I found it ironic, to say the least, that just above their link to my blog post, TexasISD had linked to an article published in the Austin American-Statesman titled "Perry: Learn to separate fact from fiction." It turned out to be an editorial written by Perry himself.
On reading the editorial, the gist of which was that a disinformation campaign across Texas is not accurately representing the Governor's record on funding research in higher education, I was struck in particular by two quotes:
One proven tactic of propaganda is that if you want to distract people from the conversation you should be having, don't be afraid to lie ... and lie big.
and
Public debates about university excellence and accountability are necessary and healthy. But these false claims about university research are damaging our universities and Texas as a whole.
I also wonder if anyone else notices that the second quote above could still be true with just a couple of word substitutions:
Public debates about Texas K-12 education and accountability are necessary and healthy. But these false claims about Texas public schools are damaging our education system and Texas as a whole.
How I wish we - that's all of us, on all sides of public education issues in Texas - could live up to the ideal that HONEST public debate is necessary and healthy.
Today, I am writing to say he is wrong about the extent of educator layoffs in Texas and that he is also wrong about the staffing ratio of teachers to administrators in the school districts in our state.
Below is a recording of the interview, and below it is a transcript of the relevant portions of the interview which I myself transcribed. To hear the portion of the interview related to this blog post, click the play button, and after the audio file streams down (you'll see the sound wave pattern fill up across the screen), drag the play bar to the 4:15 mark and listen through the 6:06 mark.
The portions of the interview to which I am referring are found between time stamps 4:15 and 6:06. Any emphasis in the transcript below is my own for the purposes of my responses.
4:15 Question from Caller:I’m asking what happened to the financial stability that he campaigned that Texas had when now we’re having massive cuts in education and all other types of programs and he campaigned and touted about the fact that Texas had a surplus. What happened to that?
4:35 Host: What did happen to the surplus, Governor?
4:37 Governor Perry: Well what we said was that we had a rainy day fund of nine billion dollars. We knew there were going to be challenges from the standpoint of our current budget. Texas is still creating jobs. We’re still the strongest economy in this country. But the idea that we’re some island in these 50 states is…no one said that we weren’t going to be impacted by the national economy…
5:06 Host: What are we going to do withall these laid off teachers?
5:07 Governor Perry:Well first off I think you’re seeing a substantial misinformation campaign going on out there. There’s not some huge, “massive” as she used the terminology, number of laid off teachers. And here’s a more important question. In Texas now, we’ve hired a huge number of non teachers into our public schools. Administrators, etc.
5:34 Host (talking over Perry at first): Yeah. Do you stand by the number that you gave…Governor Perry I’m sorry…Do you stand by the number you gave previously…Do you stand by the number you gave previously that there was 1 to 1 ratio of administrators to teachers?
5:45 Governor Perry:That is absolutely correct. And the issue becomes the local school districts and the local administrators are the ones that are going to decide how to manage their personnel loads. And if they’re laying off teachers while they’re keeping administrators on, then I think you’ve got some real questions to ask of the school boards and the administrators at that particular point in time.
There's not some huge, "massive"...number of laid off teachers...
I will concede that not all of the 12,211 job eliminations and layoffs documented here (as of the writing of this post) are classroom teachers, but a major portion of them are. And all 12,211 of those positions represent people involved in the education of children in our Texas public schools. I am not sure what the Governor defines as "massive", but I think any industry that is experiencing layoffs in the tens of thousands might qualify as having large-scale layoffs. When it is also taken into consideration that only 66 of our 1,234 districts are represented on the site, it is quite possible that the 12,211 number is just the tip of the iceberg, and it is a predictor of more layoffs to come if the legislature cannot find better solutions to our current budget crisis. It is disingenuous under these circumstances to continue to deny that massive education layoffs are occurring.
There is a "1 to 1 ratio of teachers to administrators" in Texas public schools...
My second response is to the Governor's statement that it is "absolutely correct" that there is a "1 to 1 ratio of teachers to administrators" in Texas public schools. To make my point, I first need to define "administrator" the way most of us who work in public schools define "administrator". If you ask educators who the administrators in their school or district are, they will likely answer with the names of people whose titles are principal, assistant principal, superintendent, deputy superintendent, assistant superintendent, chief financial officer, and director.
*According to TEA, “Support staff are defined as therapists, psychologists, counselors, diagnosticians, physicians and nurses, librarians, department heads, and miscellaneous other support roles. This category does not include secretaries.” Support staff often work directly with students during the school day. Instructional aides also work directly with students alongside teachers. (Information quoted from Texas Association of School Business Officials via Texas ISD.com)
With teachers comprising 50% of the employees of Texas public schools, and administrators only comprising 4%, it can hardly be argued that there is a 1 to 1 ratio of administrators to teachers in our schools. As a professional educator, I myself would be appalled if that were so.
One could still argue that more than 50% of public school employees should be teachers. After all, it is true that the majority of a school's mission is accomplished through teachers working in the classroom directly with students. I, and many other educators would point out, however, that without nurses, custodians, bus drivers, maintenance workers, computer technicians, special education diagnosticians and therapists, professional development specialists, human resources staff, secretaries, instructional aides, and people fulfilling other essential support roles, the mission of the teacher in the classroom would not be possible. Without these important people working to support teachers and students, teachers would have added responsibilities that would take away from their time focusing on student instruction.
An analogy I've heard several times is apt: Would you run a hospital staffed mostly with doctors? Fewer support staff means doctors would have to run all of the tests, process insurance, meet basic needs of patients, and so on. There would not be enough time to meet with patients to diagnose their ailments and plan treatments. Teachers would be in a similar position, not adequately supported to focus primarily on their students, if they had to attend to the tasks the support personnel in their schools and districts take care of every day.
The 1 to 1 ratio of teachers to administrators only works if you count all non-classroom teachers as administrators. Lumping maintenance staff in with principals is inaccurate at best and purposefully deceitful at its worst.
If you are interested in even more in depth analysis of the ratio of teachers to non-teachers in Texas school districts, I highly recommend the following links:
I understand our state is in a financial crisis and that there is disagreement on how best to address it. What I would like to see, however, from anyone on any side of the budget and education debates, is accuracy and honesty. If we truly believe our approach is right, we should not have to twist the facts or leave out important details in order to persuade others to support our solution. If spin is necessary, then I am tempted to conclude there is more to the agenda than just balancing the state budget.
Note: On Wednesday, May 18th, I posted a brief follow-up to this blog post.
I spent the week of February 7-11 attending the 2011 TCEA Convention and Exposition in Austin, Texas. The theme for this year's gathering was "No LimITs", and it was an appropriate theme for my biggest takeaways from the conference.
For years I have been hearing and reading about the need to open up Web 2.0 tools for student and teacher use in schools as well as moving toward 1:1 computer/device access for students. This year, these two themes converged at TCEA, and for the first time I heard from several schools and districts that have taken steps in these directions. I left the conference encouraged and energized to help my own district start making moves in this direction.
My conclusions:
It is time to bring cloud computing into our schools.Google Apps for Education is one very logical way to do this. It provides a balance of schools being able to oversee what students and teachers are doing in the cloud while giving them access to authentic tools for learning through creation and collaboration. At a time when the budget crisis in Texas is promising severe cutbacks in public education funding, using a suite of free tools such as Google Apps is even more appealing.
It is time to open up filters and bring more Web 2.0 applications into our schools. Instead of blocking everything that can be used inappropriately (in the end, what can't be used inappropriately?), it is time to teach digital responsibility and digital citizenship. We can't teach teachers and students how to successfully navigate and responsibly use the Internet which is now an integrated part of our lives if we continue to barricade the schoolhouse under the guise of protection. (One of my favorite quotes from the week was from Jamie Casap: "We teach kids how to cross the street. We do not ban cars.")
It is time to allow students to bring personal computing devices to school and integrate their use into instruction. Most schools are never going to be able to afford sustainable 1:1 computing. Yet if we open up cloud computing and Web 2.0 applications, access to devices will be critical to leveraging those tools. The answer lies in taking advantage of the tools many students already have - cell phones, smart phones, app phones, MP3 players, tablets, and laptops. This means we need to remove barriers which are blocking the use of personal technology at school.
As much as I would love to do all of the above NOW, I know that is not wise or feasible. There are conversations to be had and issues to be addressed. For all of you in the education world who think change happens too slowly, you are right in most cases. That does not mean we should throw caution to the wind, however. We need to lay the groundwork for these initiatives and keep the ball rolling to get everything in place.
Some issues I know schools will need to address are:
Bandwidth - Accessing the cloud, using Web 2.0 tools, and allowing students to connect personal devices to the network are going to take bandwidth - and lots of it. Many districts are not "up to speed" in this area, so investments must be made. Increasing bandwidth costs money, but hopefully that spending might be offset by not having to buy as much specialized software or as much hardware as students begin to use cloud applications and their own devices. A corollary to this problem is cell signal strength in some buildings. We have buildings in our district which are considered black holes when it comes to cellular access. Schools may need to invest in repeaters in some buildings to make student cell phone use viable. A second corollary is that schools will need a strong wireless infrastructure to support connecting personal devices to the Internet.
Equal Access - Not every student has a cell phone with unlimited data or text plans, nor do they all have laptops they can bring to school. What do we do for students in these situations? It really isn't fair to expect students with devices to share expensive equipment. Schools will need to invest in some devices, such as iPod Touches, tablets, or laptops/netbooks to provide equivalent access during the school day. Access at home then becomes another matter as well.
Policy - While moving into these realms opens up whole new areas of opportunity for digital citizenship education, it also opens up whole new areas of opportunity for kids to push boundaries. Obviously, new acceptable use policies need to be implemented. One of the policies I came across in a session was White Oak ISD, and what I like about it is it is applied both to the use of personal and district owned equipment. I believe a consistent set of consequences for violating acceptable use should also be established. Schools will also not be able to ignore CIPA and FERPA as they venture into these realms.
Administrator/Teacher Buy In and Professional Development - New opportunities for instructional integration will abound, but many teachers and administrators will be way out of their comfort zones in this new environment.Professional development will be needed to build the capacity of administrators and teachers to manage and leverage environments with much more open access to technology. Some will be reluctant to venture into this realm, so showing them the possibilities will be very important. While others might be ready to run with this opportunity, they, too, will need workshops in safe practices and quality integration strategies. Quite frankly, teaching in a technology infused environment requires new pedagogy which is not instinctive to most of us. As much as I try to keep up with what's going on in the educational technology field, I know even I will need training to help teachers make this transition.
I was quite surprised at the number of schools and districts who threw the door open for students to use personal devices in school without first providing their staff with professional development. To me that's putting the cart way before the horse. Most admitted to experiencing some issues by implementing without appropriate training for staff. I would hope districts on the cusp of these implementations will learn from others' experience and provide the necessary training ahead of time, as well as in a continuing manner, to maximize the impact of these new technologies on student learning.
If the purpose of public education is to prepare students to be productive members of society, we can no longer claim to be meeting our purpose if we are locking the most modern of society's tools outside of the schoolhouse door.
It is obviously going to take a time and collaboration to move from the realm of Web 2.No to Web 2.Go. Almost every one of the sessions I attended at TCEA 2011 (you can read my session live-blogs) contributed in some way to convicting me of the importance of starting NOW to make these moves.
Although we can't flip the switch overnight, we can start the conversation on Monday morning and make the case for technology to finally be in a position to transform education as it has transformed business and society.
Please share your thoughts: What am I leaving out as I think about this transition for schools? Is your school or district already doing this and do you have insights to share? What questions/suggestions do you have? Do you have links to stories of places who have successfully made these transitions? Please post in the comments. With Web 2.0 at our fingertips, there is no sense in each of us trying to figure this out alone!
Ken Royal of Scholastic Administrator Magazine recently wrote a blog post which resonated with me. As much as I love the world of social media and all of the benefits it has to offer education, I, too, worry about educators who run headlong into using free web resources with K-12 students. Are they really thinking about all of the possible implications of what they are doing?
We really do need to look at consistent solutions, as Ken points out, for multiple reasons including providing quality professional development for teachers as well as student safety and liability protection for districts and teachers.
Below are some of the points that stood out to me in Ken's blog post. I encourage you to click the link and read all of his thoughts for yourself.
Use of Twitter or Facebook by educators is one thing, but when I see articles and posts about using social media in classrooms, other than higher ed—it makes me cringe. Any adult using these online options knows how difficult they are to control. Hacking, porn, language, and just the constant updates—by the nanosecond—from all over the world are too uncontrollable for most classrooms—and from what I see, many adults, too.
Sometimes administrators and educators get so caught up with the cool, that they forget the bigger picture
At their best, they are the few in each school, or district, pushing the tech envelope. Some do that envelope pushing while working closely within the district, but others work outside that safety net. Today, the latter scares me. Relying on free downloads, cool online sites—with most of those requiring logins—can be unsafe. We need to move beyond the rogue-educator, and support consistent school or district solutions.
Experimenting with new online tech ideas is one thing, but forcing all into the classroom is not using common sense.
Adora writes about the need for teachers to provide constructive criticism for all student assignments, especially the ones that "meet the rubric". She gives some very specific examples of how such feedback for continued student growth might look. Adora's words on the need for teachers to provide feedback that goes beyond a grading rubric really resonated with me, so much so that I wrote a comment on her post.
I want to preserve my thoughts here, as well. I love commenting on blogs, but for some comments I hate that I "leave" the thoughts on another blog that I might not recall if the topic comes up again down the road!
So, for my own recollection later, and your information if you are interested, here are the comments I left on Adora's post:
Adora, I am currently a student in an online master's degree program and I want you to know I really, REALLY appreciated and related to your post above on the importance of feedback that goes beyond the rubric, especially when the assignment meets all or most of the rubric's requirements. On assignments where I do well, I still want to know what the grader thought about my ideas or be challenged to stretch my ideas.
I think back to a paper I did as an undergrad. I received a good grade on the paper, but I don't remember it exactly; I do remember a comment the professor wrote in the margin to this day, nearly 20 years later. I remember it because it challenged my beliefs and made me look at them and actually become more resolved in them.
As you so rightly pointed out, everyone, including a student who "meets the criteria" for an assignment, needs to be encouraged to grow from wherever they are. None of us ever arrives - but we can stagnate. A good teacher will use constructive dialog to help keep that stagnation from happening.
I should be studying, but I made the "miskate" of checking my Twitter streams first this morning. When looking at my #edtech search, I came across a tweet that actually sent me to the second of the two videos below, which then sent me on a rabbit trail I'm excited to have gone down.
I had not heard of SixthSense technology before today. It's a project being worked on by MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group, led by Pattie Maes and her student Pranav Mistry. Assuming continued successful development, this technology has potential for causing a huge paradigm shift in personal "computing", and it SHOULD be hugely impactful in the world of education. (I say SHOULD because of the unfortunate slowness of adopting new technologies especially in the K-12 world). I predict this for two reasons:
The technology behind the device costs around $300, well in reach of the masses in developed nations.
Mistry plans to open source the technology.
Is your curiosity meter revved up yet? What is this SixthSense thing that has me blogging instead of studying this morning? I invite you to watch the two videos below - combined they are about 20 minutes in length and they will convince you I think. Only have time for one? The first one gives a great overview of the technology. But the second one is also cool because it talks about the development - I like the "story behind the stuff". By the way, you can follow @SixthSenseTech on Twitter if your interest is piqued.
I also invite you to leave a comment on how you think this might impact society and culture in general, and education in particular.
I leave you to the videos, while I go study so I can finish my master's degree and hopefully live to see this technology integrated into K-12 one day. :-)
An educator I follow on Twitter, thecleversheep, tweeted this this morning:
Care to share your wisdom? Looking for global representation in a preso on Collaboration: http://bit.ly/4gfNqy (retweets appreciated)
When I clicked the link, here's the question I was faced with:
What is the most important thing teachers of today need to realize, or need to learn?
One of those thought provokers! Here was my response:
The World Wide Web was invented in 1989; it is 20 years old. For students in K-12 education today, the Web has always existed. There has never been a world without it. Teachers who are 30 years old or older had little or no exposure to "growing up online" or learning online when they themselves were students. They certainly did not have the unsupervised access to technology that today's students have - nor did they have the opportunities for global learning. To stay relevant in our pedagogical approaches and to equip students to survive and thrive in the digital world where they already live, we must become adopters of the technology ourselves. We may never be immersed to the extent our students are, but to ignore the digital world in our personal and professional lives is a great disservice to our students.
How would you answer that very same question? Post a comment here, and while you're at it, post a response for thecleversheep's pesentation.
First, thank you for taking the time to visit this post and offer your advice! :-)
A public high school I work with is interested in broadcasting info to parents and students via Twitter. I'm a relative newb to using Twitter myself, and have never even taught one other person how to use it, let alone a public institution.
My charge here is two-fold: gather enough info to present to our superintendent to hopefully get this approved and guide the high school in using Twitter and using it well.
Would love your advice! Some questions I have include:
What are the benefits of a public school using Twitter?
What are potential pitfalls of a public school using Twitter?
Do you know of examples of high schools already doing this and doing it well?
Would you recommend a 3rd party client and if so, which one and why?
Should tweets be public or protected?
What would you share with your superintendent? You don't know their previous knowldege of Twitter so assume no knowledge or experience.
What questions should I be thinking about/asking that aren't on this list?
I think that about covers it! Thank you in advance for any wisdom you can share. This is very exciting. I'll keep folks posted as the project progresses!
