3 ways to decrease the teacher dropout crisis

Guest post by Eric Williams @ewilliams65

Ron Maggiano, an award-winning teacher in Virginia recently announced his retirement, stating, “I can no longer cooperate with a testing regime that I believe is suffocating creativity and innovation in the classroom.” Maggiano is not alone. In an ongoing blog post, Lisa Nielsen uses text and video to tell the story of teacher dropouts. The stories of teacher dropouts share a common theme, a concern for the impact of high stakes testing.

Advocating for education reform is one way to decrease teacher dropouts. But don’t stop there educators.

1)  Share stories of students doing meaningful work with value that extends far beyond preparation for success on standardized tests. Share these stories with your colleagues and others with whom you learn.

4 Ways to Provoke Change In Our Education System

Guest post by Jaime R. Wood

In his most recent TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson says, “There are 3 principles on which human life flourishes, and they are contradicted by the culture of education under which most teachers have to labor and most students have to endure...diversity...curiosity...creativity.”

What does it take to infuse these principles into the education systems we build? This is a question that can’t be answered by one person alone, but in my 14 years of teaching and researching education, I’ve come to realize that 4 catalyzing actions, small steps that each of us can take fairly easily, can initiate change in positive ways from the ground up. 

Here they are.

Could hanging in the halls be a path to career readiness?

Melanie McEvoy & Lisa Nielsen
Teenage years

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from my best friend who I've known since before we attended high school together. Even though she didn't like class, she liked school and thought it helped her achieve future success. Here's how.

Guest post by Melanie McEvoy - Owner/President, McEvoy & Associates

I attended public high school in Las Vegas, NV, Not exactly a town known as a bastion of education. That was okay, because getting a good education wasn't really my focus.

When I think back to high school, my fondest memories include all the social elements and none of the classroom experiences. I excelled at being social, walking through the halls and saying hello to everyone I knew, congregating around lockers with friends, and, of course, lunchtime was my favorite period.

Education Reformers

Do you have what it takes to start your own public school?

Ever wish you could do something to change lives and change a community? Well now you can. Actualize your vision by creating the school of your dreams! Transform the lives of students, families and a community by opening a new school.  If you’re willing to work in one of the greatest cities in the world (NYC), and can act fast, then you can take advantage of an unprecedented opportunity offered by the Office of New Schools. They are offering a level of support (i.e. paid planning time and expert help) to talented educators (if not you, this is the form to nominatie someone) to open new district schools in September 2014. These are not charter schools, but rather public schools, and they have a significant focus on career-tech and innovative schools as well.

The strongest candidates possess:

1. Experience in leading, motivating, and developing a staff
2. A deep commitment to providing amazing opportunities to the hardest-to-serve youth
3. A clear instructional model and vision for what a successful school looks like

For inspiration, check out this PowerPoint from a school leader who tells about his experience with starting a school.

Eligibility requirements:

6 Principals of Secondary Education

Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education  makes it clear that compulsory schooling in America was intended to be what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s. John Taylor Gatto explains that the work of Inglis's, who was a Harvard professor with a Teachers College Ph.D., positions school as a fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever reintegrate into a dangerous whole. 

In his essay Against School and book The Underground History of American Education, Gatto explains the six basic functions of school outlined by Inglis.

5 reasons less is more when it comes to STEM

This post was original featured on Smartblogs on Education in Inspiring Others, Public Policy

Schools are missing the boat when it comes to addressing the problem of preparing students to recapture America’s leadership in producing scientists, inventors, engineers, programmers and more through STEM initiatives. The answer has little to do with more teachers, more common graduation requirements, more tests or more school as our policymakers and corporations who stand to profit off this have suggested.

Instead, if we listen to what the experts in these fields are telling us we discover that when it comes to producing successful STEM graduates, the key lies in the adage “less is more.”

Five lessons from STEM experts

High school dropout pursues passions and becomes a multimillionaire

David Karp began learning HTML at 11 and soon after was designing websites for local businesses. Unlike Nick Perez who spent years being drugged and tortured in a school that didn’t understand his particular passion, Karp attended high school for one year before dropping out.  This allowed him to focus on doing projects that enabled him to pursue his passions. 

He also knew this would be a good way to impress colleges. As was popular in America prior to the days of compulsory schooling and the infantalization of youth, Karp worked on projects he loved, found mentors, and began apprenticing in areas that aligned with his passion. Ironically, Karp didn’t need to impress colleges since after taking ownership of his learning he realized he didn’t need school for success.  

Public ed is only a right for the compliant

The powerful and wealthy in our country pay to send their children to schools that are not testing factories, but for those who can't afford this luxury, children are used, abused, chewed up and spit out of the system if they are not compliant. Even if it means they will get hurt or sick.

It's sort of like one of those alien movies where those in power feel they have the right to run these tests on aliens because they are sub-human. But this is not a movie and our children aren't aliens.
This story played out recently when 12-year-old Anthony Hererra's mother, Gretchen, followed doctors orders  which she shared with the school and allowed her son to opt out of the test.  As reported in Education Week, what came next was a letter waiting for her from the charter school her son attends. The letter said Anthony was no longer welcome because by opting out he violated his learning contract so he was being withdrawn from the school, effective immediately.

Why no school is the best school if you can't afford an independent school

A friend recently asked what school/districts I recommend near New York City. When my boyfriend and I discussed this a few years back I rattled off numerous schools and districts like this one.  Back then my job consisted in part of supporting schools with something called the Schoolwide Enrichment Model (SEM) which honors students passions, talents, interests, abilities and learning style. My advice today is very different.

What learning looks like for the children
of the wealthy or highly educated.

Those SEM schools are gone for the most part, though some hang on by a thread with an after school program.

Priorities have changed.

Gone are the days when we saw our children as creative, unique individuals and educators as the ones who could help them discover, explore, and develop their passions.

Today our teachers and students know they are nothing more than mere datapoints who will be fed a pre-packaged, curriculum that is measured by numerous One-Size-Fits-All tests that line the pockets of publishers like Pearson, fill the egos of politicians who don't know better and hurt our children.

Penelope Trunk, a wildly successful career advisor explains it this way:

"Test-based curricula is irrefutably ineffective and bad for kids. I'm not even providing a link, because it's so widely reported. However no one can think of a better way to run such a large and diverse public school system as the one we have in the US, so test-based curricula will persist for a long time."

This is how Democracy ends — Apology from a former teacher

Recently Kris Nielsen, the Teacher Dropout I featured on my blog last month, wrote this to me on Facebook:

A while back, I asked you if you saw any redeeming qualities about CCSS. Your answer got me thinking. Since then, you could say I've seen the light. To follow is the post he wrote that appears on his blog Middle Grades Mastery. 

Almost a year ago, I offered my time to the middle school at which I was employed to give a two-night presentation that promised to ease parents’ concerns about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Connected Mathematics Program (CMP).  I was given kudos by my boss, my coworkers, and many of those parents.  We talked about the future, the upcoming tests by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), and we even did some hands-on math demonstrations.  It was a good time for me, and I hope those parents can say the same.  My message was simple: trust us–we got this!

Some of them were still skeptical, and they should be praised for that skepticism.

First, I want to offer you my apologies.  It wasn’t long after my presentation that I had a crushing realization that the entire thing (minus the hands-on stuff) was completely misguided.  I felt like a flip-flopper, but I’ve always valued the truth more than feeling good.  So, I’m here to clear the air.  The truth hurts and it should start scaring the hell out of you, because your children are your most precious gift and you will do anything to protect them.

School Today....What they don't tell you. (Written by a teacher)

Guest post by Ed J. Komperda, III | Originally posted and shared with hundreds on Facebook

"What did you do in school today?" "Nothing."
Ah….the generic response of children when confronted upon their parents arrival home from work. No need to press the issue. As a 15-year veteran public school teacher, I'll share the 411 from an insider's perspective -- with a well-deserved angle of candidness and transparency for parents and tax payers.

Your child is becoming highly proficient with filling in little circles on bubble sheets and is acquiring a wealth of knowledge on the questioning and structure of standardized tests.
Gym class now requires sitting. Due to new federal and state educational mandates, students are required to trade their gym clothes for pencils and paper while attending physical education class on a number of days during the school year.

Today's students are test-taking gurus, a direct result of being instructed via a curriculum driven by high-stakes standardized testing. A 4th grader in New York, for instance, will spend around five weeks in which they'll be subjected to some form of standardized assessments. This figure does not account for far more time which is allocated towards test preparation -- aka "teaching for the test". Live in NY and thinking about moving? Don't. Analogous situations exist in the other states.

Your child is being shortchanged of basic academic skills, life skills, crucial thinking, social interaction, and creativity as more time, effort, resources, and money are spent on standardized testing.

Answers to 8 hard questions about education in America

I was recently asked 8 questions about education for The Daily Journalist.  Here are the questions:

1. Is there something wrong with the system and education in the U.S.?
2. Are high school students in the U.S. unprepared and surprisingly unaware of the hardness college presents to them, once they decide to get a higher education? Is the transition from high school to college to harsh?
3. Does college increase creativity or does it diminish it?
4. What is your main concern about education in the future for kids all across the U.S.?
5. It is said that in today’s generation, Facebook and Youtube are much more powerful tools than Video Games were in the 80′s and 90′s for high school students. Perhaps because the newer generation has not only access to Facebook but also to video games as well. Is Facebook and Youtube helping kids get better grades, compared to later generations?
6. Are kids going to forget what a library is in the next decade?
7. What ought to be done to increase kids awareness to become more educated?
8. Is the government doing its job right, when It comes down to education?

You can read my responses here.

The Daily Journalist is a site that shares opposite sides of ideas and news stories. The goal of the Daily Journalist is to educate the public, by asking the hard questions that the modern day media often avoid so readers can decide for their own.

How to Make Dropping Out of School Work for You

I have the good fortune to be able to call Deven Black a colleague and friend who has never disappointed when it comes to stretching my thinking. Deven helps me become smarter and look at things in new ways. Every time Deven and I communicate, I'm always surprised by some other amazing accomplishment of his that he mentions in passing.  As I was writing my Teens Guide to Opting Out of School for Success, Deven mentioned he was one such teen and he agreed to contribute to my guide.  I shared what an inspiration his story was and that I hoped he'd share it more widely.  Guess what? He did! This year I had the pleasure of seeing Deven speak at the #140edu conference in NYC on the topic. To follow is what he said, reprinted with permission and cross-posted on his blog Education On The Plate. If you'd like to watch him speak, you can find that below as well.

How many of you here graduated from high school?

(Hands go up)

#140edu stage – via digital camera (Photo credit: NJ Tech Teacher)

How many of you liked high school?

(Hands come down)

Just as I thought. 

Despite the laws mandating it, despite the ominous predictions of what will happen if you leave it, not everyone should go to high school.

Let me say it again, not everyone should go to high school.

This sounds like heresy, especially coming from a teacher.

But even in a time when it seems like you need a college degree to be an auto mechanic, not everyone should go to high school.

When I dropped out of high school for the first time, yes — I’ve done it twice — dropping out was considered a sure path to economic and social failure.

Not much has changed since 1968. Dropping out of high school is still labeled a sure path to ruin. That there are students dropping out of school is still called a crisis.

It is not a crisis. It is a message.

Thinking of drop outs as a crisis leads to solutions that focus on compliance– things like raising the age at which one can leave school, or more truant officers to track down the education fugitives.

But if we look at students dropping out of schools as a message, drop outs tell us is that school sucks, that it is not reaching them, or that they feel they have no hope for success, in high school or beyond it.

They tell us that they are not being challenged enough, or not being allowed to follow their interests, or just that school doesn’t fit them: it is too big, too small, too cliquey or too dangerous.

The reasons students leave school are as differentiated as the lessons we teachers are being told to teach them.

You have heard, and will continue to hear today and tomorrow, about ways to make school better, more enticing, more encouraging, more engaging and more effective.

All that is good, but it is almost impossible for any modern high school to meet the needs of all students.

This is not for lack of intent or lack of effort. It is a result of an increasingly centrally-mandated standardized world. Now we’re all supposed to hone our lessons to the common core. Really? Does anyone really want to be common?

Instead of focusing on how to make school better or teaching better, I’m going to talk about how to make learning better.

My idea of the perfect school is one in which you can  learn what you want to learn, when you want to learn it, where you want to learn it, and how you want to learn it.

I say, do what teachers have been telling you to do for so long, take charge of your education and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

I dropped out of high school twice, and college once, because attending was interfering with my learning. I got tired of teachers calling my questions and observations distracting and disruptive. I got tired of being told what to learn and when to learn it.

I figured out that knowledge doesn’t come in neat little packages called math, science, English Language Arts or social studies. Art is not a subject, neither is music, or health.

Knowledge is a massive, ever growing, completely interconnected all enveloping mass. It is the butterfly effect writ large, where everything we learn, every insight we gain, every understanding we come to, changes EVERYTHING.

So I left.

My parents were not happy about any of it, but I had the biggest, most cultured and most diverse city in the world to explore.

I still got a great education because I asked questions, followed tangents and never stopped being curious.

The real key to making dropping out — or opting out if you prefer– is to do it soon enough. Don’t wait until you’re beaten down by the system and have lost interest and hope. Leave school while you still have curiosity, a hunger to know something, to know anything or everything, and before you have to support yourself financially. It may be after 10th grade or it may be after 8th. You will know when it is right for you.

Now you can sleep a little later, but don’t spend the day in bed, or watching cartoons or talk shows. There is a world to explore.

Today it doesn’t matter if you live in Manhattan, like I did, or in East Nowhere, the whole world is available to you.

Think of the tools you have now that didn’t exist when I dropped out. Computers, the internet, Twitter, Skype, Facebook, and more are all there to help you access the world and learn anything you want.

You don’t need a curriculum, a road map or a plan at all.

Just ask a question and seek an answer.

Then ask another question.

Listen to the answers you get. Follow tangents. Focus like a laser or wander aimlessly. Tinker. Play.

All knowledge is connected and things will all start to make sense as you note commonalities, wonder about discrepancies, make connections and develop insights.

Are you in love with baseball? Study it. You’ll learn about statistics – figuring pitcher’s earned run averages takes complex mathematics — develop strategies, learn the science of the curveball, learn about the history of race relations in America, and more. You’ll learn about why the Dominican Republic produces so many major league shortstops and why Japan doesn’t, but produces pitchers. Follow baseball as far as it will take you…then ask another question.

Do you like to knit? Study it. Learn about different kinds of wool, how they differ and where they come from, how they become shocking chartreuse or majestic magenta. Learn math as you figure out how much you’ll need to make that sweater, the physics of tensile strength.

Into dolls, dogs, drumming or debate? Are you passionate about golf, gardening, guitar, grapes or Greta Garbo? It doesn’t matter what. Take the paths   your interests and passions give you.

Greta Garbo in The Joyless Street. Alexander Binder (for Atelier Binder) made the portrait during the filming. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After a while you’ll become an expert, an authority. You’ll wander off one path and discover another one, perhaps the secret of life, the universe and everything.

Just keep asking one more question and you will find many more answers. Each of which will lead to more questions.

Joyce Valenza calls it “a never ending search.”

Here are some things you are likely to discover:

• People are eager to talk about what they do and what they know, to someone who is interested in learning.
• People are eager to tell you their stories, what they think, what they feel, to someone willing to listen.
• Your bullshit meter will develop and become more accurate.
• You will find the joy of learning again, the joy of teaching what you learn, and you’ll rediscover the excitement of wondering.
• You will learn that all answers lead to more questions, better questions, deeper questions.
• Keep asking.
• Keep learning.

Do all the things school doesn’t leave you the time to do and you will get a better education than any institution can give you.

Don’t worry about getting into college. Getting into a good college requires standing out from the crowd, somehow distinguishing yourself from the hundreds of thousand other high school seniors.

So while all those other kids are all taking the same classes, cramming for exams and spending every extra minute doing every imaginable community service and extra credit assignment, you’ll be having different experiences.

While they’re being told what to learn, you’ll be deciding what to learn. Their learning will be limited by the curriculum, your learning will be free-range, going as far as your curiosity takes you.

Just think of the application essay you’ll be able to write.

And somewhere in the process of writing that essay, you might begin to wonder whether you really need to go to college.

Once you start becoming a free-range learner it is almost impossible to stop. And that is the best part of it all.

_________________________________________

If you want to hear it from Deven, here's his talk:

What's a teacher to do?

I play volleyball with a public school teacher who is the kind of teacher any parent would want for their children. She is a wonderful role model. She is passionate, dedicated, devoted, and always trying to come up with creative ways for her students to learn. For example she recently invited her students take the Myers Briggs test as an interesting way to think about the career they want for their future and she started a Facebook group to connect her alumnae students with current students to discuss college and careers.  In the meantime, all sorts of great literacy skills are being honed i.e. reading, writing, discussing, career readiness.

She also brings her students into the conversation. She shares the assessments they'll need to pass (English Regents) and they discuss the best way to get there. Then they write their own personal learning plan to meet this goal. It's all good. It's all the best of our teachers do.

But there's a problem. One similar to what high school math teacher Crystal Kirch recently shared on her blog when she asked for help (but didn't really want to listen to advice) with her biggest struggle this year:

"My students don't know how to learn.  They don't know how to succeed.  And, it doesn't seem like they care to change any of that. "

My friend's problem was similar in some ways.  She explained, my students just don't want to do the work. She said she has tried everything she can think of and she is frustrated because she just can't seem to motivate them.  

I hate school, but I love learning.

"I hate school, but I love learning."

That is what high school student and author of the book One Size Does Not Fit All, Nikhil Goyal, recently posted on his Facebook timeline. What followed were 99 comments. Many from peers deeply invested in and trained by the system to believe you need school to get an education. They represent those who have accepted and/or know nothing else but this new and narrow system that our corporate reformers and politicians have created for us.  

But the reality is not so bleak. Nikhil is not the only one who feels this way.  A growing number of young people have awoken to the fact that you don't need to go to school to get an education and, sadly, sometimes school actually gets in the way of learning.

More and more of these young people are taking a stand and taking the stage to share another reality.  At the bottom of this post is one video, "Why I hate school but love education" that has been making the rounds lately. But these young men are not alone. There is a growing undercurrent of young people who are mad as hell and they don't want to take it anymore. Instead of complying, they are paving the way to freedom for the children of our future by standing up and speaking out. They are writing books, writing articles, making videos, doing TED Talks, and starting movements to demand the freedom to follow more than one path to success.  

Below is another powerful and insightful video from Tele'jon Quinn, another young man who loves learning yet is stuck in what he refers to as a 12-step brainwash camp.  

And here's the one that has been making the rounds lately by Suli Breaks with more than a million hits.


Our students are waking up to the fact that this is wrong. It is up to innovative educators everywhere to help these young people be heard and do what we can to enable them to choose their own paths to success. 

What can you do now?

• Follow them:
• Suli Breaks - Twitter | Facebook
• Nikhil Goyal - Twitter | Facebook
• Tele'jon Quinn - Facebook 
• Share and discuss these videos with your students. 
• Support students who want to share their voice and ideas.
• When they do, help to amplify their ideas by spreading their message using social media like Twitter and Facebook.
• Have your students make their own video in a way that touches those like them. Below is an example of that and when your video can inspire something like this, you know you have a message that cuts across boundaries.   

The Plight of the Parent Education Advocate

Guest post by David Bernstein

I’m relatively new to the battle for wholesale educational change, but have fast learned that fighting for a different school model while parenting kids who go to fairly traditional schools requires a tortuous mental balancing act. On the one hand, I’m agitating for change to a badly broken education system, and on the other, I’ve  got to make sure that my own alternative-learning-style kids come out of the school system in one piece.

I love the movie The Matrix, not because it’s such a fabulous piece of art, but because of its powerful message of fighting back against a dehumanizing system that few fully understand.  The film depicts a future in which reality as perceived by most humans is actually a computer simulation meant to subdue the human population, while their bodies are used as an energy source (a little like factory schools producing kids to fuel an industrial economy that no longer exists). Once the main character, Neo, becomes aware of this manufactured reality, he joins a rebellion against the computers. Neo is constantly forced to move in and out of The Matrix in order to challenge it.

Scene from The Matrix

 

Such is the plight of the parent education advocate, fighting the education matrix from without one moment and engaging it from within the next; making sure our children get their work done one moment, and fighting to make sure the schools bend to their and other children’s needs the next.

Want to succeed in STEM? Listen to the experts!

President Obama believes “The quality of  math and science teachers is the most important single factor influencing whether students will succeed or fail in science, technology, engineering and math.” The problem is that our “quality” teachers  and their administrators are not given the freedom to support children in ways that will produce the scientists and innovators our country needs.  This is because we are stuck in an outdated system that values test scores and grades rather than creativity and innovation.  

This is no secret.  America’s great scientists and innovators have been clear about how our nation’s schools need to change to support great thinkers like themselves. Unfortunately it seems those with the power to make decisions (the politicians and corporations) are not listening to the very type of people we say we want our students to become.  

Let’s take a look at what those in charge are failing to hear when our nation’s historic inventors, scientists, and physicists share their advice and experiences.

Influential educators, bloggers and twitterati recognized at the Bammy Awards

What would happen if instead of being bashed, blamed, and scrutinized, educators were lauded, celebrated, and recognized. That is among the goals of what might become the annual Bammy awards.  The Awards aim to foster recognition of excellence in education, encourage collaboration and respect, elevate education and education successes in the public eye, and raise the profile and voices of the many undervalued and unrecognized people who are making a difference in the field.

In what is usually reserved for the actors and athletes of our society, instead, it was us on the red carpet in our flowy gowns and tuxedos who were being treated like movie stars as we were chauffeured in limos where we were photographed by paparazzi, taped, and interviewed as we made our way into the Arena Stage at Kreeger Theater in Washington, DC.

Posing for a picture on the red carpet.
Photo credit: Kevin Jarrett

Transform education by measuring what matters. Hint: It's not test scores.

There’s been a lot of talk about the ethics behind corporations running schools and thus profiting off students. But if we’re really concerned about folks profiting off our kids why aren’t we spending more time focusing on assessment? If we do away with measuring success with test scores the result would be billions saved that could go toward resources and personnel dedicated to support students.

Let’s face it: Teachers know and parents are waking up to the fact that these tests are one of the most expensive and least effective ways to measure student or teacher success. So why are we willing to let policymakers forcibly impose this corporate-driven assessment from companies like Pearson upon our children even if it makes them sick???

What if instead we measured success in things that really mattered to students, parents and teachers.  

For example...

Students have:

• A plan to find and develop their passion(s).
• A team of mentors, guidance, and/or advisors to help guide them in discovery and development of their passions.
• Customized success plans that they help design.
• Advisors who are deeply involved in and responsible for their lives and their success.
• An opportunity to learn about what they are interested in the world with real world experts.
• Reported they are satisfied with support they receive from the school.
• An authentic portfolio that can be used for career, academic, or civic pursuits.

Teachers and schools are measured by:

• Success is moving students along to
• Career
• College and/or
• Civic endeavors

that enable them to achieve their plans and goals for personal success.

Pie in the sky?