... I am checking in with him and hoping that things are going smoothly at his new school. This note started out from one of my students who was still deciding how much she liked science/ my class... and ended up being 'signed' by the entire 9th grade girls class. I take this as an overall compliment. =) From one of my 10th grade boys (in my advisory). He says "I love you" twice in a row as well. =) It has been about a month since the transition. My students are adjusting to their new schools and I still see several of them when they stop by after school (most of them went to the same charter school... where I can check up on them with other TFA teachers, and they get picked up and dropped off by a bus right in front of the school building where I am currently located). I am adjusting to middle school and am excited to really dive into 'real' content since state standardized testing ended this week. Things are starting to feel more normal for me and my kids in their new classroom, though I still am a little nervous about transitions and trying to keep things consistent for them. For example, yesterday I took a sick day and the leading 7th/ 8th grade theories weren't that I was sick but rather that I was either 1. laid off 2. pregnant/ having a baby because I am married I know it is a symptom of the changes, but I must admit that I love middle school logic. =)

Backwards Planning Educational Debates

yoteach — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 00:42:42 +0100

I have a lot of mixed feelings about debates surrounding educational reform. On the one hand, I believe that Sweden--where educational achievement has plummeted since it implemented a universal and even egalitarian voucher system in the early 1990s--is the evidence all critics of school choice should point to that even in the best circumstances, school choice will do little on its own to improve educational quality. On the other hand, I believe we are far from figuring out what kinds of instructional practices and school organizations are best to help particular groups of students succeed academically, and don't think top-down control from cities, states, the department of education, or unions, over how schools should be run, how teachers should be paid/evaluated, etc. is in the best interest of students. While many on this platform will disagree, I don't think this view makes me necessarily a sympathizer with reformers. Plenty of city, state and federal educational reform policies are overly prescriptive in these ways, including NCLB, RTTT, and Mayor Emanuel's proposed changes to education in Chicago (though I am sure there is an argument to be made that the presence of expansive union contracts requires that policies are fought at the city/state/national level rather than the school level). I find myself talking myself in circles. So instead I am going to try to mix up what it is we are arguing about. Instead of reform v no reform, how about "teacher autonomy versus administrator/district/state/union control." I would imagine that almost all teachers and educational thinkers would agree that in most situations, more autonomy is better than less autonomy. Possible exceptions? First year teachers may need more structured teaching environments to be successful, and teachers may buy into a school that has a particular and rigid instructional approach (uncommon schools, for example). In return for such autonomy, it is reasonable to ask in return some form of nuanced accountability. Does anyone strongly disagree with this general ideal for a school organization: teachers are given more autonomy and in return are held accountable to jointly created mastery assessments and some form of cross-school growth assessment? If so, I'd be interested in hearing why. If not, then let's think about what kind of policies are likely to promote this kind of autonomy. High stakes testing; First of all, if any principal or superintendent feels a lot of strong pressure to boost scores quickly, it is likely that they will respond by limiting teacher autonomy (a bad idea, but attempts to control come out of crisis). So high stakes testing will likely limit autonomy, though I think this outcome could be avoided if tests benchmarked schools based on growth over the course of a year, and then made reasonable goals over a 3-5 year period that did not force administrators to desperately juke the scores by invading every single classroom. As most teachers know, high stakes testing can also lead administrators to be more intrusive in adapting school assessments so they are perfectly aligned with state assessments. Perhaps, purposefully unpredictable federal assessments could fix this problem (covering the same standards but it in different ways). However, this would certainly complicate the attempts of schools to track their own progress year-year. School Choice: School choice relies on competition. Unfortunately, evidence I’ve gathered from Sweden suggests that the pressures from competition can manifest themselves in similarly short-sighted ways to bureaucratic pressures, in the end diminishing teacher autonomy as administrators step in to instill their vision of how schools will attract customers (probably driven by consumer data than pedagogy). Perhaps strong informational systems could combat this trend, where schools are judged in some way on how autonomous teachers are (their satisfaction, their ability to articulate why and when they are teaching a particular skill, etc.)in a ranking system analogous to US News and World Reports. Indeed, competition doesn’t lead to diminished autonomy in all sectors of the economy: it’s possible we could rig the game, but that would take most policymakers coming together in agreement about what education should look like, rather than what ends it should achieve. The latter is a lot easier to agree upon. But school choice isn’t just about students choosing, it’s about teachers choosing. If teachers voted with their feet more often, that could be a local bargaining chip that could be a free-market replacement of unions (especially in charter schools where unions have no presence anyways). But I see two problems:

Who wants to go to school or teach in a climate where teachers jump around all the time? I think a bunch of new students each year is enough change for the average teacher, not to mention the financial insecurity that results and the cost to parents who value a cohesive and long-term staff.
The school I teach at currently embodies the downside of this kind of world: the school limits teacher autonomy. Therefore, good teachers leave, resulting in more new teachers, leading to even more restrictions on teacher autonomy, etc. etc. Before you know it, 75% of the teachers are either TFA or on their way out (or both).

Principal Autonomy: If you want a compelling defense of how school choice à school autonomyà teacher autonomy, read Chubb and Moe’s Politics, Markets and America’s Schools. Best case for school choice ever written, I believe. Their main message is that if principals can choose the staff they want, they will trust them more, and grant them more autonomy. I’m sympathetic to the idea that it is harder for a principal you see everyday to essentially deny your expertise in running your own classroom than it would be for an off-sight administrator, policymaker, etc. But I’m realizing in practice this doesn’t always happen. Principals, especially of charter schools, rarely exist in a vacuum, and are often beholden to charter authorizers, grant-givers, CMO’s, who often have a particular vision of what they want to see in a classroom, and could care less about whether or not the teachers agree with their educational vision. I also believe that many principals aren’t sold on this vision of education, and therefore might very well think the key to improving academic quality is giving teachers “best practices” scripts. Unions: I am least versed in the history/politics of teachers unions. In the context of a school system that largely centralized, I see their value for both teachers and students to stand up for teachers against obtuse politicians or administrators. But I also see how unions might also enhance into the need for educational decisions to be done centrally, since many union contracts are city or district wide. I wonder, if school choice is inevitable, if larger unions could exist as financial support for teachers who want to strike or leave a school for egregious teacher-related policies. But the idea of cities battling with unions seems suboptimal for teachers, students, and those who believe in school choice. How about Teach For America? We certainly increase the percentage of first or second year teachers in a school, which probably justifies schools in diminishing teacher autonomy overall. We also replace older teachers who are less likely to submit to top-down lessons and curricula. I would say, in our defense, that TFA teachers are probably more likely not to need school-based support (than non-TFA first year teachers), primarily because of the support we receive through MTLD’s, TFANET, etc. But TFA teachers have less to lose than a veteran teacher supporting a family. That makes us amenable to high workloads, low pay, long hours, etc., potentially screwing over those teachers with lives. TFA teachers also are a bit more political than your average teacher (probably for the same reasons…less to lose). I think if TFA gave us more of a normative foundation of what we ought to expect as teachers, and empowered us to be change-agents in our schools (I’m thinking more for those of us dropped in the slimiest of charter and district schools) on behalf of our staff, TFA could tip the scale a bit in the other direction. But that certainly is not the case today. Indeed, TFA acts as if they need those teacher-alienating charter schools more than the schools need TFA. It would take a lot to get TFA to stand up to (or condone CM’s standing up to) one of the schools they send us to. This is cowardly and one of my biggest problems with TFA. In Conclusion? I had no idea what side I would end on after this little intellectual exercise, which is why I had fun doing it. It seems like my arguments generally support the idea that most of the current reforms would be bad for teacher autonomy, unless they were done in a very clever way. However, what I neglected to address is the fact that most states now have some muddled form of school choice based on bad assessments, scant data, etc. On the margins, I’m not sure I’m convinced that embracing some of these policies couldn’t be beneficial. Did I miss any big arguments in any category? Is my goal of assessment-informed teacher autonomy stupid? I’d love to hear back.