Apparently Blame is Contagious

I think I just solved Michelle Rhee's PR problems.

OK, not me so much as two researchers from California whose study argues that blaming other people is contagious. This article gives details about the study, which found that when people were exposed to articles by people who blamed failure on others rather than accepting responsibility, the subjects were more likely to blame others for their own personal (and totally unrelated) failures. I'm not sure I'm doing the study justice, so read the article.

I think this explains all the vitriol that we see against Rhee (whether you like her or not, we can all agree that there are people who say downright nasty stuff about her -- usually on blogs*). People feel (justifiably, in a lot of cases) that Rhee and her administration blame all of the problems in DCPS on teachers. Applying the results of the study, this likely makes teachers less likely to acknowledge their professional shortcomings -- we all have them -- and more likely to lash out against administration.

I'm certainly guilty. In numerous staff meetings, my administration has told teachers that our students are failing because we're not using engaging instruction or making meaningful connections. My response, rather than acknowledging that there are times when my lessons aren't engaging, is to blame student failure on others by saying, "the kids don't come and the administrators don't support us on discipline issues." Of course, the latter comment is true -- attendance is terrible and administrators at my school often do nothing with discipline issues that have been referred tot hem. But sometimes the former is true, too.

No one will be focused on finding solutions while other people are playing the blame game -- we keep passing finger-pointing around like a virus. So, Chancellor Rhee, my suggestion is to accept responsibility for the fact that sometimes DCPS administration does stuff wrong. Sometimes principals do their jobs poorly and sometimes downtown makes silly decisions that inconvenience teachers and students. My guess -- based on this research -- is that more teachers will start to accept more responsibility for what goes on in their classrooms.



* My favorite part of the article is this:

[The] experiment may explain why Internet comments so rapidly disintegrate into vitriolic name-calling—because blaming keeps getting passed on in different contexts. "If you read one comment by someone who is really being a jerk, you might not reply. But then you read another comment, then blast someone else entirely."

Ha. Guilty.

Does my insurance cover insanity?

Yesterday we had our monthly staff meeting after school. Interestingly enough, the first thirty minutes of this mandatory whole-school meeting were dedicated not to raising test scores, preparing for IMPACT observations, or discussing important events coming up at our school. Rather, we spent time talking about all of the exciting ways Aflac insurance can work for us! Seriously?! I don't need to come to work to hear a commercial. This staff meeting is required - not some optional sales pitch - and the Aflac presentation went long, so we had even less time for the rest of the agenda (which consisted of such clearly unimportant topics as "How and when to report child abuse" and discussing our "school safety plan").

I don't know that I've ever seen a group of teachers more irate. Instead of lesson planning, collaborating, grading, or doing ANYTHING useful, they tried to sell us insurance. I was sitting next to one colleague who just kept saying, "I'm losing it. I'm just losing it." Personally, I used the time to write and solve my own polynomial long division problems. I felt this was more important that learning how much Aflac would pay me if I got cancer.

($5000, by the way.)

Harry Potter and the Totally Arbitrary Evaluation

Last week I was observed by my principal and a master educator. I haven't had my meeting with the master educator yet to discuss my evaluation (sorry -- no juicy numerical details), but I did meet with my principal to discuss my scores and I left that meeting even more convinced that some administrators in this school system just don't have what it takes.

The lesson I got observed on went OK, but not great. I had split the class up into two groups based on their performance on a mini-assessment, and was doing differentiated lessons based on those groupings. While there were no major problems, the class wasn't terribly well organized. Essentially, whenever I left one group to work with the other, the first group didn't really accomplish much. Nothing terrible happened, but I hadn't set up structures to ensure that the groups continued working even when I walked away. All this to say that I expected my evaluation to be OK, but not stellar.

Wrong. I received a score of 3.8 (out of a perfect 4), which puts me in the "highly effective" category. Now, if I'd actually earned that score, I'd be pleased. But I didn't. My lesson showed me to be effective, but not outstanding. So why did I get the score I got? Because my principal has decided that she likes me. Of course, this isn't really a problem for me (except that I'm not really getting any feedback for improvement, I suppose). But it is a problem for the people she's decided she doesn't like. Some teachers at my school are unhappy with their scores, and for some I don't really doubt that it's because they're not based in reality.

I firmly believe in accountability for teachers. Teachers should be held to high standards of excellence. Someone should be able to walk into your classroom at any time and see what you're doing, and you should be doing your job reasonably well. I firmly believe that teachers who aren't meeting an acceptable level of performance should be put on an improvement plan and, if that doesn't work, transitioned out of the classroom (read: fired). Kids deserve that much. But I'm also coming to realize that such a practice won't ever happen fairly until we have administrators who are willing and able to do that job. If teachers are the single biggest factor in improving student achievement (as I -- and Michelle Rhee -- think they are), then aren't administrators the single biggest factor in improving teacher effectiveness?

(P.S. I think some will read this post and say, "That's just what we've been saying forever! Rhee is terrible! That's why the union protects us from arbitrary firings!" Well, I still disagree with those statements. There are way too many teachers in this system who are grossly incompetent, and I applaud Michelle Rhee's fervent attempts to rid our system of them. I'm just saying we won't be able to do that until administrators are on board with doing their jobs well. That is all.)

Harry Potter and General Malaise

Frequent readers have probably noticed that I haven't been posting much recently. While I'd like to provide some ridiculous story about why I haven't been posting -- that I was threatened or told to be quiet or terminated or attacked by a pack of bees -- I cannot tell a lie.

I'm just frustrated. And burned out. And tired. I don't know if it's because of Impact (don't think so) or the forever stalled contract negotiations (maybe) or my administration (YES!!!), but I just feel really de-motivated. One thing I can say is that it's definitely not the kids. My kids this year are doing really well, and I've somehow managed to build a really positive culture in my classes. They try hard, and for the most part they're learning a lot. But damn if I'm just not satisfied.

It's getting to the point where I'm thinking about what else I could be doing, and trying to figure out if I want to stay teaching (or at least teaching at my school) next year. On the one hand, I don't like falling into the stereotype of Teach for America teachers who sweep in on a wave of idealism and then leave after we've worked that glassy-eyed naivete out of our system. But on the other hand, do I really want to continue working in a place where I feel unvalued, unengaged, and unhappy?

So anyway, I haven't been posting recently. However, in this week alone I'm being observed by my principal and a DCPS master educator. So chances are at least one person is going to say or do something bizarre enough to get a blog post. Stay tuned for that!

Where have all the children gone?

Our school's enrollment is down, and attendance is lower than I've ever seen it. When I first started at my school, I routinely had between 25 and 30 students in my class each day. Now, I'm lucky if I get 12. Today, less than half of my students were in class, and last week the average was 55%. Now, the kids who are there every day are learning like FIENDS, but at this rate 45% of my kids are going to fail. So what gives?

Is attendance down at other schools? Anyone have any ideas? I've called home, posted notes in STARS (our student attendance and tracking system), and referred students to attendance counselors, but I'm not seeing much of a change. Is it some massive Rhee protest that no one's told us about?

I'm also getting a little annoyed with my students' parents. I've called the home of every kid in my classes, but haven't always had success in reaching parents. Apparently working phone numbers are a hot commodity. Even without a phone call, though, parents should be aware that their kids aren't in school. I've seen my students lie -- they aren't good at it. No homework, no assignments, no tests or grades or anything coming home -- you'd think parents would figure it out. So I'm frustrated, annoyed, and more than a little lonely. Where are my kids!?

What does PSAT stand for (part deux)

Last year, when my blog was in its infancy and no one except for my wife and my mom (hi mom!) read it, I wrote a post about the PSAT. My thoughts on the matter haven't changed at all in the past year, so I'm reproducing the post in its entirety. Lazy? Sure. But hell, I'm tired.

What does PSAT stand for?

If you answered Practice SAT, then, OK, fine, you are technically correct. However, I think the real answer is "Pretty Stupid-Ass Thinking."

Today, every child in my school (and in most high schools in DC) took the PSAT. Every single child. Even 9th graders with learning disabilities who can't read. Even children who do not know their multiplication tables, let alone any form of algebra. Every child.

The PSAT should be optional for 9th and 10th graders (there are some who could really benefit from the practice). It should be required for 11th graders (because that is when it counts for the National Merit Scholarship). But it should not be required for all children.

Call me crazy ("you're crazy, Mr. Potter") but I don't think that children need to take a test that they have no chance of doing well on when it doesn't count for anything. I'm all for high academic expectations, but there are 9th graders who can't read, and therefore cannot answer reading comprehension questions. Forcing them to try to do so will not work for anyone. A teacher down the hall from me asked her students to write one paragraph to our principal explaining how taking the test made them feel. All of the responses were things like "it made me feel stupid" or "it made me think I won't go to a good college."

Also, the PSAT costs money. It was free to our students because it was paid for by DC taxpayers. So, good work DCPS. We just paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make tens of thousands of students feel dumb. I bet we could find a cheaper way of doing that...

People don't actually get "race cards," right?

So here's the thing about this RIF: it sucks. I get that there isn't money to pay people, but I think the whole thing went down in a way that can only be described as "icky." First, it was supposed to happen on Wednesday. Then it didn't. It finally went down on Friday, and I got the impression that my administration didn't have a plan for it. There was zero communication between admin and staff, which was disconcerting and unprofessional. The whole thing is gross and I don't like it.

Apparently, I'm not alone. The (admittedly small, egomaniacal, and usually bizarre -- myself included) DC teacher blogosphere has been blowing up with allegations that race and age were motivators for the RIF -- specifically, people are accusing the chancellor of using the RIF to get rid of African American teachers over 40.

Many people on many blogs have made the comment that the people who were laid off were "disproportionately" older Black teachers. Here's the thing: we don't know if that's true, and we won't until someone does some pretty complex statistical analysis on the numbers. Rather than wax philosophical on the nature of race relations, I'm going to unleash my inner nerd (OK, it wasn't on a very tight leash to begin with) and give a statistics lesson. *adjusts glasses* Here we go.

In order to say that there is statistical evidence that Rhee's team (and her principals) are racist, we need to know several things. In each school, what are the demographics of the staffs in each competitive rating category? What are the demographics of the people who were laid off? If we can then compare those proportions, we can get some answers. (DORK ALERT) This is called a chi-squared test for independence. Here's what I mean:

Imagine that I wanted to know whether or not race was a factor in the layoffs for teachers. First, I'd need to know the proportion of teachers in each ethnic sub-group. Then, I'd need to know the proportion that was laid off. In general, we'd want the proportion laid off to be the same for each ethnic group -- this would mean that race and layoffs were independent of each other. Make sense? Well, it gets complicated.

For example, let's say we wanted to know whether or not race was a factor in the layoffs of educational aides. In my school, 100% of the educational aids are African American women. Therefore, 100% of the educational aides who were laid off were African American women. The chi-squared test would show us that the proportions are the same and there was no evidence of racism here (note that I say "no evidence of racism", not "no racism" -- statistics can't prove the absence of something).

Next, let's say that we want to look at teachers. Well, each teacher was rated within his / her department. The principals had to decide whether or not they could afford to lose an English teacher, for example, and if they could then the lowest rated English teacher was let go. In order to see if race played a part in that decision, we'd need to look at the racial makeup of the English department. At my school, most English teachers are White. One English teacher was laid off -- a middle-aged Black woman. While the proportion of African Americans in the English department is only about 40%, 100% of the people in the English department who were laid off were African American. This means racism, right? Not necessarily. When the sample size is one, as it is here (only one English teacher laid off, remember) then we can't really conclude anything. 100% of the English teachers laid off would have been some race, after all.

If you're still reading, here's my point: it's too early and the statistics are too complex for anyone on any blog to be accurately declaring that racism was involved. Certainly, we're entitled to our opinions, but it's irresponsible to make assertions -- especially using specific terms like "disproportionate" -- when facts and evidence are as murky as they are here. One thing is certain, though: this RIF blows, and it blows hard.

It is my opinion that DCPS is a pretty racist place, and that we live in a generally racist society. One only has to look at the glaring inequality of opportunity on one side of the river and the other, or on one side of the park and the other, for evidence. But I don't think it's responsible to declare as fact that Michell Rhee is racist because we notice a trend in some of the people laid off. We need to give this issue proper investigation and analysis.

That is all. Please go back to your previously less nerdy lives.