The correct answer is: yes.

If you want an NY Times summary of how wording matters in polls, it’s here.

One of my favorite articles on the topic was written in 1941, by George Gallup. Yep, that Gallup.

Anyway, now let’s move on to a specific poll.

There were two versions of the question. Version 1 was asked in certain years. Version 2 was asked in certain years.

Much has been made of this opinion survey.

(You can click on the image to make it clearer).

So what do you think?

Specifically,

1. Do you trust the upward line? Is this policy getting more popular?

2. Do you think the 2011 drop is caused by something? Or is it simply an outlier? Or are you not sure? It’s just one data point.

Now let’s re-examine the graph, but with the years listed on the X-axis.

Now what do you think? Sputtering around until 1995, then a surge. Then a down point in 2011.

So if you want to connect the public opinion here to federal policy, you’d connect it to Clinton/Bush, and then maybe blame Obama.

Okay, now I’ll show you the whole image.

Now what do you think?

Well here’s what happened when this survey came out.

1. Some reporters wrote: “Teacher satisfaction has dropped to a 20-year-low.” Example.

2. Some commentators argued: The decline is the fault of…President Obama….Michelle Rhee….teacher bashing.

Let me briefly address the commentary. If you want to opine on Race To The Top (federal policy) “causing” the 2011 low point, would you also ascribe the high scores to President Bush and No Child Left Behind? My guess: no. Then how do you determine causality?

To the reporters, however, I’d question the “20-year-low” meme.

Because….drum roll….this survey has used TWO different questions.

And we agreed from the jump that wording matters in public opinion polls.

Let’s create 2 new graphs from the data, shall we?

This graph is for the question:

All in all, how satisfied would you say you are with teaching as a career?

*

This next graph is for the question:

All in all, how satisfied would you say you are with your job as a teacher in the public schools?

The first poll question uses the word “career.” We can probably agree that evokes certain emotions.

The other poll question omits “career” and injects “public schools.” Also evocative.

So how might a reporter more precisely write up this poll? Well, I know it would kill the theme (teachers are unhappy!), but these would be more precise:

Teachers were asked a question about job satisfaction 5 times in the last 26 years. Three times (2011, 1987, 1985) roughly 40% said they were “very satisfied.” Once that number hit 52% (2001) and once it hit 33% (1986).

That would be a neutral version.

Or:

Teachers were asked a question about job satisfaction 5 times in the last 26 years. The second highest level of satisfaction was in 2011, with 44% saying “highly satisfied.”

I wouldn’t choose to write it that way, even though it’s factual. The 44% is probably within margin of error to the 40% numbers.

Or:

Teachers were asked a question about satisfaction 8 times between 1985 and 2009. The proportion of “very satisfied” teachers rose steadily.

Now what causes teacher opinion to change? I have no idea. It seems to me that the results could lend themselves to all sorts of plausible guesses.

But I do fault the survey, and the reporters, for not separating the results of the 2 questions. It’s likely that the wording skews the results in some way.

“A 20-year-low” would suggest to the many readers that you’d asked a question every year or so, which did not happen. A “20-year-low” would not convey what really happened: you asked 3 times in 20 years.

Put another way:

Let’s say this 2012 survey reverts to the “public schools” wording of the question. The one which has shown steady increase over the years.

I’d bet a beer that MORE than 44% are very satisfied — “despite” Obama, Gates, Rhee, the Red Sox, Mayan calendar, and other proposed “causes” of teacher dissatisfaction.

Anyone want that bet?

Molly sent me an email about this Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker article. It’s about predicting who will be successful NFL quarterbacks and teachers.

Molly — I blogged it 2 years ago, so I thought I’d re-link to my views. It’s an oldie-but-goodie.

2. More NFL

That reminds me. Fun event at Harvard’s Ed School recently. Minnesota Vikings coach Brendan Daly described talent evaluation.

Athleticism is certainly a factor in evaluating talent, but what sets a player apart is his ability to study and learn the game, said Brendan Daly, who is also a former teacher.

We ask ourselves “what is his ability to learn, what is his demeanor toward learning … how is he going to learn, absorb, and understand the game,” he said. “That, in my personal opinion, is the difference between the guys who make it and the guys who don’t.”

The main “nuts and bolts” of teaching is very similar, agreed his brother. “It’s how you prepare for class; it’s how you respond to things when they go wrong. It’s how you learn from your mistakes, and how capable you are of changing.”

After the event, I chatted with Coach Daly. He mentioned an unknown D-lineman on the Patriots practice squad that he coveted.

As a loyal fan, I meant to call up Jonathan Kraft — protect this guy. I forgot. Turns out Belichick had picked up the scent on their own, and paid the guy to stay.

Carter has put on 10 pounds since the end of the season, and about 25 since his last game with Central Arkansas. He’s up to 275 now, and said he hasn’t lost any of his speed and has gained explosiveness through all of his work in the weight room.

Do teachers have any equivalent of the weight room?

But there’s something else he’s gained: His younger sister, Keyarrie Hudson, has moved in with him. Hudson suffers from lupus, a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disorder that can affect the joints, kidneys, and other organs.

Even though she’ll be spending a few months with her brother in Massachusetts and then a couple of months back home in Oklahoma to take college courses, having Hudson here even part-time means that she can get better medical care. She is now seeing the third-ranked lupus specialist in the country, Carter said, and her kidney specialist is better than the one in Oklahoma as well.

Some doctors are better than other doctors. Who’d have thunk?

3. Doctorate?

Had a fun visit on Friday from Harvard’s Ed School dean. Reminded me: if you read this blog and have toyed with the idea of a doctorate in education of some sort, check out Harvard’s EdLD degree in leadership. Three years. Decent stipend. A capstone but no traditional thesis.

I guest taught a class there a few weeks for Greg Gunn. It’s an impressive cohort, good camaraderie. Evidently in Year 1 of the program, each got $500 to blow on something educational. And they all somehow managed to travel roundtrip to Singapore or Finland, cold-calling grad students in those nations to ask if they could crash on their couches, etc.

4. MTR Critique

This is our first year of having elementary teachers in our teacher residency. We had a great teacher visiting us from DC also on Friday. After watching some of our student teachers in action, she gave us some pointers. For example:

Our early elementary teacher trainees don’t use nearly enough visuals in their lessons. They say stuff, and expect kids to learn it just from hearing it. That is: Teacher says or explains X, poses a “Check For Understanding” question, kid can’t answer. Teacher repeats X or explains a different way, asks again, kid still can’t answer. Those kids need to see the idea. See printed words, see pictures.

A bunch of MTR alums had drinks together on Saturday. Some even had traveled from New York just to hang out. One alum, teaching at KIPP Lynn, said her principal’s critique was that our residents needed to learn more Joy Factor moves.

5. EPIC award

On my to-do list is to write with Harvard doctoral student Matt Kraft an easy-to-follow explanation of various studies of charters, teacher prep, and the achievement gap. One day.

Meanwhile, we just got a stats-heavy report from Mathematica. They crunched all the numbers for this EPIC grant. They calculated the Value-Added of a ton of charter schools.

For example, our high school had a VAM of 0.11 standard deviations in English. So in this particular analysis, our school was 8th out of 26 charters measured.

A question for the stats-minded among you. Given those gains, what would you predict a kid at the 50th percentile would rise to after one year? 51st? 60th? 70th?

Answer: 54th.

In other words, you can have a pretty good team working hard, making reasonably good decisions about curriculum and such — so that you’re a pretty good charter school relative to other high-performers — and the 1-year result for each kid is useful but not huge.

That’s why so many charter networks now serve either 7 grades (6 to 12) or all the grades (K-12).

KIPP started as middle schools, but now does K-12. Excel started as a middle school, will now be 5-12. Match started as high school, now is 6-12. And our new school (Match Community Day) is preK-12.

That is, if you keep nudging kids up by 4 percentile points in a year, you need a lot of years to get where you want to go.

Who is the first person to get these people to agree on something?

Randi Weingarten
Mike Feinberg
Linda Darling-Hammond
Cory Booker
Eva Moskowitz
Terry Grier
Howard Gardner
and
Your Mom

Answer:

Chris Gabrieli

According to teacher-appreciation.info, “about 1944 Arkansas teacher Mattye Whyte Woodridge began corresponding with political and education leaders about the need for a national day to honor teachers and show teacher appreciation. Woodbridge wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt who in 1953 persuaded the 81st Congress to proclaim a National Teacher Day that would serve to the purpose of celebrating teacher appreciation across the nation.”

After much lobbying by the National Education Association (NEA) and others, Congress declared March 7, 1980, as National Teacher Day. The NEA and its affiliates continued to observe Teacher Day on the first Tuesday in March until 1985, when NEA and the National PTA established Teacher Appreciation Week as the first full week of May. The NEA Representative Assembly then voted to make the Tuesday of that week National Teacher Day.

So there you go.

The MTR team made lunch for our high school teachers on Tuesday. Laura wrote:

Tomorrow’s menu is entirely vegetarian and hopefully entirely delicious. Here’s the plan:

Bow-Tie Pasta with Lentil Bolognese Sauce*
Garlic Bread
Spinach and greens salad with tomatoes
Dessert chez Veronica

*For those of you with allergens, the sauce has no gluten or lactose or nuts, but does have soy

I know you’re wondering: what did Veronica make for dessert?

Cupcakes.

1. U of Virginia Ed School dean Bob Pianta

In the Chronicle of Higher Ed, he writes:

Stop Complaining About Teacher Assessments; Find Alternatives

State agencies today certify teachers using an accumulation of academic credits and assessments that do not discriminate between good and poor performers. Nearly all graduates pass criteria that have no known association with teaching and learning in elementary and secondary classrooms.

But when teacher-preparation organizations say that state-standards tests and value-added metrics are neither reliable nor valid, they sound like unions arguing against teacher evaluation—placing blame on imperfect assessments rather than finding alternatives and testing them.

This is important. There are (at least) two groups of folks opposed to Arne Duncan’s call for measuring teacher prep programs based on how their alumni do with actual kids in the classroom.

a. Some teacher prep leaders welcome it; their chief worry is precision.

b. A second group wants to avoid it entirely. Instead, they’d like to focus on those currently being trained. Moreover, they’d like that assessment to be in the form of videos. That’s a topic for another day.

1b. How Do We Measure Our Alums?

With our small teacher prep program, we do three things beyond surveying alums: track employment, interview principals about the performance of our grads, and hire “blind” evaluators to see our grads in action. The evaluators also see other rookies and 2nd year teachers in the same schools, who then become our control group).

We will be adding two new measures starting next year.

a. Surveys of the children taught by our grads.

b. And student learning gains as measured by test scores.

We’ll do what Pianta recommends:

…Work out the kinks in measurement, develop and test parameters of accountability that could inform policy, and use the teacher-preparation process to begin improvements (in our teacher prep program).

Massachusetts is going in this direction, so barring a U-turn in policy, every teacher prep program will get to a similar place.

However, we’re eager to learn from these imperfect measures now — and do a better job of training our next cohort…..

2. Vanderbilt Ed School dean Camilla Benbow

In the Tennessean, she writes:

Even U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has accused schools of education of doing a mediocre job….

Put simply, we can think of alternative licensure programs as emphasizing talent identification, while traditional education schools emphasize talent development.

Programs such as Teach for America are strong at talent identification. They choose their candidates from among the best students in the best colleges and universities in the country. Then they put these talented students through a boot camp and send them quickly into high-need schools, where they do, in fact, have an impact.

In comparison, most education schools enroll individuals who represent a broader range of academic experience and skills, and develop their talents over two to five years….

The abilities of novice teachers tend to improve significantly during their first few years.

Her broader point is true. Some of the alt programs, including ours, are getting a particularly strong group of recent college grads, compared to traditional ed schools. This makes it hard for us (and any other selectors of high gpa college grads) to separate our “selection effect” from our “training effect.”

Dean Benbow also right that skilled teachers can serve as critical mentors/coaches.

I’d quibble with four things:

a. While TFA is the dominant player in the alternative programs, there are many non-TFA “alternative” teacher residencies which spend more on talent development than even traditional ed schools like Vanderbilt.

b. It’s true that TFA does attract elite folks. Yet they also spend a lot on talent development once the teacher is deployed. My guess is this investment is far higher than what Vandy spends on their graduates.

c. Lots of TFA folks actually go to grad school. For example, all of the Boston area TFAers take classes at Boston University’s ed school. So I suppose this would be talent selection and development.

d. She is right that teachers improve with experience. But here we run into a problem: the word “significant.”

Statistically, it means “unlikely to be caused by chance.”

Regular people, like your mom, think of that word as “sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention.”

Scholars say that — on average — teaching experience is “significant” only in the first meaning. But not the second.

The green teachers are a bit better than the blue teachers.

See my blog post here if you’re curious about this.

A few days ago I posed a question about how to get kids who hate reading to truly come to like it. Particularly kids aged 11, 12, etc, whose negative views on reading may have hardened.

The full list of ideas is here. I’ll highlight four ideas today.

1. Paul and Allison are a husband-and-wife teaching duo at Edward Brooke Charter School. Allison describes how her principal, Kimberly, rewrote learning standards with the help of teachers. She loves it.

We now have power standards like, “Can sustain reading for 45 minutes,” “Can identify his/her favorite genres and authors,” and “Can ask questions to monitor comprehension.”

More nit-picky standards like “Can identify cause and effect,” or “Can visualize while reading” have been either de-powered or eliminated completely.

We have half the number of standards that we used to….

2. Sarah Tantillo, author of the Literacy Cookbook, recommends a blog called The Book Whisperer. There’s a book, too, which Amazon readers have given 5 stars, subtitled How To Awake The Inner Reader in Every Child.

Donalyn Miller says she has yet to meet a child she couldn’t turn into a reader. No matter how far behind Miller’s students might be when they reach her 6th grade classroom, they end up reading an average of 40 to 50 books a year. Miller’s unconventional approach dispenses with drills and worksheets that make reading a chore. Instead, she helps students navigate the world of literature and gives them time to read books they pick out themselves. Her love of books and teaching is both infectious and inspiring. The book includes a dynamite list of recommended “kid lit” that helps parents and teachers find the books that students really like to read.

Vero, I need that, thanks. I’m particularly interested b/c it seems like a playbook for an individual teacher. These other ideas tend to rely on multiple teachers working together — plausible at some schools, unlikely at others.

3. Paul gave some details about his 7th grade team’s collaboration:

Book clubs! We have been inconsistent about implementing this, but when we have done it kids have really loved it. Sometimes, groups are made by the ELA teacher and the kids manage it themselves. We give them time to meet during one of those IWT blocks. We check in to make sure they are on task and continuing to read, and provide more guidance when they are having trouble.

This year, we split the 7th grade into 7 or 8 book clubs each led by an adult (all the 7th teachers, plus some administrative folks). I’ve loved talking with my kids about two great, pretty hard books – Nation and Matched. They were tepid on the first, but totally dug the second.

We originally sorted by preference; we might be reorganizing soon by reading level. What I’ve loved is talking with the kids about issue that I never get to in my classes – faith vs. reason, the nature of control in society, etc. I assign reading over the week – usually about 80-100 pages, and then we meet during the first IWT block on Friday.

4. Will runs a new charter school in New Bedford. He dropped a line about his wife:

Laura is a National Board Certified librarian who works in a middle school with 1000 kids. She’s doubled circulation since she’s been there. She says Manga count, I say they may be juking her stats a little.

Her favorite stories to tell when she comes home usually follow the format of:
- Non-reader came to me last week and I found him the perfect book.
- Non-reader came back yesterday and asked for more books like the one I gave him.
- Non-reader read that book overnight and came back for more. Non-reader is now a reader!

Laura does a lot of “book talks,” throughout the school, which helps to create demand for lesser known but suitably high interest books. She generally reads 4 or so new YA books a week, so she’s up on all the latest lit.

As a Nation, we share a responsibility to provide our children with a world-class education.

Alas, it turns out this is hard to do. Depending on who you ask, the average charter in the nation is about….average. (Boston’s generally good. Detroit’s generally bad.)

By keeping our young people engaged in learning, we help them develop the skills and values that will not only guide them in life, but also prepare them to thrive in the global economy.

Values like scrubbing Facebook profile of most pictures involving binge drinking. Also perseverance.

For years, charter schools have brought new ideas to the work of educating our sons and daughters.

Except for Orin’s son and daughter. Sorry bro.

Whether created by parents and teachers or community and civic leaders,

Or by unshaven public policy grad students

charter schools serve as incubators of innovation in neighborhoods across our country.

Of course sometimes the “innovation” is finding an ingenious way to get kids to do math homework

This unique flexibility is matched by strong accountability and high standards, so underperforming charter schools can be closed,

can be, and a few in Massachusetts were in fact closed, but others survived for political reasons

while those that consistently help students succeed can serve as models of reform for other public schools.

Except that these good ones tend to be very labor intensive and violate some conventional beliefs about the proper role of the teacher, so the models can replicate but do not usually change existing schools

Our children only get one chance at an education, and charter schools demonstrate what is possible when States, communities, teachers, parents, and students work together.

Amen. In all seriousness, Obama’s push for charters led directly to a new law here in Massachusetts in 2010, which in turn led to the 2011 opening of some stellar new schools in Boston, including: this one, this one, this one, and ours.

By the way, this last photo is from our middle school math teacher Tara. She took some kids to the Sox game over break, nominally teaching a stats unit, but also for some quality time.

Thanks to our friends at Achievement First, who gave me a stipend to talk to their swell leadership fellows, which I then re-gifted for some teacher stuff. That the $ ultimately ends up in the pocket of billionaire Sox owner John Henry causes me some distress, but oh well.

Ross writes:

The set-up. We’re doing a 7-10 page research paper that involves a ton of clicking around the internet. My seniors, bless them, are major procrastinators. Vanishingly few of them put in any real work on essays until right before the due date. To try to generate some momentum, this week I gave them 3 consecutive days of dedicated independent work time during class.

Unfortunately, as a teacher, me circulating and doing over-the-shoulder pointing and ‘here-let-me-see-the-mouse’ is not efficient.

Reboot. Today all students were instructed to create and share with me a Google doc. It included their outline and any essay writing they’ve done. When they sat, each student was working within the document. I had 20 tabs open on my screen, so I could click between their essays.

A Google doc allows you to insert comments (like Word), and chat with the author in a pop-out window (like Gchat), but puts the whole process in the cloud in real time.

The end result was me giving specific feedback and dialoguing with 20 kids in a totally silent and engaged classroom.

At the end of the period I asked for some student feedback. 85% positive, 10% neutral, 5% negative. Almost all the neutral feedback was partially shame at knowing that I’d be aware of their lack of progress.

Kids wrote:

1. I like the google doc. I think it is a lot more accessible to get edits and feedback on our work than having you walk around to students tables looking over their shoulders. I just hate writing on the actual good doc itself…but it will have to do.

Good point here. Google docs has limited word processing functionality (no endnotes, for example). But it has enough features that students can work offline, then copy-paste to the doc when they get to class.

2. I really like the Google doc idea, it not only gives me a sense of urgency I didn’t have before, but really gives me reason to draft to the top of my abilities. Most importantly, I can ask questions without the need of disrupting others. Thanks for this!

The urgency was something I hadn’t really considered. Unintended consequence for the win. With the potential of your work being observed and appraised at any moment, the dreaded “first draft” becomes highly accountable.

3. This google doc technique is cool. I like the instant feedback.

4. I really like this way of working. It lets me talk to you more easily without having to beckon from across the room or while you’re busy with another student. Plus, considering that we’re all rigorously working, it keeps things rather time-efficient.

Another unintended consequence. Shy students no longer have to raise their hands or publically speak to ask a question. They just type it in the chat bar and I respond when I click back to their doc.

…Except when the internet is slow…

Yeah, that. Also, this whole setup requires you to have 20+ serviceable and internet-enabled machines. If you don’t have access, it’s still good to be able to check up on and offer feedback on work that students are doing at home, but it loses the cool/urgent factor of knowing that both author and editor are simultaneously online and working.

I’m basically sold. Every essay I assign from now on will be authored on Google docs (to the extent that kids have internet access at home) or at least worked on in class for 1-2 days before it’s due (to the extent that I can get laptop access). I get to track progress, kids get a little eAngel on their shoulder while they work, and I can dialogue with the loquacious and the reticent alike.

It’s an interesting thread with a few great observations in the comments.

I conclude with

I’ve often thought we should wage an all-out effort to generate pleasure reading habits among older kids. In our early years at MATCH High, we took kids to the bookstore each month, to buy whatever book they wanted. Somehow our tradition faded away.

My questions for you today:

1. Do you know of an urban middle or high school that has had shocking success at flipping kids who, when they arrived in August, never read for pleasure (preferring video games, TV, facebook, etc for 6 to 7 hours a day), but after a few months, read many hours each week? I am talking gigantic, massive, mega-turnaround….kids who read voraciously on their own, with non-assigned books.

2. Barring that, do you know of an unusual individual teacher who has achieved that?

Email me or just write into the comments.

We’ve got a great team. Add it up — our schools, Patti’s crew in Houston, Erica’s team in New Orleans, Orin’s posse in the cell phone store, Alan’s peeps in “Merrimack” — and we get to slot this bad boy next to our 2012 middle school boys basketball trophy.

Thanks NSVF, for all your help.