Last month, Andy Hargreaves of Boston College spoke at Wellesley College about the essence of the teaching profession. Andy has studied teaching and teachers around the world and has received many honors for his work, which seeks to raise the esteem of teaching as a profession. He won the Grawemeyer Award in 2015 for his work with Michael Fullan.
Andy spoke at the Annual Diane Silvers Ravitch ‘60 Lecture at Wellesley. He graciously agreed to speak on short notice after Linda Darling-Hammond fell ill.
Here is a video of the occasion.
The key to successful teaching, he has learned, is collaboration. Teachers work together, plan together, support one another in their work. Their work is focused on their students; it is seldom a solitary endeavor.
I am happy to announce that the 2018 Lecturer in this series will be the outstanding scholar Yong Zhao. I look forward to the event.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My previous principal thinks that you reinforce collaboration by making teachers prep for different grade levels! 😂 So if you could have a full schedule of ninth grade, forget it! She’s going to chop you in half and make you do a section of tenth grade. It’s the stupidest, dumbest thing in the history of education! No wait…maybe it isn’t quite the dumbest!
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At some point during the ’90s, our union negotiated collaborative projects for experienced highly rated teachers as a substitute for the typical observation protocol. Teachers collaborated on a variety of projects in given grade levels, disciplines or even K-12 departments. Some collaborations included curricula development, cross observations, and sometimes the collaborations entailed groups of teachers working in study groups based on a particular book or methodology. It was a lot more work! It was teacher driven, but subject to the approval of the building administrator. These options were a lot more engaging than the typical observation that had become redundant and routine for very experienced teachers. When NCLB came along with high stakes testing, the district retreated to the same old top down observation system of the past.
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Using VAM in teacher evaluations is the easiest path to killing collaborative teaching. One of the tragedies of Reform.
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Great article debunking VAM by mathematician John Ewing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/leading-mathematician-debunks-value-added/2011/05/08/AFb999UG_blog.html?utm_term=.1005798cf165
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All of the so called “reforms” have attempted to put teachers on the defensive. People trying to survive generally are not likely to be reflective in their practice. As Hargreaves mentions, teaching is hard, and it has gotten a lot harder under so-called reform. With states disinvesting in public education and paying for charter expansion, the classes are larger, the resources are fewer, and there is little respect for teachers.
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Super video. Thank you, NPE and Diane.
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A few big piglets trying to suckle at the teat of public education. Taking those monies for profit off the backs of the most innocent in society, the children. Blood sucking leeches would be a nice term to describe the Broads, Waltons, Gates, Allens, and their bought off paid whores in the media and “philanthrofoundations”.
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Ooops, this is supposed to be a response to Steven Singers post.
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Just curious.
Has Hargreaves ever actually taught in a public school?
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Democracy,
I don’t know. I will ask him.
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Diane,
Following from the American Principals Project
Action Alert: Stop the Assault on Student Privacy and Parental Rights
November 12, 2017 | American Principles Project
Urgent action needed to stop Congress from passing what can only be described as an unprecedented assault on student privacy and parental rights. This assault comes in the form of three bills floating around Congress, one of which – H.R. 4174 The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (FEPA)—could be voted on as early as this Wednesday.
The Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (FEPA) (H.R. 4174), which would create a “unified evidence-building plan” for the entire federal government – in essence, a national database containing data from every federal agency on every citizen; and
The College Transparency Act (CTA) (H.R. 2434), which would overturn the Higher Education Act’s ban on a federal student unit-record system and establish a system of lifelong tracking of individuals by the federal government; and
The Student Privacy Protection Act (H.R. 3157), which would amend the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), 20 USC § 1232g, without restoring the FERPA privacy protections that were gutted by regulatory fiat in 2012.
Special interests that want increased access to highly personal student data for their own benefit have mounted a massive lobbying campaign to achieve their goals with respect to each of these bills. The bottom line is that bureaucrats in the Administrative State, as well as researchers, want a vast trove of data they can access to examine freeborn American citizens as lab rats – without their consent or even their knowledge.
Please read the one-pagers copied below which briefly address the most serious problems associated with each of these bills. Applicable to all three discussions are two other fundamental problems. The first is that the federal government has demonstrated its utter incompetence at protecting the security of individual data (see here, here, here, and here). Expanding the pool of data that will be so enticing to hackers is more than unwise – it’s madness.
CEP one-pager final Nov 10
CTA one-pager Nov 7
FERPA One-Pager JR
Privacy assault letter final Nov 11 10am
But the more fundamental problem is this: Even if the data could be maintained with 100% security, and even if students could somehow benefit from collection and sharing of their own confidential data, there are certain lines a free society should not cross. Increasing the government repository of highly personal data further entrenches the Administrative State – the Swamp, if you will – which will inevitably use that data to increase its own power. The mere presence of such data with the government has an intimidating effect on the citizen, whose freedom of action is necessarily limited by his awareness of government surveillance. This is a feature of totalitarian governments; it should be anathema in free societies.
For the sake of American students and parents, we are counting on you to flood Congress with calls starting Monday morning and tell them to vote “NO” on H.R. 4174, H.R. 2434, and H.R. 3157. The number for Congress is 202.224.3121. Make your voice heard!
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Jscheidell,
Student privacy is an issue we can agree on.
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Ed reformers are holding yet another rah rah for charters event today in DC.
They focus on 18 cities who have adopted most or all of their privatization plans. I was looking for “results” because these people are supposedly focused on results so I read the brief.
One has to wade thru a lot of assertions about the inherent superiority of privatized systems to find “results” but they are in there.
It’s 36%. 36% of the most reformy cities saw an increase in test scores:
“Of cities for which we had data, 36 percent were making statistically significant improvement in school proficiency rates
in math and reading. Only two cities showed statistically significant decline in math or reading proficiency rates. This
is tentative, but good news considering the challenge most urban district face in overcoming the challenges of their
student populations.”
So in cities that have adopted the whole ed reform roster of privatization 1/3 of those cities have seen “results”.
How does this justify privatizing the whole country? Two out of 18 cities actually DECLINED with privatization!
But there won’t be any debate because the event is carefully designed to exclude any analysis of the cities who DID NOT privatize. They look at Cleveland and rather than compare Cleveland to a less reformy Ohio city they compare Cleveland to Indianapolis.
You see the error here, right? They only compare ed reform to ed reform. They’ve omitted the cities who DID NOT privatize- the cities where they did something different.
Now – if you genuinely want to know whether privatization benefits students wouldn’t you compare privatized cities to cities who went a different route? You wouldn’t limit the debate to those cities who adopted your agenda. That’s skewed.
Click to access crpe-stepping-up-american-cities-public-school-choice.pdf
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