State law mandates 990 hours of instructional time be provided for each student under its authority with a minimum of 180 school days to achieve this goal. Unfortunately, the School District of Philadelphia is not fulfilling this requirement, instead using that time to process report cards and administer state tests, reducing the true number of instructional hours by a large percentage. 

Let's take my school as an example: we have 47 minute periods that students attend 7 period per day. With 181 days planned for the school year, that is 47*7*181/60 = 992.5 hours. That means if we lose half a day to an unapproved issue we are technically in violation of state law. 

It just so happens that this year the School District of Philadelphia has decided to require teachers to submit grades by the end of the day on Wednesday, June 12 even though classes do not end until Friday, June 21. That is a loss of 7 school days (or 7*7*47/60 = 38.4 instructional hours). 

Additionally, this year was the introduction of the Keystone Exam so we have organized administration in the Winter and Spring with delayed openings totaling 10 days. That is a loss of 10*3 (hours per delayed opening) = 30 instructional hours. (I am well aware that the state wants this test - I would argue its use is way too hectic and not as valuable to be valid). 

In total with just the end-of-year calendar and testing schedules we have lost almost 10 school days (roughly 6% of the school year). Not only is this a bad idea but it also seems to go against the very laws we are supposed to uphold in Pennsylvania. 

I wish more people would pay attention to this issue. 

The past week or so has been quite hectic for me: my student-teacher has finished his work in my classroom, 3rd quarter has ended, and new, austere budgets were announced across the School District. In all that time, the one major thing that has kept me going despite all the distractions has been the conversations I've been lucky enough to have with my students. Even if they are not focused on math content in particular it is always interesting to hear and discuss what they have to say. Unfortunately, with the new wave of budget cuts I worry that those conversations will go by the wayside as I'll be dealing with content- and management-related issues instead.

Student relationships are at the core of what I do as an educator. When people ask me what I do, my response is usually, "I teach kids math." Notice what came first? Kids. Then my content-area.

Over the past few years, however, there has been such a drive for content that we as an education system are losing the drive we once had. I've been thinking about this a lot in the context of cyber schools in general and the one the School District of Philadelphia wants to open in particular. The choice to invest money into cyber schools is a sensitive one at both a District and State level - it involves funding, politics, and most importantly kids. The main thing that often gets left out in the conversation, however, is that idea of relationship-building between student and teacher that could case amazing outcomes for students across the spectrum. How can a student sitting at a keyboard using online software be as engaged with their teacher as someone in the same room?

Even if I am in the same room, though, how do I focus my attention between 33 kids in a class (the legal limit in Philadelphia). Class sizes have ballooned so much I sometimes forget things my students tell me - a fact I am trying to fix but find it difficult when I have to remember what happened with 150 students every day. Honestly, I can tell you I am unable to forge the kind of strong relationships that foster good teaching with that number of students. 

Articles like this one dating back to 1988 report on the importance of lowering class size. And this one from 1998 focuses on Philadelphia in particular, mentioning the need to reduce class size to help student achievement. While recent research focuses on the teacher as the most important in-school factor for student success, I would argue that my quality diminishes with more and more students in my room. It takes me longer to grade assignments so I make easier ones; my feedback is less thorough so students learn slower; I am forced to focus on content to the detriment of my student's feelings on the subject leading to more math anxiety.

If we as a society are serious about improving education we need to make sure to invest in it. As said in The Centennial Anniversary of Public Schools of Philadelphia, "A school system that is not costing a great deal these days is not worth a great deal."

Yesterday the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the PhillyPLUS program - the new School District "Pathway to Leadership in Urban Schools" - has selected some of its first cohort to begin in the Fall. For those unfamiliar with the program or its impetus, it is important to note that there is more than just a teacher churn going on across urban districts in the USA. Recent statistics for our city place two thirds of schools with a leadership change in the past five years. Anyone inside or outside of schools knows that consistent high-quality leadership is a cornerstone of a good education system.

Enter PhillyPLUS: a program designed to take potential leaders and put them on the fast track to principal-ship of schools across Philadelphia. Participants, also known as "residents," will receive a six-week intensive summer training and then be placed in a high-needs school somewhere in the District. During their year in the school they will receive support through mentorship and once-per-month meetings in schools where residents are located. At the end of their year they receive PA certification and can get a job in the District as full-fledged principal.

One might ask: are there prerequisites for this program? Perhaps teaching experience? My understanding of this from years past was that each principal had to have at least five years of teaching under their belt before getting a job as an assistant principal and/or principal. Apparently these rules have changed as the PA Department of Education only requires three years of "professional experience in an educational setting that is related to the instructional process." 

I find this trend in this country to be alarming: parents and community members are demanding more and better teachers while criticizing the profession and reducing requirements thereof. While there is a mixture of data on the effectiveness of Teach for America corps members, one thing is clear: overall they do not stay in the classroom much more then 2-3 years. Those who stay longer generally do better. 

So what will happen with a program of this nature? Will these new principals really have the experience necessary to stay long-term? Since, like TfA, they are being placed in the highest-need schools, are we demanding too much without enough support? I hope this program does well and increases the supply of high-quality leaders but have serious concerns about this process. 

This evening I attended the Math + Science Teacher Forum hosted by the Philadelphia Education Fund and can honestly say my world was rocked.

The session I went to was about how to think about unit placement and place value for middle school students, but really applies to all students across the board. During the conversation we talked a bit about how the emphases in the Common Core curriculum are supposed to focus more on the conceptual basis for how we do things like multiplying 34x38 but on the ground in schools teachers are still using the same pedagogical tools.

The thrust of the argument is this: more often than not math teachers are teaching procedures and specific guided techniques instead of the concepts behind the mathematics. This might be so because our teachers are poorly trained or because the tests don't emphasize enough of the concepts or some other reason. Whatever it is, the problem exists and we are tasked with fixing it. 

So, now for the example:

This session was run by Dr. Ellen Clay of the Math Forum, a wonderful group from Drexel University that tries to make sure math teachers do a good job. They have a lot of resources, including sessions like this one. 

The basic problem is multiplying 34x38, as I mentioned earlier. If you are like me, you learned to set it up this way and use the procedure where you multiply the 4 and the 8, then the 3 and the 8, then the 4 and the 3, then the 3 and the 3. If you complete the steps correctly, you will get an answer of 1292. 

This is all well and good, but it is such an isolated skill. With some deeper understanding, you can connect it to fractions, polynomials, and more. Let's take a closer look.

Instead of thinking of the numbers as blocks like "34" or "38," Dr. Clay suggests we think of them in groups. 34 is 3 tens and 4 ones. 38 is 3 tens and 8 ones. So multiplication becomes a series of "unit matching" problems. 

If you see the text at the top, it says "3 tens times 3 tens = 9 hundreds;" then "3 tens times 8 ones is 24 tens" and so on and so forth. Instead of using a procedure, we are thinking about the units being used. Since we know that 3x3 = 9 and tens x tens = hundreds, we can conceive of 900 in a deeper way. We still get the same, correct, answer, but now we can apply it elsewhere.

This then extends to if you had a math problem like (x + 3)(x - 2). Now I am multiplying "1 x times 1 x = 1 x^2" and "1 x times -2 ones = -2 x's." It doesn't look so good in text, but I hope you get the idea. 


If we want to get some use out of the Common Core we need to understand the mathematics at a deeper level and learn methods to explain that deeper level to our students. Dr. Clay and the Math Forum will help that happen.

I was surprised to read Bill Gates' piece in the Washington Post this evening mostly because - while he acknowledges some of what teachers desire in our profession - he equates the measurement of student performance to getting points in a football game:

One of the major issues that is often overlooked in the debates surrounding testing is that it is so incredibly difficult to measure "success." Is it attendance rate? High school graduation rate? College acceptance rate? A certain score on a test?

Many of my readers know I have certain beliefs regarding standardized tests: from what I have read and experienced they do not tell me nearly as much about my student's knowledge level than what I can glean from just talking to them. Moreover, they have many negative effects as evinced by the recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette piece where a mother describes opting out of the Pennsylvania state test (PSSA). Negative outcomes abound for students in the form of high anxiety, a hatred of schooling, and a belief that education is the same thing as filling in bubble sheets. 

This past Tuesday I attended a workshop discussing the new wave of high school tests for Pennsylvania called the Keystones. Modeled after the New York Regents, they will be required for graduation beginning with next year's 9th grade classes. At this workshop we discussed how the questions are significantly more difficult than ever before because they are at a higher level on Webb's Depth of Knowledge meaning they require deeper thought and connection in order to answer. The problem here is that the PSSA test beforehand has narrowed the curriculum so much that students are mostly exposed to multiple choice questions demanding simple recall in isolated situations - they have no idea how to apply concepts in new contexts. 

Granted, this seems like a good goal: change the test to make it force deeper critical thought. But, it is still focusing on a few subject areas and the students are not used to these questions yet. And the new policies have "eliminated the requirement for students to complete a culminating project in order to graduate." A project that allowed students to be creative and think at a deeper level (Level 4 according to Webb) has been curtailed and a lower-quality assessment has replaced it. 

As a society we need to foment curiosity amongst our students and not reduce their learning to bubbles on a page.

I spent much of the month of March dreaming about some of the things I was reading in a wonderful book called Trusting Teachers with School Success. In the book, the authors explain their research into 11 schools across the country that are allowing some type of intense autonomy to the benefit of their students. 

At the core of this vision is the idea that if people (administrators, parents, community members, policy makers, etc) just asked us teachers what we thought would make sense, then we would better be able to prepare our young people for the new future that awaits them. 

A few specific aspects of this autonomy are:

1) Teacher control over curriculum - this may be obvious to some teachers, but probably not to some administrators. With control over what to teach every day, I can better serve my students.

2) Teacher control over budgets - imagine a world where we could help purchase new materials not just for our classrooms but for the school. If teachers could come to agreement on if they needed money for trips, new furniture, storage, etc, then we'd understand some of the financial pinches of wasting paper but also how to balance the money we need for good use.

3) Teacher control over hiring/firing - this is a tricky concept that can run us into trouble but I think overall is an intriguing idea that should be pursued. The staff at a given school understands the culture the best and would know if a new hire would work well or not with other teachers. 

There were many different aspects on which that these schools were compared (check out the autonomy matrix here) but they all were implemented in slightly different ways. I think it would do districts across the country a great service to trial some of these ideas. Some are scary but all have interesting opportunities.