Crumbs From Your Table

Hancock Graduation Ceremony

Today I received an email from a wonderful colleague and teacher at Hancock High School in Chicago. I have worked with the science faculty at Hancock for the last six years on a variety of projects to improve student learning in science. During that time, the school has seen significant growth in student outcomes. Last year, all of the students were accepted to college, several of them to highly selective schools, despite the fact that over 95% of the students are low-income. To celebrate the accomplishment of the senior class, the graduation has traditionally be held in a "run-down school auditorium with torn seats, bad lighting, and A/C that is not dependable." I have contributed to their fund raising campaign to give the wonderful students of the class of 2015 a proper celebration of their accomplishments.

I find it ironic that the Chicago Public Schools has decided to convert Hancock into a selective high school at a time when the students and faculty have to raise funds for a proper graduation. Talk about throwing crumbs to your constituents. Despite the dilapidated conditions at the school, the faculty have developed a successful neighborhood school model. Now the neighborhood will suffer the double indignity of eliminating a successful neighborhood model and being thrown a mere bone for a selective program so that the city can say that there is a selective school on the Southwest side. If you have had the chance to visit some of the other selective school campuses in Chicago, like Walter Payton College Prep, you will see that those campuses rival many college campuses. In fact, CPS is providing $17 million to Walter Payton merely for an expansion of the already wonderful campus to accommodate more students. The $10 million crumbs that the city is providing to convert Hancock to a selective school campus may well be just sufficient to provide a proper graduation venue.

If the city wants to provide a selective option on the Southwest side in deed and not just in name, they should leave the neighborhood model alone, give Hancock the $10 million to fix up the school, and then build a real selective school campus on the Southwest side. In the meantime, consider giving money to the class of 2015 so they can have a proper celebration.

Faith and Reason in Educational Reform

This month, I attended the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). It is a gathering of around 15,000 educational researchers, who present and discuss the latest research findings from all areas of education. The theme of the conference this year was “The Power of Education Research for Innovation in Practice and Policy.” A significant driver of innovation in any field is faith - a belief that is not based on proof. Steve Jobs, one of the foremost innovators of our time, talked often about the importance of intuition in leadership. Good intuition allows you to see solutions that others cannot see. Just ask the makers of a smattering of the other products I used on my trip, Bill Gates (Microsoft), Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines), Howard Schulz (Starbucks), and Larry Page/Sergey Brin (Google). In every one of those cases, a strong leader saw an opportunity that ran counter to current trends. With the exception of Southwest, all of those companies struggled without the intuition of their founders. 

However, faith alone is insufficient for innovations to succeed. Faith is backed by reason - the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences. Faith directs reasoning and creates a focus on what data is important to collect. The decision about what data to collect can enable or thwart innovation by focusing attention on new ways of seeing the world or reinforcing existing approaches. It is possible to infer an individual’s faith based on the data that person values.

Nowhere was the idea of data as instantiation of faith more prevalent than in one of the AERA presentations I attended about the Gates Foundation-funded Measures of Effective Teaching Study (or MET) by Harvard’s Dr. Thomas Kane. The measures used by MET are student feedback surveys, principal observations, and student test score growth (controlling for background characteristics). Midway through his presentation, Dr. Kane discussed an example of using MET data to make a decision about tenure for a third year teacher. He felt that the rational decision for a principle to make is whether the teacher’s test score growth measures are better than other hypothetical teachers that the principal could hire to replace the third year teacher. In other words, the principal should reason through the opportunity cost of awarding tenure to the teacher. Consistent with much of “reform” these days, Dr. Kane expects principals to value test score data above all else.  Never mind that just a few minutes earlier in the same session, Harvard’s Dr. Ronald Ferguson presented results indicating that teaching behaviors that promote test score growth can also hamper student persistence and happiness in school. A myopic focus on test score growth could exacerbate depression and dropouts. 

Aside from the impact of focusing on student test score growth, the valuing of student test scores as a measure of teaching also reveals the faith that drives today’s “reformers.” The Gates Foundation, Teach for America, the Broad Foundation, and others are doubling down, tripling down (or in the case of Bill Gates whatever the term is for 100 fold down) on their faith that we need more heroes in education. Their intuition is that if we could only do a better job of recruiting, measuring and rewarding heroes while at the same time punishing and eliminating cowards, we would eliminate race and SES performance gaps and increase economic mobility. Therefore, this faith focuses what data to collect for data-driven decision making. After two decades of faith in test driven reform, we have not seen innovation in teaching, but rather reinforcement of traditional teaching practices. 

Another drawback for reform by heroes is that heroes leave. In particular, heroes are most likely to leave precisely the schools that need them the most. Alternatively, systems that are designed to engender heroism in ordinary people are much more sustainable and productive. Southwest Airlines is the only major carrier that has never gone into bankruptcy. For 41 years in a row, Southwest has generated a profit. The original faith in an alternative mode of running an airline has been supported by a system that values its employees. That system has engendered continuity on the front lines as well as in the corporate office.

Likewise, we know in education that it is the school structures and level of trust that are huge factors in retaining teachers in urban settings. It is time that we shift our faith away from pioneering heroes towards systems that bring out the best in ordinary people. Attracting and retaining the best teachers relies on systems that have faith that you do have the best teachers and building data systems that support them.

Pressing for Reform: What Ecology Can Teach Us About School Reform

On September 21, 1998, Hurricane George struck the island of Puerto Rico as a Category 3 hurricane. It caused $2 billion in property damage. It also caused immense devastation to the El Yunque rainforest, which is one Puerto Rico’s most popular attractions and has been designated as a United Nations Biosphere Reserve. The picture on the left below shows the devastation that remained to one section of the public trail 6 weeks after the hurricane. The picture on the right shows the rapid growth along the same stretch of trail 9 months later. The forest floor was teeming with plant life under the bright sunlight. By three years after the hurricane, the trees had reestablished the canopy and within ten years, it became hard to discern the differences between the forest before and after Hurricane Georges. Nature is quite resilient even in the face of a devastating disturbance like a hurricane. Once the disturbance is over, nature has a way of returning very close to its pre-disturbance state. 

Likewise, I think schools are very resilient. Last month, I discussed a variety of school reform efforts that seemed to have changed very little about the core of teaching and learning as well as done very little to close the achievement gap between high and low income students. One of the models that was discussed was school turnaround in which the principal and all of the teachers are terminated and a new principal and teaching corps are hired (some of whom are rehired from the incumbent teaching corps). Now think about school turnaround like Hurricane Georges. The disturbance is abrupt and complete. The school looks like a blank canvas with a few hearty stems remaining. Yet, upon return 5-10 years later, it looks awfully similar to what the school was like before the turnaround (if it hasn’t been closed).  

Ecologists call this kind of disturbance a “pulse” disturbance. The disturbance comes from outside of the ecosystem, is intensely destructive, but short-lived. Once the disturbance is over, a robust ecosystem returns very close to its pre-disturbance state. This sounds very consistent with the 4 to 8-year election cycle reform model. It also gives insight into teachers’ feelings of “This too shall pass,” whenever administrators or reformers introduce new ideas in schools. 

Other types of disturbances do lead to drastic permanent changes to ecosystems. For example, coral reefs are disappearing all over the world. Ecologists are not sure why some reefs are resilient while others are not. Some of the factors that have been linked to coral reef destruction include, warmer ocean temperatures, sedimentation, invasive species, and over fishing. All of these factors are also outside of the ecosystem, but they are mulit-faceted, gradual and long-term. Ecologists refer to these kinds of disturbances as "press" disturbances.  They are unrelated, gradual changes that occur over a long period of time and eventually converge to create a tipping point that dramatically changes the ecosystem. 

Here are two examples of press disturbances in education. Thirty years ago, U.S. News and World Report published it’s first rankings of colleges. One-fourth of the ranking score is based on the selectivity of the admissions process and the quality of the student body as measured by test scores and class rank. Many universities actively manage their position within the rankings and some publicly state rankings targets. Over these past three decades, the importance of test scores in the admissions process has increased as the importance of the rankings has increased. Over this same time period, the college admissions gap between high income and low income students has increased. The codification of test scores that privilege the privilege has entrenched the advantage that the wealthy have in gaining access to the “best” universities. Many believe that the K12 test craze began with the enactment of No Child Left Behind. I contend that No Child Left Behind represents the tipping point for the press disturbance brought about by U.S. News. The No Child Left Behind legislation was possible only because the idea that SAT and ACT scores define college readiness was codified by U.S. News. 

The Race to the Top program at the U.S. Department of Education represents another tipping point in a long-term press disturbance. In 1988, the most typical teacher was a 15-year veteran. Twenty years later, the most typical teacher was a 1st year teacher. Around one-fourth of America’s teachers have less than 5 years of experience. In 1990, Teach for America began it’s mission to support urban districts that found it difficult to staff low performing schools. The vast majority of Teach for America teachers fulfill their two-year teaching commitment and then move on. Over the last 25 years, it has become hip to teach for a couple of years and then move on to one’s real career whether leading reform efforts or going on to grad school or the world of finance. While Teach for America represents a very small percentage of first year teachers, it has been the most vocal vanguard in this movement away from teaching as career. With the majority of new teachers not being career minded, it is no wonder that the strength of teacher unions is crumbling and the emergence of Race to the Top accountability efforts have strengthened. Teachers who see teaching as a stepping stone do not care about long-term pensions or tenure protections. In addition, the depleting corps of experienced teachers have greater control over their own destiny as schools must vie for fewer numbers of veterans. The more attractive and wealthier school settings will successfully recruit the experienced teachers. The least attractive and neediest schools will continue to struggle with recruiting and retaining teachers. Every effort to increase accountability on teachers and to provide band-aids through temporary teachers continues the downward spiral of our neediest schools.

I applaud the motivation of reformers like U.S. News and Teach for America that saw a need in education and created a long-term plan to address that particular need. However, a myopic focus on one aspect of education can have devastating effects on the system as a whole. We are in need of new visionaries who can look beyond the 4-year election cycle and can look beyond single issues. We need visionaries with a holistic, long-term view of our systems of education. Arthur Roy Clapham revolutionized the field of biology in the 1930s when he introduced the term “ecosystem” to focus attention on the long-term and large spatial scales that affect the health of particular biological locations. We need a similar revolution in education to shift away from short-term, localized pulse disturbances towards long-term and systemic press reform. Only with a focus on education as an ecosystem can we open up opportunities for all youth.

It’s Only Weird If It Doesn’t Work

As the NFL season came to a close this past Sunday, the annual armchair analysis of SuperBowl ads has begun. As an avid NFL fan, I like to salute those ad campaigns that have stood the test of time for the whole season. My top honors for advertising campaigns goes to Budweiser beer. (Disclosure: I am only a fan of their advertising. I am not a fan of their beer.) Through a variety of hilarious commercials Budweiser salutes all of the superstitious things that fans do to help their teams win. My favorite spot features “Ramsay.” The narrator begins the commercial by describing Ramsay as the most obnoxious person you would hate to watch a game with. He yells at the TV, throws food in the air after a bad play, and does goofy touchdown dances after good plays. Yet the narrator says that every time Ramsay comes over, their team wins. “I love you Ramsay,” concludes the narrator.

I have also been reminded of this ad campaign throughout this school year every time I hear the next cockamamy plan for improving our schools. In case you have not been paying attention for the last 13 years, 2014 is the year in which 100% of the students in America will meet basic standards in reading, math, and science so that there is No Child Left Behind.  Recognizing that we were not going to meet that goal, the Obama administration has been handing out No Child Left Behind waivers like cotton candy. The brilliance of the Bush administration was to set the timeline for the ridiculous goal for after he is long out of office. The Clinton administration was a little short-sighted in their benchmarking. They had the audacity to think that they could move the United States from the middle of the pack on international assessments in 1994 to be the top scoring country by the end of his presidency in the year 2000.  (On the 2000 PISA, we were still average in 14th place in science and 19th place in math.) The Reagan administration did not set benchmarks per se, but he did set off the hailstorm of standards-based education by declaring that our education system was so mediocre that we would declare it an act of war if another country had imposed the system on us. (By the way, the products of that mediocre system fueled the largest economic expansion in U.S. history.) In every discussion of raising standards, I am always reminded of a quote from Gerald Bracey saying that just because you make someone’s shirt sleeves longer, doesn’t mean their arms will grow longer.

Although the Obama administration is pragmatic enough not to set specific benchmarks for judging his education policies, they still rest their hopes on a bedrock of educational competition. Those teachers, principals, and schools that are above average will be rewarded and those teachers, principals, and schools that are below average will be punished. Obama has introduced what many have hailed as a “new” approach to school reform, piloted tested by Arne Duncan in Chicago, called school turnaround, in which all of the staff at a failing school are let go and a whole new staff is hired. What modern, ahistorical policy makers do not realize is that this same approach was called “reconstitution” in the 1990s, with little success. In fact, “turnaround” has a long history in business, with a very small success rate.

Just as the narrator in the Budweiser commercial tells Ramsay that the players can’t hear him when he is yelling at the TV, we need strong voices to tell policy makers that the essence of lunacy is superstitiously doing the same things over and over again and hoping to get different results the next time. Since none of these ideas are working at scale, it’s just weird how we keep trying them over and over again.

Why are quadratic equations so important?

Even though it is the middle of January, I still find myself asking people about their Christmas and wishing people a happy new year. I feel somewhat justified as the Catholic church just ended the Ecclesiastical Christmas season this past week with Three Kings day and the baptism of Jesus. Glossed over in the joy of the Christmas season is a morbid story associated with the three kings or three magi. In Matthew’s gospel, he describes how the magi stopped in Jerusalem to ask the current king Herod, where they might find the newborn king of the Jews. After identifying Bethlehem as the prophesied city of birth for the savior, Herod sent the magi on their way, but asked that they return and tell him where he might go to worship the new king (in reality he wanted to kill the newborn king). After the magi visited Jesus, they went back to their country a different way and did not go back to see Herod.  When Herod figured out he was double-crossed, he sent his army to Bethlehem to kill all of the baby boys under 2 years of age, hoping to eliminate the threat. Fortunately for civilization, Joseph was warned in a dream and took Jesus and Mary to Egypt to wait out the reign of Herod.

I was reminded of this event, when I heard another morbid news item over the holidays:  Chicago experienced a significant decrease in the murder rate for 2013, to its lowest level since 1965. This is hopeful news. However, the Chicago murder rate is still significantly higher than New York and Los Angeles, which are bigger cities. The vast majority of the murders in Chicago are gang-related and the vast majority of gang members are high school dropouts. I can’t help but feel that Herod’s attempt to maintain the status quo by murdering his own citizens is similar to modern society’s attempt to maintain the status quo which leads to excessive killing of our own citizens. 

At first blush, you may feel I am using hyperbole and being sensationalistic. However, researchers at the University of Chicago Crime Lab have found a link between freshman algebra and Chicago’s gang violence problem. Other researchers have found that in large urban districts like Los Angeles and Chicago, students who pass algebra class by the end of 9th grade have nearly a 100% chance of graduating from high school. If they fail to pass algebra by the end of the 9th grade, they are more likely to drop out than to graduate.

Given that algebra can mean life or death for our urban youth and the central role that the abilities involved in setting up, manipulating, analyzing, and applying quadratic functions play in passing and performing well in Algebra I, one would think that quadratic equations must be an essential life skill and the lynchpin of democratic society.  I searched the Internet for real world examples of quadratic equations. The top hit is a Math is Fun web site. Here are the examples that they provide.

In managerial economics, quadratic equations (and more sophisticatedly, differential equations) are a powerful tool for combining supply and demand curves to set a product price that maximizes net income. In manufacturing, quadratic equations are useful in instances where you want to maximize volume and minimize materials, such as the least amount of steel needed to make a steel frame. In optometry, quadratic equations are useful for designing corrective lenses. I am sure there are many other examples, especially for students going into STEM fields. 

However, when you examine these three example domains more closely, you realize that the use of quadratic equations are not the best approach for solving problems of practice. In the managerial economics example, only MBA marketing gurus in the largest companies have sufficient market data to have realistic supply and demand data that can feed into quadratic equations. If you talk to any small business advisor (most people work in small businesses), they will tell you that pricing for small businesses is a crapshoot. Market data is unreliable and pricing is more often dictated by market forces. Therefore, for small business owners the precision of quadratic equations is misleading and small business owners may not have the market capacity to dictate price anyways. In small business, cash flow is king. Accounting may be more useful than quadratic equations.

In the manufacturing context, optimizing volume and minimizing waste is a common problem. However, it is an issue that is solved once and then implemented in the manufacturing process. Therefore the frequency with which manufacturers would be faced with this dilemma will depend on the breadth and turnover of the product lines. For large manufacturers, such as auto companies, they have engineers that use mathematical equations to solve these maximization problems for a wide variety of parts. However, for small manufacturers, they do not run into the problem often enough to have full time engineers. In addition, experienced fabricators develop powerful spatial intelligence for working with a wide variety of products. In addition, fabricators are also able to balance the need to minimize waste with also minimizing the complexity of the manufacturing process.

The web site also provides examples that do not have practical value, but provide an opportunity to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of quadratic equations. They can be used to characterize the flight of a ball that is thrown into the air - specifying the height of the path and the location of landing. Also, quadratic equations can characterize the speed and length of a river boat that cruises upstream and then downstream. 

I challenge my readers to provide any example of the use of quadratic equations that would warrant the importance they play in dictating the survival our urban youth. Most of the debate around the Common Core standards ignores the tragic lost opportunity to deeply reflect on what is of importance for the next generation. What was important one hundred years ago, when less than 10% of the country graduated from high school, may not be important for everyone to know today. While algebra is important for a variety of fields, it seems to be overweighed in importance for all students. Taken from this standpoint, it is not far fetched to think that algebra continues to play an important role in maintaining the status quo and thwarting economic mobility. Rather than force feed math that drives high drop out rates, let’s focus on math that will drive economic mobility. Given the technological revolution of the last 40 years, maybe computer science for all is better at driving economic growth than algebra for all.