These techniques are obviously important.

I wonder, though, if we teachers and our students, schools, and districts might be better off if we spent a little more time focusing on — for lack of being able to come up with better terms — our “cultural orientations” or basic “ways of thinking”?

What am I talking about?

Please bear with me as share my thinking on all this. Usually, I don’t post a piece like this which is more of a “process post” — I don’t necessarily have as much clarity as I would like, and, instead, am sharing my thoughts and hoping that feedback from readers will helping move my thinking along.

Last week marked the 100th anniversary of Peter Drucker’s birth. Drucker was the renowned business and management philosopher, writer, theorist, analyst. His thinking also says a lot to community organizing (my previous career) and teaching (my present one) Someone (and I’m sorry that I can’t remember who) wrote about National Public Radio’s coverage of this anniversary, which pointed out that his most important idea was:

the importance of a company having a sense of mission or a purpose, and that that’s not identical with its strategy, it’s not identical with its business model, it’s why it exists and what social good or greater good that it’s serving. That’s a very important Drucker idea.

When I’m talking about a “cultural orientation” or “way of thinking,” I think mean something like what Drucker meant. But something more than “whatever is good for kids.”

I’d like to give three examples of what I mean — in the classroom, in a school and, in the context of schools connecting with parents.

IN A CLASSROOM

In the first part of each school year, in most of my classes I lead a discussion with students asking what they want our class to be — “A Community of Learners” or a “Classroom of Students.” I write about this more extensively in my book “Teaching English Language Learners: Strategies That Work” (which will be out next summer), but I’ll give a short description here.

I write the two columns on the overhead and give some examples of the difference between the two. In a classroom of students, a teacher does most of the talking. In a Community Of Learners, students work in small groups and are co-teachers. In a “classroom” people laugh when others make mistakes, while in a “community” people are supported when they take risks. In a “classroom” the teacher has to be always be the one to keep people focused, while in a “community” students take responsibility to keep themselves focused.

Most students say their previous classes had been more like a “Classroom of Students.” I ask students to share what other differences they might see between the two types. Here are a couple of examples students said this year:

In a “classroom” “students start a fight and end up hurting each other.” In a “community” “they don’t start a fight, they talk it out.”

In a “classroom” “the only way to succeed is doing exactly what the teacher says.” In a “community” “you have more than one choice in succeeding.”

After adding to the list, students then decide which one they’d rather have. No one has every chosen a “classroom of students.”

By starting with this basic “cultural orientation” or “way of thinking,” students developed their own ways of approaching (I guess you could almost call it their own “techniques”) how the class would operate. It provided a framework for looking at numerous issues throughout the whole school year, and respected their judgment and wants.

IN A SCHOOL:

Ted Appel has done a tremendous job working with teachers over the past few years at our school to develop a “cultural orientation” or “way of thinking.”  Basically, it’s not acceptable for students to not do well — everybody succeeds.  That way of thinking operates almost universally among the faculty, and is amazingly prevalent among students as well.

Our tutoring project, where students hire (and fire) teachers of their choice, is an example of this way of thinking. We didn’t set-up an after-school tutoring center and then blame the students for not showing-up. Ted and our staff began with the thinking that some students needed help, and looked at what were the barriers to them getting the most effective assistance they could get so they could do well and thought outside the box.

IN A PARENT ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

In my book, Building Parent Engagement In Schools, I highlight the differences between parent involvement and parent engagement.  Some of those differences include the primary “involvement” tool schools use is their mouths to talk, while the primary “engagement” tool is their ears to listen.  Involvement is often about one-way communication, while engagement can be about two-way conversation.   The invitation to involvement is often “irritating” — challenging parents to do something the schools want them to do, while with engagement it’s often “agitation” — challenging parents to do something that they say they want to do.

Obviously a few examples are useful to illustrate each of those parent engagement elements, but if schools are committed to that kind of criteria, they can judge their own possible actions against them.  They don’t necessarily need a long laundry list of what they should or shouldn’t do.

I guess all I’m wondering is how many schools and districts are skipping looking  these big kinds of cultural orientations or ways of thinking?

I wonder if there should be more of an investment in developing our compasses instead of giving us road maps?

What do you think?

But, as I note in a post I have at my other blog, Engaging Parents In Schools, I have a “bone to pick” with the headline wording. I believe it helps perpetuate a myth that most schools can indeed “bridge” the achievement gap. You might want to check out the post.

MR. BRUCE STEWART: When I began teaching in the ’60s, we had that population of people. And since then, because greater opportunities have opened up for young women and for minorities, there’s been a great brain drain from American schools. I think we want to get those people back. If you look at Singapore, look at Finland, the reason they consistently are testing their population of students in the top levels of international exams, it’s the quality of their teaching force. They all come from the top third of their colleges, universities. In the United States, our tendency today is to have that pool of teachers coming from the bottom third of college and universities and from the bottom third of those classes. That’s something we need to reverse and to change.

I’ve heard this kind of statistic about teachers coming from the bottom third of something or other before (though never about the bottom third of classes — I don’t know where he got that bizarre statistic from), and just ignored it. But hearing it on Meet The Press, from the director of a private school, got “my dander up” and I decided to look into where those numbers came from and how valid and reliable they were. It was quite a ride on a Sunday afternoon….

Here is what I found…

Tons of people use a McKinsey report as the reference for the statistic of teachers coming from the bottom third of colleges.  That report just uses a quote saying that:

“We are now recruiting our teachers from the bottom third of high school students going to college…” (p. 19)

It uses as its citation “Tough Choices Or Tough Times” , a report issued by The New Commission On The Skills Of The American Workforce in 2007.

So I went there. The link in the preceding paragraph only leads to a downloadable summary, which just stated the same statistic with no citation of a source. So, I went to Amazon, downloaded a Kindle Reader for my PC, and purchased the whole report.

That report uses as its source a “Report From The Department Of Education, National Center For Education Statistics, The Condition Of Education 2002.” It quotes the report as saying:

“A report by the National Council on Teacher Quality in 2004 said that the profession attracts a ‘disproportionately high number of candidates from the lower end of the distribution of academic ability.’ And, college graduates whose SAT or ACT scores were in the bottom quartile were more than twice as likely as those in the top quartile to have majored in education.”

Well, I couldn’t find that exact quote (but admittedly, I was getting a bit punch drunk by that time and might just have missed it) in the Condition of Education 2002, though page 91 has a lot of mathematical discussions of this topic, little of which I could understand (perhaps a math teacher can take a look?). I also found it interesting that I couldn’t find any other Condition of Education reports (they’re issued every year) that examine that topic.

However, I did find information on the National Council on Teacher Quality report that was quoted (which also based its critique on SAT and ACT scores), including criticism of its methodology – it apparently only included a portion of people who were going to be teachers.  In fact, it excluded that portion who typically score the highest on SAT (the link takes to you a NY Times article about it that gives details). Also, ironically, in the same year, the same National Council on Teacher Quality came out with another report basically dismissing SAT scores as a valid and reliable predictor of teacher effectiveness, saying:

“…measurable teacher attributes like SAT scores…account for only a small portion of why some teachers are more effective than others.” (p. 10)

So, after all that, what are my conclusions?

First, I’d love to find out where the Sidwell guy came-up with his numbers, since they seem to be flat-out wrong.

Second, I’d love for a math person to examine the numbers on page 91 of the report on the Condition of Education 2002 to tell me what it really says in plain English.

Third, based on what I read of the criticism of the National Council of Teacher Quality report, this “bottom one-third” number also appears to be flat-out wrong.

And fourth, even if their numbers were right (which they don’t appear to be), it’s all much ado about nothing because they themselves say it’s not a reliable predictor of teacher effectiveness.

In other words, this bottom-third thing does seem to me to be a bunch of baloney.

What do you think? Let me know if I’m right or wrong, please!

GREGORY: Newt Gingrich, what is the knowledge most worth having in 2010 if you are a high school graduate? What do you need to know? What should the end product look like?

REP. GINGRICH: Well, Jefferson said that religion, morality and knowledge being important, we need schools. That’s the Northwest Ordinance. So I’d say the first thing you need to know is about yourself and your own values and your own concerns. The second thing you have to know is a good work ethic and a ability to be honest. And the third thing you have to know is how to learn whatever you’re going to need to be successful.

Now, can he tell us how those qualities are assessed by the standardized tests  used to evaluate schools now and would be used to determine the teacher merit-pay he supports?

It’s obviously geared toward some parent involvement efforts, but can also be applicable to any efforts or programs that emphasize style over substance. I’m sure we’ve all seen a few of those in education circles.

You might want to check out that post…

It’s pretty neat.

Here is the link to the Wordle for our book, “Building Parent Engagement In Schools.” I was having some difficulty resizing it to fit in this blog, which is why I’m just posting the link to it.

It certainly gives an accurate representation of what the book is all about.

Since the final edits are now completed for my next book, Teaching English Language Learners: Strategies That Work, I’ll be posting a Wordle of that one in the near future, too — presumably after I figure out how to display it in the blog

It gives a brief overview of my book.

I’d strongly recommend you read his entire post, but would like to specifically share a quote he uses from from social scientist Donald Campbell, who has developed an interesting concept called Campbell’s Law:

Achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways.

This might be something that, among others, Secretary Duncan and President Obama keep in mind.

In this final report, he takes issue with three positions many school “reformers” are taking:

1. High-quality schools can eliminate the achievement gap between whites and minorities.

2. Mayoral control of public schools is an improvement over the more common elected board governance systems.

3. Higher standards will improve the performance of public schools.

It’s definitely worth a read.