Homecomings

Mister blog, I am back. I took a trip to Russia where I attended a conference at my alma mater, the Novosibirsk Teachers' University. I then went to Roslavl in Western Russia to see my Mom, my brother, and his family.

Going home has to do with resurrection of old memories, bringing back old anxieties, but also reliving the good memories. It is fascinating to observe oneself; not just what cognitive memories still there, but also, how much your body remembers. I could not recall some names, but have an indelible map of our old building. Some episodes came back vividly, in full force, while others are completely gone. The narratives we construct about our own lives are so incomplete and fragmentary; the only way to remember your life is to go to the places where you have been in the past, and look for triggers of old memories.

But people in Russia are not really interested in my nostalgia. They have lived through some difficult and eventful years. Let's see, I missed two military coups, a depression twice as deep as the American Great Depression, and then unlikely economic recovery; they experienced chaotic democracy and returning authoritarianism, went from deepest national humiliation and dramatic population plunge to a new sense of national pride, and the relative stability of Putin's era. I had a very different experience of immigration. This chasm in experiences creates interesting disconnects. People who I have been friends for years suddenly do not find some of my jokes funny. Their language is now interspersed with words I find annoying and distasteful; they are probably equally irritated with my language that now has traces of the English syntax. For some reason, the English words that are flowing freely into Russian usage I find especially irritating. Less troublesome are the criminal slang expressions that have invaded mainstream. The Russians did not freeze in time when I left; they kept thinking and working, and acquired a whole new set of ideas and skills, new institutions and habits.

Coming home creates this very ambivalent and delicious feeling of familiarity mixed with estrangement. People and things are the same and yet not the same. The interplay of recognition and misrecognition, of being completely comfortable and accepted yet being alienated, separated by an invisible membrane. A classmate of mine, who was the social center of our little group, gave me a run-down on the entire cohort (we had about 25 people in it). One of our classmates is serving a prison term for contract killing, while others are successful businessmen. Most are still in education. None of the stories really surprised me, but none was also entirely predictable.

Coming home disturbs the familiar-unfamiliar continuum, and creates another class of feeling, which has to do not with re-experiencing the past, but with imagining yourself in an alternative life. What if we all stayed home?

Yet another reform

Governor Ritter is proposing a new bill. Basically, the standards will be revised, and then re-revised every two years, and aligned from pre-school to college. There will be two-tiered high school diplomas: one indicating certain attainment, and another indicating completion of high school. This seems to be similar to New York's "Regents' diploma" scheme; only 42% of students actually receive it. Several other states have similar two-tiered high school diplomas. The intent of the bill is not new, and it is a reaction to the testing dilemma. Make the tests too easy, and everyone passes, so we have no standards. Make tests hard but inconsequential, and kids will not try hard, and your data will be meaningless. Make them hard and tie to graduation, and a lot of kids fail, and what do you do with them? Tell them they need to work harder? So, the compromise that many states use and Colorado seems to be going to is the two-tier diplomas. But that really means that the failing students will get a meaningless pieces of paper, and the diploma that counts will be in the possession of those with privileged backgrounds. The two-tier high school diplomas have been tried in other states, and I do not see any evidence it was successful.

What bothers me about the bill is not its intent and not even its proposed solution, but the utter lack of original thinking in it. I don't know how about others, but I am becoming increasingly bored with educational reform. All fifty states do the same things, call them something different, and fail to learn from each other's errors. The bill will produce a lot of revising and revisions of standards, tests, report matrixes and other stuff without perceptible benefits for K-12 or higher education. Instead of looking for true innovations, Colorado seems to be doing more of the same. The bill reads like a lecture on everything that is right and good, and it is hard imagine the State's power is best applied to lecturing through the law. The substance is lacking.

There is a rival bill in the State legislature, which has much narrower focus. It simply replaces the CSAP for juniors with ACT. It is not that exciting, but at least makes a practical kind of sense. The kids would be trying harder, because colleges really look at ACT scores. But again, it is not clear what level of consequences passing or failure would entail. Those who really hoping to get into college will try their best; those who do not will still pretend to take it, ar won't take at all.

The fundamental problem is this: you cannot require people to do something for free, and require to do it well. It's as simple as that: to test people on how well they do something you need first to make sure they want to do it. If certain activity is involuntary, you can increase the effort in one of two ways: one is fear, and another is to make it voluntary and pay for doing it. While tightening standards and improving teaching seems to be the logical thing to do about elementary education, it is not clear that we are doing something remotely effective on the secondary education. The problem seems to be one of motivation to learn, not of the standards or testing requirement.

Refuse to be second-rate

Like everyone else, our School has a vision. It is better, less bland than most of its kind, but I doubt it really guides our every-day activities. Yet every strong community needs an idea, a one-liner that captures its spirit and sets certain norm. Some people call it the ideology, some prefer vision or belief; in some organizations it is an image or a memory, or a founding myth, but every group needs an idea, an authentic expression of its ideal self. When I first came here almost two years ago, I was asked about developing a vision. My reply was that finding a vision is a process, and it has to come from within; it may never be brought from without. I agreed to be on a look-out, and now I may have found it. This is not something we would put on our promotional materials, but I believe this idea (a motto? a dictum?) captures the essence of what we are all about. This can really be our private vision.

It came about in a casual conversation with one of my friends and colleagues, whose name shall rename unknown. We were talking about something, and considered certain pluses and minuses of a possible decision. And he said in support of his argument "I just refuse to be second-rate." The more I think about it, the more this simple sentence captures our ethos; it acknowledges the challenges we face, and gives us a measuring stick to apply to everything we do.

The challenges are numerous: we are in a state college, besieged by funding shortages. Our salaries are low, workload is large. Our students tend to be first-generation in college, and many have to work through to support themselves. Many are very intelligent, but many also experienced gaps in their K-12 education. College professors, our peers in R1 schools do not necessarily consider us to be their peers; they have incomparably stronger institutional support for their research activities, and considerably lighter teaching load. So, their resumes tend to be thicker than ours, partly because grants and publication game is biased in their favor, partly because we simply do not have as much time to research and write, or lack elite connections in our respective field. On top of all of these pressures, there is a creeping internal pressure to succumb. Some of us allow too many compromises; let themselves to lower standards in both teaching and research. Once they enter into that mode of defeat, they start to water down policies and standards to justify the defeat. Sometimes the university policies tacitly accept the second-rate mentality. For example, our policy allows people to get tenure with half plus one votes, while most universities require 2/3 of the votes. Our vita template uses the designation for publications "Juried: (reviewed by editorial board, or refereed)." This is significantly below a true peer-refereed publication standard everyone else uses.

And yet what we can and should do in the face of all these pressures is just this: refuse to be second-rate. Being second-rate is really a state of mind, a set of operating assumptions. We should try to act as if we were among the best. Should we hire someone who is only OK, and no one is especially excited about? Well, would you even ask this kind of question if were a Stanford or Yale faculty? - Probably not. So refuse to be second-rate and operate as if you were the best of the best. Similarly, if you're working on an article, should you aim for the top journal or for the regional one where the editor is your friend? Again, the hesitation before answering it may betray the second-rate mentality. Aim high, and then if it does not fly and you've lost interest to the project, OK, maybe send it to a less rigorous publication.

And finally, one more point. We beat the harvards of the world by the value-added measure. They accept the best of the best, who are either exceptionally talented or exceptionally privileged. We accept students from various backgrounds, from some good and some bad public schools, and almost never from the very elite schools. Our teaching may very well be much more effective than that of harvards'. Just as an aside, would it not be awesome to know this for sure? To measure teaching effectiveness on a fair, consistent, and value-added basis? The elite institutions' teacher education programs tend to be small and selective or non-existent; ours are large and successful. At the end of the day, a head-to-head comparison between our graduates and their graduates will probably reveal similar results even though our freshmen come at lower academic levels. And finally, we have a mission no one else can fulfill. What am saying is that the pride and self-respect I advocate is not self-delusional, or purely inspirational. We do have much to be proud about, we can do a lot more; we just need to always refuse to think and act as a second-rate institution. I am asking everyone, before making any decision, just remind yourself to refuse to be second-rate.

Slowtalk

Much of my interactions with people are fasttalk through e-mail, in person, or phone. However, certain kinds of problems can only be effectively resolved through slowtalk. Slowtalk is a unique, powerful communications tool, although it is quite expensive in terms of time. On the practical level, Eugene Sheehan's three emails rule works well: when you exchanged more than three emails with someone on the same subject, it is time to set a meeting. It means the fasttalk ceases to be efficient, and becomes wasteful or worse. What kinds of issues can be dealt with though fasttalk, and what requires slowtalk? What does it do that fasttalk does not?

• Slowtalk minimizes the mismatch in assumptions. When you fasttalking, your counterpart may have a completely different background information, and therefore different set of assumptions. Fasttalk is just to get a point across as quickly as possible. Slowtalk allows one to react to the smallest mismatches of meaning between oneself and a conversation partner. That is why in slowtalk, you can often hear admissions of cleared misunderstanding: "Oh, I thought you mean this, not that," or "I assumed you knew that." But how do you know that your partner has different assumptions? By reacting to the mismatch of meaning; that is, when you have difficulties interpreting your partner's words, because they mismatch to your understanding of the background.
  
• Slowtalk clarifies the affective component of the problem. We are emotional animals, and always keep track of what we think is friendly or not friendly actions by other people. That is just how our brains operate. So we tend to attribute much of people's actions to their intent. So, the slowtalk helps to find out if indeed there is another, emotional agenda, or it is just an issue to be resolved. Fasttalk, on the other hand, tends to ignore the affective component, and thus reinforce errors in understanding.
  
• One of the best uses of slowtalk is to consider complex solutions. In However, if a problem is indeed serious, and no close precedents exist, the only way to weigh in all the possible consequences is through slowtalk. Slowtalk allows people model the future much more effectively than any of them can do individually. Multiple participants model multiple interests, so we tend to disagree with each other a lot more than we disagree with ourselves.
  

Fasttalk and slowtalk are two very different modes of communication, and should be used appropriately. For example, I refuse to engage in slowtalk about the colors of our walls; I don't think that be a good way of discussing it, because fasttalk is just enough. However, the recently discovered glitch in our digital archiving system deserves some slowtalk. It is a truly new problem; it can be potentially very serious. So, folks, if you think you see an issue deserving slowtalking, don't hesitate to set aside time and meet; it may be in the end much more efficient than series of fasttalks. However, estimate the scope of the problem, too; if it is not that important, fasttalk is just fine: brief, to the point, yes or no.

Due Diligence

Wikipedia defines due diligence (also known as due care) as the effort made by an ordinarily prudent or reasonable party to avoid harm to another party. This applies to areas other than civil law. For example, this is something I am learning to do in my job. It is not easy, and I probably fail a lot, but I am trying.

Someone like me finds oneself at the center of many different interests and agendas. People come to me to talk about their problems and issues, and I made it very clear that this is very welcome. We cannot operate without informal information exchange. However, most people’s problems have to do with other people, and I am always drawn into discussions of someone’s actions when that person is not there. Some people take the high moral ground and refuse to discuss others in absentia. This is highly impractical, because it would shut down most of vital conversations. Such a strategy would certainly be impossible to carry on in my position anyway. However, discussing someone when that person cannot be a part of the discussion has its ethical and practical problems, which need to be taken good care of. Impracticality if a radical ethical position does not imply lapse of all moral obligations. The problem is with asymmetry of power. Imagine A comes to me to complain about B, but B does not know about it. A just got an unfair advantage over B. This is not necessarily a conscious attempt to manipulate me against B; rater, A has a particular view of B’s behavior. In a conversation, people tend to agree when possible, so my tendency is to see the point A is making about B. It is important to understand that any conversation implies some readiness to accept your partner’s premises, at least to some extent. Otherwise, there is no conversation. So, by the virtue of having my ear, A has created a story that becomes a part of what I know. B does not necessarily have a chance to challenge that story, because she might not know about A’s complaint. Due diligence requires me to find B’s side of the story to avoid imbalance. However, how do you do that? What A is telling me might be said in confidence. If I came back to B and ask, say, I have hear you did this and that?, this will give away the fact of our conversation with A away and breach confidentiality. However, if I never ask, I will never know the other side of the story, and become a hostage of A’s allegations.

This is the dilemma. Whoever comes first, gets a certain narrative established, and it is not easy to exercise due diligence. What do I do? There are several tricks. One of them is to try to challenge A’s story by suggesting different, more generous interpretations of B’s actions. The risk is that A thinks I am taking B’s side in the conflict, because I am looking for excuses for B. In general, when you are trying to challenge or investigate someone’s story, you inadvertently challenge that person’s honesty. Not many people routinely recognize that their perceptions might be limited, and dependent on their interests and positions. Another trick is to delay any kind of actions and decisions, and then try to verify the story indirectly. It does not always work, because a question about a specific incident will almost always allow the person in question to trace the source of information. And yet another trick is to ask someone other than A and B about the same story, to get an independent opinion. The risk here is that any C who knows about the story might already been in my position, and have been influenced by A or B for exactly the same reason as I get influenced by whoever bring the story to me.

Why am I dwelling on all these complications of human interactions? For a very simple reason: I don’t want people to be offended or put off by my exercise of due diligence. I simply need to know other sides of the story not because I mistrust their account, but because we all have specific points of view, and I cannot do anything that can potentially harm someone else without due diligence.

The Spring Fever

There is a faint smell of Spring in the air. Birds are not chirping yet, but they are thinking about it. His last stretch of winter is especially hard on human bodies and psyches, so everyone is a bit more irritable, and less tolerant of others. Fingers at keyboards get a bit jitterier; fuses become a bit shorter. Of course, in the Academia, this biological phenomenon is exacerbated by the evaluations season. For some it has high stakes such as tenure and promotion. However for most, the stakes are pitifully small and yet the passions run unreasonably high. My instinct is to tell people to chill out, and look at all of this from a larger perspective. Of course, this is easier said than done. If you're anxious, and someone tells you to relax, it can get you even more excited and mad. So, here is a portion of cognitive therapy. What you find below is an absolutely irrefutable rational proof that we all should step a little back and relax, and perhaps have a good laugh about it all.

1. It is not life and death, not even consequential for one's wallet. There might be consequences for self-esteem, but again, those are as large as we allow them to be. Higher education is notoriously gentle with its work force. What in the private sector will get you fired, will result in someone's finger shaking at you, if you're lucky to be employed by a university. So, celebrate your good fortune, and ignore minor worries.
   
2. There is no such a thing as absolutely fair evaluation. Any system will benefit someone and disadvantage someone else. So, what? We are in this profession because there is an inner drive; we do it for our own deep moral convictions and because we want to do it. If the evaluation system treats us a bit unfairly, or it FEELS that way, this is no reason to ruin your mood over it, even for a day.
   
3. In the long run, being nice to everyone, including those people you dislike or mistrust is the best strategy. Getting angry is just a way of making people do something you want. Aggression in general is behavior manipulative technique. It rests on a premise that other people will afraid of you and therefore will do your bidding out of fear. But the society has been changed since we developed all those instincts, and non-violent, legal and administrative procedures took over conflict management. So, getting angry, or rather, showing one's anger does not really work anymore. It is but an atavism. So, cheer up, be nice to everyone, and do whatever you have to do to protect your rights through various appeals, legal challenges, etc. There is just a lot more chances to prevail, if you're civil to other people. The civility credit goes a long way, because it indicates you accept the rules of the game.
   

On another note, there is Spring just around the corner, and the birds are seriously thinking about chirping. When we are very old, and our great-grand children will ask us what have we done in life, none of us will say: "I received great annual evaluations." We have to think about something else. Let's start now about a possible answer.

The sleep of reason produces monsters

There are two different conversations about quality in teacher education. One has to do with compliance. How do we gather data that will allow us to report to the State and to NCATE? The other is about what makes sense for teacher preparation as such. Both are probably needed, but what I find more and more troubling is that the first tend to crowd out the second one. Among other things, we tend to create incredibly generic assessment instruments the sole purpose of which is to "cover" certain standards. For example our Elementary teacher candidates get evaluated at the end of student teaching, with this rubric:

1. Uses knowledge of math and social studies and standards to plan instruction and support student achievement.
   
2. Creates a learning environment characterized by acceptable student behavior, efficient use of time or gaining knowledge, skills, and understanding.
   
3. Applies sound disciplinary practices in the classroom.
   
4. Develops/selects/utilizes resources to enhance the learning of students with diverse backgrounds, experiences, abilities, values and perspectives.
   
5. Applies appropriate assessment and intervention strategies consistent with a successful learning environment.
   
6. Uses strategies to keep students on task to support learning processes.
   
7. Demonstrates instruction which is consistent with district goals and state standards.
   
8. Teaches students within the scope of teachers' legal responsibilities and students' rights and follows procedures as specified in state, federal, and local policies.
   
9. Reflects on and evaluates his/her own performance to improve teaching.
   
10. Is dependable, reliable, and punctual.
    
11. Demonstrates effective interpersonal communication skills with students, staff, parents.
    

Our Secondary candidates are evaluated with a 6-page long instrument that is somewhat similar, although more detailed (the STEP Instrument). If you think of it, it is incredibly difficult to assess these with any degree of accuracy. We do not, agree on what are sound disciplinary practices. Moreover, we do not teach those practices. We do not make judgment on whether such an application is effective or not; it is just "applies." Number 6 is simply funny, because everyone uses strategies, some just use better ones. The room for error is huge, criteria are very subjective, and there is no way to assess the validity or reliability of these monster rubrics. Yet the people who designed those rubrics are very smart, competent educators who certainly know what makes a good teacher. What happened? Very simple: the demands of accountability. The State of Colorado in its infinite wisdom has developed standards (not really bad ones), and demands us to show how we meet all of them. The most efficient way is to copy the standards almost exactly into the rubric, and then have some poor supervisor to check – advanced, proficient, or just good enough. The value of a monster rubric is minimal, because its sweep is so broad. However, the compliance conversation tends to ignore the common sense, and instead leads us to accept the absurd as the normal. The whole last year we were thinking about curriculum and assessment, and yet we were not thinking about curriculum and assessment. Our horizon was artificially limited to those things that produce good compliance records rather than good teachers. It is ironic how the quality movement actually detracted us from working on improvement of quality.

Several colleagues and I have attended the AACTE Conference last week. One of the highlights was the lecture by Deborah L. Ball, Dean, School of Education, University of Michigan. Her point was that teaching is really a precise, highly skilled occupation, which should involve a lot of training, and not a lot of improvisation. She suggested that teaching should be analyzed to its basic elements, and teacher candidates are to be trained in very specific behaviors and ways of thinking. This is simple enough, and we can probably do it right here, within our school. The combined expertise among my colleagues is enormous, and we certainly have the desire to do the absolutely best we can. However, we're running round thinking how to comply. We have no time or strength to think about the substance of what we do.

I say we stop now. Let's ignore the compliance worries, and focus on what we teach and how do we know if we did a good job. Let's look at very fundamental elements of good teaching and then concentrate on how to do more with less. Let's get rid of all monster rubrics, monster portfolios, monster assignments, and make a few very good assessments. Let's find wholes in our programs and plug them all. There is no accrediting body on Earth who could touch us with a six feet poll if we do that. We can always come back and say that these standards are covered by this and that. However we need to stop being afraid and only do what is good for our students. We should put our foot down and only comply to demands which does not hurt what we do. Enough is enough; let's take charge of our own affairs.

Let me try to begin brainstorming. I think we should be able to see a teacher candidate to do the following:

1. To explain a concept or an operation to children, in several different ways
   
2. To assess whether kids get it or not, and then re-teach it in yet more ways.
   
3. Organize a learning activity
   
4. Respond to kids' questions and problems
   
5. Address behavioral problems in classroom and relate to children well
   

I think this is about it. Well, perhaps I am missing something, but let's keep it short and manageable. The standards movement has ran into problems precisely because no one had the guts to stop proliferating the standards.

X, Y, and Z: The University Habitat

There are three species of university faculty. Let’s call them X, Y, and Z. X’s are good scholars; they do research for fun, because they like it, and therefore are successful. It might be the other way around: people who do well start to like it after a while even more. There is a subspecies of X (b) who are no good as teachers, but in our habitat none of those survive for long. Every X here is also a good teacher, and contributes abundantly to service. X’s are good people.

Y’s often go beyond the traditional forms of scholarship, or focus on teaching or advising or administration. However, they all have found other important ways to contribute and to enjoy their work: it could be less traditional forms of scholarship; they may take on administrative duties, or devote a lot of extra time to teaching and curriculum development. Y’s often find their satisfaction in more demanding forms of service. What is important about the Y’s is their work ethic: they work hard, and maintain intellectual curiosity, willingness to take risks, and commitment to our common enterprise. Y’s often have a genuine disagreement with the X’s about the role and the mission of a given university. The difference between X and Y is not that of values, but of preference. Y’s are just turned on by different things than X’s. I am now a Y, although I used to be more of an X. Y’s are good people.

And then there are Z’s, who are just not performing that well for a variety of reasons. Perhaps one day I will become a Z, but just not yet. Z’s are good people.

Now as we introduced the cast of characters, let me show how these three species occupy the same habitat. The X’s, again, are wonderful people who contribute a lot to the common good. However, they also tend to confuse Y’s and Z’s, and confuse low performance with different performance. The Y’s, of course, are threatened by X’s, because they believe that the X’s standards are a bit too narrow. Y’s’ sometimes to seek allies among the Z’s. And of course, Z’s often consider themselves to be Y’s and are trying to sell the lack of effort as the difference in interests.

Then comes the annual war ritual called evaluations. X’s are honestly trying to raise expectations, because they are invested in the future of the institution, and it reputation. Z’s are trying to water down any expectations to the point of non-existence. Y’s are usually caught in between: they want recognition for their various ways of achievement, so they may end up disagreeing with the X’s and with the Z’s, which is a difficult position to defend.

This ecosystem will function well when there is a compromise, an agreement between X’s and Y’s, but not with the Z’s. Both X and Y have a deep ethical kinship, and can be immensely useful to each other. Z’s can be encouraged to join either species. The way to reach the compromise is to allow a broader range of contributions to be counted as productive, but hold a clear line against low expectations. I am not sure if it is possible to achieve through a perfect evaluation document. Rather, mutual understanding should be reached first, and then the practices of evaluations will reflect it.

All people deserve respect, X, Y, and Z alike. Each group should clearly understand that the need for compromise. X’s should allow for a broader interpretation of scholarship (but we do need to have decent scholarship standards to maintain credibility as a university). Y’s should see clearly acknowledge the difference between broad standards and low standards. Z’s should demonstrate the level of effort consistent with the notion of group solidarity (and join X’s or Y’s). And we all need to take it easy, cool down, and not take our differences so seriously. There is an X, Y and Z in all of us, and of course, this is but a simplification.

Tell me, otherwise I won’t know

Kurt Lewin has invented the T-groups in mid-1940s, by accident. They became very popular in 1960-s and 70-s, and still used today in a different form. A Russian educator Igor P. Ivanov has independently invented something similar, in late 50-s (sorry, no English references; nothing has been translated). The basic premise of T-groups is very simple: in normal life, we do not know how we are perceived by other people. We have a general idea: someone smiles, or frowns, at what we say, etc. The problem is, most people are quite bad at reading these signs, and some people cannot read them at all. Even the best of us make mistakes all the time, because they attribute the feedback signs to something else. In most cultures, the norm is established through a system of reprimands and encouragements; however, in today’s highly complex and multicultural society, the old mechanisms simply do not work. We interact a lot, very often and very fast. We all have slightly different cultural assumptions about the normal vs. abnormal. Yet we always interpret each other’s behavior.

To counter this subtle cultural change, T-groups offered very simple technique: people tell directly how they perceive each other, and what sorts of words and actions lead to what kind of emotional response. What Lewin and Ivanov both discovered was that such groups learn to cooperate a lot faster than a regular group. People who have been trained in a T-group are a lot more sensitive to other people’s reactions, but what is more important, they are ready to communicate their perceptions of others to those others. Of course, all of this requires a level of trust that would guard one’s feelings from being hurt. It should be done in the spirit of mutual help, rather than criticism. If I see you doing something unwise, which might hurt you or others, I feel an obligation to find a way of pointing this out to you. So, you should do it for me, too.

I am not going to suggest anything like the T-group at our School. Many years ago, I used to facilitate such groups, both Lewin’s style and the Russian style (there are significant differences), and know that those are risky, delicate, time consuming, and did I mention risky? What I want is for other people (especially the more secure senior faculty) to tell me how they perceive me, especially when I make a mistake, or they think I make a mistake. For example, there is absolutely no way for me to know that my frequent forgetting to turn off the cell phone during meetings is annoying, and may be perceived as a sign of disrespect. Someone has to tell me that directly, and I promise I won’t get offended. To the contrary, I will appreciate the information and appreciate the trust, whether I agree with the assessment or not.

This is a small example, of course. However, the small things tend to accumulate, and pretty soon we become unhappy, annoyed with each other, and don’t even know why. As everyone knows, familiarity breeds contempt. And God knows, the Academia is full of departments where people have been working together longer than most marriages last, and hate each other for no particular reason. But why does familiarity breed contempt? -- Mainly because people who know each other well don’t really know each other well. They tend to accumulate small misunderstandings, annoyances, errors, and never get around clearing this stuff out. Pretty soon a mistake becomes recorded in history. We do not adjust our behavior because we do not realize we should. Communication errors clog the relational veins, unless they are countered by direct, open communication. I don’t want this happen to us as a group, and especially to me in this group. So, please, do tell me, otherwise I won’t know.

Politicization of Teacher Education

Yet another report on teaching and teacher education hit the waves. This time, it is National Council on Teacher Quality Policy Yearbook. We've got an overall grade "needs significant improvement," with GPA 2.33, if you average these grades:

• D for Meeting NCLB Teacher Quality Objectives.
• B for Teacher Licensure
• D for Teacher Evaluation and Compensation
• D for State Approval of Teacher Preparation
• C for Alternate Routes to Certification
• D for Preparation of Special Education Teachers

Hmm, but who is the grader? Who asked this group to grade Colorado's teacher quality, and how did they do it? First of all the organization claims to be non-partisan, and it states that it does not accept any direct funding from federal government. That is not quite true; it received $677,318 in 2003 – 2004 from the Federal Department of Education. But OK, it may no longer receive any federal money, not recently. But if you read the criteria under which they judge, it becomes clear that this is an attempt to influence the State's policy through pretense of giving it an objective assessment. Here is a recipe: Put together a non-profit, get some private funds, release a sleek report, and give states grades. Then release the report to the media, try to get headlines like " Colorado Gets a D on teacher quality." The more the merrier. Then an outraged politician will think, oh, well, we need to do something. Who do I ask to propose a new legislation? Why, of course, the group that gave us a D, or perhaps someone they know and recommend.
The reality is, two groups of researchers, with specific political leanings produce very different findings about quality of teachers or teacher education. They largely ignore each other, or engage into skirmishes, criticizing each other's methodology. There is a wide political campaign against teacher unions, public schools in general, teacher education faculty, certain methods of teaching reading, etc, etc. So, NCATE-bad, alternative certification-good. Content knowledge- good, methods courses – bad. Testing – good, standards – bad. Teacher merit pay – good, teacher tenure – bad.
I do not necessarily reject all of these people's proposals, but I question their way of pushing these proposals; it strikes me as manipulative. People used to run for public office to influence policy. Now they influence policy in order to get into public office. Because let's face it: for the Republican Party to ensure its long-term survival, the power of teacher unions needs to be diminished, number of public employees needs to be reduced. Hence the attempt to inflict the death by a thousand regulations onto public schools and traditional teacher education programs. However, regulation is contrary to Republicans' own long-standing deregulation philosophy. I am not saying the other side is any more principled. The Democrats are just interested in the unions' support, so they have become the educational conservatives who preserve the not-so-glorious status quo. The two parties' distinctive ideologies stopped beliefs and became means of getting elected.
Here is an interesting quote from the report, page 118:

A few more [STATES] have required that all in-state programs, public and private, attain national accreditation. These policies are inappropriate, since they require that public funds and institutional resources be spent meeting the standards of a private organization that has yet to be recognized as the undisputed guarantor of minimum quality in its field.

Yet the organization that writes the report is also a private organization, and it believes public funds should be expended to meet its recommendations. Is there any evidence that states that heeded to their advice do better in preparing quality teachers? The report than suggests that all Social Foundations of Education are all but useless, but then gives a list of sample topics that should be covered in a teacher education program, including "The social and cultural roots of the achievement gap; learning challenges from poverty." But that's what we teach in a foundations course.
Here is another logical pearl:

NCTQ's research shows that there are teacher preparation programs in the majority of states where teacher candidates are required to complete 60 or more credit hours of professional coursework. We found programs in still more states where candidates are required to complete 50 to 59 credit hours of professional coursework. [UNC requires 40-44 — A.S.]These are excessive requirements that leave little room for electives, and often leave insufficient room for adequate subject matter preparation. Though there is no research data to confirm this, it seems likely that such excessive requirements are likely to discourage talented individuals from pursuing teacher preparation—and public school teaching.

They are adamant about requiring evidence, except when they claim something weird. NCTQ is very much concerned about the availability of alternative licensure, but none of its goals include strong induction programs and in-service training. Wouldn't this be an interesting area to explore? What if support provided to novice teachers actually increase their chances of success?
I could go on and on — the bottom line is, if you put out such a self-assured, cocky assessment full of recommendations ("The State should" phrase is used 118 times), it does not hurt to check if the standards you want others to follow apply to your own report.

On the Science of Lawmaking

Yesterday in Denver, there was another meeting on the proposed dyslexia legislation. The State Representative that heads this initiative, made an interesting if inadvertent admission. "This is the first time, - he said, - that I develop a bill with various groups represented around the table. Usually, a special interest group just comes up with a draft of the new law." He was a bit frustrated, because there were a lot of ideas, and some disagreements, but there was no specific language he could put in a bill. Yet this remark made me think about how laws are developed.

Many major professional activities have recently move toward some rational way of decision-making. There is the Evidence-Based Medicine, God knows education has been struggling with accountability, and outcome-based education. The best practices movement in business, programming, construction, insurance, and accounting slowly but surely change the way people do things. However, lawmaking remains a game of competing rhetoric, trial and error, and special interest influence. Laws are passed constantly, but their effectiveness is often unknown or minimal. The same is true about public policies that interpret and implement the laws. The major example is the No Child Left Behind act, if you discount the Texas Miracle (and you should). It was premised on the idea that raising accountability plank will improve educational outcomes. It seems obvious and self-evident, but is actually an untested idea. Colorado Governor Ritter just came up with another "most revolutionary shift in education policy" in years. Not that I am opposed to it necessarily, but I am cautious about another set of laws that will inevitably follow, the revision of the Colorado Content Model standards, and the work of revamping K-20 curriculum to meet them. Perhaps if someone shown me some evidence it's going to make any difference, I'd be less skeptical. But no, people want me to take their word for it, and I just have hard time doing it.

People who write laws are very smart, well-meaning, and experienced; no doubt about this. Yet all those doctors who for years prescribed drinking more fluid to flu sufferers (does not help, actually), are also all smart and experienced. It's just that the scientific methods allow us to go beyond the individual life experiences, which are statistically speaking, are often useless.

Let me begin a rough list of law-making standards here; perhaps people with better knowledge of law and policy can expand or dispute these. I will turn them into questions. I believe each bill introduced should have an accompanying package of materials questions like these should be answered. Right now, nothing like this is available; so the proposed laws maybe great or poor, we simply do not know. It is expensive, and perhaps it is time there were private independent law audit agencies, like in accounting, that would study these things. it might be expensive, but no more expensive than a poorely conceived law and policy. I know some of the questions below are asked one way or another; that's not the point. What I want is a set of standards, with some evidence of meeting them.

1. Is there an existing law on the books that already covers the same ground? If yes, why has it been ineffective? How is this one better?
   
2. Is the intended result of the law clearly defined? Is it measurable?
   
3. Is the effectiveness evaluation mechanism built into the law and adequately structured and funded?
   
4. Is there a sunset clause that allows ineffective law to expire if it has not shown effectiveness?
   
5. Has a similar law been passed by another state or another country? If yes, is there any evidence it worked?
   
6. Have unintended negative consequences been systematically considered and ruled out?
   
7. If negative consequences are unavoidable, does the law include measures for mitigating it?
   
8. Does expected benefit outweigh the expected loss?
   
9. Is it feasible to comply with the law?
   
10. Can compliance be actually measured, detected, and enforced?
    
11. What is the cost of compliance, including the reporting burden cost? Is there a funding mechanism to cover it?
    
12. Who specifically has written the draft of this bill (names, affiliations)?
    
13. Who is likely to benefit and who is likely to lose?
    
14. If the law is written by those who is likely to benefit, are the losers' representatives consulted in advance?
    
15. Are the opponents arguments included?
    
16. How does the law help or hurt its sponsor's political career?
    
17. Which agencies and institutions will carry the burden of compliance and enforcement? Were they consulted on the law's feasibility, and compliance cost?

On writing

I was able to write a little over the break, and reflect on joys and pains of writing. My current project is a book, with a working title Labor of Learning. This is a treatise on economics of learning; a project I have been engaged in for several years. I have some ten papers written and published with this book in mind. However, when they all are put together next to each other, and I begin a search for some logic, it becomes apparent that there are some glaring gaps. For example, there is no way to write this thing without confronting Dewey directly. I was avoiding doing it, mostly because Dewey scholars expect a lot of detailed knowledge about Dewey in all writings about him, so it is almost impossible for an outsider to publish something in a refereed journal. They always say "But you omitted this passage from the Public and its Problems…" Or whatever. They also love the guy too much. Dewey was a prolific and an incredibly dense writer, and I cannot imagine reading all of his stuff. That would kill me. Yet I must engage with his main ideas, because mine contradict his. Anyway, here is where a non-refereed publisher helps – I can say whatever outrageous things about Dewey, and it will get out.

But my goal is to understand the particular drive; what is it that moves me and many other people to do this? The work is tedious, incredibly time-consuming. It takes one away from real human interaction with family, colleagues, students. The returns of it are not that great: unless you write a best-selling textbook, money is puny. There is not much glory in it either: with the exception of a few academic superstars, most academic books never break a 1000 copies sold ceiling; out of those sold most are never read, because libraries buy them. The whole industry of academic publishing seems to be in great peril, with opportunities to publish a book dwindling. I have finally gotten a book contract with a start-up publisher out of the Netherlands, after some thirty rejections. Also, as an administrator, I am not expected to keep up with academic publishing to the same extent as faculty. In other words, it is a lot of hassle without much in return.

And yet, any time I have any time, my mind inevitably wanders into one or another writing project; it just does. It starts laying out logic, structures, points to be made, etc. SO, here is my hypothesis: people like me are easily bored, and are not good at relaxing. We create an alternative reality; so writing is a lot like computer games. The world has certain rules, certain obstacles, and one can overcome them all and reach an end. That's it, it is a pure mind game, a way of glorified entertainment. It has the same sense of agency without really any danger and much responsibility like computer games. Reading fiction does similar thing, but it is too passive; you don't get to act.

I don't think it is possible to write because of the tenure expectations, or because you want to improve the world, or because it is your job. None of these strike me as strong motivation. People who find other ways of occupying their brains are not addicted to writing, and do just fine without it. This particular way of living and acting does not appeal to everyone. It is easy to judge someone and claim my particular preference to be more honorable and more advanced. We always like to measure ourselves with a stick to which we measure well. So, being good at chess – good; being a computer game champion – bad. Scholarly writing – good; spending all the time teaching – not so good. The institutions we create are biased in favor of some people and against some others. I don't think it will ever be corrected, although some openness and some broad-mindedness should be welcome.

Educational Reform: The Denial of Ignorance

As the presidential campaign flares up, No Child Left Behind seems to be in big trouble; see the NY Times account. Virtually no one wants to keep the law as it is; everyone wants to either change it or scrap it. What is conspicuously absent? You guessed right: alternatives. There is a talk of changing the emphasis from testing to teaching, of changing the punitive aspects of the law, etc., etc. It seems most people, especially on the Left, imagine some vagueS softer version of accountability and perhaps more funding for schools. Folks on the Right still hope for deregulation in education, with vouchers or other form of competition unleashing market mechanisms to improve education. Of course, the Democrats are almost forced to make it an election issue, but all they can do is the negative stance against NCLB. The entire bent of Democratic strategies is anti-Bush rather than pro-anything (with the exception of the host of tame medical reforms); education is a part of this: anti-Bush, and pro-very-little. That and some personal innuendo about who’s got more experience and who’s more of a non-Bush.

However, the political discourse on education suffers not only from the normal campaign-induced shallowness, but from a genuine absence of any plausible alternatives. I wish a politician of any kind, let alone the pres candidates, would just stand up and say: “Folks, we’ve got no idea what to do with K-12 education. There were a couple of ideas, and none of them seems to be working. I am pledging significant support to generating new ideas, which then will all be discussed and tested.” Sounds highly unlikely doesn’t it? Yet that would be the only practical position to take. We do have a problem after all: the educational gap between rich and poor kids is still tremendous, which means education for the poor can and should be improved. We don’t have anything close to consensus on what should be done. Moreover, all existing approaches so far have proven ineffective, or very difficult to replicate.

So, what? We have a number of other problems without solutions; deadly diseases is the most obvious example, but also crime, teenage pregnancy, social inequality, etc. Why is it OK to admit that there is no cure for cancer or even common cold, but not OK to admit there is no cure for education? There is a peculiar phenomenon I would call “the denial of ignorance.” Our culture allows for certain things to be unknown, while others have to be known; we do not admit our ignorance about them. Education is clearly one of these areas of “must-know”; politicians have especially hard time admitting having no clue. Or as Dewey used to spell it, no clew.

See for yourself: OK to say, “I don’t know…”

• …How to influence price of gas
• …How to treat Alzheimer’s
• …What is going to happen with stock market
• …How to win all elections
  

Not OK to say, “I don’t know…”

• …Who I am and what my beliefs are
• …What’s right and what’s wrong
• …What to do with education
• …How to fight crime

The truth is, most people individually, and we as a society, collectively, have no more clarity about the first set of claims than we have about the second one. Our ignorance is abysmal; our knowledge is frustratingly limited. Among other things, we have created the wonder of contemporary schooling, which turned out to have some nasty side-effects, and we have very little idea about fixing it.

The existence of the “denial of ignorance” is an interesting phenomenon; it is a special case of a knowledge claim. Some institutions are based on implicit knowledge claims. For example, it is very hard to claim an autonomous self, if you cannot define who you are. One who is in doubt about right and wrong cannot claim to have ethics. Once you build an extensive public schooling system, and collect tremendous amount of taxes to support it, you’d be a fool to admit that you have no idea how to make it work properly. Such an admission undermines the legitimacy of the whole enterprise. Yet explaining does not mean justifying. I still think an honorable position for presidential candidates would be to admit the ignorance – not personal one, but our quite obvious collective ignorance, and seek real sizeable resources in finding solutions. Admitting the ignorance about educational reform may actually serve as evidence of being informed. A part of the position of ignorance is to leave the system to its own devices, until a solution is to be found. We simply cannot continue experimenting with the huge national system of K-12 education with unproven interventions. Just to remind everyone: no one has shown that accountability measures will positively impact learning achievements; it was simply assumed (wrongly) to be self-evident. What we need is a moratorium to new reforms, a freedom for states and districts to experiment, and most importantly, a call to develop new models of educational reform.

Of course, I am biased, because I have a proposal, which may be one of many. The point is, by pretending that we have a solution, we waste our time and energy on politics, on little fights about this kind of reading instruction versus that kind of reading, etc. If we focus our energies on developing a new, truly new approach to educational reform, well, we might actually get there.

Right-brained Teachers

Here is an argument by Daniel H. Pink which I find convincing. You can read a short version on-line, or get his book. Basically, his point is that the linear, logical, sequential thinking is becoming less important, for economic reasons, while right-brain "inventive, empathic, big picture capabilities" come to be the most valuable. His reasoning is quite simple: the computer-like information processing that can be reduced to a number of algorithms, can be handled better by computers, and is easily shipped overseas where it can be made cheaper. We see the evidence of this right here, in our School: instead of paying computer programmers some 30,000 for developing a database, we used a commercially available (although quite sophisticated) software and did it ourselves. Too bad for the company that was hoping to sell the thing to us; great for us. I just got a Christmas card from the company, and feel sorry for these people, but we simply do not need their skills; one does not need to know code to develop databases.

However, my point is this: Teaching seems to be going in the opposite direction. We still are trying to boost very technical skills in teachers. Scripted instructions and standardized assessment seem to call for sequential, linear thinking among teachers. One is supposed to know the curricular standards, and then go through an algorithm to plan instruction, assess, adjust, re-teach, and start over again. Teachers become more and more like knowledge workers and some people link hopes to professionalize teaching with the mastery of knowledge processing. There is nothing wrong with that, except this seems to be too late. We're trying to catch up with a train that is left already; instead of going ahead of the next one. Here is what the new age is calling for, and what we need to teach teachers to do:

High concept involves the capacity to detect patterns and opportunities, to create artistic and emotional beauty, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new. High touch involves the ability to empathize with others, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning (Pink).

Somehow news reaches education much later. One of my doctoral students, Jen Davis, just turned in a paper which convincingly shows that schools use an outdated model of literacy; they are trying hard to reach a wrong goal. Similarly, teacher education might be improving fast but in the wrong direction.

The routine parts of teaching should and will be taken over by computers. For example, computer systems, such as the PLATO are much better at delivering the right curriculum at the right pace, and minutely assess the progress. They are also much better at individualizing the pace of instruction. Sometime soon they will also be able to individualize by learning style and learning disability. Therefore, instead of focusing on what machines can do better, we need to train teachers to relate to students and their parents, to figure out motivational and learning problems, to build supportive communities in their classrooms, and to spread joy. Creativity specifically can be cultivated in people; instead, we send them through compliance school. Our students are so used to complying; they get anxious when directions are not too clear, and the situation is ambivalent. But teachers should thrive on ambiguity and be non-conformists.

Paradoxically, to be creative, teachers need to know which parts of their work can be delegated to computers, and how to use the new informational universe. To even make a distinction between a linear information processing and an insight takes some skills. We still teach our students how to use PowerPoint, which is simply a glorified chalkboard. However, we spend very little time teaching them how to use the course management systems, or ways of creative Googling, etc. We spend almost no time on development of people skills; such as empathy, the ability to interpret emotions, how to listen, how to read body language, how to modulate one's voice, how to act, etc.

I taught a class like that in Russia for a couple of years. It was somewhere between an Encounter group, or socio-psychological training group and acting class. I taught them how to look in the eye, and how to walk in class. We trained for ability to withstand aggression, how to use self-suggestion, and to command attention. I taught them how to smile and charm parents, how and when to touch people. We practiced reading facial expressions. Not sure if they still do it, but that would be some right brain training.

Special Interest and Teacher Education

In the last few months, our College has been approached by several groups; among them the Teaching about the Holocaust group, teaching about American Constitution group, the teachers unions, and the alternative non-union teacher associations, the dyslexia advocacy group. Each wants us to do add their specific concern to our teacher education programs. Some are more effective than others, because they come with willingness to help, to contribute resources, and see how their specific agenda fits into our larger objectives. Others just come insisting we should change our curriculum to address their concern, just on the merits of that concern. All come in hope of getting their agendas extra-mileage, because of the scope of our reach. Indeed, we graduate, some 600 teachers a year, each of them will teach thousands of children over her or his life time. The potential reach is enormous, that's why they all come.

Here is an example of some of the most dangerous, although also well-intentional attempts to influence teacher education. On Wednesday, Harvey Rude, the Director of the School of Special Education, took me and two of his faculty along to a meeting with a State Representative, who is considering introducing a bill on dyslexia in the Colorado General Assembly. The representative is a former teacher and is sympathetic to concerns of dyslexic children, so he all but made a commitment to introduce a bill. The question is, of course, what kind of a bill, so he asked for our input, which is a very reasonable.

Yet the dynamics of such an initiative is very troubling. The special interest group is well organized and well connected. They have a very good cause to defend, and have aggregated a lot of expertise on the issue. The group feels, justifiably, that dyslexic children may be misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all, and neglected by the schools. The problem is, of course, that they see the world through the lens of this specific issue; everything else takes the back seat. So, they would like to see something like a special course in all teacher education curriculum, and if not that, a special procedure for reporting to the State how the information on dyslexia is a part of teacher education curriculum. In other words, they would like to see the State agencies such as the Colorado Department of Education to enforce a mandate from the state. The narrow focus and belief in unfunded state mandates are the two problems; the third one is the assumption that teacher education does not do its job, and our graduates are ignorant in dyslexia issues, and just about everything else.

Let's consider all three assumptions:

1. "My issue is more important than your issue." It is very easy to believe, especially if you have a child of your own who suffers from a particular disability. The special interest groups by definition do not attempt to reconcile their interest with others. However, it is a deeply unethical assumption. What would you like us to remove from curriculum to make room for the dyslexia education? What about other disabilities? Other concerns about teacher training? Also notice that disability does not know class distinction, which is why these groups can recruit a lot of middle class, educated parents to argue for their cause. We never see Latino parents lobbies or poor parents or single moms lobby at our doorsteps, simply because they have little resources to organize. And their children deserve to have a teacher who can individualize instruction to meet their needs, and be sensitive to their specific issues. So, I argue, to be effective a special interest group must be not so special, and show empathy for other causes. They must form broader coalitions, and figure out broader solutions, and make an effort to be useful to people whose work they want to change.
   
2. "Just tell them to do it." Many special interests groups just do not know how higher education and its teacher education branch work. They tend to assume that the State law can effectively change curriculum. In fact, new mandates without any funding attached to it wreck havoc on higher education, and do more damage than good to whatever just cause they are supposed to help. Part of it is that such states as Colorado keep their public colleges on a starvation diet. So faculty feel resentful, tired, and hate new demands. Second, state mandates can create a flurry of reporting activities, but rarely change what is going on in college classrooms. Short of monitoring every classroom, how do you ever know that what we report is actually happening? Third, university faculty's sense of self-esteem comes from being specialists in their fields. State mandates always ignore controversies in scholarship, and prescribe something at least part of faculty does not agree with. Dyslexia is a case of this. When I listen to the advocacy people, they seem to be hundred percent sure about what works and what does not. I come back to my colleagues who actually research the issue, and they are telling me, wait a minute, it is not really that clear, and we do not know much about dyslexia, or even how to define it. Telling a faculty that the State mandate must override his or her scholarly knowledge is most often counterproductive.
   
3. "You suck, because there is a problem." The special interest groups rarely find out what we already do. Their logic is this: there are reports from schools that our issues is not addressed adequately, therefore teachers are not adequately prepared. For example, such and such percent of US population cannot say how the Constitution begins. Therefore, teachers are not prepared to teach it. Notice no one claims that because certain percent of cancer patients still dies, we have a disaster on our hands with medical training or medical research. People who care about cancer get together and find ways of raising money and helping raise awareness. People who care about K-12 schooling mostly get together to lobby state governments to pass laws. Lobbying is a lot cheaper than research. I would like to propose a law to cure cancer by the year 2010, and have all hospitals send the State government annual progress reports… The deep fallacy here is that everything is believed to be possible in education, while in medicine, there are limits to what can be done. In fact, all areas of human activity have intrinsic limits of what is possible. Back to dyslexia: it is possible, that after a careful study, one could find that within the limits of the possible we indeed do not do as much as other comparable institutions do in these areas. However, no one has done such a study to make such a claim. Instead, someone has spoken with this woman who is a UNC graduate, and she even did not know what dyslexia means. On the basis of such "evidence," the entire State of Colorado may introduce a new law.
   

This is not about us protecting our turf, but rather about the unhealthy blend of special interests activism, popular conceptions about education, and reckless law-making.

If you're not too tired yet, here is the entire letter I have written to the State Representative after our visit:

Dear Representative Merrifield:

Thanks for inviting us to yesterday's meeting on dyslexia, and for allowing us to provide further input. Here is my five cents.

1. The Performance-Based Standards for Colorado Teachers already include Standard Six: "Knowledge of Individualization of Instruction: The teacher is responsive to the needs and experiences children bring to the classroom, including those based on culture, community, ethnicity, economics, linguistics, and innate learning abilities. The teacher is knowledgeable about learning exceptionalities and conditions that affect the rate and extent of student learning, and is able to adapt instruction for all learners." Our Teacher Education programs are authorized by CDE on these standards, and it would be very difficult to show actual evidence that these regulations are not enforced. Of course, you can suggest that this specific standard receives more attention or that CDE introduces the Dyslexia Directorate to make a whole new set of standards out of this already quite specific standards. As I mentioned at the meeting, there is a fundamental problem with this sort of regulatory enthusiasm. Among other things, multiple sets of standards present an oxymoron: a standard only makes sense when there is only one. We already have four sets to comply with; three of them overlap greatly (The Licensure standards, the PBSCT, and the Reading Directorate).
   
2. I believe The Colorado Educator Induction Statute (see how CDE is applying it at http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeprof/cdeprofsvc/iheprograms/downloads/IPTemplateteachssp.pdf) can be amended to include more incentives for partnership for collaborative efforts between higher education institutions and school districts in induction programs; and also include partnerships with non-profit entities such as IDA who have collected a wealth of expertise. Such partnerships were encouraged by the Statute, I believe in 1994, but as far as I know, none established with UNC. Perhaps the Statute can be amended to give more teeth to requiring meaningful induction programs. Teacher Education research has plenty of evidence that good beginning teacher training is more effective than piling up a lot of stuff in pre-service programs.
   
3. I also suggest that Colorado experiments with state-NGO partnership models. Frankly, the State has no funds and limited expertise in such highly specialized areas as dyslexia or other learning disabilities. However IDA and its peer organization do have significant expertise and some resources. So, why not use them not only for legislative activism, but also as a resource to promote their causes with State's help? For example, CDE can serve as a clearing house for resources to be used in higher education instruction; to have a list of guest-speakers, of adjunct instructors with specific expertise, etc. In my experience, relatively little money used as mini-grants can generate a lot of interest among university faculty. It can be a mixture of the NGO's money and State matching funds. NGO's such as IDA can help review applications and evaluate the results of such mini-grants. University faculty's buy-in is incomparably higher if they are enticed rather than forced to comply.
   

You also invited us to comment on the Colorado Reading Directorate.

1. The core problem as I see it is that CDE is trying to regulate the input rather than the outcome. CDE and CDHE should be mandated to stop wasting public money and use national accreditation to the extent allowed by Colorado statutes. For example, 39 states have adopted or adapted the NCATE unit standards as their own and apply them to all institutions for purposes of state approval. The national accreditation agencies simply have more resources and have better accreditation systems, which are increasingly performance-based. CHEA is another example.
   
2. The legislature should regulate the regulators. Can we put limits on how much reporting and what kind of reporting a State agency can demand? Can the regulators be held accountable for following the best practices of regulation? Does anyone actually check their review process for integrity? Can someone ask them to prove that their specific way of authorization actually does ensure quality of programs? You guys pass a statute, which then is converted into rules and regulations document that may or may not have anything in common with the intent of the law. For example CRD, in my view, clearly exceeds the authority granted to CDE by the State law. The line between regulating and prescribing which textbooks to use in which course has been crossed; with absolutely no reason to believe it will do any good to anyone.
   

Anyway, thanks for listening. If you want an angrier version of the regulations argument, feel free to read http://sidorkin.blogspot.com/2007/05/what-makes-me-angry.html

Something uplifting

A colleague told me last week, “Why don’t you write something uplifting in your blog; this is the holiday season.” What she meant to say was that many of my blogs read like litanies of problems and complaints. You read them and think the guy is working at a horrible place full of problem. Of course, she is right. The blogs are intended to share my world with my colleagues, and my brain works in such a ways as to focus on problems, and their solutions. This can present a somewhat skewed picture, so let’s count our blessings.
First, STE is generally a very happy place. We all are a bit overworked and sometimes cranky. However, our little group has a tremendous amount of good will and good energy. Simply put, most people do not walk away from problems, and embrace new things. Every time we accomplish something, I have a funny feeling: is this all it took? A complete list would be boring to read, but just a few things: we finished NCATE program reviews this fall, and working on the State review; we revised out biggest program twice; we have a new and growing teacher preparation program; our Doctoral program is revamped, and growing, our off-campus offerings have doubled, we agreed to learn on-line and hybrid pedagogy, our people get grants and publish books and articles… Anyway, this is not a newspaper, so no more bragging, although this could go for another page or two. I guess the kick I get out of all this is connected to the sense of agency. Hope others experience this too. There is nothing worse than knowing something should be done, and not being able to do it. Conversely, the knowledge that if we agree to do something, it can and will be accomplished, this feels really good.
Second, we are a very collegial group. I would love to claim credit for it, but cannot. My colleagues have made a collective decision to get along and become one cohesive community, and they carried it out. Considering the history of typical academic mergers and splits, plus some unfortunate past personality clashes, our School is a remarkably professional and cordial group. This demonstrates that any community has cultural mechanisms of healing. While there are clearly differences in opinions, they rarely grow to become interpersonal conflict. For example: my own proposals and ideas are just as likely to get voted down as they get to be supported. And this is, of course, OK with me and everyone else. At the same time, I am proud to say, I have no enemies. Moreover, there is very little animosity among my colleagues.
Collegiality is very important; so important that pre-tenure faculty cite it as more important than compensation in job satisfaction. Court consistently recognize the lack of collegiality as a valid reason for termination of employment or tenure denial, even if it is not specifically spelled out in contracts and tenure and promotion documents (references are available upon request). A lot is at stake with collegiality; not just warm and fuzzy feelings, but life or death of an institution. A lot of my colleagues understand it better than I do, and we try to keep this place friendly and collegial.
Thirdly, we have some of the best jobs around. Even though faculty and staff are relatively underpaid, our jobs are not boring; they include a lot of intellectual and emotional stimulation. Tons of people would like to be where we are now, so we should really feel fortunate. Thos who complain about working at a university most likely have not really tried anything else, or have forgotten.
So, let’s reflect on what we have, and what we have achieved. This will help us develop an ambitious view of what could be yet achieved. Or as Randy Bachman said and Al Gore repeated, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Relational disorder and the question of power

Writing these blogs made me so transparent, there is no mystery anymore. Those who read them probably know already how I think and what I worry about. However, there is a whole set of things that cannot be disclosed, that will never make it to these blogs, other than in abstract and metaphoric form. Those are, of course, problems related to other people.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a professional development workshop for School Directors, entitled “Things that keep you awake at night.” What transpired from the conversation is the common concern about faculty. Specifically, when someone’s behavior negatively affect students, programs, and other faculty, and we have very limited range of options to address the situation. The frustration comes from the very nature of our position: it is our job to make sure the environment is good, and people - all people - are comfortable: students, staff, and faculty. Because we are the lower-level managers, we receive all the complaints. None of the school directors believe everything we hear. All agreed that one should always listen to all sides of a dispute. These old tried techniques work well, and most of conflicts can be resolved with time and patience and with a little bit of luck. All human cultures have developed some mechanisms of forgiving and forgetting, otherwise no social life would have been possible. Thank god for holidays, breaks, parties, and other things that help us forgive and forget.

However, each of us had some cases where complaints are numerous, credible, and persistent. They seem to be rooted in certain personality traits rather than from miscommunication, specific conflict, or differences of opinion. We all have troubling and troubled individuals who seem to invite conflict, complaints and resentment. None of these people realize they have a problem; they always place the blame in others, no matter how numerous those others are. The power of denial is a tremendous force; people sometimes come up with a completely irrational, far-fetched version of reality just to avoid acknowledging “I have a problem.” Unfortunately, in an academic setting, we have little power to protect other people, especially students, from individuals with the relational disorder. Once someone is tenured, supposedly to protect one’s academic freedom, it becomes very difficult not only to let one go, but also to effect any changes in behavior.

At least some of my colleagues believe that the solution is in more power; wouldn’t it be nice if we could fire someone who is clearly a trouble. I don’t think so. I don’t like to have power, and dislike exercising it. There is a risk in having power concentrated in someone’s hand, both for others, and for those who are given power. It is an old tradition among Russians, which originates in the Orthodox theology, to treat power with suspicion, and try to avoid it as something spiritually corrupting. In my view, the collective power of faculty should be sufficient to solve problems such as relational disorder. However, I would like to comment on a systemic problem: all the good news are openly shared, and people tend to know about each other’s achievements. The bad news, however, accumulate in my file folders. Complaints are dealt with discretely. I am happy to share some of the bad news with the Dean, but he is in the same position: there is no way to make the bad news public, for the obvious reasons. However, faculty have a lot of say in peer evaluation but they basically operate without inadequate information. Some of it, of course, gets through the rumor mill, but that’s just it, the rumor.

Because of this curious mismatch in information flow and decision-making power, administrators sometimes look like the bad guys. They make a decision that, given equal access to information, everyone else would have made exactly the same way. However, because others did not have the same information, they may see the decision as unjust or frivolous, or worse, motivated by personal likes or dislikes. The power balance between faculty and administrators is needed, in part, precisely because of the difference in information to which they have access. However, for it to work well there should be some initial trust on both sides. When I learn of someone’s decision which I consider to be erroneous, I must first assume that the person who made it is not an idiot and not evil. Most likely, she or he know something I don’t. This does not prevent me from questioning, and demanding clear answers, but the initial hypothesis to be proven or disproven should be exactly this: something I don’t know has led to the decision I do not understand.

Thinking with Ursa

A significant portion of my week was spent working on curriculum changes. It is an interesting work, actually, because a lot of it deals with imagination. When you set curriculum as described in catalogue, you have to imagine all possible implications such changes may have. For example, we have found a few bugs that created problems in this registration session; none of these were on our radar screen last year when we introduced the changes. For example, we added a certain prerequisite because program faculty who teach it believe the course should be taken later in the program. We missed of course that it is mathematically impossible for students to fit the specific course so late in the program, because of other requirements. So, they all need to be manually cleared, which is exactly the problem we were trying to solve in the first place. Here is another example: some courses had Provisional admission to a program prerequisite. However, some students went directly to Full admission, and skipped the provisional. In any person’s mind, full supersedes provisional, but computer read these two as separate codes, so it wont’ let fully admitted people to do what provisionally admitted can. We failed to think like a computer, and in a contemporary organization, such a skill is a must.

It is funny how we talk about Ursa (our registration software). She is really a person, but then she is a very peculiar one, with her own logic, her own quirks and obscure rules. We say “Ursa thinks they have not met the requirements,” or “Ursa read this course on their transcripts, and she cannot read the attribute after that.” Ursa has its own logic, so we need to learn to think like Ursa. We wonder how to make Ursa understand something, how to translate our point into Ursa’s logic. YOU cannot argue with her, but you can trick her into doing what we want, only if you understand the way she thinks.

It is all about imagination. We consider possible implications of our curricular changes for students, programs, faculty. It is all but impossible to anticipate all consequences of a change, but we need to see at least the major ones. My wonderful curriculum team, Vicky and Karon, and I take one change, one specific adjustment, and then we basically let our imaginations run. How is it going to affect A, B, and C? What about past and the future? Let’s imagine those students two years from now? What about all these special circumstances we know about? In a way, it is like writing a fiction story, where circumstances are imagined, but they need to have some level of plausibility to them. I guess other people would call it modeling. It is an interesting intellectual and creative challenge though. It requires contextual knowledge of the multiple programs. Funny how computers themselves are not capable of doing such imaginative work. Computers relieved us from a lot of tedious work, but it seems like there is even more demand for human brains that can connect seemingly unrelated dots, and imagine real-life scenarios. Human brains can pick on subtle patters that computer completely ignore, and their owners actually enjoy doing it.

Junior high politics

Junior high politics can be brutal. Adolescents discover the world of relationships, and engage in it with enthusiasm of zealots. One essential feature of human relationships is their selectiveness. Being a friend with certain people means you’re not friends with other people. If you are friends with everyone, this removes any meaning from the concept of friendship and renders it empty.

Of course, by definition, adolescents have not yet established long-term relationships; they are trying it out. So, there is the constant sense of being unsure. The affiliations and alliances change, shift, they fail and are reestablished, and consequently, not much trust exists among adolescent friends. And because power comes with the quantity and quality of friends one has, the constant fears of betrayal are only heightened.

What comes with mistrust and insecurity? It is constant demands to prove loyalty, and to dispel suspicion. For example, if Lucy your best friend, and Sarah is your worst enemy, Lucy may not be friendly with Sarah, even in passing, even briefly. And if she is, she has some explaining to do. This is about the appearance of friendliness. However, if Lucy openly suggests that she would like to be friends with both you and Sarah, well, that is an open invitation to break the friendship.

Adults develop a lot more sophisticated understanding of relationships. First, they will learn the shades and gradations of friendship, and will develop a repertoire or f relationships that is much richer than friend/enemy dichotomy. Second, they will realize that no relationship is truly inclusive, even the most intimate ones like marriage: spouses must still have their own friends, and a whole range of other working and personal relationships. Healthy relationships of all kinds require certain amount of trust and predictability. Adults also learn to calibrate their assessment of relationships. Someone who disagrees with you, or who even has lost temper with you, is not necessarily your enemy or dislikes you. We learn this one way or another, to a different degree.

This is how things normally work. However, when adults experience certain traumatic, dysfunctional communities, they sometimes revert to junior high level of politics. This has little to do with individuals, or their maturity. It’s just the lack of trust that comes from past experiences. If you do not believe the relationship you develop with someone is safe, you will be scrutinizing the other person’s behavior for signs of betrayal. You will interpret her or his friendliness with your enemies as a worrisome sign.

Whoever is in the position of leadership has to be careful treading the relational waters. She needs a support group, those people who most close to her in outlook, and just simply people she draws emotional support from. However the leader cannot engage in junior high politics. He cannot ensure the support of his base by alienating the others. The temptation to anoint friends and enemies is great, especially if there is some genuine dispute within the group, and especially if the leaders feels he has the majority’s support. Nothing unifies your base group as a defined enemy, the others. Nothing brings people closer than a warm discussion about shortcomings of those not currently present. But that is exactly the strategy that would erode trust and plunge the whole group into junior high politics. This has to do with power asymmetry. Although in an academic setting administrators’ power is severely limited by faculty governance, faculty and administrators still have different kinds of powers to balance each other. It all goes wrong when an administrator or a faculty member attempt to tilt that balance by augmenting their powers by personal relations.

Social systems are powerful, but not all-powerful. Systemic problems can nudge a person towards reverting to junior-high politics, but we all have the choice to remain adults.

Just-in-time scheduling

We live in the midst of an incredible information technology revolution. We ask questions that were never asked before, we can know things that otherwise simply could not be known. For example, here is a simple question: how many students will need class X in the next semester, and what time of the day will accommodate the most? To answer this question, we usually use the last year’s experience, some informal feedback, and whatever other hunches we might get. To prepare for especially hard-to-plan course like student teaching, we use some sort of application process. However, we can never account for fluctuation in numbers and scheduling conflicts.

Let’s assume the Math school decided to move their MATH 283 two hours down, simply because they cannot have faculty who can teach it during their regular hours. This means that Elementary kids cannot take our EDRD 419 class. So, a lot of them decide to try it in the following semester, and we cancel a low-enrolled class. Yet in the following semester, there is a bubble we have no idea about: kids whose time is it to take 419, plus all those who delayed last time because of Math, all want to take the class. They try to get in, they cannot, and then they start complaining to the Dean. So we realize there is a problem, create a sign-up list, struggle to find an instructor, and finally offer it anyway. All of this is OK, but costly: students are upset, our FT faculty maybe underemployed when we cancel, but then we have to pay an adjunct extra. School Director’s valuable time is wasted.

What we need is a data management system. Students will develop their four-year tentative plans, so the system will know how many students need what when, for at least a couple of years in the future. The closer it gets, the more accurate picture of student demand we will have. We would also have a better idea of our expenses in the future, and could plan our budgets accordingly.

Then if Math 283 will happen to get scheduled first, the system will know that students who need it also need EDRD 419, and will suggest the best times for it and other yet unscheduled classes, so most students do not have conflicts in their schedule. Of course, if we schedule first, Math folks have to use the free time available.

Of course, something like this does exist already; just check out all these products. Yet it does not appear any of them have the capacity to look several years ahead; they basically play one semester in advance, and help match people’s preferences (they ask students and faculty when they would like to teach or take classes). Of course, no student wants to drag his or her behind on campus at 7:30 in the morning, and faculty may have their own preferences. So, the system can keep track of three factors: how many people need a class, when they are available to take it, and when they would rather take it.

It is not really that complex, and probably not that expensive to develop. Other industries such as shipping may have used similar algorithms to manage different processes. Any takers?

Morsels of the Real

This is my sixtieth blog, and I am not sure how many more things I have to say about all this life. I have something today though.

We had a good conversation with my Philosophy of Education class last week. We talked about Buber, and about I-Thou relations. Basically, Buber says that what’s important in our lives is not necessarily what takes the most time, nor is it something you can pinpoint as a behavior or a principle. The brief, infrequent, fleeting moments is what’s most important. Otherwise, the routine of everyday work and home worries and interactions sweeps away the very humanity we all possess. Buber suggests that the usual lives we live are not completely human, that the only way to become a full human being is to seek and appreciate these fleeting moments, when another person comes in direct relation with me, and as Buber writes, fills the heaven. It is when we relate to another person outside of restrictions and considerations of our relative positions, characteristics, stereotypes, and expectations. Those moments are the morsels of the real that actually make our lives worth living. Just thinking about scheduling, budgeting, big and little conflicts, programs, curriculum, etc, etc. – just thinking about this is actually quite depressing without some sort of a window to the real.

Our lives in big bureaucratic institutions and impersonal suburbs actually make this worse: we do not go to war, do not get lost in the desert, do not think about survival. The opportunities to reflect on our lives are not that plentiful. So, small problems tend to look bigger than they really are, petty fights look like big fights, and generally, the routine tends to eat us alive. How do we develop the capacity to always be on for the real? How do we manage to also pass this capacity on to our students?

What I am talking about may or may not be spiritual life. It’s basically, the ability to encounter other people without BS, directly. Lots of deeply religious and deeply atheistic people develop such abilities, although many others never do. Some people are a lot better at it than others. The problem is, we never specifically learn or teach how to seek the I-Thou, and how to recognize it once found.

What worries me is that this will sound crazy to many people. Then you ask them to tell a story about their lives, and how they sometimes feel a very deep connection to another person in a specific moment of a specific conversation, when the outside world somewhat disappears. And they suddenly remember, and agree that yes, it felt real, somehow profound. So, here is my suggestion: let’s amend the Performance-Based Standards for Colorado Teachers as following:

Standard Nine: I-Thou relations

The teacher has demonstrated the ability to:

1 Seek dialogical relations with his or her students
2 Maintain openness to the Other
3 Develop the need and ability to experience live in its fullest
4 Create classroom situations conducive to spontaneity, complexity and carnival

Or something like that...

I look at the list of my 59 blogs and wonder: how many of them about the real, and how many are about the superficial? Hmm, perhaps not that many.

1. How to alienate people and damage relationships
2. The Nomadic conference
3. Authority and power
4. Going with the flow: On the horizontal transparency
5. On-line is on the line
6. Playing the “you”
7. Switching gears
8. The Organizational Drift
9. Can you ever go home?
10. Dances with Data
11. Churchill and tenure
12. Freud for teachers, amended
13. Weddings, rituals, and memories
14. Curriculum and communication
15. Shift Left
16. The 90/10 rule
17. The cost of fairness
18. What is the most important
19. Zeno, Buddha and Program Development
20. What makes me angry
21. Gospriyomka and NCATE
22. Time density
23. The clouds glide by
24. The ethics of rumoring
25. Time Management and Sorry
26. The Lake Wobegon Effect
27. The “B” Word, or How do you know what you say you ...
28. Notes from AACTE, or American Absurdities
29. On Scholarly Productivity
30. Memories and time Symbolic violence
31. Merit, Shmerit, or “Evaluate not and thou shall no...
32. Why are we poor?
33. Midwives, matchmakers, Napoleon, and Kutuzov
34. On failings of humans
35. On the Money
36. What makes a problem hard to solve
37. UNC’s Organizational Culture and Change
38. Community and innovation: On the Academic Plannign...
39. Neo-prog’s Educational Agenda
40. Neo-progs wanted: Toward a new educational progres...
41. The Academe and other Soviet states
42. Teaching as research
43. Justice is good bureaucracy
44. Fall, foliage, and intrinsic motivation
45. Notes from the Dark Side
46. Accreditation and ambivalence
47. Levine Report
48. Cultural cycles
49. On human errors
50. The anatomy of human conflict
51. How to stop turf wars
52. Your director's list of task, abridged
53. On the nature of human knowledge
54. On authority
55. Big ideas
56. Complexity and catch-22
57. On vision, geeks, and technology
58. WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT