NBC should be commended for shining a light on what should be a national discussion on Education Reform. Expense was not spared to create more than just a venue for this examination of education. It was an atmosphere created from banners hanging from streetlights to a modern tent pavilion which encased the iconic skating rink in Rockefeller Plaza. All of this created an air of excitement and passion to finally gather educators in a public forum to clearly state what so desperately needed to be clearly stated in the pursuit for education reform. With all that sizzle, I could not wait for the steak.
The Town Hall style meeting began with a touching film about the experiences of a first year teacher. It was well received by the several hundred educators under the big tent. That was a great start with all the members of the tent in accord and reminiscing about their first days as a teacher. The next big question further solidified that feeling of solidarity. Do you feel that teachers are under attack? There seemed to be no one standing up and saying, “No, it ain’t so”. It was shortly after this that I viewed the big tent as more of a circus tent with three rings in the center and a different activity in each of the rings. There was no focus.
I understand the Town Hall meetings are for everyone to get up and say their piece, so I really should not be so critical. Maybe I should be critical of the selection of this format as not being the forum of choice to advance Education Reform. It seemed to me anything but productive in moving reform forward. If this were a class discussion, I would say that the teacher needed a better lesson plan. I don’t know if it could have been done in this format, but I wanted a moderator to summarize, focus, refocus and lead with facts and questions. There were some facts flashed on the big boards, but they were not addressed or reflected in the questions or answers from the participants.
One big objection I had with the entire discussion was the lack of definition. I always have problems with people addressing a problem without defining what the problem is. I bet if you asked a dozen of those educators, “what does a successful education look like?”, you would get a dozen variations. We easily point out all of the failure signs, but even the failure signs are determined by standardized tests and few educators agree on that as a valid assessment. One problem we can identify is that we as educators do not all agree on what a good education is let alone how to get there.
The other lack of definition was that of a “Bad Teacher”. The only thing clear as to what a bad teacher was, was the fact that anyone using that term did not include him/herself in that category.I sumized that a “Bad teacher was similar to the definition of pornography. “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it. It always gets ugly when teachers go after teachers. Why do we always find a need to FIRE the offenders? We are teachers. Do we fire our students who don’t get it or do we go back and continue with a different approach. Teachers are amongst the most educated people in this country. One would think that they are at least trainable. Is it possible that some of these “Bad Teachers “are victims of poor leadership and/or a lack of professional development? We are talking about people’s careers. They too had that first day in the classroom experience that we all reminisced in the opening movie.
Where the entire meeting seemed to be sidetracked was when someone brought up the topic of TENURE. As an educator of 40 years it was obvious to me that there is a huge disconnect on the part of young teachers as to what tenure is and why it is necessary. It was also obvious to me how naïve some of these young people are about thinking the only thing that would affect their maintaining a secure teaching position was the quality of their teaching. This subject also seemed, at least to me, to open a rift between Charter School educators and Public School Educators. I was getting a feeling that each felt threatened by the other. This was when I noticed that many of the audience members were wearing shirts identifying their schools. Of course my Hawaiian shirt did not give anyone an inkling as to who, or what I represented.
I came away from the Education Nation Town Hall Meeting more frustrated then when I went in. I understand that by a number of assessments our education system needs to make changes. I consider myself a reform advocate. The changes are many and it will require that we define things clearly and dispel any of the myths that people seem to hold onto from their education experience. Of course, with education the common experience of all citizens of this country with compulsory public education, everyone is an expert. There is no single answer to solve this problem. We can’t fire the Bad teachers and expect all will be right with the world. We also need to be truthful about agendas. Education Reform to many people is the code for “Lower my taxes”. Or fire the most expensive teachers. Or, let’s get in on the profits and make money with charter schools. Or, I need to get re-elected by jumping on the education bandwagon.
We need to make changes in the system, but they must be made by people who have an understanding of the problem. It can’t be left to town hall meetings. These meetings are useful in underscoring the concerns, but emotions tend to cloud the facts. We need educational leadership to step up and replace the business people and politicians who are stealing what should be our issue. We need educators on every level to be aware of not just their problems, but how they fit into the big picture. We need to take responsibility for our actions. We expect nothing less from our students. We need to model that which we teach. We need to be educated about our profession in order to guide the discussions to a positive outcome for reform.
My Island View 
Well said, Mr. T.
We’ve all seen the limitations of Town Hall meetings, especially from the political arena where everyone talks about the problems, some even with articulate passion, but nobody does anything about it.
It gets everyone fired up and ready to charge the battlements of the problem. But where? And how? Does anyone need any examples of what I mean by this? I hope not.
Politics and education are two systems so huge and so entrenched that the only change that can be made, if any is made, must come from those individuals able to make it, one person at a time.
It’s incredible to me that anyone with a modicum of commonsense puts any credibility in the claims of politicians, entertainers, entrepreneurs and the meandering media who claim insight into or resolution of the spectrum of challenges that K-12 educators face today.
But in charity, let’s welcome them all into the classrooms. Come, help us do a better job of helping our many, diverse students. Bring your insights, your passion, your caring concern for young learners. Be a part of the solution, instead of more of the problem.
But, if you possess all that, you’re probably already a teacher.
I have been reading a lot of teacher blogs that have been very critical (for good reason) of the proposed solutions. I have learned a lot reading these blogs but I still have not read many posts on fixing the problem.
I have been waiting for the “Education Rock Stars” to start a real reform movement. You know who you are. The ones that can send a tweet and get 100 teachers to collaborate on a topic. The ones that run the big #ed and #edu hashes. Tom’s idea of blogging on one day is brilliant. Let’s not stop there.
I am in no way qualified to do this. I will gladly provide a platform because I am and developer. That is the best I can do.
On another note, one of the best teachers that I know, who is recognized by his peers as a good teacher, was once a bad teacher that had given up on the “system.”
So, yes, they are very much trainable/”fixable.”
I believe the answer lies in teachers becoming more involved even if they are not invited. It also means creating learning communites amongst peers, holding open classroom where teachers lear from each other…also, perhaps describing what we want out of a ‘good’ education might get us all on the same boat.
Mir
I founded a reform-based public middle school called the Saturn School of Tomorrow back in the early 90’s. It was visited by over 10,000 people from all over the world, recognized by President Bush as a model of reform and lasted for 5 years, until the Superintendent who supported us left for other pursuits, and given our standardized test scores hadn’t yet gone up, the Board pulled the plug.
Many good things happened at that school: personal learning plans, high parental involvement, effective use of technology, mentorships, use of community resources for learning (public library, science museum, art museum, cable TV utility, etc.) The students loved it. They conducted the tours and told their stories.
The local newspaper fell out of love with us when the test scores sagged. Never mind the portfolios our students had developed that showed others what they knew and were able to do.
Other schools in our district were opposed to our year-round calendar, our resultant higher teacher salaries, and the tech “goodies” we had. They and other critics lobbied the Board against us.
We weren’t perfect. We made mistakes. But we were making progress, too. The union collaborated with us. So did higher-ed and local businesses.
We had a large grant to evaluate the project so we could learn from it. But we weren’t given enough time to make it work.
I have no idea how much time we need to make reform work. But it needs to be ongoing and we need more of it. It’s hard enough to change a school let along a district, let alone a nation.
I’ve come to believe that the most effective changes are those made in a classroom. We need to improve one classroom at a time and put the support in place to make it happen.
Here’s a video our students made on their own to tell others about their school. It ends with a line we need to hear more often in education.
Never give up!
Your description of the meeting sounds similar to a live version of Twitter – f2f – Generally there is little focus, and little desire to take charge, but the noise is all there.
IMHO, the leaders are there, they are in the middle group of teachers, the ones that whine about the younger and older teachers. They are the ones that need to step up as they have the most to gain from well thought out reform that is student centered. Most already know that teaching is going to be their life and they are some time away from retirement and in too deep to walk away.
But, how to get them going?
Is it too late?
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Tom,
Thank you for your post. For those (like me) that had no idea the Town Hall was going on, I thank you for your insight. Sounds like I would have enjoyed the meeting, if only to have had a chance to sit back and spend time people watching (something NY’ers are known for) and listening.
As you know I spend a lot of time with teachers, and students, and administrators…in schools, outside of schools, all around the country. Sometimes the educational system seems to serve its students well. Sometimes the system does not serve to the best of its ability. Sometimes it’s for lack of funding. Sometimes it’s the lack of leadership. Whatever the reason, I’ve never felt a case was so far gone that it was beyond hope.
In my work, I concentrate on helping people become less afraid of making a change. We talk about common language. We try to ignore that with so much education, a teacher might have had little time to apply knowledge…practical experience…so we practice, and we learn. But I am never without hope. Giving up is not something educators normally do, whether it’s a teacher working with a student or a teacher working with peers.
The largest disconnect comes from having policymakers who influence the who, what, and where, without having been an integral part of the system they affect. Could Ms. Cator really be the only one in our federal government to ever grace the classroom? Hopefully not, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
But until, and unless, those who have served us well in classrooms take the plunge into politics you will still have regulations created by people who have not had the experience. It’s not just the classroom I’m talking about either. It’s about learning the ins and outs of the political system that an educational institution is built upon. It’s about knowing how decisions get made. It’s about understanding the roles of superintendents and building administrators. It’s about knowing that all members of a school community have agendas, and that in the middle of those agendas it is easy to forget about the children.
It seems to me that with enough effort we could have fought NCLB years ago. We could have stormed Washington and demanded that lawmakers talk to us. Alas, no such revolution happened and educators who didn’t believe in its measures were charged with the task to put them in place.
There’s a revolution happening again, and again, no one storming Washington to make a point, to offer degrees of solutions. And so we have our educational rockstars, and our entrepreneurs, and our celebrities, making their own difference. Who are we to complain if no one else gives those schools a chance or hope?
Time will tell what happens with education in this country. Little by little, one by one, is how our revolution is taking place. Let’s just hope another country doesn’t take hold of our youth and give them something “better to rely on” at a faster pace. The technology exists to do so. We better get ready. The next generation quickly grows impatient.
tom – i think you hit the nail on the head with ‘lack of definition.” it’s easy to say “good schools” and “good teachers” and “good education” but it means different things to different people. difficult to have a solution without a well-defined problem.
Tom —
This is a great summary and I am glad you shared your observations as a participant — so many of us couldn’t be there in person and this kind of summary is valuable to us.
I agree with the others who have already commented on this post — “lack of definition” is a huge barrier to school improvement / education reform. I’ve seen so many examples of how “lack of definition” derails initiatives over the years.
You were specifically speaking to the issue of defining what is a “good” or “bad” teacher. Unfortunately, I think many of us realize that the definition depends on who you is speaking…
Politicians, policy makers, pundits — definition usually based on test scores
District administrators — definition usually based on test scores
School administrators — definition usually based on test scores and/or personal preferences, differences in philosophy, lack of admin responsibility in effective supervision, etc.
Teachers (of others) — definition usually based on personal issues – who “pulls their own weight”, who refills the paper in the copy machine after using it all up, difference in teaching philosophy, etc.
Teachers (of self) — do I see growth or progress in my students’ understanding of the concepts based on a variety of multiple forms of formative assessment over a period of time (week, grading cycle, month, semester, etc.).
Parents — definition usually based on whether or not parent perceives that a teacher supports the student/helps student achieve greater academic success, and on whether or not parent perceives that a teacher is mean, unsupportive, or abusive to the student.
Students — definition varies depending on the student.
Let me quote from Jeff above: “difficult to have a solution without a well-defined problem.”
Tom I agree with your assessment of the town hall. The first warning that this would not be a profitable meeting is that the host was a media figure, not an educator. In a better format, the media figure could have announced the many commercials and the educator could have responded intelligently to comments and may have kept the focus on the education needs of the country.
At any rate, the town meeting may have provided educators with a foot in the door that will eventually lead to reform.
Maybe educators need a commercial.
I have been in the youth and education field for over 20 years—for the last seven as a teacher, three as an administrator and, since 2007, as an advocate and director of an educational consulting firm (ED101). Since the issues of how to improve education have moved to primetime and beyond, it has been the strangest two weeks of my life. For years I have dreamed that these issues would be addressed, discussions would be held and strategic focus would be placed on the growing crisis in public education. Now I have more questions than answers, more concerns than comforts, greater fear and yet, greater hope.
After graduating with a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership, and with the help of several like minded-friends including my business partner Allison Caldwell, we started an educational consulting firm called ED101, Inc. Our goal was to become a place where educational ideas would be approachable to non-educators in hopes of creating the community dialogue and input that schools need to improve—and I knew firsthand that schools and youth programming needed to be better. I started my career at age 15 as a youth counselor in New Jersey. I had worked in the New Jersey schools—some of the best in the nation, yet with its Newarks, Trentons and Freeholds as well. I saw the inequity of New Jersey schools and watched the once abundant public money that drove youth programs dry up in the 70’s and 80’s recessions. As any house owner knows maintaining a improvement is in some ways more difficult than the implementing the improvement itself.
I moved to South Carolina with the jobs, and worked as a private school history teacher and youth director. Soon I learned what inequity really was, along with what a “portable” is. I had gone from a system that had seen money for “the extras” dry up, to a section of the country that never had the extras—from buildings with well-paid teachers, to trailers as classrooms and teachers that had to have a second job just to pay the rent. I once thought that The River Runs Dry was a time that has passed, yet it lives even today in South Carolina. More inequities—North and South, urban and rural, black and white, the top scoring to the lowest—these things still haven’t changed. New Jersey still has one of the best school systems in the country, while South Carolina remains one of the lowest. It makes me wonder: if New Jersey is receiving $100 million, will South Carolina receive even more? I don’t think so. Now close to two decades later, I sit and watch as some of the very issues that I have lived with, thought about and prayed for have finally reached the national spotlight, and I can barely watch. Here are some of the reasons why.
Even now, I am listening to the President speak about the issue of teachers leaving the teaching profession. This one is close to my heart, since I don’t teach full-time anymore for some of the reasons he mentions. He uses a one-minute statement to express the challenges of recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers, to mention programs like Teach for America and suggest the need for merit pay and administrative support. I spent two years studying this issue in one of the poorest performing districts in the country, and I couldn’t draw the conclusion he just did. What I found was that we have some ideas why teachers leave, but a solution couldn’t be so easily applied. In fact, there were many reasons why teachers left the profession, including the birth of a child (or children, with three being a threshold amount); changes in their spouse’s or their own work situation; and, of course, each teacher’s fiscal situation—be it lower or higher. I also learned that a supportive administrator is important to teachers, but what does the administrator support and what do they support the teachers doing?
My fear is that sound bite answers and the desire for a quick fix could cause more problems than solutions. We lack much of the research necessary to make the right decisions to fix America’s schools, as well the right tools to fix them. We are like barbers suddenly being asked to become surgeons, but without the x-rays or anesthesia, without the numerous experts, doctors, support staff or even the fiscal support needed to perform critical surgery. We sometimes know what the patient needs, but we don’t have access to developed medications or behavioral supports. Can you blame the doctor who tells a patient that they must quit smoking—yet the never do and die from it? But isn’t that what we are doing to teachers and administrators who lose kids that never do their homework or never go to school? It is so easy to say what needs to be done but that is the easy part—how long will this focus continue, and does America have the desire to see it through?
The challenges are great, and results do not happen overnight. Our company has spent the last three years influencing educational changes not only in South Carolina, but nationally and internationally as well. When we go into an area, we ask several questions: What do the stakeholders know—who are the players, and how much room is there for consensus? How dedicated are they to real change, or are they simply looking for a flash-in-the-pan photo op? How much room is there for outside assistance? How well do local politicians, business leaders, agencies, higher ed and K-12 work together? What support services and how much long-term assistance can they receive? How developed is the research, and do the political systems work well enough to implement the prescriptions? Most importantly, what is the climate and who can help us with the changes that need to occur? Answering these questions helps us determine how much change an education system can take without total collapse, resulting in more damage than good. Are we flexible enough to change but can we maintain the stability that schools provide? I wonder if these kinds of questions were seriously considered before the media blitz before us was born—why now, and how serious are we to honestly address these issues and give true educational reform the attention and support it deserves?
Schools are not political footballs—they are the backbones of many communities that have lost a lot the last 10 years. We are in a very conflictive period in our nation. Major pieces of legislation directly related to education remain unaddressed on the floor of Congress, and state and local budgets look very weak for next year. It is important to note that some argue that the decline of our nation’s educational system began when school board appointments became paid, politicized positions. How many people are really willing to get involved?
There is clear evidence that schools can change, that children have changed (yet there has been very little discussion of crucial generational issues), and God knows that the world has changed. The real question is—can adults change? Whether tax payer, board member, educator, parent, professor or politician—we all must change for the sake of our children’s futures. Our willingness or refusal to do so is the one big variable in implementing effective educational reform—are we willing to change who we are and what we believe to become what we should and can be together? If you are waiting for Superman, you’d better find a phone booth quickly. Superman is you, my friends—and that raises another question: has anyone seen a phone booth lately?
[…] on education, called “Education Nation. Read the thoughts of one participant, Tom Whitby. Education Nation includes an interview with President Obama. My favorite point from this […]