I support using alternative methods to student performance on standardized tests to evaluate teachers. In fact, I have a long list of “tried and true” alternatives at The Best Articles Describing Alternatives To High-Stakes Testing.

One of those alternative measures worth considering, I believe, are student portfolios.

Well, this week, Arne Duncan gave a speech where he endorsed that view:

Just last week I met with Dru Davison, a fantastic music teacher in Memphis. Arts teachers there were frustrated because they were being evaluated based solely on school-wide performance in math and English. So he convened a group of arts educators to come up with a better evaluation system.

After Dru’s committee surveyed arts teachers in Memphis, they decided to develop a blind peer review evaluation to assess portfolios of student learning. It has proved enormously popular—so much so that Tennessee is now looking at adopting the system statewide for arts instructors. If we are willing to listen, and to do things differently, the answers are out there.

You can find more information about this Memphis plan here (and I’ve also contacted Mr. Davison for more information).

Of course, Secretary Duncan only endorsed it for arts teachers. But you’ll see articles on my previously mentioned “The Best…” list that detail ways schools have used similar systems on a large scale.

It would be nice if the U.S. Department of Education seriously explored such a system, but I’m not holding my breath.

Thanks to Alexander Russo for the link to Duncan’s speech.

Here are a few recent good posts on education policy issues:

Getting Real About Turnarounds is by Diane Ravitch. I’m adding it to The Best Posts About Attrition Rates At So-Called “Miracle” Schools.

New Hope for the Obama/Gates School of Reform is by John Thompson. I’m adding it to The Best Resources Showing Why We Need To Be “Data-Informed” & Not “Data-Driven.”

Review of Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers is from The National Education Policy Center.

The ugly truth about “school choice” is from Salon. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning Why School Vouchers Are A Bad Idea.

Being Ranked Can Reduce IQ is the headline of an article in The Wall Street Journal about a study that’s been receiving a fair amount of media attention this week. The Journal article is the best one — by far — that I’ve seen on it.

Basically, if people know they are being “ranked,” and are rated low, their IQ gets worse. This is not a surprise to many of us who teach and who resist “tracking” students.

The researchers apply these findings to other areas, including in the workplace.

Is it a stretch to wonder if labeling schools as failing can have a similar effect? How about teachers who were publicly ranked as bad by the Los Angeles Times using faulty statistics? Do you think those public humiliations generally result in positive change?

One of my favorite experiences in class each year are the two periods each week in the second semester of my IB Theory of Knowledge class when small student groups prepare and then teach a lesson to another group. We just did it for the first time this year, and it was a lot of fun and very informative.

People quote Edgar Dale’s “Cone of Experience” a lot (you know, the one that says “We learn….90% of what we teach”) and, even though the research behind it has been just about completely discredited, William Glasser quotes it lot because he says it reflects his own experience. I agree with Glasser.

I first have students read the chapter in my Helping Students Motivate Themselves book that’s titled “What Are The Best Things YOu Can Do To Maximize The Chances Of A Lesson Being Successful?” We then discuss the multiple elements of a successful lesson that I highlight there.

Then, each week, we take one of what the IB Theory of Knowledge curriculum call “The Ways Of Knowing” (emotion, language, reason, perception — the ways we “acquire” knowledge) and the “Areas Of Knowledge” (math, arts, natural science, human sciences, history, ethics — how we “categorize” the knowledge we acquire), and small groups have to complete a form and outline on how they are going to teach a short related lesson (10-15 minutes long) to another small group including at least six of the elements of a successful lesson. They have to choose one of nearly thousand Theory of Knowledge links I have saved on Delicious.

They do the preparation one day, and then the next day two groups match-up and teach each other their lesson. After one lesson is taught, each group completes an evaluation — the “teachers” evaluate themselves and their “students” evaluate them as well. Then, the groups reverse their roles.

As I mentioned earlier, it works very well (and I’m planning on making some modifications and trying it with my other classes this year, too), and in many ways it helps students gain the knowledge that so many “school reformers” don’t realize they’re missing, as Larry Cuban has described:

I draw from Mary Kennedy’s Inside Teaching to elaborate that “yet.”

“Yet children are not privy to the whole of teaching. They are unaware of the decisions teachers make, the plans they make, and the work they do outside class. Moreover, they are emotionally dependent upon teachers, so their interpretation is not likely to be based on a close analysis of events. Yet from those naive experiences, many durable values are formed about the nature of school subjects, how teachers and students should behave in classrooms, and what constitutes ‘good’ teaching…..

….Sure, reformers beliefs are often stated in sophisticated language seemingly far removed from their less articulate ideas formed when sitting 10 feet away from their teachers but should those glossy phrases be stripped away, the provenance of reform ideas can be found in the daily experiences of sitting in classroom many years ago. And those ideas, as Mary Kennedy reminds us, are distorted because children are emotionally involved with their teachers and know little about the planning, the improvisational decision-making during lessons, and work outside of school that teachers do.

I asked students to reflect on their experience and what they felt they learned about teaching.  Here are some representative comments:

“I learned that we actually need to talk about something interesting to get student attention, and also you have to interact with them — not just say what you want to say… You have to not be boring.”

“It’s really hard to keep students to not be bored for only fifteen minutes. It’s really easy for students to get bored and distracted.”

“Teaching was tough.  I had to keep getting obnoxious students’ attention with interesting facts but they irritate me.”

“I think I learned a lot about teaching.  It seems sort of easy, but it’s harder than it looks to prepare every lesson.  You have to try to explain your thoughts and put them into words and try to get others to understand what you’re trying to teach.”

I suspect — and hope — that many of my students will have a healthy respect for the work of teachers in the future…

Here are some recent good school reform-related posts and articles:

The Latest Wrinkle About Merit Pay for Teachers is by Walt Gardner at Education Week. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning Why Teacher Merit Pay Is A Bad Idea.

Stop Tying Pay to Performance:The evidence is overwhelming: It doesn’t work. is from The Harvard Business Review. I’m adding it to the same list.

Merit pay, Merit pay, Merit pay… is from The Daily Kos and I’m also adding it to the same list.

From Whence Come Ideas for Reforming Teaching Practices? is by Larry Cuban.

6 Things I’m Still Waiting for in 2012 (and likely will be for some time!) is by Bruce Baker.

Student Achievement, Poverty and “Toxic Stress” is by Robert Pondiscio. I’m adding it to The Best Places To Learn What Impact A Teacher & Outside Factors Have On Student Achievement.

Time for the status quo to make room for meaningful school reform is by Anthony Cody and appeared on CNN’s website.

I’ve got to say that I have not been overly-impressed with the most of the commentaries I’ve seen today on President Obama’s call last night to have states require students to stay in school until they’re eighteen.

It seems pretty simplistic to me, and brings to mind the story of the person who loses their keys inside a dark house, but decides to move outside under a streetlight to look for them because it was too dark to see. The issue is making schools engaging so students want to stay in, and economic supports so students don’t have to drop-out to get a job to help their families.

You might also be interested in The Best Resources For Showing Students Why They Should Continue Their Academic Career.

Here are the best commentaries that I’ve seen so far today. I hope you’ll contribute additional suggestions:

Obama Says “No Dropping Out Until Age 18″ …But Here’s How We Make It Work is by Dan Brown.

Does Changing the Dropout Age Matter? is from The American Prospect (thanks to Alexander Russo for the tip).

More on Obama’s SOTU Proposal on High-School Drop-Outs is by Dana Goldstein.

Why Raising the Dropout Age Won’t Solve America’s Education Crisis is from GOOD.

The True Cost of High School Dropouts is from The New York Times.

Higher Dropout Age May Not Lead To More Diplomas is from NPR.

Feedback is always welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore the 850 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

I wrote an article titled “Icarus and School Reform” for The TCRecord, and it’s available free through tomorrow. Then it goes behind a paywall.

It might be worth a look…

Ruby Payne is a popular consultant to school districts around the United States and, perhaps, the world. I have major concerns about her “deficit” view of low-income students and their families — it smacks of a “blaming the victim” mentality.

I’ve written extensively about the concept of “blame,” and you might be interested in The Best Resources For Helping Students (& The Rest Of Us) Learn The Concept Of Not Blaming Others.

I thought it might also be important, though, to create a “The Best…” list specifically related to Ms. Payne. Her popularity is a fact (you can read this fawning New York Times Magazine article about her to confirm that statement).

There have been some good critiques written about her, though there have also been ones that are not particularly accessible and written in “academic-ese” and others which I think have been overly ideological. Here’s a comment I left on Scott McLeod’s blog a few years ago during a conversation about Payne:

I agree that the most effective long-term strategy for dealing with many of the problems facing low-income communities (and the children who live in them) is to organize for better housing, employment, health, etc.). I would also add that schools and their staff should work as partners with parents and other local neighborhood institutions to push for those changes.

At the same time, though, I don’t necessarily believe that this kind of strategy is the only avenue to pursue, just as I don’t believe that most teachers are attracted to Ruby Payne’s deficit model because it’s “comfortable.”

I believe that there is much that can be done day-and-day-out in the classroom by teachers. And that many of these teachers are desperate to learn any kind of instructional strategies and classroom management tactics that they can apply effectively to respond to the many challenging situations that can be found in inner-city schools.

Saul Alinsky, the father of modern-day community organizing and the founder of the organization that I worked for during my organizing career, once said, “The price of criticism is a constructive alternative.”

I believe that those of us who are critics of Ruby Payne need to do a far better job of offering constructive alternatives that teachers can use today and tomorrow — right in their classroom — if we want more to see the fallacies of Payne’s approach.

One of the things I try to do in this blog and in my books is to offer practical strategies for teachers to use instead of getting sucked into “blaming the victim.”

But there have been some good accessible critiques written, and I thought I’d share a few of what I think are the best ones:

The Myth of the Culture of Poverty by Paul Gorski at Educational Leadership.

A Framework for Understanding Ruby Payne by Anita Bohn at Rethinking Schools.

Savage Unrealities by Paul Gorski at Rethinking Schools.

Revisiting Ruby Payne by Anita Bohn at Rethinking Schools.

Poverty and Payne: Supporting Teachers to Work with Children of Poverty is by Mistilina Sato and Timothy J. Lensmir.

Shifting from Deficit to Generative Practices: Addressing Impoverished and All Students is by Paul Thomas. And thanks to Paul for helping me find some of the articles on this list.

The Corrosive Power of Stereotypes in Politics and Education is also by Paul Thomas.

Return of the Deficit is by Curt Dudley-Marling.

More resources can be found at Debunking Ruby Payne’s Framework of Poverty.

Feedback and/or Additional suggestions are always welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.

You might also want to explore the over 800 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.

Here are a number of recent good posts and articles on school policy issues:

Opinion: Creating teacher evaluations systems Californians can believe in appeared in the San Jose Mercury News. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About Effective Student & Teacher Assessments.

On Creating a Useful Teacher Evaluation System is by James Bouton. I’m adding it to the same list.

What Works in School Turnarounds? is by Alan M. Blankstein and Pedro Noguera. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The Four School Improvement Grant Models.

What Happens When Teacher Voices Depend on Foundations’ Choices? is by Anthony Cody at Ed Week. I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning About The Role Of Private Foundations In Education Policy.

Dear Michelle Rhee: About that teacher evaluation study is by Valerie Strauss at The Washington Post. I’m adding it to The Best Posts On The NY Times-Featured Teacher Effectiveness Study.

Follow up on Fire First, Ask Questions Later is from School Finance 101. I’m adding it to the same list.

What Can We Learn from Educational Change in Finland? is by Pasi Sahlberg. I’m adding it to The Best Resources To Learn About Finland’s Education System.

Finnishing School is from Thoughts On Public Education. I’m adding it to the same list.

The Finland Phenomenon: What the U.S. Can Learn about Teacher Preparation and Professional Collaboration is from CCSSO. I’m adding it to the same list.

Can Schools Solve Societal Problems? is from Learning First. I’m adding it to The Best Places To Learn What Impact A Teacher (& Outside Factors) Have On Student Achievement.

False Choices: The Economic Argument Against Market-Driven Education Reform is a report from Minnesota 20/20. I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Articles Explaining Why Schools Should Not Be Run Like Businesses.