OPINION | Tick-tock, tick-tock

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We sometimes lose track of it in today’s United States, but it used to be common knowledge among employers that 40 hours a week was the maximum that should be expected of employees if productivity was to be maintained. The more hours a week people are made to work, the less productive they become. This raises some important questions about how we manage our teachers and students.Over a century ago, factory managers began to realize that daily productivity increased when workers’ hours were cut from nine a day to eight a day. That is, by working one hour less a day, workers produced more over the course of that day. Henry Ford made waves in 1926 when he cut worktime from ten hours a day to eight, and from six days a week to five, without reducing pay. Continue Reading

OPINION | On the containing of multitudes

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In his “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman wrote, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” If this can be true of one person, how much truer might it be for our school system? The sheer diversity of our student body—not just diversity of race and class but diversity of interest and learning style—suggests that the quest for the one “right way to do it” may very well be a fruitless one. Instead, we should strive to develop a system of diverse schools working together to serve all students.That italicized piece, “working together,” is what is missing from so much of our discussion of schools today. Whether a result of the glorification of the rugged individual or a byproduct of an overblown faith in the magic of the free market, our policymakers have bought into an approach to education reform that pits each school and program against all others in the hope that The One Right System will emerge triumphant in the end.As a result, those efforts that have sought to innovate and bring creative approaches to educating students end up fractured and divided, forced to fight each other. Charter schools, which were supposed to be about teachers working with parents in the development of truly new approaches, have been co-opted by non-educators and a perverted set of incentives tied to test scores. Continue Reading

OPINION | Fewer options for greater Minnesota

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The past few weeks have seen a major legislative battle in Saint Paul about teacher seniority and school layoffs. The proposed policy, spearheaded by the same legislators happy to cut school funding at any opportunity, would replace seniority with an undeveloped, unproven evaluation system when schools are forced to fire teachers because the money’s run out. This is the wrong fight, waged for the wrong reasons, and it’s wrong for greater Minnesota.Our fight should be about how to avoid layoffs, not how to conduct them. After a decade of letting inflation slash state support to schools, too many districts have reached or passed the point of nothing left to cut. Still, they carry on, seeking out new ways to save here and there without having to further reduce their staff sizes. Continue Reading

The potential and peril of edu-startups

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Education Week recently ran a story looking at the explosion of education-related startup companies hoping to break into the “education market”. Venture capital has started pouring into such endeavors, and the opportunities and questions presented by the rise of new classroom technology have given that money somewhere to go. There are some good things to come of this, but—as always—there are some caveats, too. Continue Reading

OPINION | Testing out of control

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Late last week, in an absurd fit of data-mania, New York City made the shameful decision to release three years’ worth of test scores attached to individual teachers’ names. This is a gross violation of any conceivable standard of professionalism and a sign that the conservative war on teachers has reached new heights of repulsiveness. There is no acceptable justification for this disgraceful behavior.New York is the second city to make this reprehensible decision. Los Angeles made a similar dump in 2010 and faced righteous indignation as a result. You would think New York would have learned from that example, but they apparently decided that the public outcry was worth hurting teachers with bogus scores.There is no question about the bogusness of these scores. Indeed, their bogusitude knows no bounds. Continue Reading