Anyone who knows me at this point in my teaching career knows that I enjoy opportunities for true professional development, in contrast to those workshops and webinars normally offered by the School District of Philadelphia. I have written in months past about the Math + Science Teacher Forum, the Philadelphia Area Math Teachers' Circle, EdCampPhilly, and more. Just last night a colleague and I hosted our first Reflective Teacher Network where teachers shared actual problems they are having right now and got suggestions from colleagues across the city.

All this begs the question: why do the leadership of the School District, the Union, charter management organizations, and more not listen to what we want? I understand that cash is tight across the city - this is why I do not begrudge those who created narrated webinars to train staff across the city. There is simply not enough money to provide differentiated instruction for all of us. 

So, what's my solution? Let us communicate with each other and share what we want and what we have to offer. I wish a central organization would create a simple, easily-searched database of people and their instructional resources. Imagine if teachers at School A needed to learn about the Understanding By Design model and teachers at School B were able to fulfill that need. Just type in a few search strings and - poof - your screen fills with the contact information and bio of the potential trainer. By no means do I have the necessary knowledge to create this database - but I'm sure someone does. Please step up to the plate and announce yourself so we can get behind you!

If someone downtown would listen to us, maybe we would improve our practice with less money and less worry. Maybe we could call this movement PD4Us - a group of teachers coordinating the offerings of supports across the city for all of us to learn from each other. Wouldn't that be something?

Tonight I participated in the first general meeting of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers for the school year 2012-2013. This is a pretty important year since our contract is set to expire in August 2013 and a lot of people are wondering whether we are going to go the route of Newark, NJ or Chicago, IL. A number of people are concerned about loss of pension benefits, teacher evaluation tied to student test scores, and more.

But my main question is: Do I care about the Union?

My demographic is traditionally uninvolved in Union politics, and for good reason: we don't feel a part of it.

Even though the Union negotiates our contract and we are subject to their collective bargaining unit, few young teachers like myself feel that we have ownership or even membership in the Union itself. This is quite strange since the whole concept of the Union is to get people like me together and form plans of action to protect ourselves.

That being said, I find myself going to more meetings this year, holding my ear closer to the ground, and trying to pay more attention. I just wish I could convince others to do the same. Some say this is because I care about my salary, my job, and my benefits. I would argue it is because I care about the kids in my classroom. 

What person is going to want to stay in a job that has few rewards, both related to salary and emotional issues if they do not feel like they will benefit from it long term? I am certain that without the Union, teachers would be on their own in a very bad way. 

So, I do indeed still care about the Union and am trying to make the Union care more about me. I am hoping to engage the young teachers across the city to bring them together and see not only that the Union influences policy around us, but that we influence policy around the Union. We should stand up for our beliefs and make it known that we can work together to ensure better teachers for our students, more supplies for our classrooms, and fewer standardized tests mandating low-quality, uncreative instruction.

I want to preface this blog entry by saying it will be longer than usual and contain more math-specific content. I will try to elaborate as best I can for the non-math teachers out there to understand.

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As many of my readers well know I am definitely what some would call an "independent spirit" when it comes to my pedagogy. Others might call that "rebellious" but I choose to think of myself as one who can be swayed by a valid, reliable argument.

With that in mind I would like to share a recent frustration that I have with the School District of Philadelphia in the context of the Algebra 1 course that I am teaching. From my understanding and short experience (although 3 years teaching is already more than a lot of folks out there), the progression at the beginning of the course is something like the following:

1) Review pre-Algebra topics including the order of operations (PEMDAS)
2) Connect these topics to patterns in nature and the world to analyze
3) Discuss algebraic representations (the variable x, etc) and apply to these situations
4) Connect patterns and algebraic representations to create a linear graph

There are obviously more things to do inside each topic but this is what I think makes sense for the start of the class.

Now, contrast that with the most recently updated Planning and Scheduling Timeline from the School District of Philadelphia. I will quote the "eligible content" here:

1) A1.1.1.1.1: Compare and/or order any real numbers. Note: Rational and irrational may be mixed.
2) A1.1.1.1.2: Simplify square roots
3) A1.1.1.2.1: Find the Greatest Common Factor (GCF) and/or the Least Common Multiple (LCM) for sets of monomials.
4) A1.1.1.3.1: Simplify/evaluate expressions its equivalent forms. involving properties/laws of exponents, roots, and/or absolute values to solve problems. Note: Exponents should be integers from -10 to 10.
5) A1.1.1.4.1: Use estimation to solve problems.
6) A1.1.1.5.1: Add, subtract, and/or multiply polynomial expressions (express answers in simplest form). Note: Nothing larger than a binomial multiplied by a trinomial.
7) A1.1.1.5.2: Factor algebraic expressions, including difference of squares and trinomials. Note: Trinomials are limited to
the form ax2+bx+c where a is equal to 1 after factoring out all monomial factors.
8) A1.1.1.5.3: Simplify/reduce a rational algebraic expressions.

I completely agree and have been focusing on teaching the first five points they suggest. But at point 6 I respectfully and wholeheartedly disagree with their plan. 

For those uninitiated folks, a "polynomial" is something like 5x^2 + 2x - 1. What the District suggests we do is emphasize those types of expressions before we help kids understand the concept of simpler ideas like a "linear equation" (ex. y = 2x + 3). Then they go on to request (at point 7) that we teach the kids to factor these expressions when the kids don't know how they were created in the first place!

I definitely do not understand the rationale behind all of this and wish I could discuss this with the person (or people) who created it. Maybe they could explain to me why this progression is pedagogically sound. In the meantime, if I don't teach this content in the "proper order" then my students will perform poorly on benchmark assessments this year. Since we do not want that to happen, I am being forced to teach according to a plan that I fervently think has little relation to proper pedagogy.

For the past three years I have seen the School District of Philadelphia slowly collapse upon itself. As the School Reform Commission approved a $300 million credit card bill for operating expenses, I am almost sure to be paying for it later on as a teacher in a public school. We have fewer resources than ever before and are still expected to produce the same results. Whether due to cheating or lack of funding (and regardless of your feeling of standardized tests) we are definitely not doing that.

For many teachers across the city this means it is time to hunker down, update the resume, close your classroom door, and hope for the best.

For me, it means action. I wonder what I can do as an individual teacher that can influence larger policy or mobilize others across the city to make the lives of our children better. To that end I attend meetings of various organizations, trying to learn what is best of all of them and how to apply their skills to help my students.

But there are two groups that are notoriously not paying attention to us: the administration at the School District of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. 

If they were smart, they would both be engaging teachers across the city in a collaborative effort to make change. I'm not talking about holding so-called "community meetings" over the course of a month. I am talking about a consistent push by people downtown to see, experience, and survey what it is like on our end and what we need to make things better.

There are many of us who have ideas and would be happy to help implement them. But the only way we will is if others listen. So, I beg of you: please open your ears.

I listened to about half of the Radio Times piece yesterday featuring Helen Gym and Matthew Brouilette and I must say it was quite illuminating. At first they discussed the upcoming movie "Won't Back Down" and how it portrays the Hollywood version of the various parent trigger laws being debated across the country. These laws are supposed to allow parents to take over and turnaround an underperforming school as long as a majority of the community agrees to it. What they do not discuss much through the political field is to whom they are turning these schools over? Many times these schools become charter schools and my oust the parent community they say they support due to hard-to-navigate entry standards or application processes.

But the most interesting thing to come of this radio show was the illumination that the PA Department of Education (PDE) has allowed test scores of charter schools to be elevated by treating each school as an individual District as opposed to an individual school. 

Even though I disagree with the use of test scores to compare grades, schools, etc, the charter advocates general do use them, so we'll analyze their rationale. According to this metric, 4thd grade in Charter School should compare only its 4th grade students against those at Public School Y in order to see which students are performing better. What PDE has allowed is for charter schools to average all their scores together in order to compare, which might inflate scores for individual grades.

This practice seems unfair to both charters and public schools alike. By playing games with numbers, the PDE will inflate certain grades' scores while deflating others. And the comparison is based on more students, changing the nature of said comparison.

While I do not advocate using these scores this way, at least use them fairly!

I cannot be fired this year.

Sort of.

As part of a new program crafted by the School District of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers certain educators will be formally observed this year (with the potential outcome of dismissal) and others will be responsible for creating and monitoring Professional Development Plans (PDPs). I happen to be a lucky member of the latter category.

To that end I decided to include the requirement of reading one research article on education per week with analysis to be posted here. To be honest, I'm already behind by one week but I'm doing my best to catch up with my new role as Technology Teacher Leader in the school so I've been busy. 

With all that in mind, I read a paper entitled "What Does Certification Tell Us About Teacher Effectiveness." The authors use data from the New York City public school system to analyze the value-added scores of teachers from various backgrounds, including traditional certification, NY Teacher Fellows, and Teach for America corps members. Overall, they find there to be very little difference between the groups in terms of their effect on student gains, with the exception that TFA teachers leave the classroom in astonishingly large numbers after their two year commitment is completed. 

A few things I learned by reading this article:

• In the 1999-2000 school year, 60 percent of all new teachers in New York City were uncertified. This figure alone is enough to rethink the entirely of education in that city. The NY Teacher Fellows program was a response to that statistic - created to bring more people in through alternative avenues. That being said, they still only spend 7 weeks in a summer program in preparation for the year.
• According to the Value-Added Model (VAM) used, TFA teachers are 0.02 standard deviations higher in math than regularly certified teachers. This means they produce better test scores at a slightly higher rate than their compatriots. 
• NY Teaching Fellows have similar rates of retention as regularly-certified teachers (around 50% after 5 years) but TFA teachers are much lower (18% after 5 years). 
• Experience is the best predictor of successful increases in VAM. 

While this information may be used to argue that TFA teachers are the same (or better) than regularly-certified teachers, I think we should take a moment to analyze the metrics used: test scores and VAM. From my experience I would argue there is another lurking variable: teaching to the test. Additionally, since they are using VAM as a measure of student learning when, as Gary Rubenstein recently pointed out, it is not. 

The most important take-aways for me from this article are: 1) New York City (like others) has simply changed the definition of "uncertified" and allowed those with little to no experience to remain in the classroom; and 2) We should be emphasizing teacher retention to improve quality overall - even if it only affects VAM in this study, overall it improves outcomes for children.

Today was the first day since my brief tenure teaching at the High School of the Future that I got the opportunity to use one of the best formative assessment tools I know: ActivExpressions. A Promethean student response system (SRS), the ActivExpression is an easy-to-use device that allows the student to work on sets of questions at their own pace while the teacher reacts in a just-in-time kind of way. These devices - while quite expensive - can be a wonderful boon to a teacher who knows how to use them. 

In my Algebra 1 classes I had prepared a problem set wherein students had to arrange numbers from least to greatest. This specific task has many levels of complexity as evinced by my creation of varying difficulties for the students. For those who needed more work towards the beginning, they would focus on the first two levels and practice to get the answers correct. For those speedier students, they could fly ahead to levels 3, 4, and 5. 

As students progress from one level to the next I can determine which of them is struggling and assist at that moment. Alternatively, I can keep this data for later use and track progress by comparing this administration with one I plan for the future.

I have also used this system to take quick polls from the class on a variety of issues and graphically display the responses - something quite applicable to a math classroom. 

Formative assessment is a tough thing to perform and I'm happy to have my hands on a tool that can ensure I push myself to use data to make a difference.