This article by Hillary Greene appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our June 19th e-Newsletter and originally appeared in Education Week Teacher. For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

Everybody knows that a good house party, no matter how enticing the dining room, ends up in the kitchen. Surrounded by the comfort of food and drink, we relax and bond. We say things we wouldn’t say in the dining room.

Yet, in this nation that “runs on Dunkin’,” some schools appear to be cutting back on staff-room provisions as a budgetary precaution. So while Google generously—and shrewdly—provides copious amounts of first-class nourishment to its employees, teachers often can’t get a free cup of coffee.

And while a cut like this may seem relatively insignificant, I’m convinced it harms teaching and learning.

Without coffee to induce them to linger in the staff room, teachers have lost their kitchen space. And gone are the conversations that used to occur there, where the most productive (and completely unscheduled) meetings would often occur. Somehow, encounters in front of vending machines tucked in some tiny, darkened room do not produce the same effect.

But this isn’t really about coffee. This is about teacher voice and collaboration.

An Isolating Profession

I decided to become a teacher four years ago, due to some combination of a desire to have an impact on others and indecision about what else to do. Also involved on some level were the collapse of the economy and an interest in heeding President Obama’s call for top students to pursue public service and teaching.

I learned to teach middle school humanities in an alternative-licensure program at an independent school in Cambridge, Mass. Around the seminar table, we soon-to-be teachers grappled with questions of equal access to great education while we swapped tales from teaching that day. Between classes and after school, the teachers’ staff room provided not only free coffee, but also free peanut butter and crackers, so people congregated. In that cozy space, I practiced an important aspect of teaching: bonding with colleagues. Another teacher’s “Patrick” sounded like “James” in my class, so we talked and shared experiences. We all laughed together when a stressed teacher ran in to get a coffee and exclaimed, “I have to remember I’m not running the Pentagon!”

I stepped into my first teaching job filled to the brim with ideas about teaching and learning. But I completely underestimated all it takes to be an effective teacher (and how infrequently bathroom breaks occur). Making matters worse, my school offered none of the opportunities for collaboration and informal conversation among teachers that I had experienced in my training program. I tried to figure out my next social studies unit during 30-second conversations in the copy room. A 20-minute conversation with a social worker seemed like a rare treat. I spent most hours at my computer, drowning alone.

Still hopeful, I stepped into my second dream job this past fall at a first-year public charter school, but it has proven to be no different. I find myself reflecting relentlessly: Does public school teaching really have to be this isolating?

Losing My Voice

The greatest disappointment for me as a teacher has been how little intellectual exchange there is among educators. On the way to a staff meeting, I still catch myself running through my dream agenda: First, we’ll reflect on the prevalence of ADHD and the implications for us, after which we’ll all step back and think about whether more—not fewer—music classes could improve our math scores and students’ experiences. Then we’ll think about the rapidly growing use of iPads in the classroom and what that might mean for instruction. Instead, in reality, I quietly enter the meeting room, sip my tea, and chime in when I must because perhaps my professional opinion matters on where recycling bins could be stored or maybe the department head just got to my students on her list of numbers—that is, students—not meeting assessment proficiency.

At these get-togethers, the party never moves out of the dining room.

I have occasionally worked up the nerve to ask kitchen questions in the dining room, but the results have not been good. During an IEP meeting, I brought up the issue of racial identity for a struggling African-American boy in a predominantly white, affluent school. For that, I was called a “loose cannon.” At another meeting, I divulged that I felt more like a proctor than a literature teacher due to the frequency of assessments. For that, I was made to feel as though I misunderstood the whole purpose of assessment. I have questioned many aspects of the way my school operates, and I have stated my views more directly as my experience as a teacher has grown. For that, I have been urged to be more “politically correct.”

It’s hard not to feel that I’m losing my voice. Or perhaps I’m saving it for something else.

We frequently hear the statistic that nearly half of teachers leave teaching within five years. I’m inclined to believe that politically incorrect loose cannons leave schools at a higher rate. Yet this is precisely the type of person you want teaching because he or she can inspire children to find their own voices.

Teachers are getting the message: Quiet down and behave. We need you, but we don’t value you.

If we want our public schools to create the next generation of thoughtful, engaged Americans, we need to support the people whose job it is to make an impact, and we need to work especially hard to retain the types of teachers who question the status quo and speak up even at the risk of being politically incorrect.

We could start by giving teachers free coffee—and how about decent coffee?—so that the party can move back to the kitchen. Otherwise, doors will close and the great ideas in education will be spoken separately and silently in lonely classrooms.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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This article by Edward B. Fiske appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our June 12th e-Newsletter and originally appeared in the News & Observer.For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

As a longtime supporter of charter schools, I am distressed to watch Republican legislators attempting to hijack this once-promising notion for school improvement and transform it into a force for undermining public education in North Carolina.

Charter schools are publicly funded schools that are given flexibility in areas such as curriculum, hiring and scheduling in return for being accountable for positive educational results. There are now 5,600 charter schools in the U.S. and 107 in North Carolina. I helped establish a charter school in Durham in 2002 and continue to serve on its board.

The promise of charter schools was many-faceted. Charters are free to innovate and to explore new curricula and teaching methods that, if successful, could make their way into traditional public schools. Since one size does not fit all when it comes to schooling, charters offer parents and students a wider range of educational options. Charter schools at their best give teachers space to work in collegial fashion around innovative educational visions.

From the time charter schools first emerged in Minnesota in the early 1990s with broad bipartisan support, proponents recognized that they are integral parts of established public school systems. In North Carolina, where charters date to 1996, this means that charters are part of our constitutionally mandated “general and uniform system of free public schools.”

Significantly, proponents have long recognized that charter schools can best fulfill their promise of enhanced quality and choice when they remain on the edges of the system. The number of educational visionaries is limited. Making charters the norm would require a cumbersome bureaucracy that would eventually stifle the educational creativity for which they were established. Students whose experience in a charter school does not work out well need access to a traditional public school.

Republican leaders in the legislature are pushing a charter school “reform” program that would undermine all of the fundamental principles that have driven the charter school movement in North Carolina and elsewhere.

Senate Bill 337 and a parallel bill in the House would strip the State Board of Education of its responsibility for overseeing charter schools and set up an 11-member governing board mostly of charter school advocates appointed by the governor and the legislature.

Such a dual system would make a mockery of the notion that charters are part of a coherent statewide education system with an obligation to serve all students. Freeing charters from any obligation to pursue goals established by the State Board of Education would inevitably lead to two classes of schools: some free to avoid enrolling students who are most challenging to teach, others required to serve all comers. A charter board would also become a new bureaucracy – exactly what charter supporters feared.

Since the board would not be bound by conflict of interest laws, members would include profit-making charter school operators who would then be in a position to shape policies favoring their own private economic interests, including the blocking of applications from potential competitors.

The legislation would allow charters to hire fewer teachers with professional credentials – scoffing at the concept of teacher professionalism that has been a point of pride among successful charter schools. It would further jeopardize the status of teachers who, thanks to the Republican legislature, are already staring at the loss of tenure, shorter contracts and fewer teaching assistants.

The Republican agenda thumbs its nose at the implicit bargain of the charter movement – flexibility in return for accountability – by eliminating the second half of the equation.

Charter schools have long fought against critics who, often with justification, accuse them of becoming, in effect, “private schools with public funding.” Far from seeing this critique as a problem, the Republican legislative agenda would make it into a virtue.

The pending charter school legislation does not reflect any clamor from North Carolina residents. To the contrary, Republican leaders have essentially downloaded model legislation formulated by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a right-wing corporate group that mounted a multi-prong attack on public education throughout the country.

The timing could not be worse. Republican efforts to set charters and traditional public schools against each other fly in the face of a national movement that has developed in about 20 cities to create mutually beneficial “compacts.” Charters typically accept responsibility to educate the full range of students, while local school boards, acknowledging the autonomy of charter schools, agree to cooperate on issues such as professional development, school safety, transportation and school lunch programs.

Talks are actively underway in Durham between the public school system and local charters to work toward such a compact.

All North Carolinians who believe in the importance of quality public education for all children should resist the Republican proposals. At the front of the barricades should be advocates who still believe in the promise of charter schools and do not want to see a good idea hijacked.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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This article by Clifton Vann IV appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our June 6th e-Newsletter and originally appeared in The Charlotte Observer . For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

Last year, my company spent more than $100,000 with headhunters, trying to find talent to fill the gaps we have in employment. Sadly enough, the vast majority of the people we found did not come from North Carolina.

It is not just occupation skills that are hard to find. Too many young people entering the workforce lack the “soft skills” – communication, collaboration and critical thinking – that can spell the difference between success and failure in today’s business world.

As we enter another graduation season, we should examine if students are developing the skills they will need when they enter the workforce.

Our education system is so focused on memorization and “making the grade” that we are not helping enough students “learn to learn.” They need to have a strong command of core academic content but they also need a strong command of the increasingly important soft skills.

Most businesses demand these skills in all levels of jobs. Yet six out of 10 surveyed N.C. employers reported communications skills gaps among job applicants – and close to half reported deficiencies in critical thinking and problem-solving abilities.

Take manufacturing – with which I am very familiar. If you have the right skills, the jobs are definitely out there. But the Manufacturers Institute has reported that 67 percent of manufacturers have moderate to severe shortages of available, qualified workers.

How critical is education in establishing a career in our region? According to a report from the business leaders group, America’s Edge, by 2018, two thirds of all new jobs in North Carolina will require some type of education beyond high school. That percentage rises to 91 percent for science, technology, engineering and math jobs. These benchmarks will be hard to meet when 22 percent of our students do not graduate on time and only 30 percent of the North Carolina Class of 2012 graduates taking the ACT college admissions test met college readiness benchmarks.

The outlook is certainly challenging. But it is solvable.

We must train and re-train our workforce and attract skilled workers to our region and state. But we must also embrace innovative education models that will develop necessary skills in the next generation.

One solution? Make what children learn at school relevant to the business world, so they can develop the skills businesses look for in new hires and continue the implementation of our new rigorous standards and assessments.

High schools across the country, including in Charlotte, are already working to incorporate these ideas, by integrating career relevance training with rigorous academic curriculum. Students take classes together as a cohort with a career-themed curriculum that helps them see the connections between academic subjects and their real-world applications. By working in teams and gaining actual work experience, students begin to understand the importance of professionalism, reliability, teamwork and clear communications skills.

The business community knows what we need in our workforce. Innovation in our schools will create innovators in our workforce.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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This article by Stuart Watson appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our May 29th e-Newsletter and originally appeared on WCNC.com . For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — I’m one of the biggest critics of CMS. Because I have the most invested. I have two daughters who graduated from Northwest School of the Arts and two more kids who are going to North Meck High School – the same North Meck locked down in February when a 15-year old brought a gun to school and the same North Meck in the headlines in April when another 15-year old was charged with attempted murder for allegedly attacking a girl on campus.

Who sends their kids to such a school? I do. And I’d do it again.

Why? Here are 10 reasons, plus one:

1. North Meck offers my kids teams and clubs and school spirit than Cato Middle College High School doesn’t – even though Cato’s scores are much better from a purely college prep perspective.

2. Because a school is more than its test scores. A lot more.

3. North Meck offers more IB and AP courses than a charter school.

4. North Meck has a superb Speech and Debate team with a rich tradition (Thank you Mr. Rocca for all the hours).

5. North Meck has many great teachers. Not good teachers. Great teachers. (Thank you all).

6. North Meck’s diversity exposes my kids to students from around the world – and across town.

7. North Meck’s adversity teaches my kids you can’t just run away when things are tough.

8. My daughter’s boyfriend went to North Meck and got a full ride to NC State. And an education.

9. North Meck students taught us an alternate definition of the word “ratchet” – which North Meck is not, BTW, you haters.

10. My own education at an all-white private school was the product of white flight and that education helped me a great deal with book learning but did little to prepare me for my first real job 30 years ago interviewing all types of people in Mississippi.

11. The boogaloo.

I say all this for several reasons:

A) Reporters cannot be perfectly objective– especially about their kids
B) People should know where a reporter is coming from.
C) I’ve been doing a lot of reporting on schools so you should know where I’m invested

I reserve the right to criticize CMS and ask hard but fair questions, precisely because I’m invested.
So there. Now you know.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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This article by Ann Goodnight and Richard L. McNeel appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our May 22nd e-Newsletter and originally appeared in The News & Observer. For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

To meet the future demand for a more skilled and educated workforce, North Carolina must invest in what works: high-quality early care and education.

We agree with Gov. Pat McCrory and many of our state lawmakers that proficiency in reading by the third grade will help children succeed in our K-12 system and graduate from high school ready for college and career. High-quality early-learning programs are crucial to achieving that goal.

Children who participate in these programs are more likely to graduate from high school, hold a job considered semi-skilled or higher, attain a four-year degree and earn more as adults. And that is good for our businesses and our state’s economy.

Key to these economic outcomes are two critical factors: the quality of the programs and access to the programs.

• Quality: Some policymakers have been led to believe that improvements in school performance for children in early learning programs diminish as they get into elementary school. Some call it “fade-out.”

But decades of data and longitudinal studies do not support this conclusion when early learning programs are high-quality.

A 2012 Duke University study of our state’s early learning programs shows North Carolina third-graders have higher standardized reading and math scores and lower special education placement rates in those counties with more funding for those programs. In fact, researchers found that the expected savings in reduced special education and instructional costs for children in these programs is at least equal to the cost of the programs – a break-even or savings of taxpayer money.

This study is not alone. A quantitative statistical analysis of 123 studies across four decades of early education research – a meta analysis – found that by third grade, one-third of the achievement gap can be closed by early education.

North Carolina is already a national model for high-quality early learning programs, being the second state to enact a Quality Rating and Improvement System. North Carolina’s programs have the quality components that get the results businesses want: appropriate teacher-to-child ratios, teachers educated in early childhood development, strong parental involvement and coaching, and screening and referral services to catch problems early.

North Carolina also leads the country in tying subsidies for child care to the quality of the programs. Programs receiving subsidies must have a star rating of three or higher.

Today, 70 percent of all young children in North Carolina’s regulated early learning programs attend high-quality programs rated with four or five stars.

• Access: Currently, parents – our workforce – can receive state financial assistance to place their children in our quality early learning programs, such as N.C. Pre-K, if their income is at or below $33,021 for a family of four. Some lawmakers are considering cutting that eligibility in half, which would make our state among the five most restrictive for accessing early learning programs.

Cutting eligibility is not good for our businesses. In North Carolina, 65 percent of children under age 6 have both or their only parent in the workforce. The median income in North Carolina is $44,083, while the annual cost of a quality early learning program is $7,803.

It does not take a financial expert to understand that these programs would simply be out of reach for too many working families without financial assistance.

We support McCrory’s proposal to pay for 5,000 more children in our N.C. Pre-K program.

We also support maintaining current levels of eligibility so children can access the quality programs our state has created. The definition of “eligibility” should not be tied to a single year’s budget target.

It should be tied to ensuring that North Carolina working families can place their children in programs that will strengthen our future workforce and economic growth.

If we are serious about improving North Carolina’s economic future, we must address the issue of our sadly leaking education pipeline.

Our children’s educational needs should be served at the very beginning by investing in high-quality preschool rather than trying to remediate later.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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This article by Sean F. Reardon appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our May 15th e-Newsletter and originally appeared in The New York Times. For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion.

Whether you think it deeply unjust, lamentable but inevitable, or obvious and unproblematic, this is hardly news. It is true in most societies and has been true in the United States for at least as long as we have thought to ask the question and had sufficient data to verify the answer.

What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially.

One way to see this is to look at the scores of rich and poor students on standardized math and reading tests over the last 50 years. When I did this using information from a dozen large national studies conducted between 1960 and 2010, I found that the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago.

To make this trend concrete, consider two children, one from a family with income of $165,000 and one from a family with income of $15,000. These incomes are at the 90th and 10th percentiles of the income distribution nationally, meaning that 10 percent of children today grow up in families with incomes below $15,000 and 10 percent grow up in families with incomes above $165,000.

In the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type test scale, the average difference in test scores between two such children would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points. This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between white and black children. Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race.

The same pattern is evident in other, more tangible, measures of educational success, like college completion. In a study similar to mine, Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski, economists at the University of Michigan, found that the proportion of students from upper-income families who earn a bachelor’s degree has increased by 18 percentage points over a 20-year period, while the completion rate of poor students has grown by only 4 points.

In a more recent study, my graduate students and I found that 15 percent of high-income students from the high school class of 2004 enrolled in a highly selective college or university, while fewer than 5 percent of middle-income and 2 percent of low-income students did.

These widening disparities are not confined to academic outcomes: new research by the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam and his colleagues shows that the rich-poor gaps in student participation in sports, extracurricular activities, volunteer work and church attendance have grown sharply as well.

In San Francisco this week, more than 14,000 educators and education scholars have gathered for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The theme this year is familiar: Can schools provide children a way out of poverty?

We are still talking about this despite decades of clucking about the crisis in American education and wave after wave of school reform.Whatever we’ve been doing in our schools, it hasn’t reduced educational inequality between children from upper- and lower-income families.

Part of knowing what we should do about this is understanding how and why these educational disparities are growing. For the past few years, alongside other scholars, I have been digging into historical data to understand just that. The results of this research don’t always match received wisdom or playground folklore.

The most potent development over the past three decades is that the test scores of children from high-income families have increased very rapidly. Before 1980, affluent students had little advantage over middle-class students in academic performance; most of the socioeconomic disparity in academics was between the middle class and the poor. But the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor. Just as the incomes of the affluent have grown much more rapidly than those of the middle class over the last few decades, so, too, have most of the gains in educational success accrued to the children of the rich.

Before we can figure out what’s happening here, let’s dispel a few myths.

Read more

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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This article by Kathleen Oropeza appeared in the For Your Consideration section in our May 8th e-Newsletter and originally appeared in The News & Observer. For Your Consideration* provides an open forum for individuals to voice their opinions on various public education issues.

As a Florida mom, I find it hard to watch states with veto-proof majorities push and pass the same education reforms that have hurt our children and harmed our public schools.

North Carolina parents are right to worry about SB 337/State Charter School Review Board, which bypasses the authority of elected school boards to give political appointees the power to grow and fund charter schools. Equally concerning is SB 361 by Sen. Phil Berger – the Excellent Public Schools Act – that implements Florida’s A-F school grading system and ties high-stakes student test scores to teacher evaluations.

Florida has spent 14 heartbreaking years at the epicenter of a “Bold Education Reform” experiment brutally imposed by single party rule. We know where this is going. Mandatory third-grade retention morphs into fifth, eighth and 10th grades. For-profit charter chains, virtual charters and voucher schools are held to lower standards than traditional district schools. Diverted tax dollars fund separate and unequal school systems while drastic funding cuts starve traditional district schools.

Because of one, lone standardized test score, some AP high school students with 4.0 GPAs are forced to spend 90 minutes a day in “remediation.” We are not anti-test. We object to using a single test with known statistical flaws as the judge and jury for schools, teachers and students.

Raleigh has signed on with powerful outsiders who travel state to state pitching the “Florida Miracle” like so much snake oil. A few graphs and percentages persuaded North Carolina politicians to subject every public school child to a flawed experiment. It’s the same drill in 20 other states.

Lobbyists, virtual vendors, chamber types and politicians all sound the same frightening public school crisis alarm while scheming to divert public tax dollars meant for our neighborhood schools straight into private pockets.

North Carolina has been told its public schools are in dire straits, national rankings have fallen and there is a bad/greedy/lazy teacher behind every desk. Don’t believe it. Every one of us remembers at least one teacher who changed our lives. Millions of children have passed through your public schools and gone on to be successful citizens. The vast majority of children in North Carolina attend your vibrant public schools today.

Don’t believe the story about the A-F school grading system. Grades are based on high-stakes test scores and have little to do with what really goes on in a school. Tying teacher evaluations to student test scores monetizes our kids. Think about it. When every reward and punishment revolves around high-stakes test scores, an undeniable burden is placed on the shoulders of children.

There they sit, little third-graders, pressured to deliver the scores that will earn money and an A for their school, help teachers keep their jobs and save themselves from being labeled losers by the state.

For the record, Florida’s policy of mandatory third-grade retention is a proven drop-out predictor. Florida legislators refuse to add robust wrap-around services that improve student reading levels while allowing children to advance with their classmates. Why? When low-scoring third-graders are held back, a guaranteed bump in learning gains appears in fourth-grade test data. It’s this sort of slender “proof” that is used to convince states like North Carolina that Florida’s education reform agenda is a miracle.

There is no miracle in the heartbreak of defeated 14-year-olds trapped in fifth grade by an unforgiving policy.

For more than a century, hard-working people on every level have faithfully spent precious tax dollars building North Carolina public schools brick by brick. This extraordinary asset belongs to you.

Parents have the power to stop politicians from breaking public schools and selling them to the highest bidder. Your children are watching and innocently waiting. Demand something better for them. Despite overwhelming odds, a million empowered Florida parents stand in a diverse rock-solid alliance determined to change Tallahassee by making education a single voter issue.

Florida parents are with you. We know what it means to walk the path you now face. When it comes to our children, we are the Florida miracle. The “North Carolina miracle” will come from you.

*Please note the views expressed in For Your Consideration are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MeckEd.

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