Here are some good school reform-related pieces from the past couple of days:

Corey Bunje Bower uses the great Dilbert comic that I’ve embedded below as the beginning of an excellent post titled Outsiders and School Reform.

Class Size:What Research Says and What It Means for State Policy is a report from The National Education Policy Center. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About How Class Size Does Matter.

Fact Is, Students Have Never Known History is from NPR, and includes several good quotes from Diane Ravitch about international test results. I’m adding it to The Best Sites For Getting Some Perspective On International Test Comparison Demagoguery.

In my opinion, many unwise actions are taking place in the name of accountability. I’d like to highlight three recent ones:

Educators are now being told in Memphis and in other areas that student evaluations of them and their classes will be included as part of the teacher evaluation process.

Videotaping is being used by the Gates Foundation on thousands of teachers to connect which practices lead to higher test scores, and some are calling for constant video monitoring in the classroom.

Several state legislators and other officials want to start grading and punishing parents who don’t come to parent/teacher conferences and other school events.

I’m not a fan of the word “accountability” when it is related to schools. It comes from the Latin roots meaning “calculate,” and it reinforces the view that everything that happens in schools is countable. I prefer the word some dictionaries use as a definition for the word — they say it means responsible, which is defined as:

Able to make moral or rational decisions on one’s own and therefore answerable for one’s behavior.

Able to be trusted or depended upon; reliable.

Based on or characterized by good judgment or sound thinking.

Instead of using “accountability” as a bludgeon on educators and parents, perhaps it’s worth looking at the issues raised at the beginning of this post from the point of view of the “responsible” definition.

Administrators at our school have taken chosen that strategy and consider teachers as professionals who can be trusted, have good judgment, and want to improve their craft.

I have often written about how I use student evaluations of my class and me, and our administrators regularly encourage us to do them. They are valuable sources of input. Many of our teachers use them and take them very seriously — not because they are required to do so, but because they can be adapted by each teacher depending on their situation, and because so many of us speak positively of what we have gained from them.

And because they are outside of the official evaluation process.

You might want to read My Best Posts On Students Evaluating Classes (And Teachers) for more information.

I have also written more about student surveys, and videotaping of teachers, at Why I’m Afraid The Gates Foundation Might Be Minimizing Great Tools For Helping Teachers Improve Their Craft. As I explain in that post, we have a voluntary videotaping process — completely outside any kind of formal evaluation — that has a great deal of buy-in from teachers. You might also want to read The Best Posts & Articles About Videotaping Teachers In The Classroom.

With parents, instead of approaching them from a punitive perspective, perhaps those who advocate those actions might want to look at what we do at our school and District — teachers and classified staff, in return for a small stipend, make home visits (hundreds each year) to listen and build relationships with parents (many whom are facing multiple challenges of their own) of our students. In addition, we have a “Parent University” program that is genuinely led by parents themselves. You can read more about it at “Involvement or Engagement?” at Educational Leadership.

I know many “school reformers” like the word “accountability.”

I just wish they preferred the definition of “responsibility” that I shared earlier in this post:

Able to make moral or rational decisions on one’s own and therefore answerable for one’s behavior.

Able to be trusted or depended upon; reliable.

Based on or characterized by good judgment or sound thinking.

That describes a ton of teachers, and parents,  I know.  A little encouragement and support, and a few more resources, might go a lot further than a bludgeon…

An Arkansas educator with the Twitter handle BaldMisery recommended I try using Storify to share the “Poverty Matters When…” tweets. Here is what I came up with:

Here are some good recent posts on school reform related issues:

On Treating Students & Educators ‘Like Rats in a Maze’ is by Diane Ravitch. I’m adding it to The Best Posts/Articles On National Research Council Finding That Carrots & Sticks Don’t Work.

Do self-selection and attrition matter in KIPP schools? appeared in the Washington Post. I’m adding it to The Best Posts About Attrition Rates At So-Called “Miracle” Schools.

Facts and opinion from Steve Brill’s new book comes from The Hechinger Report. I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Articles Analyzing Charter Schools.

Thompson: “No Excuses” Supe Blames Everyone Else by John Thompson is not-to-be-missed.

I’m not quite sure how it all got started, but all of a sudden on Twitter tonight tons of people started sending tweets to Diane Ravitch starting “Poverty matters when…” And these were some amazing tweets.

I used “Searchtastic” to bring them all together. You can find all of them at the time of this post here. I think you can just type in the phrase to refresh it again, but I’m not sure.

I’ve also downloaded them all in a permanent document you can access here.

I also used Twitter’s own search, but I just don’t how long their search result page will stay “live.”

If you have other suggestions of tools to use to collect these tweets, I’m all ears. I tried Twitter Fountain and Tweet Doc, but they didn’t work well at all.

Feel free to add additional “Poverty matters when…” ideas in the comments section of this post.