Rotten Apples

ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your boat…at work but not at school. ROWE stands for Results Only Work Environment. Long story short: let people work how they want, when they want. Only measure the results. Performance and morale improve.

There workers can come in at four or leave at noon, or head for the movies in the middle of the day, or not even show up at all. It’s the work that matters, not the method. And, not incidentally, both output and job satisfaction have jumped wherever ROWE is tried.  -NY Times

Full article here.

How can we use Results-Only to get our kids to perform?

The bottom line for teachers and parents is that they need to get cooperation from 1-150 kids on tasks that, lets be honest, often aren’t interesting to them. If the child has ADD or a Learning Disability, the challenge is even greater.

Are our schools results oriented?

With few exceptions, in my opinion, No. This does vary from school to school and teacher to teacher, but overall I think that the atmosphere in America’s classrooms (big generalization here) is one in which students are evaluated on a mixed curriculum of education and discipline. In other words, the student’s grade is determined by both his or her mastery of the material and by how well he or she fits into the stereotypical pigeon-hole of a “good student”.

It is not enough for a student to learn the curriculum. He or she must also meet the teacher’s expectations of behavior and discipline or their grades will suffer. Which means that their collegiate futures are at risk. Which means their behavior in and around the classroom will in part determine their future.

Why is this bad? In my opinion, it is appropriate to evaluate behaviors, rule-following, conscientiousness and sociability. However, this evaluation needs to be made separate from an academic evaluation. Not merely out of fairness but because a student’s behavior does not reflect his or her mastery of the material. If the student has mastered the curriculum, and demonstrates that mastery on assessments, then his or her grade should reflect that mastery.

Further, teachers evaluate behavior based on their biased backgrounds. Students with different backgrounds are unfairly penalized. Since most teachers are middle-class, poor students suffer.

What do I mean? I mean that the student should not be penalized because he or she did not complete a non-assessment assignment (busy-work) or was disruptive in the classroom, or had a poor attendance record. Notice that each of these items are strongly correlated with poverty and a low socio-economic status. They also fit the profile of kids with Learning Disabilities.

In my opinion, when teachers mix assessment grades with behavior grades, they are doing these kids a major disservice. I am especially thinking of my LD students. These kids’ futures are already at risk. If they are graduating on a regular diploma, and most are, then they need every point they can get on their GPA. When I go into an Individualized Education Planning (IEP) meeting for a student, and I see that his assessment grades are A’s, B’s and C’s but his report card is full of C’s, D’s and F’s I conclude that the student’s needs are not being met. Isn’t it obvious? He can ace the exam, but has seven zeros for homework assignments…he’s learned the material. Even more, he did it without doing the homework. For him, the homework was really just busy work.

The goal of our schools should not be to pump out mass-produced cookie-cutter worker.

Corporate America is realizing that if you let good people make choices about how and when to work, everybody wins. Lets take that lesson home and into the classroom. Recognize that people have different learning styles and preferences and that the goal of our schools should not be to pump out mass-produced cookie-cutter workers.

Teachers: create multiple routes to success. Keep behavior and academic evaluations separate.

Parents: realize that your kid needs breaks. LD and ADD kids need LOTS of breaks. Split their homework session in two. Have a physical activity planned for in between.

One last quick story: a student of mine often comes in completely brain-fried. You know, that horrible feeling that you can’t even spell your own name right…for no reason! Once I realize we are up against the wall we go for a ten-minute walk and talk about video games. This lifts the mind-fog and learning can begin again.

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Reports abound reflecting the “fact” that Standardized Exam scores have improved across the nation and of course a variety of experts have chimed in supporting or opposing their political candidate…I mean, their view of the “facts”. Are we as a nation that naive? Scores haven’t improved due to increases in learning. Scores have improved because the administrators and teachers who are now being “held accountable” thanks to No Child Left Behind are getting better at scamming the system.

Scores have improved because administrators “improve” at scamming the system

At my wife’s school, their score has improved slightly. How did they do it? The Principal rounded up anyone who didn’t fit the normal mold and couldn’t afford a lawyer and he kicked them out of school. Students over-age for their grade, learning disabled kids who didn’t seem like they could graduate, students with spotty attendance were all eliminated. So while the school didn’t really improve, they eliminated a good chunk of the student body who traditionally weakened the school’s ratings.

Forget the fact that those low performers tend to be poor, suffer from Learning Disabilities and have IEPs, Individual Education Programs that are expensive and challenging to implement…therefore many teachers simply ignore them. Exceptional Student Education is all too often a joke. It is supposed to provide an appropriate education for students who don’t fit neatly into America’s pigeonholes. Instead it is a route for incompetent teachers to hide in the system, literally ruining the future for hundreds of kids right under our noses!

Exceptional Student Education Certification Exams are a joke

In Florida, Exceptional Student Education Certification fails to deliver any kind of quality. My training and experience lay almost exclusively within the business world, yet I took and passed the Florida ESE Certification Exam on the first try, without any kind of course work, study or preparation. Ridiculous!

What is the exam like? It is a 45 minute, multiple choice joke. If you can understand English and apply a little common sense, you can pass it. While researching for this post, I found zero hits on Google for the search “exceptional education blog” — so let me say here that Rotten Apples is an Exceptional Education Blog.

RATs, Rotten Apple Teachers, hide in the in-demand world of Exceptional Student Education

So what happens is that a RAT–Rotten Apple Teacher–starts getting flack for being a shitty teacher. Why? Because now that there actually are some independent standards (via standardized testing) by which students, schools and teachers can be judged, it is actually possible to find out who is teaching and who is farting in a windstorm. Realizing that they are going to be dealt with, these teachers can take the ESE certification exam and switch over to the in-demand world of Exceptional Student Education (or ESOL - English Speakers of Other Languages). For the unindoctrinated Exceptional Students aren’t valedictorians, they’re Challenged: they have Attention Deficit or Asperger’s or Dyslexia or some kind of learning disability that makes them special. What a stupid term.

Lousy teachers hide in ESE programs because when they blame failure on “retarded” kids, everyone buys it

Is this a new phenomenon? Nope! Lousy teachers have been hiding in ESE programs all over the nation for as long as they have existed because when you blame the failure on “retarded” kids, people believe you! Its the teachers who are retarded–in IMHO–not the kids, as well as the retarded administrations that hire them and are too lazy to actually fire them and instead pass the problem teachers on to another school or district. But since this demographic is expected to be failures, no one raises an eyebrow when a shitty teacher does a shitty job and the ESE kids get shitty scores in standardized exams.

I don’t have all the answers, but if we want this system to change then the PARENTS have to get vocal and get involved, the teachers have to get their act together and perform to an ethical standard instead of to a negotiated employment contract, and administrators have to stop living the political suck-up’s wet dream and start doing their duty to eliminate the bottom 10% of teachers instead of the bottom 10% of their students–the ones who need the help the most.

If you think it is expensive and time consuming to fire a rotten teacher, think about how expensive it is to keep them

And if YOU, dear reader, think that the bottom 10% of a school’s population is a bunch of retards, immigrants and gang members, you might be right about that. But if you think it is too expensive to educate them and prep them for real life as a working adult then wait until you see the bill for the damage they do as a criminal, for the social services they need as a dependent adult (because they missed out on independence) and for their incarceration as convicted felons. Just hope that you and your families don’t wind up collateral damage when they rob your corner 7-11.

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Roland G. Fryer, a racial economist, champions an idea that has been used by parents for decades, if not centuries: bribe students with cash for high (standardized) test scores. Who hasn’t heard of a parent offering $5 per A on a report card? This isn’t a new idea, it’s an old idea with a new twist: schools pay the bribe, instead of parents.

Click here for the article.

Will bribing students motivate them to perform?

No. The science on this has long been done. It has been demonstrated quite solidly that there are two kinds of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. That’s just a fancy way of saying internally or self-motivated, versus externally or reward motivated. People who are internally motivated work hard and persevere out of an internal desire to succeed, usually just for the good feelings or personal reasons important to the individual. People who are externally motivated are acting to obtain some external reward such as a cash payoff, hugs, praise, promotion or raise.

Both forms of motivation can be effective, but if you want to instill a long-term drive, external motivation won’t get you there. Some studies have shown that when a person is motivated internally and an external reward is then offered for the same action, it can kill the internal motivation.

How this might show up in the classroom is offering to bribe a class with “free time” if they get their work done. Once that teacher is in a position where he or she cannot offer free time, there is a chance that at least a portion of the class will rebel by goofing off.

Can external motivation be effective?

Yes! Here is how I use external and internal motivation as a team to help my challenged students transition from struggling and resistance to school into an eventual “love of learning”.

First, I reframe their experience with me in terms that are fun and valuable to them. So if a student loves video games, then I make sure to have video games available in the classroom (or at home) to use as an external motivator. Then I set a realistic goal and explain that once that goal is reached, we can play video games (together and individually) for a set amount of time. It’s then easy to redirect the student if she gets sidetracked by saying something like, “I like your stories, but we’re using up your video game time.” Over time, the goals become more challenging.

Throughout the entire process, I train them to be internally motivated by directing them to notice how good they feel when they accomplish a task and achieve a goal. I praise them in front of their parents and get the parents involved in rewards and celebrating accomplishments. The idea is to direct their focus on the good feelings that come with being successful. “Dumb” kids and Challenged Kids may not know what it feels like to be successful!

“Dumb” kids and Challenged Kids may not know what it feels like to be successful!

Will this new program of paying students for performance be successful? Maybe. Is it worth trying? Yes. My concern is that the teachers and administrators who are responsible for putting it in action will deliver the same quality of service we’ve come to expect from the government; i.e. crappy.

To turn the immediate benefit into a long term motivator, the soldiers on the front line of America’s War on Education need to build on their students’ successes.

• Intrinsic Motivation
• Motivating Students in the Classroom

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“We’re the most vacation-starved country in the industrialized world. By far. Small business employees, the majority of us, get an average of eight days off ….”

-Joe Robinson of www.worktolive.info
From http://www.accuracy.org/newsrelease.php?articleId=858

Prior to transitioning to teaching, I left the house at 8:30AM and was home by about 6:30PM. An hour for lunch or the gym squeezed its way in there on most days, but due to the nature of the business, I couldn’t skip lunch to come home early. The schedule prohibited me from taking care of just about anything that required business hours such as banking. Once home I dove into dinner, vegged out for about thirty minutes of quality time, then had to get ready for bed to do it all again the next day. Not the hardest work or schedule, but certainly worse than my wife’s as a public school teacher.

Teachers never get a real break during the day.

She would leave at 6:30AM and come home by 3:30PM. Occasionally her day lasted longer due to meetings. Yes, she sometimes brought home papers to grade. Yes, her lunch lasted a mere ½ hour and let’s be honest: teachers never really get a good break during the day.

There’s a five hour difference there. But then we come to vacations. Any time I wanted a vacation, I could take one (in theory). All I had to do was forgo getting paid. Sure, the office closed for certain holidays…all unpaid.

Compare that with the teachers’ lot: two weeks automatically at X-Mas, the most in-demand vacation time of the year…and the time when everyone in retail is required to work at least a portion of that time, if not overtime. 1-2 weeks for Spring Break. Two months for the summer. Every summer! Then, they actually get paid sick days and paid personal days, and can take additional unpaid time off as needed.

Do the math and I worked 680 hours per year more than she did. That’s 17 full-time work weeks!

So how do teachers get off crying that they are overworked?

Is it an issue of sliding standards? Are they just used to having the time off, and so any changes feel oppressive? Is there something to the claim that working with kids is exhausting—more so than most other jobs—and therefore teachers *need* an extended break to both catch their wind and brush up on their skills (and continuing professional education)?

I don’t have all the answers, I just act like I do. What I have observed in my wife is the following:

1. From day one she complained a lot and I had the impression that her department did her a disservice in that they seemed to foster a negative attitude.
2. She came home completely wiped out almost every weekday in her first two years teaching. In some cases, she would eat something and go directly to bed!
3. Her third year, she seemed to have the “system” down and rarely brought home any kind of papers to grade or projects to work on.
4. She lavishly enjoys her summers. During the school year, work is everything. Our schedule revolves around getting to bed on time.
5. Her normally robust immune system gets put down at least twice a year.
6. When she coaches, she gets home 2-6 hours later than usual, depending on practice and game schedules.

I’m interested in seeing for myself exactly how exhausting public-school teaching really is. There’s a solid chance that I’ll find myself overwhelmed, especially that first year. I do know that when I do spend time in the classroom (at other programs), it is draining. But is it draining enough to justify a two-month recovery?

Is teaching draining enough to justify a two-month recovery?

In Florida, many schools shuffle schedules to match the hurricane season. When several days are lost after a big storm, the school year gets extended and people get a little more used to the idea of a permanently longer year. Maybe year-round school! Why not? It isn’t like the students are learning the material in the time they have now (they aren’t).

I think many teachers suffer mini-strokes whenever the idea of year-round school is pulled from its dusty shelf for another look-see. I know I do. Three months of paid vacation lured me away from private sector work. Without it, at current pay, teaching is a chump’s game. With a raise proportionate to the additional time worked…its still a sour deal, but at least it enables more teachers to afford their own home…maybe mobile home.

Here are a few tidbits that make teachers crazy. These requirements eat up a great deal of time, are poorly organized, and deliver shoddy results.

1. Open House – Exactly what I want after a long day. Run home, eat, shower, run back to work for the three parents who give a shot.
2. Half-Days – Also known as “why bother to come to school” days by many students. Why not have a half-day when there is open house?
3. Imbecile Theatre – This is the mandatory meeting after school that is of no interest or impact on 90% of the faculty, but which allows some Imbecile to be ignored by the entire staff at one time.
4. Assemblies, Standardized Testing Assemblies and Standardized Testing Administration – Cut into teaching time many times during the year.
5. Playing the System – Get rid of the bottom 10% of the student body and your school grade goes up. Cha-ching! Bonus time — for the administration, usually. Screw those whiny kids!
6. Duty (Doodie) Periods – Who says teachers need planning periods? They can do that kind of work at home! Make ‘em stand duty, instead. Teachers love nothing more than guarding precious hallways instead of doing something important like grading papers and prepping labs.
7. Incompetent Administrators – A teacher can’t teach? Its too hard to fire ‘em, so make him an admin! We need more to meet Equal Opportunity quotas? Better hire this guy—don’t worry, he’ll learn English as he goes!

This is an issue with no easy answers, but lots of opinions. I’d like to hear yours. Send it to snoop at whyschoolsux dot com.

-Snoop

Additional sources:
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0728-02.htm
http://www.libraryspot.com/know/workweek.htm

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Here is an easy method for you to check on the effectiveness of your child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP).

If your child has a Learning Disability, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome or another challenge that makes life in Public School extra-challenging, then you know the drill. Once per year, a “team” of teachers, administrators and mental health professionals meet with one confused kid and two overwhelmed parents. At the end of this meeting the family is presented with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) that is supposed to ensure that the child has his or her special educational needs met.

How do you know if the IEP is any good?

You may also know the tragedy: that gut-sinking feeling when you read a report card full of D’s and F’s, while in your heart of hearts you know that your child is capable of so much more. Isn’t he? What if the teachers aren’t doing their part? What if the IEP sux? What if the principal wants to get rid of your kid because he thinks that the school’s rating is suffering due to the special needs students?

Step 1: Compare Assessment Grades Against Overall Grades

The first step is to collect all the grades and progress reports for your child. Go back as far as one year. Any further and you are running into a different batch of teachers. The best time to do this is during the first nine weeks of school. Why? So that if there are any problems you can address them before your child’s GPA suffers.

The teachers may be indicating which grades are Assessments, measures of skill mastery, and which are homework or attendance or performance based. If they haven’t, it is no big deal. You can just assume that all the quizzes and tests are the only assessments. Take the assessment scores and compute the average (by adding them all up and dividing by the number of assessment grades). This score tells you what level your child is testing out at. Now take a look at the overall grade and see how they compare.

If you child’s assessment score is higher than her overall grade then that is a sign that her IEP is ineffective or not being followed.

If you think about it, the assessment grade is really all that matters, isn’t it? It is the score that reflects how well your child has mastered the material. If that grade is being brought down because of missing or incomplete homework, poor classroom performance or spotty attendance, then the grade no longer reflects mastery of material and is now a reflection of how well your child matches the individual teacher’s idea of an “A” student. If the teacher thinks that homework is tops, then they weight homework as a larger portion of the grade. For most Challenged kids, homework is a nightmare, so this policy is like penalizing them for having a disability.

Don’t go on the rampage just yet!

Step 2: Take an inventory of what is being done outside of school.

The idea here is you need to verify that your end of the educational team is performing up to snuff. Ultimately, you need to be honest with yourself and ask whether your child is making an effort, and are you and your family supporting that effort. According to Snoop, the family should have clearly expressed expectations of school performance, in writing. They should provide a quiet place with all the tools needed for homework and study. They should make an effort to respect the student’s homework time as sacred, avoiding interruptions and distractions. They should also help redirect the student, help the student evaluate her progress and celebrate victories as a family.If this is being accomplished and your child is working diligently (to her ability), then the ball is definitely back in the school’s court.

It is a fact, maybe a sad one, that the squeaky wheel gets the oil in our school system.

Step 3: Make some noise!

Now that you have determined that the family and student are filling their roles, and the school possibly is not, you have to make some noise to get the issue noticed and resolved. If you have the time, meet with your child’s teachers and simply ask them how the disparity can be resolved. Don’t be afraid to rock the boat. Teachers may be resistant to the idea that they have to do more or aren’t following the IEP. Make a checklist and ask the questions: how are you complying with this IEP requirement? And this one? What about that one?If you need to, call the Special Education Coordinator (or whatever they call it at your school). Call the District Coordinator. Call the Principal. Call the parents of other Challenged Children. Time is precious and if your child is graduating with a regular diploma then her GPA really matters! The higher it is the more seriously colleges will take her.

A high GPA can be a point of pride in the life of a child who may feel defective and stupid. Don’t let RATs (Rotten Apple Teachers) take that away!

In the end, you may find that the teachers are all doing their jobs quite well. What then? CHANGE THE IEP! If everyone is doing their part and student performance is down the the IEP is not meeting all of their educational needs.

Do I need to hire a private tutor?

Our government has taken on the role of educator and has willingly accepted the responsibility for providing an adequate education for everyone. You should not need to hire a private tutor. However, I have seen many student benefit from one-on-one attention, and a private tutor is free to use techniques and teach skills that public schools aren’t interested in or prepared for. Challenged children are easily friendless, and a tutor or mentor can help meet the child’s social needs and teach socializing skills in a different way than schools do.

Good luck, and feel free to email me with any questions, comments or concerns.

-Snoop

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