How Small is Small Enough?

I'm short on time today, so I'm allowing Mike Petrilli to do my thinking for me. He asks a very good question:

"Will teachers ever think their classes are small enough?" (to which his answer is "Doubtful.")

When I was teaching, my classes ranged from 23-29 students over the course of the year (due to student mobility). And, yes, I thought they were too large -- if for no other reason than because it was quite difficult to effectively monitor that many students at the same time. I was pretty convinced that my classes would have been fundamentally different if I had 10-15 students.

I don't know of any feasible way to fund a 50% reduction in class size, but let's say it happened. If I were teaching a class of, say, 13 students would I think that my class was small enough? I'm not sure what the answer to that question is. I have little doubt that I could teach 13 students more effectively than 26, but I also have little doubt that I could teach 6 or 7 students more effectively than 13 -- so I'm not sure I'd have a strong incentive to think my classes were small enough even with only 13 students. Even if I had two students, I'm not sure that I would say that my class was small enough because I might be able to do a lot more good with only one of the students at a time.

So maybe he's right, maybe teachers would never say that classes were small enough.

But maybe that's not quite the right question. I can't imagine not wishing for fewer students in my class, but I can imagine thinking that other policy ideas would do more good than reducing class sizes. Let's say, for example, that somebody provided me a list of 10 reforms and asked me to rank them in order of which reforms might do the most amount of good. I could imagine "reducing class size" falling down that list as the size of my class shrunk.

Then again, my perception of the size of my class would probably rely largely on the size of other classes that I saw and experienced. If I had 13 students and the average class size in the country was 8, I'd probably still complain.

Anyway, enough rambling. Back to the question. At what point would class sizes be small enough?

Teaching and Barriers to Entry

Depending on whom you ask, there may or may not be a teacher shortage. I think everybody would agree, however, that there is a shortage of quality teachers and that there are certain positions that go unfilled each year. My school, for example, was short 2 science teachers, a special ed. teacher, and a Spanish teacher my second year -- and a Chorus teacher (after the original teacher and her replacement both quit in the first two months) for most of the year during the second year I taught.

So, in some way, shape, or form, more teachers are needed. What's interesting is how this problem has been addressed. A variety of strategies have been tried: bonuses, fellowships, cutting red tape on hiring, etc. But the most prevalent one seems to be simply lowering the barriers to entry. In other words, making it easier to become a teacher.

I, personally, would not have started teaching if the policy hadn't been in place. Even though I had no training in education, I was allowed to spend one intense summer (supposedly) learning the basics and then jump right into a classroom. Teach For America, The New Teacher Project, and who knows how many other local, regional, and national programs have popped up as alternative routes to certification.

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with this strategy, you have to admit that it's interesting. And I wonder what it says about the field of teaching. What if we had a shortage of doctors; would we address that by lowering barriers to entry? I can't imagine we would b/c nobody wants a doctor operating on them who is smart but knows little about the human body. What if there was a shortage of lawyers; would we shorten law school? If we had a shortage of bus drivers, would we let them finish the training courses while driving routes full-time? If we had a shortage of police officers, would we give people temporary badges while they figure out how to do their job?

I don't know the answers to above questions. I guess people used to be temporarily deputized in order to form posses to track outlaws in the old days (at least in books and movies anyway), so maybe there is some precedent for this. But I wonder which fields we'd be willing to lower entry requirements for and which we wouldn't. And why.

"No Excuses" . . . Except for College Professors

Finally, the post everybody's been waiting for (Make sure you read this first) . . .

Earlier today, I posted a bunch of random quotes from a commentary written by a teacher (see above). So, what prompted this?

The much-discussed Atlantic piece by "Professor X" is finally available online. Since I'd already mentioned it in a previous post, I decided I should read it and see what all the fuss is about.

Most of the discussion has centered around the theme of the article -- that "The idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth" -- but I was struck by something else.

If a K-12 teacher said half the stuff that Professor X did, they would be crucified . . . and by many of the same people who've been agreeing with him.

The article, in essence, says that although he is a very talented and hard-working professor, that he simply cannot teach many of his students to succeed because they're too far behind and have too many obstacles to success.

Imagine a K-12 teaching saying the same thing, with the conclusion being that the students simply didn't belong in school b/c they were incapable of passing. They would be branded as subscribing to the "myth of helplessness" and blamed for all the problems of our schools. They would be told that they're either not qualified to be teaching or need to work harder. They would be told not to make excuses and that every child can succeed. And there might be a grain of truth in some of these statements.

But, somehow, Professor X's essay is proof not that he's a miserable teacher but that the students aren't qualified to be taking his course -- and that we should stop pushing so many students to take similar courses.

I continue to find it odd that K-12 and higher education are so similar but are treated so differently.

Working with Failures

Before I say where this is from, I'm going to start by pasting a few passages from a recent commentary written by a teacher.

For many of my students, [passing my classes] is difficult . . . their boredom quickly becomes apparent. They fidget; they prop their heads on their arms; they yawn and sometimes appear to grimace in pain, as though they had been tasered. Their eyes implore: How could you do this to me?

Despite my enthusiasm, despite their thoughtful nods of agreement and what I have interpreted as moments of clarity, it turns out that in many cases it has all come to naught . . .

Remarkably few of my students can do well in these classes. Students routinely fail; some fail multiple times, and some will never pass, because they cannot write a coherent sentence.

I explain, I give examples, I cheerlead, I cajole, but each evening, when the class is over and I come down from my teaching high, I inevitably lose faith in the task, as I’m sure my students do.

Over the course of 15 weeks, some of my best writers improve a little. Sometimes my worst writers improve too, though they rarely, if ever, approach base-level competence.

I had responsibilities to the rest of my students, so only when the class ended could I sit with her and work on some of the basics. It didn’t go well. She wasn’t absorbing anything. The wall had gone up, the wall known to every teacher at every level: the wall of defeat and hopelessness and humiliation, the wall that is an impenetrable barrier to learning. She wasn’t hearing a word I said.

[The student] had done everything that American culture asked of her. She had gone back to school to better herself, and she expected to be rewarded for it, not slapped down. She had failed not, as some students do, by being absent too often or by blowing off assignments. She simply was not qualified

One of the things I try to do on the first [day of class] is relate the literary techniques we will study to novels that the students have already read. I try to find books familiar to everyone. This has so far proven impossible. My students don’t read much, as a rule, and though I think of them monolithically, they don’t really share a culture.

Based on these statements, what do you think about this teacher? Is he working hard enough? Is he a good teacher? Does he give up too easily? Should he be doing more to ensure the success of his students?

I'll reveal the source of these quotes (in case you don't already know) and why I think this is important later in the day.

Update: The follow-up post is here

All Research is "Mesearch"

So says my roommate, who heard it from a friend. As a relatively new member of the research community, I have two thoughts on this:

1. There's a lot of truth in that statement
2. "All" is too strong

I don't really have a rooting interest in any particular intervention, but I would be lying if I said that my personal experiences hadn't shaped my research interests. I'm a private person -- when I talk about myself, it's not usually about personal things. Education is, to me, however, very personal. Particularly my decision to quit teaching. I know not everybody quit for the same reason as me. I don't know exactly how the exit of people like myself affects schools. But I've been convinced by my experiences that it merits further investigation.

I'm in an unusually pensive mood b/c TMAO has started to expound a bit on his decision to quit, and it stirs up a lot of memories for me. He makes a list of all the reasons he didn't quit and, oddly enough, these are mostly reasons why I did quit. Here are all the reasons he lists that he didn't quit:

1. I wasn't prepared - I certainly wasn't. It's not really the reason that I quit, but it certainly hindered the amount of success I had.
2. I'm not successful - I certainly never felt successful. Maybe I just set the bar too high for myself, but I always felt like I was trying to preside over chaos.
3. I'm not supported - TMAO says he doesn't know what this means. In my school, it meant that when I struggled I was told I was a bad teacher rather than helped. When a student flipped out, I was berated and the student remained in my room.
   
4. I can no longer stand to work with the disastrously declined youth of today or their apathetic, uninvolved families - I'll agree with him on this one -- that had nothing to do with my decision
5. I'm not paid enough - Of course I wasn't paid enough for what I went through, but that had very little to do with my decision to leave.
6. I really want to teach at a KIPP school - That was probably the last thing on my mind as the kids ran out the door on my last day.
   
7. I'm burnt out - TMAO wrestles with whether or not he was burnt out. I have no such quandary: I was burnt out -- badly.

Considering that these are the reasons he didn't quit, I'd very much like to hear more on why he did. Personally, I'd add discipline problems and the overall hostility level of the school at the top of a list of other reasons why I left.

But enough about me; back to my point. Just as everybody has experiences that define their lives, this one has defined mine. And these experiences define not just who people are but also what they research. Part of me feels that this is a bad thing -- in which case I plead guilty -- but part of me isn't so sure.

On the one hand, it means that people have more personally at stake in their research than we might like to believe (I'm guessing that most people who are interested in merit pay or teacher education believe that they are potentially powerful interventions). But, on the other, it also means that people have some context for the questions they ask and, for that matter, that they are motivated to spend time on the topic.

I know that my experiences have shaped my interests (and probably always will), and I think I can be ok with this as long as I start a project answering questions that I genuinely believe can be answered in either direction. It's the difference between starting off saying "I'm going to prove that discipline problems influence teacher retention" and saying "I wonder if discipline problems influence teacher retention and, if so, how much?" I'm not perfect, but that's the goal for which I'll aim.

Is High School Too Late?

Bob Herbert has another woe are our schools piece in the Times today. In it he decries the performance of our high schools -- particularly our low graduation rates. He argues that we need to intervene in order to ensure that our high schools are on par with the rest of the world's. The most interesting statistic he cites (and I'd like to see the source for this) is that the U.S. ranked second in the world in four-year college graduation rate in 1995 while we now rank 15th.

I buy the premise of the op-ed: too many students are leaving our schools unprepared for college and/or the workforce, and change is needed. But I have on question: is high school too late?

In other words, are high schools really creating the problems, or are they just where we're noticing them. High school teachers I've talked with tell me that students come to school woefully underprepared and far behind in their abilities. In these cases, is high school really the right point of intervention?

I'm under the impression that most problems take root much earlier than high school. For example: one research article found that, in Baltimore, each absence in first grade was related to an increased likelihood of about 5% that the student would drop out of high school. Does this mean that intervening in first grade might be more fruitful than intervening in high school?

American Citizens First

An article in the Times yesterday discussed some actions that districts and schools have taken to immerse their students in more international knowledge. The article has some interesting parts -- it's worth reading -- but what really caught my attention was this:

Michael J. Petrilli, a vice president of the conservative-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute, cautioned that American schools were already giving short shrift to American history and government and could not afford to layer global studies on top of already stretched curriculum.

“In some of these trendy schools, there is an ethos that we are all citizens of the world, and that’s all that matters,” he said. “Students need to be taught to be American citizens first.”

I've read a number of Petrilli's posts over the last month, and I don't usually find him that reactionary or anti-world. I'd like to hear more from him about the context of the quote.

Maybe he didn't realize he was playing right into the hands of these Dutch cartoonists:


source: http://www.wulffmorgenthaler.com/strip.aspx?id=656c268e-ff70-43a3-9e52-b4923c42e1f2


Update: Thanks for providing some context

Blog Posts In Need of Improvement

Alexander Russo has his "Best of the Blogs." The idea occurred to me a few weeks back to create a "worst of the blogs" list as a counterbalance, but it seemed far too judgmental and condescending for my taste. Given my espoused distaste for some of what passes as dialogue in education policy, however, the idea rattled around in my head for awhile. I've finally reached a compromise.

Today I'm starting a new section titled "Blog Posts In Need of Improvement" -- a title I deem tongue-in-cheek enough for others to know that I'm not taking myself too seriously. I have no desire to put myself on a pedestal or scold others, but I would like to encourage more thoughtful and productive dialogue. Here are the rules and criteria:

1. Blog posts will be classified as "in need of improvement" when they fail to productively advance discussion and, instead, root for one side over another. Posts that are accusatory without evidence, thoughtless, derogatory, or fail to take the good of society into account are all eligible. Selection will not be based on ideology or poor grammar.

2. Blog posts that are selected will be accompanied by the selection of a productive and thoughtful post from the same blog. I'm not out to get anybody, I just feel an odd desire to point out when people aren't helping.

I'm going to lead off my list with a couple of oldies-but-baddies:

BPINI 1: I Pity The Fool!, Jay P. Greene's Blog
Why: Greg Forster chooses to revel in the "smackdown" of teachers who wrote letters to the Wall St. Journal, despite the fact that there's no possible way to tell whether or not the letters are evil given their brevity. He chooses to take sides and root for the downfall of others rather than working for the betterment of schools. In response to my criticism of the post, he defends his right to criticize "the blob" -- a derogatory term used to refer to teachers with whom he disagrees.
Better Post, Same Blog: The Devil's In the Implementation
Why: A thoughtful post analyzing the recent analysis of Reading First and what might have gone wrong.

BPINI 2: P.U. to B.U., Flypaper
Why: Chester Finn decides, without ever having met the man, that the new dean at B.U. will ruin the school -- apparently based on a glance of his resume and the fact that he currently works at Wisconsin. Finn writes that "He is reportedly hostile to charter schools and high-stakes accountability and just about everything else worth being in favor of nowadays." In the future, I hope Finn bases his judgments on facts rather than what somebody is "reportedly" like. I further hope that we can stop viewing education reform as a series of separate ideas, some of which we should root for and some which we shouldn't.
Better Post, Same Blog: Quizzing for Reading Data
Why: In her inaugural Flypaper post, Amber Winkler delves into the numbers in the latest report on reading -- examining why the numbers are they way they are rather than simply reacting to the table.

Should Everyone Attend College?

In a previous post, I disagreed with Kevin Carey. This time, I'd like to defend him. A recent article in The Atlantic (which I haven't read since I don't have a subscription, don't feel like sitting in Barnes & Noble, and it isn't online) described the life of an adjunct professor who teaches adult ed classes in the evenings and finds that most students don't have the skills to complete college coursework. Apparently the point of the article is that college isn't for everyone.

Kevin Carey writes

One thing's for certain: this piece will be catnip for those who like to adopt the contrarian too-many-people-are-going-to-college-these-days position. This is an especially attractive stance for elitists and/or people who spend a lot of time searching for opportunities to loudly begin sentences with some variation of the phrase "I know it's not politically correct to say this, but..." as if this denotes intellectual bravery of some kind.

he continues on to argue that perhaps it would be more beneficial to put more effort into these programs rather than loudly complain that these students don't belong in college.

Liam Julian, on the Fordham Institute's blog, apparently disagrees. He criticizes Carey for "impugning motives" and "name-calling" and then goes on to mock ("The blatant rejection of reality inherent in Carey’s sentences is astounding") his position. I have an avowed dislike for unproductive, thoughtless, side-taking blog posts and while both posts touch on this territory, Carey's (with the exception of the above paragraph) is much more thoughtful and much less accusatory.

Anyway, Julian continues on to write that college isn't for everybody, that it's not supposed to teach remedial skills, and that pushing underqualified students into college will accomplish nothing other than cheapening college degrees.

I have a number of problems with these arguments:

1. It's easy for us folks with college degrees to sit at our computers and say that not everyone belongs in college, but self-interest precludes any sort of impartial judgment on this matter. If fewer people graduate from college then my degree looks that much better (and vice-versa).

2. I'm not sure that Carey ever made the argument that colleges should teach remedial skills to underqualified students. The fact that students graduate from high school unable to read or write at a college level doesn't mean they shouldn't go to college, it means that they should have learned more while they were in their previous schools. Since it's too late for them to learn more in elementary, middle, and high school then it's entirely appropriate for them to enroll in some sort of classes that will adequately prepare them for college. If colleges choose to make promises they can't keep in order to make money off these classes, then shame on them.

3. Despite the fact that I've previously informed him he was incorrect about this, Julian still assumes that the number of people graduating from college is skyrocketing at an alarming rate. If one looks at the statistics (look at the second category, third column) it becomes readily apparent that this isn't the case. The percentage of 25-29 year-olds with at least a bachelor's degree has remained virtually flat over the past decade. Below is a list of this figure for each of the past 10 years for which data are available.

1997: 27.8%
1998: 27.3%
1999: 28.2%
2000: 29.1%
2001: 28.6%
2002: 29.3%
2003: 28.4%
2004: 28.7%
2005: 28.6%
2006: 28.4%

4. Even if we assumed that this figure was on the verge of increasing rapidly, exactly what would that harm? Let's say that 50% of the population gets a bachelor's degree and the percentage of people with a graduate degree also doubles. Other than the amount of student loan debt that the population has, I fail to see how this is a bad thing. In 1910, 13.5% of the population had a high school diploma. The figure now stands at 85.5%. Has this ramp-up in educational attainment had some sort of detrimental effect on our society? If so, what?

5. Julian assumes that anybody who thinks more students should attend college thinks that everybody should go to college. It's quite apparent that this is a willful exaggeration. We are so far from a 100% college graduation rate (heck, most high schools graduate significantly less than 100% of their students) that it's a completely unrealistic goal even for the most optimistic pundit. Arguing that more students should be able to enroll in college and arguing that everybody should enroll in college are not one and the same. I, for example, think more people should enroll in college; but I don't think everybody should. In other words, it is possible to have a somewhat nuanced position on the issue.

Update: The article is now online here. After reading it, I posted some more thoughts on the article here.

Another One Bites the Dust

A sad day in the world of teaching. The writer of the blog Teaching in the 408 has announced he's resigning. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but it sounds like he was frustrated.

I've never seen him teach, but it sounds like he was an effective teacher in a tough school. A smart, determined, dedicated Teach For America alum. In other words, just the type of teacher that we should be trying to keep.