School Technical Ideas

“These schools to be under a visitor, who is annually to chuse the boy, of best genius in the school, of those whose parents are too poor to give them further education, and to send him forward to one of the grammar schools, of which twenty are proposed to be erected in different parts of the country, for teaching Greek, Latin, geography, and the higher branches of numerical arithmetic. Of the boys thus sent in any one year, trial is to be made at the grammar schools one or two years, and the best genius of the whole selected, and continued six years, and the residue dismissed. By this means twenty of the best geniusses will be raked from the rubbish annually, and be instructed, at the public expence, so far as the grammar schools go.” Those are the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, excerpted from Notes on the State of Virginia. 

Jefferson, it seems, was cognizant that “genius,” as he called it, must be cultivated and developed.  Furthermore, he asserts, that talent is something “nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich …”

These words and ideals, expressed by a founding father, oh, so long ago, form the crux of the ideas embodied in the law of the land, as it pertains to gifted and talented education.  Section § 8-202, of the relevant section of Maryland law unequivocally states, “Gifted and talented students are to be found in youth from all cultural groups, across all economic strata, and in all areas of human endeavor. ”

The perceived failure of gifted and talented education to equally identify “genius” from “youth from all cultural groups, across all economic strata, and in all areas of human endeavor,” is not a rationale for dismembering gifted and talented education.  Instead, it should gird us with the determination to do it right. 

It is a national shame that we have embarked on a voyage of dismantling the vestiges of a challenging education and replacing it with a soufflé of little substance.  In Montgomery County, Maryland, the exercise has taken the form of replacing middle school honors courses with courses that fail to meet their stated goals. 

For example, Honors Earth Space Systems A/B Grade 8, has been replaced with Investigations in Earth Space Science (IESS).  According to a memorandum issued by the then superintendent Jerry D. Weast, “As part of the Middle School Reform initiative, OCIP staff members have redesigned the middle school science curriculum to create two courses, Investigations in Science 6 and Investigations in Science 7, which lead to Earth Space Systems in Grade 8.”  He goes on to assert, “The courses integrate STEM concepts, technology, research, innovation, and multiple solutions. Students generate questions and develop plans for solving problems and evaluating solutions. They record their findings in design-folios and science journals. Classes analyze progress toward possible solutions throughout each unit and students have multiple opportunities for reflection and revision.” At least in one school, in a co-taught IESS class, teachers don’t seem to have the time to accomplish these objectives

It is time to change course. 

(c) 2012, Kumar Singam.  If you would like to receive email notifications of columns by the DC-Gifted-Examiner please use the “subscribe” button at the top of this article to sign up.

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A Palm Beach County face will share the stage with actor Matt Damon and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch during an education march this weekend in Washington, D.C.

On Saturday, thousands of people – including several from Palm Beach County – are expected to muster in Washington to participate in the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action.

The event, which is accompanied by several days of lobbying and conferences, aims to push back against what its organizers see as misguided education reform policies, including high-stakes standardized testing and the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Among those in the crowd will be Rita Solnet, a suburban Boca Raton activist who is part of the event’s organizing committee. She has been asked to speak before the march from her perspective as a parent and as co-founder of the nonprofit Parents Across America.

Our politicians and the Department of Education are just not listening to people in the trenches – the parents, teachers, constituents, said Solnet, a former PTA president at Eagles Landing Middle School in western Boca Raton. We want equal air time.

Solnet said she has been on conference calls every Sunday night for the past eight months helping to plan the event, which includes a conference at American University on Thursday and Friday, organized lobbying efforts, and the rally and march from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday.

Organizers are expecting to draw about 10,000 people to the march, which begins at the Ellipse and loops past the White House. Solnet said speakers during the march will include Damon and his mother, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, a professor of early-child education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.; actor Richard Dreyfuss; author Jonathan Kozol; Stanford University education professor Linda Darling-Hammond; and Ravitch, who was an assistant Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush.

Solnet said Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, a current events show on the Comedy Network, has sent in a video for the event because he has a conflict and cannot attend.

Never in my lifetime have I seen people care so much about education, she said, noting that the timing of the event comes as Congress continues to discuss overhauling No Child Left Behind, which came up for reauthorization in 2007. It’s a combination of the demoralization of teachers and of public schools. People are angry.

In Palm Beach County, the local teachers union is offering $150 to teachers who want to travel to D.C. for the event, union president Debra Wilhelm said.

She said she isn’t sure how many Palm Beach County teachers will end up going, in part because they might be on vacation or short on cash.

Forest Hill High School teacher Sara Cuaresma said she is flying in Saturday just in time to participate in the march.

She said she feels that legislators ignore the voices of teachers and parents who are dealing with the public education system every day, and that, through the unified march, they will see this is something serious, a serious group of stakeholders whose concerns need to be heard.

That’s Solnet’s goal for the event, as well. She said she’s been appalled by what she sees as a push to privatize public education, such as increased focus on charter schools, and by how focused schools have become on high-stakes testing.

Everybody who attends is there for a reason, because they’re just as frustrated, Solnet said. Whether they are parents or teachers or businesspeople who are frustrated that the people they hire can’t do math, they want to show that it’s time to put the public back in public education.

Richard Ingersoll (UPenn)

At researcher Richard Ingersoll’s Ivy League university, there’s no undergraduate degree in education.

“Very few undergrads at Penn want to do it,” said the University of Pennsylvania professor of education and sociology who once taught at the University of Georgia. “Most want to do law, medicine, business, or veterinary school.”

A former high school teacher turned academic, Ingersoll has more than a passing interest in whether students choose teaching careers. He is one of the nation’s foremost experts on teacher turnover, and he fears that one-sided accountability measures drive good people out of the profession and deter promising candidates from entering it.

He cites the misinformation on the shortage of math and science teachers. In a given year, the United States produces four times as many new math and science teachers as leave the classroom due to retirements, Ingersoll said.

So, while he applauds President Obama’s plan to add 100,000 new science and math teachers over a decade, Ingersoll said, “We lose 25,000 math and science teachers each year.” Of that number, he said only 7,000 are due to retirement. He does not believe that incentives — performance pay or bonuses — are enough of a carrot to reverse the trend.

As two recent studies suggest, paying teachers bonuses doesn’t appear to lead to higher student achievement. Yes, teachers would love a $1,500 performance bonus for meeting targets, but a new RAND study out of New York and a National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University last year out of Nashville both found that many teachers are already pedaling as fast as they can under new accountability systems and the bonuses appear to have no impact on student achievement.

“We tested the most basic and foundational question related to performance incentives — does bonus pay alone improve student outcomes? — and we found that it does not,” said Matthew Springer, executive director of the National Center on Performance Incentives.

The RAND study was commissioned by New York City, which wanted to find out if $56 million in performance bonuses to school staffs over the last three years improved student performance. The finding: No improvement.

What teachers want most, Ingersoll said, is to be regarded as professionals and valued for their judgment, their intellect and their ability to think on their feet and problem-solve.

On scales of motivation, teachers and nurses are the highest for wanting to do good with their lives rather than earn a lot of money.

As one teacher noted here on the blog, “We not only buy school supplies for students (pencils, paper, etc.), but we also must buy classroom supplies (white board markers, copy paper, etc.). Can you just imagine if employees of Coca-Cola were asked to purchase their own copy paper and pens and paper clips?”

Ingersoll understands the common-sense appeal of merit pay and performance bonuses, and why Obama and U.S. education Secretary Arne Duncan are such proponents. As a young high school teacher, it annoyed him that his colleague in the next classroom read the newspaper all day while he was up until midnight each night preparing lessons. “Yet, he was making more than me because he had been there longer,” he said.

“We all know that some teachers are better than others, and there do seem to be some teachers who are not working very hard. Then, we find out they are all being paid the same,” he said. The problem is that we haven’t devised a good way to fairly and objectively judge the most effective teachers and separate out what a teacher brings to the student performance equation.

Ingersoll hoped that the new science of value-added measures — using student growth as measured by tests to analyze how much a teacher advanced the learning of each individual student — would offer a reliable yardstick. But he is wary now because of the rising doubts of statisticians about the reliability of value-added data and studies showing that a large proportion of teachers who rate highly one year tumble to the bottom the next.

“That raises a real monkey wrench in our belief that a good teacher is a good teacher and a bad teacher is a bad teacher when you have that drop from the top quintile to the bottom in one year,” he said.

(“Some of my fellow professors are very zealous about value-added measures,” added Ingersoll, “until I say ‘What about using it for us in higher education?’ Then, there is ominous silence in the room.” )

Ingersoll sees greater potential in Denver’s performance pay system, crafted by teachers and administrators, that incorporates 10 weights to assess success, such as pursuing professional development, working in a high-needs school, receiving a glowing evaluation and raising test scores.

But Ingersoll said no performance pay system can work if we don’t address the deprofessionalization of teaching, citing his own research that teachers in virtually all states report less of a role in decisions about textbooks, content and grading —all of which are integral to their jobs and for which they ought to be consulted.

“The whole accountability regime tends to be a top-down thing that hasn’t included teachers. It violates basic management principles — you can’t hold employees responsible for things that they don’t have any control over or don’t have the tools to do,” he said.

“If you give people autonomy and tools and don’t hold them accountable, then you get corruption,” said Ingersoll. “If you hold them accountable and don’t give them autonomy and tools, then you drive employees out — the best ones first.”

Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger says hes committed to having a vibrant, healthy public education system in Michigan.

Doug Pratt, spokesman for the Michigan Education Association, says hes committed to the same thing.

The overlap in outlooks and frustrations struck me on Wednesday, when I went to Lansing and spent part of the morning with Bolger and part of the afternoon with Pratt.

Usually, Im communicating with Bolger or Pratt on the phone or via email or press release to get a reaction to this development or that, and both are very good at providing the quote that sticks it to the other side.

But in more relaxed private conversation, each comes across as more nuanced than his public image. These are smart, thoughtful, sincere people who really do care about improving Michigan schools.

That said, they represent diametrically opposite stances on how to accomplish that.

For people such as Pratt, its all about giving schools more money and teachers more voice. In their eyes, the Michigan Education Association is fighting the good fight for 150,000 people whose lives are dedicated to helping kids, as Pratt put it.

Pratt and his colleagues are genuinely horrified that Bolger and other Lansing Republicans can fund a tax cut for businesses, but siphoned $700 million from the School Aid Fund to balance the state budget. They see Republicans as using their power to help corporate fat-cats and the wealthy, while ignoring the needs of children. They also see a clear pattern of union-busting, of Republicans busting the chops of the MEA whenever and however they can, just out of spite against one of the Democratic Partys most stalwart bases of support.

No surprise, Republicans have a much different narrative: In their view, improving schools is all about greater accountability. In their eyes, teacher unions have helped assure that the Michigan schools have gotten plenty of money and that teachers have had plenty of voice. And all its gotten Michigan, they say, is a well-funded K-12 system that produces lackluster results. 

Republicans see the solution as giving school boards and administrators more power to control costs and manage their staffs. They justify cutting school funds by noting that K-12 has been largely protected from state budget cuts before this year, and that a business tax cut is needed to improve the climate for job growth. A healthier economy and lower unemployment, they say, will help all Michigan residents and ultimately help schools by generating more state revenues. 

The fact is, each side does have a point.

Just like members of the military, teachers play a vital role in our society. Union leaders are right that educators need and deserve respect and appreciation.

Meanwhile, Republicans are not alone in thinking that union contracts can make it difficult to maximize school quality and fiscal accountability. 

I dont spend a lot of time around state government or policymakers, so it may seem incredibly naive to wish that people such as Bolger and Pratt could move beyond the talking points and have a candid dialogue.

No surprise, both Bolger and Pratt blame the other side for that not happening.

Its striking that both feel deeply misunderstood, and yet both take a cynical view of their opponents true agenda and motives.  Talking to Bolger and Pratt back-to-back is like talking to a couple in the midst of a bitter divorce who think only the worst of the other.

And just like a divorce, children are caught in the middle.

Both Bolger and Pratt told me on Wednesday that, in the end, K-12 policy should be driven by whats best for kids.

If they really believe that, then its not about scoring political points. Its about problem-solving. Thats why they dont need to agree, but they do need to listen to each other.

For better or worse, the Republican Legislature and the MEA are partners in overseeing the educational system that serves Michigans children and the kids are counting on them.

Julie Mack is a reporter for the Kalamazoo Gazette. Contact her at or 269-388-8578, or follow her on Twitter.com at Twitter.com/kzjuliemack. She also writes a blog called School Zone at .