Innovation in Education: some Irish success

Amongst the buzz-words one hears a lot about in education these days are innovation and globalization. As this article shows one Irish organization in this field (Hibernia College) is doing well (and doing good too). Curiously enough, it is a for-profit company.

Happening This Week

Dear readers,

I want to personally invite you all to attend two terrific events happening on the UW-Madison campus this week. I will be speaking at both and hope to see many of you there.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Department of Educational Policy Studies will be holding its annual conference. The topic is The Obama Education Agenda: Principles, Policies, and Prospects.

The speaker for the opening session, Tuesday night at 7 pm at the Union Theater, is none other than Diane Ravitch. (You can bet Liam is excited!) She will be talking about "The Future of Public Education."

On Wednesday there will be several panels and a lunchtime session featuring former Wisconsin congressman David Obey. You might've seen the video of Dave attempting to get into the Wisconsin State Capitol building recently -- I sure hope he talks about that. Take a look at the full agenda, and note that the title for my talk has been revised -- I will now be speaking on Saving Public Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century: The Case for Pragmatic Idealism.

In addition, Wednesday night there will be a teach-in about the New Badger Partnership-- Chancellor Biddy Martin's vision for our public flagship. It will take place from 7-9 pm in Humanities room 2650. Panelists include: Steve Stern: Associate Vice Provost for Faculty and Staff Programs, Chad Goldberg: Associate Professor in the Sociology Dept. and Vice President, United Faculty & Academic Staff (UFAS), AFT 223, and Ben Manski: Executive Director of the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution.

There's plenty to do around here and a great need to get involved. Come join us!

Get SSC/Dakhil/Vocational Result-2011 of Bangladesh Education Board

 SSC Result Bangladesh 2011 SSC Result Bangladesh 2011 Bangladesh SSC Result 2011 BD SSC Result 2011 SSC Result Bangladesh 2011 Bangladesh SSC Result 2011 BD SSC Result 2011SSC Result Bangladesh 2011 Bangladesh SSC Result 2011 BD SSC Result 2011 SSC Result

Bangladesh 2011 Bangladesh SSC Result 2011 BD SSC Result 2011 BD Result SSC 2011 BD Result SSC 2011, SSC 2011 BD Result, SSC 2011 BD Result, SSC 2011 BD Result, SSC 2011 Get the result of SSC, HSC, ALIM, DAKHIL

 

 

 

Another exciting day is knocking to our door. It’s the time of getting the SSC Result and a day to fly away with joy & fun for somebody and a day to get depressed and gloomy for somebody. I would like to congratulate to everyone who are going to achieve a great result and I also would like to tell the guys who might have a bad result that; don’t worry, don’t be hopeless, keep trying and you will surely be able to get a good result next time. 

 

Now I would like to share with you about How to know the SSC result of 2010.

In this year the Bangladesh government has taken a new, awesome decision; which is to send the SSC or Dakhil or Vocational Result to the candidate’s personal email address with the details of the GPA he or she obtained and the Marks he/she achieved.

How Can I get Result In My Email Inbox

To get the SSC result directly to your email inbox; you just have to go to the Education Board’s respective website, which is here – Click this link.  and Subscribe into the box below.

Now there is another way to see the published SSC result.

How Can I See The SSC result in the Education Board Website

To see your result from the Bangladesh education board website; just Click on this Link. It will take you a result page where you will be able to see your SSC result when the result will be published. Just enter your roll no, Registration No and Board and press enter. It will show your result. Yahoo!

How Can I Get SSC Result By Using Mobile Phone

You can get the SSC, Dakhil or Vocational Result by using your Mobile phone too. Just open the Message option from your mobile phone and write “reg” and give a space and write the first three letter of your board name and then give a space and type your Roll No.
Now send this SMS to 16222.

For example: reg dha 321654 and send it to 16222

Heay! SSC Examinee friends! Hope, you will be benefited from this post. 

Result is Publishing at 11AM(Local Time), 15th May, 2011

Education Board Result All Website Link For Bangladesh

Education Board Results Only: www.educationboardresults.gov.bd

Education Board Website: www.educationboard.gov.bd

Dhaka Education Board Website:www.dhakaeducationboard.gov.bd

Rajshahi Education Board Website:www.rajshahieducationboard.gov.bd

Barisal Education Board Website:www.barisalboard.gov.bd

Dinajpur Education Board Website:www.dinajpureducationboard.gov.bd

Jessore Education Board Website:www.educationboard.gov.bd/jessore

Chittagong Education Board Website:www.www.bise-ctg.gov.bd

Sylhet Education Board Website:www.bise-sylhet.gov.bd

Bangladesh Madrasa Education Board Website:www.bmeb.gov.bd

Bangladesh Technical Education Board Website:www.bteb.gov.bd

MInistry of Education Website:www.moedu.gov.bd

National Curriculum and Text Book Board (NCTB):www.nctb.gov.bd

Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education:www.dshe.gov.bd

Directorate of Primary Education:www.dpe.gov.bd

Bangladesh Portal:www.bangladesh.gov.bd

Teletalk Website Bangladesh:www.teletalk.com.bd

All result in one website:www.edunbd.blogspot.com

Teaching 2030: an important book on teaching by teachers

this is slightly modified from the original which appeared at Education Review

Berry, Barnett, and the Teacher Solutions Team (2011). Teaching 2030: What We Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools — Now and in the Future.

In all of the public discourse of what we need to do to fix public schools and educate our young people for the future, one set of voices has until now been conspicuously absent. It is the voices of teachers.

This new book, put together under the auspices of the Center for Teaching Quality established by lead author Barnett Berry, and with generous funding from the MetLife Foundation, is an important attempt to include the voices of teachers in helping frame the discussion of how we address our educational needs.

Those of us in classrooms, unless we choose to be oblivious, recognize that our profession needs to be redefined. We lose too many good teachers from classrooms because too often the only path for professional and financial advancement is through administration. In the meantime, we see the students arriving in our classrooms changing as society changes. Often we are prevented from changing what we do in order to meet them where they are. We know this has to change.

This book is the product of an extensive discussion among professional educators. Much of it was conducted online. The final product list 12 authors besides Berry, all themselves notable classroom teachers. They are the ones who sat down with him to put together the book as we have it. But that final product also included material offered by others in online discussions through the various arms of the Center for Teaching Quality, especially its Teacher Leaders Network, of which I am member. Thus while I was not part of the actual author group, I appear 3 times in the work. I do not think that disqualifies me from examining the work and encouraging others to read it.

The teachers participating in this endeavor collective bring a diverse set of experiences to it. Renee Moore taught English high school students in the Mississippi Delta, where she now teaches at a community college. Ariel Sacks and Jose Vilson teach in New York City middle schools. Laurie Wasserman has almost 30 years as a teacher of special education. After a distinguished career in a classroom, Shannon C’de Baca has spent a number of years doing online education. Jennifer Barnett now functions as school-based technology integration specialist in rural Alabama. Kilian Betlach is a Teach for America alumnus who was well-known as a blogger and is now an elementary school assistant principal. Carrie Kamm is a mentor-resident coach for an urban teacher residency program in Chicago. Among these and others in authoring group are winners of State Teacher of the Year (including one finalist for National Teacher of the Year), Milken award winners, Lilly Award winners, and so on. All have experience in trying to improve the teaching profession beyond the reach of their own classrooms. One finds a similar range of diversity and an equal amount of accomplishment in the 33 teachers who are also thanked for their contributions in the online discussions in which we took part.

In addition, those functioning as authors were able to participate in webinars with a number of outstanding experts from across the nation, including on expert from Australia.

The result is a book rich in insight, analysis, and suggestions for the future, one that has already received praise from many notables associated with education and teaching. Of greater importance, it is a book that will speak to a wide range of audiences: those who prepare our new teachers, those who administer our schools, those who make policy, and most of all, to those of us who teach now or may teach in the future.

In his Prologue, Barnett Berry makes a couple of key points that help a reader understand the thrust of the book. The authors

...have come together, in harmony if not always in lock-step, about an expanded vision for student learning in the 21st century and for the teaching profession that will, in myriad ways, continue to accelerate that learning. (p. xiii)

They get to this point by examining what works now in order to describe what will likely work and be needed in the schooling of the future. The vision “emerges from a student centered vision” that takes advantage of new tools, organizations and ideas. It is based on four “emergent realities”:
1. a transformed learning ecology for students and teacher
2. seamless connections in and out of cyberspace
3. differentiated paths and careers
4. “teacherpreneurs” who will foster innovation locally and globally

These rely on six levers for changes: 1. engaging the public in provocative ways
2. overhauling school finance systems
3. creating transformative systems of preparation and licensure
4. ensuring school working conditions that they know promote effective teaching
5. reframing accountability for transformative results
6. continuing to evolve teacher unions into professional guilds

Each of these levers and each of the realities could be a separate volume. Thus the authors cannot fully explore the dimensions of each, yet they provide more than enough to lay out a vision that is clearly possible. In part that is because of the experience they collectively bring to the task, and what they have absorb from the webinars and from the exchanges with each other and with those who participated in online discussion.

The aforementioned Prologue is titled “We Cannot Create What We Cannot Imagine.” It is followed by two chapters that can be considered introductory:
1. The Teachers of 2030 and a Hopeful Vision
2. A Very Brief History of Teaching in America.

The next four chapters explore the four Emergent Realities, each in some specificity. For example, Chapter 5 explores the 3rd of these Emergent Realities, Differentiated Pathways and Careers for a 21st-Century Profession. In just over 30 pages the authors explore four subthemes:
1. Outgrowing a One-Size-Fits-All Professions
2. Redefining the Professions for Results-Oriented
Teaching
3. Teacher Education for a Differentiated, Results-Oriented Profession
4. Professional Compensation for Differentiated Profession

After these four chapters the book spends almost 40 pages exploring the six policy levers of change before concluding with Taking Action for a Hopeful Future, with a subsection on “What You Can Do to Build a 21st- Century Teaching Profession.”

Perhaps the power of the book can best be understood through the notion of “Teacherprenuerism” as it is explored in Chapter 6. The term first appears near the beginning, with the idea of teacher entrepreneurs serving in hybrid positions that don’t easily fit the normal way we classify teachers. Allow me to offer the paragraph from p. 7 which first presents the idea in some detail, after setting the stage by reminding us how already teachers, many National Board Certified and comfortable with using the tools of the web, are de-isolating teaching and offering cost-effective ways of propagating exemplary teaching practices:

The fruits of those labors have been realized in 2030. About 15% of the nation’s teachers - more than 600,000 - have been prepared in customized residency programs designed to fully train them in the cognitive science of teaching and to also equip them for new leadership roles. Most now serve in hybrid positions as teacherpreneuers, teaching students part of the day or week, and also have dedicated time lead as student support specialists, teacher educators, community organizers, and virtual mentors in teacher networks. Some spend some of their nonteaching time working closely university- and think tank-based researchers on studies of teaching and learning - or conducting policy analyses that are grounded in their everyday pedagogical experiences. In some school district, teachers in these hybrid roles earn salaries comparable to, if not higher than, the highest paid administrators.

Lest one think that a pie in the sky belief about the future, several members of the team that wrote this book - and several of those who like me served as additional resources - already partially function in this fashion. The book posits a day where such teachers would not only be known to wider audiences of parents, community and business leaders and policy makers, but would be respected and listened to. Some of those participating in this process already have that kind of respect, for example, Renee Moore, who has served on the boards of both the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and as the first educator still in the classroom on the board of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (California). John Holland has served as a classroom teacher, a blogger for the Pew Charitable Trust blog Inside Pre-K and moderates an online community of accomplished teachers. Others have similar experiences of attempting to create hybrid roles where they can leverage their expertise and knowledge while remaining at least partially classroom based. They use their experience to project to the future they envision. The process has begun already, but the authors are talking about something more than selling one’s good lesson plans on E-bay. As John Holland notes in Chapter 6,

The combination of self-publishing and the use of the internet as a platform for communication has already given rise to the “communities of practice” around topics ranging from lessons in how to teach fractions to using brain research to perform the teaching act as the highest levels. Teacherpreneurs will increasingly be leaders in these communities, which will stretch far beyond the confines of their school or district - a virtual domain where they are able to impact the profession on a large scale. (p. 143)

As more teacherpreneurs appear they will serve as a primary agents in developing connected learning. As we get more teachers who have greater facility in using the power of the web, not only will teachers be less isolated, but the nature of teaching will begin to change, and radically, as Emily Vickers notes

Teachers will, in fact, be orchestrators of learning - a concept we talk about today, but one that will force itself upon most everyone who expects to be a teacher in 2030. (p. 145)

In part this will be because students will be accustomed to different ways of obtaining information. We are already seeing this among our current students. They know how to quickly obtain information, although we may still have to guide them in how to evaluate the information they obtain. They are comfortable building websites and increasingly also putting together wikis. It is incumbent upon the educational professionals to adapt what we do not only to meet our students where they are now, but also to anticipate how much this will change the nature of what we do. Teacherpreneurs will be key to a successful transition to a new approach to education.

We still have a way to travel to even come close to such a radical rethinking of the teaching profession. The book points out how much we already know, and how we can begin to move in such a direction, even if the path may change over the next several decades from what even the most imaginative of our current teachers can foresee. A key to this is that others with whom teachers interact will need to rethink how they do their jobs. Administrators will need to spend more time in classrooms, even teaching, and most certainly embrace the idea of teacher leadership. Unions will need to rethink how they serve the teachers who are their members, being more open to diverse roles and with those diverse roles different models of compensation. Policy makers will have to be willing to support and invest in the development of the kinds of hybrid roles necessary to implement the kind of teaching we will need. University-based teacher education will have to change, being more connected with what is happening in classrooms, and working together with community-based organizations, as education moves to be more firmly integrated in the communities in which are schools are located.

There are the first five points listed in the concluding chapter. By themselves they represent a major rethinking of how we have been approaching education and teaching. There are examples of these kinds of changes. I teach in a school that serves as a professional development school for a local state university, and we have had an increasingly close relationship between those who serve as mentor teachers and the university faculty. The next step is for more of those who are skilled mentors moving into a hybrid role where they not only mentor within their own classroom, but perhaps serve as adjunct instructors in the university environment, overcoming the artificial divide between learning about teaching and learning how to teach.

For this to work requires three additional points, also covered in the final chapter. The communities must become more involved, helping encourage the new roles of teacher-leaders even as administrations and unions have to redefine their relationship with one another. Parents and students must be willing to advocate on behalf of the effective teachers, providing the support that will enable teacher leaders to help redefine the conversation about teaching.

Most of all, teachers will have to step out of the isolation of their individual classrooms. They will

... need to band together to document their professional practice and assemble both empirical evidence and compelling stories about what works in their classrooms and their communities - and, therefore what matters most for public policy. (p. 210)

The book is intended as a starting point for ongoing conversations. The authors do not presume that they have imagined every possibility. They want to encourage further discussion. They encourage people to visit them at either of two websites, that of the Teaching 2030 social networking site and by connecting with other teachers from the Center for Teaching Quality’s New Millennium Institute.

I am as I write this in my 16th year of teaching. I have been a participant in the discussions of the Teacher Leaders Network for the past few years. I have gotten to know electronically a number of the authors of this book, and have been fortunate enough to meet both Barnett Berry and John Holland. I know how seriously all of the authors take the profession of teaching, and how much they already give of themselves to try to make the teaching profession a more effective way of serving our students, which is ultimately the goal.

For too long the voices of teachers have been systematically excluded from the public discourse about education. In part this book serves as an important corrective, or at least the start of one.

I am not only a teacher, but also one who engages in policy. Like the authors, I wear several hats besides that of classroom teacher. Here you encounter me as one who regularly writes about books on education in order to encourage others to read them. Like many of those who authored the book, I regular write online about education. We are bloggers; it is part of how we connect with one another.
Our expert teachers are a resource that we should value beyond what they accomplish in the classroom, as important as that is. We need to tap their expertise and insight, we need to hear their voices.

If you read this book, you should get a sense of not only how important the teacher voice is, but also how much we all gain from including it in the discussions.

What the authors have proposed is in some ways radical. It has the promise of moving us in a far more productive direction in how we approach the future of teaching. Since I am in my mid 60s, it is unlikely I will still be teaching in 2030. Several of the authors will be. They are helping reshape the profession to which they are dedicating their lives.

I feel as if I should end with the voice of one of the authors. Each offers some closing words at the end of the final chapter. The last are offered by Renee Moore, whose work I greatly respect. It seems appropriate to end this review as the book ends, with the words she offers on p. 214:

We stand on the cusp of a great opportunity to end generations of educational discrimination and inequity, finally to fulfill the promises of our democratic republic. I believe the noblest teachers, students, and leaders of 2030 will be remembered by future generations as those who surged over the barriers to true public education and a fully realized teaching profession - while myopic former gatekeepers staggered to the sidelines of history.

I too am dedicated to improving the teaching profession for the benefit of the students entrusted to our care. It is because I am that I fervently hope Renee Moore is right. Read this book.

Teaching 2030: an important book on teaching by teachers

this is slightly modified from the original which appeared at Education Review

Berry, Barnett, and the Teacher Solutions Team (2011). Teaching 2030: What We Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools — Now and in the Future.

In all of the public discourse of what we need to do to fix public schools and educate our young people for the future, one set of voices has until now been conspicuously absent. It is the voices of teachers.

This new book, put together under the auspices of the Center for Teaching Quality established by lead author Barnett Berry, and with generous funding from the MetLife Foundation, is an important attempt to include the voices of teachers in helping frame the discussion of how we address our educational needs.

Those of us in classrooms, unless we choose to be oblivious, recognize that our profession needs to be redefined. We lose too many good teachers from classrooms because too often the only path for professional and financial advancement is through administration. In the meantime, we see the students arriving in our classrooms changing as society changes. Often we are prevented from changing what we do in order to meet them where they are. We know this has to change.

This book is the product of an extensive discussion among professional educators. Much of it was conducted online. The final product list 12 authors besides Berry, all themselves notable classroom teachers. They are the ones who sat down with him to put together the book as we have it. But that final product also included material offered by others in online discussions through the various arms of the Center for Teaching Quality, especially its Teacher Leaders Network, of which I am member. Thus while I was not part of the actual author group, I appear 3 times in the work. I do not think that disqualifies me from examining the work and encouraging others to read it.

The teachers participating in this endeavor collective bring a diverse set of experiences to it. Renee Moore taught English high school students in the Mississippi Delta, where she now teaches at a community college. Ariel Sacks and Jose Vilson teach in New York City middle schools. Laurie Wasserman has almost 30 years as a teacher of special education. After a distinguished career in a classroom, Shannon C’de Baca has spent a number of years doing online education. Jennifer Barnett now functions as school-based technology integration specialist in rural Alabama. Kilian Betlach is a Teach for America alumnus who was well-known as a blogger and is now an elementary school assistant principal. Carrie Kamm is a mentor-resident coach for an urban teacher residency program in Chicago. Among these and others in authoring group are winners of State Teacher of the Year (including one finalist for National Teacher of the Year), Milken award winners, Lilly Award winners, and so on. All have experience in trying to improve the teaching profession beyond the reach of their own classrooms. One finds a similar range of diversity and an equal amount of accomplishment in the 33 teachers who are also thanked for their contributions in the online discussions in which we took part.

In addition, those functioning as authors were able to participate in webinars with a number of outstanding experts from across the nation, including on expert from Australia.

The result is a book rich in insight, analysis, and suggestions for the future, one that has already received praise from many notables associated with education and teaching. Of greater importance, it is a book that will speak to a wide range of audiences: those who prepare our new teachers, those who administer our schools, those who make policy, and most of all, to those of us who teach now or may teach in the future.

In his Prologue, Barnett Berry makes a couple of key points that help a reader understand the thrust of the book. The authors

...have come together, in harmony if not always in lock-step, about an expanded vision for student learning in the 21st century and for the teaching profession that will, in myriad ways, continue to accelerate that learning. (p. xiii)

They get to this point by examining what works now in order to describe what will likely work and be needed in the schooling of the future. The vision “emerges from a student centered vision” that takes advantage of new tools, organizations and ideas. It is based on four “emergent realities”:
1. a transformed learning ecology for students and teacher
2. seamless connections in and out of cyberspace
3. differentiated paths and careers
4. “teacherpreneurs” who will foster innovation locally and globally

These rely on six levers for changes: 1. engaging the public in provocative ways
2. overhauling school finance systems
3. creating transformative systems of preparation and licensure
4. ensuring school working conditions that they know promote effective teaching
5. reframing accountability for transformative results
6. continuing to evolve teacher unions into professional guilds

Each of these levers and each of the realities could be a separate volume. Thus the authors cannot fully explore the dimensions of each, yet they provide more than enough to lay out a vision that is clearly possible. In part that is because of the experience they collectively bring to the task, and what they have absorb from the webinars and from the exchanges with each other and with those who participated in online discussion.

The aforementioned Prologue is titled “We Cannot Create What We Cannot Imagine.” It is followed by two chapters that can be considered introductory:
1. The Teachers of 2030 and a Hopeful Vision
2. A Very Brief History of Teaching in America.

The next four chapters explore the four Emergent Realities, each in some specificity. For example, Chapter 5 explores the 3rd of these Emergent Realities, Differentiated Pathways and Careers for a 21st-Century Profession. In just over 30 pages the authors explore four subthemes:
1. Outgrowing a One-Size-Fits-All Professions
2. Redefining the Professions for Results-Oriented
Teaching
3. Teacher Education for a Differentiated, Results-Oriented Profession
4. Professional Compensation for Differentiated Profession

After these four chapters the book spends almost 40 pages exploring the six policy levers of change before concluding with Taking Action for a Hopeful Future, with a subsection on “What You Can Do to Build a 21st- Century Teaching Profession.”

Perhaps the power of the book can best be understood through the notion of “Teacherprenuerism” as it is explored in Chapter 6. The term first appears near the beginning, with the idea of teacher entrepreneurs serving in hybrid positions that don’t easily fit the normal way we classify teachers. Allow me to offer the paragraph from p. 7 which first presents the idea in some detail, after setting the stage by reminding us how already teachers, many National Board Certified and comfortable with using the tools of the web, are de-isolating teaching and offering cost-effective ways of propagating exemplary teaching practices:

The fruits of those labors have been realized in 2030. About 15% of the nation’s teachers - more than 600,000 - have been prepared in customized residency programs designed to fully train them in the cognitive science of teaching and to also equip them for new leadership roles. Most now serve in hybrid positions as teacherpreneuers, teaching students part of the day or week, and also have dedicated time lead as student support specialists, teacher educators, community organizers, and virtual mentors in teacher networks. Some spend some of their nonteaching time working closely university- and think tank-based researchers on studies of teaching and learning - or conducting policy analyses that are grounded in their everyday pedagogical experiences. In some school district, teachers in these hybrid roles earn salaries comparable to, if not higher than, the highest paid administrators.

Lest one think that a pie in the sky belief about the future, several members of the team that wrote this book - and several of those who like me served as additional resources - already partially function in this fashion. The book posits a day where such teachers would not only be known to wider audiences of parents, community and business leaders and policy makers, but would be respected and listened to. Some of those participating in this process already have that kind of respect, for example, Renee Moore, who has served on the boards of both the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and as the first educator still in the classroom on the board of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (California). John Holland has served as a classroom teacher, a blogger for the Pew Charitable Trust blog Inside Pre-K and moderates an online community of accomplished teachers. Others have similar experiences of attempting to create hybrid roles where they can leverage their expertise and knowledge while remaining at least partially classroom based. They use their experience to project to the future they envision. The process has begun already, but the authors are talking about something more than selling one’s good lesson plans on E-bay. As John Holland notes in Chapter 6,

The combination of self-publishing and the use of the internet as a platform for communication has already given rise to the “communities of practice” around topics ranging from lessons in how to teach fractions to using brain research to perform the teaching act as the highest levels. Teacherpreneurs will increasingly be leaders in these communities, which will stretch far beyond the confines of their school or district - a virtual domain where they are able to impact the profession on a large scale. (p. 143)

As more teacherpreneurs appear they will serve as a primary agents in developing connected learning. As we get more teachers who have greater facility in using the power of the web, not only will teachers be less isolated, but the nature of teaching will begin to change, and radically, as Emily Vickers notes

Teachers will, in fact, be orchestrators of learning - a concept we talk about today, but one that will force itself upon most everyone who expects to be a teacher in 2030. (p. 145)

In part this will be because students will be accustomed to different ways of obtaining information. We are already seeing this among our current students. They know how to quickly obtain information, although we may still have to guide them in how to evaluate the information they obtain. They are comfortable building websites and increasingly also putting together wikis. It is incumbent upon the educational professionals to adapt what we do not only to meet our students where they are now, but also to anticipate how much this will change the nature of what we do. Teacherpreneurs will be key to a successful transition to a new approach to education.

We still have a way to travel to even come close to such a radical rethinking of the teaching profession. The book points out how much we already know, and how we can begin to move in such a direction, even if the path may change over the next several decades from what even the most imaginative of our current teachers can foresee. A key to this is that others with whom teachers interact will need to rethink how they do their jobs. Administrators will need to spend more time in classrooms, even teaching, and most certainly embrace the idea of teacher leadership. Unions will need to rethink how they serve the teachers who are their members, being more open to diverse roles and with those diverse roles different models of compensation. Policy makers will have to be willing to support and invest in the development of the kinds of hybrid roles necessary to implement the kind of teaching we will need. University-based teacher education will have to change, being more connected with what is happening in classrooms, and working together with community-based organizations, as education moves to be more firmly integrated in the communities in which are schools are located.

There are the first five points listed in the concluding chapter. By themselves they represent a major rethinking of how we have been approaching education and teaching. There are examples of these kinds of changes. I teach in a school that serves as a professional development school for a local state university, and we have had an increasingly close relationship between those who serve as mentor teachers and the university faculty. The next step is for more of those who are skilled mentors moving into a hybrid role where they not only mentor within their own classroom, but perhaps serve as adjunct instructors in the university environment, overcoming the artificial divide between learning about teaching and learning how to teach.

For this to work requires three additional points, also covered in the final chapter. The communities must become more involved, helping encourage the new roles of teacher-leaders even as administrations and unions have to redefine their relationship with one another. Parents and students must be willing to advocate on behalf of the effective teachers, providing the support that will enable teacher leaders to help redefine the conversation about teaching.

Most of all, teachers will have to step out of the isolation of their individual classrooms. They will

... need to band together to document their professional practice and assemble both empirical evidence and compelling stories about what works in their classrooms and their communities - and, therefore what matters most for public policy. (p. 210)

The book is intended as a starting point for ongoing conversations. The authors do not presume that they have imagined every possibility. They want to encourage further discussion. They encourage people to visit them at either of two websites, that of the Teaching 2030 social networking site and by connecting with other teachers from the Center for Teaching Quality’s New Millennium Institute.

I am as I write this in my 16th year of teaching. I have been a participant in the discussions of the Teacher Leaders Network for the past few years. I have gotten to know electronically a number of the authors of this book, and have been fortunate enough to meet both Barnett Berry and John Holland. I know how seriously all of the authors take the profession of teaching, and how much they already give of themselves to try to make the teaching profession a more effective way of serving our students, which is ultimately the goal.

For too long the voices of teachers have been systematically excluded from the public discourse about education. In part this book serves as an important corrective, or at least the start of one.

I am not only a teacher, but also one who engages in policy. Like the authors, I wear several hats besides that of classroom teacher. Here you encounter me as one who regularly writes about books on education in order to encourage others to read them. Like many of those who authored the book, I regular write online about education. We are bloggers; it is part of how we connect with one another.
Our expert teachers are a resource that we should value beyond what they accomplish in the classroom, as important as that is. We need to tap their expertise and insight, we need to hear their voices.

If you read this book, you should get a sense of not only how important the teacher voice is, but also how much we all gain from including it in the discussions.

What the authors have proposed is in some ways radical. It has the promise of moving us in a far more productive direction in how we approach the future of teaching. Since I am in my mid 60s, it is unlikely I will still be teaching in 2030. Several of the authors will be. They are helping reshape the profession to which they are dedicating their lives.

I feel as if I should end with the voice of one of the authors. Each offers some closing words at the end of the final chapter. The last are offered by Renee Moore, whose work I greatly respect. It seems appropriate to end this review as the book ends, with the words she offers on p. 214:

We stand on the cusp of a great opportunity to end generations of educational discrimination and inequity, finally to fulfill the promises of our democratic republic. I believe the noblest teachers, students, and leaders of 2030 will be remembered by future generations as those who surged over the barriers to true public education and a fully realized teaching profession - while myopic former gatekeepers staggered to the sidelines of history.

I too am dedicated to improving the teaching profession for the benefit of the students entrusted to our care. It is because I am that I fervently hope Renee Moore is right. Read this book.

GOP Spending Cuts Follow Tax Cuts For The Rich

Just as I said.

Republicans now controlling the House promised Thursday to slash domestic agencies' budgets by almost 20 percent for the coming year, the first salvo in what's sure to be a bruising battle over their drive to cut spending to where it was before President Barack Obama took office.

"Washington's spending spree is over," declared Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman who announced the plan.

The White House says the GOP effort could cause widespread furloughs of federal employees, force vulnerable people off subsidized housing, reduce services in national parks and mean less aid to schools and police and fire departments.

Popular programs such as health research and federal aid to school districts appear likely to take a hit when lawmakers write the spending bill for the departments of Education, Labor and Health and Human Services.

Tax cuts for the rich prioritized over all else.

I note that former Labor Secretary and current Berkeley professor Robert Reich, in his Twitter feed (@RBReich) today, backs up a point I made about these proposed tax cuts being a precursor to Republican efforts to launch an assault on domestic spending and entitlements -- using the federal budget deficit made so much worse by these tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires as their rationale.

I said: "I recognize that this issue isn't specifically about education, but it is inexorably linked. Given President Obama's apparent unwillingness to go to the mat for Democratic principles (and his own campaign pledge!), Republicans have succeeded in extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires -- not just for the first $250,000 or $1,000,000 of their income, but all of it up to infinity. The total cost of all the proposal's tax cuts is $900 billion. Republicans' likely next step is too take off their "tax cutter" hat and don their "deficit hawk" cap, saying that the federal government is living beyond its means, and will fire away at domestic spending. You don't think education will avoid being in their crosshairs at that time, do you? You know that this is more than simply a ploy to line the pockets of rich Americans, right? It's part of a plan to bleed government dry and then argue that government programs need to be reduced, eliminated or privatized."

Reich wrote: "$900 b tax cut w/ lion's share for rich explodes deficit and makes future domestic discretionary spending sitting duck for R cuts."

Yes, folks. This isn't just about tax cuts for the richest Americans. This is but a front in the war to reduce the size of government regardless of its collateral damage to Americans who need government the most.

Economic inequality is already at an all-time high in this country -- even higher than prior to the start of the Great Depression. Our educational system only has a finite amount of power to overcome such overwhelming inequities. If these forces are left unchecked, it may become an impossible job, especially as education programs themselves may fall victim to all-too-easily-predictable budget cuts.

At least the House Republicans can say that they kept this promise. This proposal shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

Bangladesh Ministry of Education Scholarship February 2011

Ministry of Education is the apex policy making institution of the Government regarding administration and development of post-primary education sector.

Scholarships available in February, 2011 are listed below.

Monbukagakusho Scholarship Program 

Darmasiswa RI Scholarship Program  

 Al-Azhar institution Scholarship Program, Egypt

 Chinese Government Scholarship  

Brunei Government's Scholarshop for 2011-2012

Ministry of Education formulates policies and programs for the development of post-primary to higher education including Madrasah, Technical and Vocational education. It also formulates laws, rules and regulations for the management and administration of post-primary education sector and its institutions of the country.

All Department Semester Final Result of Bangladesh Technical Education Board

Textile Result 4th Sem 2010,Textile Result 3rd Year 2010,Textile Result 2nd Year 2010,Textile Result 2nd Sem 2010,Jute Result 4th Sem 2010,Jute Result 2nd Sem 2010,Garments Result 2nd Sem 2010,Textile Result 6th Sem 2010,Agriculture 2nd Sem 2010,Agriculture 4th Sem 2010,Agriculture 6th Sem 2010,Agriculture 8th Sem 2010,2nd Sem 2010,4th Sem 2010,6th Sem 2010 (2005 probidhan),6th Sem 2010 (2000 probidhan),6th Sem 2010 (2000 probidhan) irregular,8th Sem 2010 (2005 probidhan),8th Sem 2010 (2000 probidhan) regular,8th Sem 2010 (2000 probidhan) irregular,8th Sem manual

To view the desired result click the link given below

Textile Result 4th Sem 2010
 

Textile Result 3rd Year 2010
 

Textile Result 2nd Year 2010
 

Textile Result 2nd Sem 2010
 

Jute Result 4th Sem 2010
 

Jute Result 2nd Sem 2010
 

Garments Result 2nd Sem 2010
 

Textile Result 6th Sem 2010

Agriculture 2nd Sem 2010
 

Agriculture 4th Sem 2010
 

Agriculture 6th Sem 2010
 

Agriculture 8th Sem 2010

2nd Sem 2010
 

4th Sem 2010
 

6th Sem 2010 (2005 probidhan)
 

6th Sem 2010 (2000 probidhan)
 

6th Sem 2010 (2000 probidhan) irregular
 

8th Sem 2010 (2005 probidhan)
 

 8th Sem 2010 (2000 probidhan) regular
 

8th Sem 2010 (2000 probidhan) irregular
 

8th Sem manual

Save Our Schools March - who we are, part 1.

Last Sunday, January 23, I introduced you to Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action, where I told you that

For the future of our children,
we demand the following . . .

* Equitable funding for all public school communities

* An end to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation

* Teacher and community leadership in forming public education policies

and that the date of the event was July 28-31, 2011.

Starting today, I will begin to introduce you to some of the key people organizing the event, and explain why we are committing our time and energy to this important effort to save our schools.

Today I would like you to meet Katherine Cox.

From our About page you can learn that

Katherine McBride Cox, who grew up in Louisiana, initially began her career as a college English instructor. She recently retired after 35 years as an educator in Arizona where she was a classroom teacher, an elementary principal, and a high school principal. She developed a nationally recognized career education program for 5th and 6th graders called Window on the World. She taught self-contained gifted students for eight years and later worked with at-risk middle school students. She also served as an instructional coach, coaching other teachers. She serves on the Information Coordination Committee and the Blogging/Social Networking Sub-Committee.

I asked Katherine why she was volunteering in this effort. She told me the following:

When No Child Left Behind was passed, I was not as wise as others.

Arizona is one of the most poorly funded states in the nation as far as K-12 education goes. I was glad that we would be getting additional monies.

It took me awhile to see that we had made a pact with the devil. Standards actually were lowered because the state had to make the new state tests easier year after year in order to get enough students to graduate. The tests became meaningless, yet schools were ranked according to their test scores.

In order to get the excelling label, principals were telling teachers to drill and kill on the subjects tested – reading, math and writing – and to neglect science, social studies, p.e. and the arts. In the past, at least 75% of our students were on grade level or better. Now I could see that the top 75% of our students were getting a worse education than these students had received before NCLB.

As a high school principal, I could see a train wreck heading down the track. If freshmen had not had 4th grade geology – the rock cycle, including sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rock or 5th grade human body systems -- were we supposed to introduce these concepts for the first time to freshmen in biology and physical science classes?

Learning became tedious for students and teachers alike. No longer were we attempting to ignite fires in the minds of our students. I ended up retiring in December of 2009 and set up my website, In the Trenches with School Reform.

I began following teacherken on Daily Kos, as well as bloggers such as Anthony Cody, Nancy Flanagan, and Valerie Strauss. I continually said in my blog – I’m tired of talk. Others like me have been talking and explaining for years. It’s time to take action.

Anthony Cody and Victoria Young made contact with me and eventually I was asked to join this group. I was delighted to be asked to help.

I had spent 35 years as a teacher and principal trying to make our schools better and better. For a long time, I believe I succeeded. After NCLB came along, it seemed that my life’s work had been for nothing. Everything I had helped build was dismantled. For what? I knew that we had fallen into the rabbit hole where everything is upside down and nothing makes sense.

I’m in this battle to take our schools back and make them better. But first we must wrestle them away from the likes of the Michelle Rhees and Bill Gates of the world – and the grip of the federal government.

Katherine is just one those dedicated to the well-being our our students and health of our public schools who has stepped up to the challenges we face.

We ask that you join us in supporting Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action, July 28-31.

You can see who has endorsed us (and there you can find out how YOU can endorse us)

You can contribute to help us.

See how YOU can help us in this effort.


Thanks for reading.

Please consider helping let others know about this effort.

Help us Save Our Schools.

Peace.

Save Our Schools March - who we are, part 1.

Last Sunday, January 23, I introduced you to Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action, where I told you that

For the future of our children,
we demand the following . . .

* Equitable funding for all public school communities

* An end to high stakes testing for student, teacher, and school evaluation

* Teacher and community leadership in forming public education policies

and that the date of the event was July 28-31, 2011.

Starting today, I will begin to introduce you to some of the key people organizing the event, and explain why we are committing our time and energy to this important effort to save our schools.

Today I would like you to meet Katherine Cox.

From our About page you can learn that

Katherine McBride Cox, who grew up in Louisiana, initially began her career as a college English instructor. She recently retired after 35 years as an educator in Arizona where she was a classroom teacher, an elementary principal, and a high school principal. She developed a nationally recognized career education program for 5th and 6th graders called Window on the World. She taught self-contained gifted students for eight years and later worked with at-risk middle school students. She also served as an instructional coach, coaching other teachers. She serves on the Information Coordination Committee and the Blogging/Social Networking Sub-Committee.

I asked Katherine why she was volunteering in this effort. She told me the following:

When No Child Left Behind was passed, I was not as wise as others.

Arizona is one of the most poorly funded states in the nation as far as K-12 education goes. I was glad that we would be getting additional monies.

It took me awhile to see that we had made a pact with the devil. Standards actually were lowered because the state had to make the new state tests easier year after year in order to get enough students to graduate. The tests became meaningless, yet schools were ranked according to their test scores.

In order to get the excelling label, principals were telling teachers to drill and kill on the subjects tested – reading, math and writing – and to neglect science, social studies, p.e. and the arts. In the past, at least 75% of our students were on grade level or better. Now I could see that the top 75% of our students were getting a worse education than these students had received before NCLB.

As a high school principal, I could see a train wreck heading down the track. If freshmen had not had 4th grade geology – the rock cycle, including sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rock or 5th grade human body systems -- were we supposed to introduce these concepts for the first time to freshmen in biology and physical science classes?

Learning became tedious for students and teachers alike. No longer were we attempting to ignite fires in the minds of our students. I ended up retiring in December of 2009 and set up my website, In the Trenches with School Reform.

I began following teacherken on Daily Kos, as well as bloggers such as Anthony Cody, Nancy Flanagan, and Valerie Strauss. I continually said in my blog – I’m tired of talk. Others like me have been talking and explaining for years. It’s time to take action.

Anthony Cody and Victoria Young made contact with me and eventually I was asked to join this group. I was delighted to be asked to help.

I had spent 35 years as a teacher and principal trying to make our schools better and better. For a long time, I believe I succeeded. After NCLB came along, it seemed that my life’s work had been for nothing. Everything I had helped build was dismantled. For what? I knew that we had fallen into the rabbit hole where everything is upside down and nothing makes sense.

I’m in this battle to take our schools back and make them better. But first we must wrestle them away from the likes of the Michelle Rhees and Bill Gates of the world – and the grip of the federal government.

Katherine is just one those dedicated to the well-being our our students and health of our public schools who has stepped up to the challenges we face.

We ask that you join us in supporting Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action, July 28-31.

You can see who has endorsed us (and there you can find out how YOU can endorse us)

You can contribute to help us.

See how YOU can help us in this effort.


Thanks for reading.

Please consider helping let others know about this effort.

Help us Save Our Schools.

Peace.

Sailing A Ship With Half A Crew

Andy Rotherham pens a smart column in this week's TIME Magazine ('States' Rights and States' Wrongs On School Reform'). In it, he deals with the oft-ignored issue of the capacity of state departments of education to implement education reforms or engage in strategic policymaking.

Today's state departments of education are good at compliance, but with few exceptions, they are not good at strategy or leading systemic change. That's why competition is so fierce for talented individuals who are willing to work in state education agencies....

Rotherham loses me a bit with his proposed solution, glossing over the fiscal difficulties that would prevent a strengthening of state departments of education.

So what to do?

States need better bureaucrats. In some places, this means hiring new people. In others, it means making sure the right people aren't focusing on the wrong activities.

Hey, I'm all for trying to work smarter. But the problem is that the likelihood of state departments of education hiring any new people, strengthening their talent pool and increasing their capacity to do this work over the next several years is practically nil. Between state hiring freezes, furlough days, incentivized retirements, and frozen or reduced salaries, there is little incentive for talented individuals to take such jobs except perhaps at the highest levels. But then those folks are trying to sail a ship with half a crew.

If the federal government is clear-headed about devolving more authority to the states and committed to actually seeing reforms work and outcomes improve, then it needs to pay attention to states' implementation capacity. Perhaps there is a need to fund more positions within state departments with federal dollars given states' unwillingness to staff their agencies and politicians' willingness to target state workforces for additional cuts. So many state departments of education have been eviscerated that, despite the many talented folks at the helm and in the ranks of senior management, there simply aren't enough capable hands on decks to do the work and to do it well.

A similar concern has to do with policy reform itself. As I've written in the past, too many advocates and reformers seem to consider passing a law or reforming a policy as an end in itself. Increasingly, however, there is much more talk and attention to the importance of implementation and, in some quarters, collaboration and stakeholder buy-in as well. (Others, of course, would be happy to run certain stakeholders over with a truck. I recall someone influential saying "Collaboration is overrated." Hmmm.) The work does not end with a law's passage, but state departments of education play a critical role in communicating it, implementing it, evaluating it, and making sure it can succeed in a variety of school and district settings. That is not easy work. Sure, there is a role for outside consultants, but I would argue that there needs to be someone on the ground shepherding the work day in and day out. In too many state departments of education, the people with the talent, capacity and know-how have walked out the exit door, and there may be no one immediately available to replace them. That's a concern that cannot be swept under the rug. And it doesn't seem to be a concern that is being raised amidst the numerous proposals in states across the country to shrink the state workforce and make state service a much less attractive career.

Why Great Teachers Quit: And How We Might Stop the Exodus

If teachers, parents, school boards, administrators, community members, and lawmakers can listen to each other and work on this problem together, we can lessen the tide of teacher attrition, ultimately improving the learning and working environment in schools for everyone. (p. 156)

Those are the final words of this new book by Katy Farber. Depending on what statistics you use, we lose up to 30% of new teachers in the first three years, up to 50% in the first five. Some clearly should not have been teachers in the first place. But others bring the passion, knowledge and, at least potentially, the skill we need for all of our students. Some of those we lose early in their career are already great teachers, others are potentially so. The reasons that cost us these teachers also cost us those later in their careers, who all recognize are great.

This book can help us begin to address the problem.

Katy Farber was mentoring another teacher at her school in Vermont when that teacher quit after only two years. She was stunned. Her mentee was enthusiastic, creative, and the kids loved her. Farber decided to study the issue of teacher attrition, why we lose so many so early, and in the process began hearing consistent messages from teachers across the country. This was also at a point in her own professional career that potentially represented a cross-roads for her:

A perfect storm of difficult parents, a new principal, and a new teaching partner brought many of these issues to the forefront for me (p. xiii)

This book is something you can choose to sit down and read through, but the design makes it clear that there are other approaches you can take. After the various introductory materials, there are eight chapters, followed by a brief set of Final Thoughts by the author, a list of references, and an index. Each of the eight chapters focuses on a specific area that is a source of tension and possible disillusionment for teachers. In order, these are

1. Standardized Testing
2. Working Conditions in Today's Schools
3. Ever-Higher Expectations
4. Bureaucracy
5. Respect and Compensation
6. Parents
7. Administrators
8. School Boards

Each chapter presents a real-life scenario, drawn from Farber's contacts with teachers through conversations, posts on blogs, emails, and other forms of communication. The scenarios are followed by discussions containing thoughts from additional teachers, as well as a list of suggestions Farber describes as "practicable, applicable recommendations for administrators and teacher leaders" (p. xvi).

It is fair to say that while there is no one single reason causing teachers to leave the profession, a large number of the reasons that influence them, and which Farber explores in this book, could be generally classified as experiencing a lack of respect. That lack of respect applies to skill, knowledge, work conditions, salary, treatment by administrators, and treatment by parents.

Let's focus on working conditions for a moment. Teachers have far less flexibility for things like bodily functions and meals than do most menial workers. There are also issues with unhealthy buildings, use of toxic substances to clean. There are real issues of safety. Imagine you have a college degree. Now imagine you may have to go three hours without being able to take a bathroom break, or that you may have a lunch period as short as 15-20 minutes to yourself. That is the real world of conditions for many teachers.

Or consider this. A significant proportion of teachers, particularly at the elementary level, are female. If they are starting families, and wish to breast feed an infant, is there any provision for a teacher to express milk during the school day? Or is our solution going to be that we are going to exclude nursing mothers from being in the classroom, even though we might thereby diminish the pool of highly qualified and effective teachers?

Farber offers thoughtful comments from teachers on all the topics she covers. Because the impact of testing is perhaps the most covered of these, I will not explore the valuable material she offers on that topic. But we should not avoid exploring the related topic of ever-higher expectations. Even without the imposition of such higher expectations, responsible teachers already feel crushed by the demands on the time they have. Increasingly, the demands “are not directly related to teaching students” which as Farber notes, is often the main motivation for teachers to be in the classroom. She also writes:

This state of affairs is exhausting and dispiriting. Many teachers shared that they simply don’t have enough time to do everything that they feel they should be doing. And it is eroding their personal and professional lives. (p. 44)

The advice offered by veteran teachers is to set limits, as one experience suggests to no more than 9 hours of school-related work daily. Yet this can create conflicts for those really dedicated to their students. If, for example, I were to limit my workday to 9 hours, of which 7.5 were in school, how could I conceivably read and correct papers from the vast majority of my 192 students in order for those corrections to be part of a meaningful learning experience? Do I limit the amount of work I assign in order to keep up with it? Do I shortchange the feedback to which my students are entitled? Do I allow the responsibilities of effective teaching to consume time that should be available for things outside of my school responsibilities? None of the three choices is truly acceptable, yet in reality for many teachers such are the options from which they can choose. Choices like this are just one example of the pressures that many good teachers experience, and that can help drive them from the profession.

Hopefully by now you have a sense that that book will connect you with the real experience of real teachers. The structure provides not merely their reactions, but a context from which those reactions flow, as well as material that can help ameliorate some of the problems that are contributing to our losing some of the teachers we really want to keep.

Just that justifies purchasing the book as a valuable reference tool. But that is not all one gets from this book. The final four pages of text, 153-156, are under the title of “Afterward: Final Thoughts” and these pages bring together final conclusions from the wealth of material Farber has provided. There are three sections, titled respectively, Why Teachers Teach,: To Educational Leaders, Policy Makers and Politicians; and To Teachers. In the first, Farber tells that most teachers look beyond the challenges discussed in the book.

They tend to be idealists. They strive constantly to improve their teaching, public education, and the lives of their students. It is our responsibility as citizens, educational leaders, parents, and politicians to support them in doing so. (p. 153)

In the 2nd, directed to those who are not teachers but have a great influence on education, Farber offers 4 points, the last of which is this:

Elevate the dialogue about public education by infusing your comments, thoughts, and ideas about education with respect for the hard work that teachers are doing in America. As you may have noticed from this book and several others like it, teaching is no easy task. Before making broad and sweeping pronouncements about education, think how your comments will forward the goals of educating children and supporting teachers. (p. 155)

Speaking as a teacher, were the public dialogue about education more respectful about teachers, we would likely be less resentful of others who do not understand the task of teaching and seek to impose “solutions” without regard to the real welfare of the students who are our primary concern.

Farber concludes with words directed towards teachers. You have already read, at the very beginning of this review, her final words. In this final portion of the book she refers to words by Jonathan Kozol about making the classroom “a better and more joyful place than when [the students] entered it” (from his Letters to a Young Teacher). Kozol also reminds us that we cannot let our concern for professional decorum overwhelm and suppress our very human need to reach out to and comfort our students. Farber concludes her quoting of Kozol with words from p. 208 of that book directed to teachers: “A battle is beginning for the soul of education, and they must be its ultimate defenders.”

Farber wants teachers to remember why we got into education, to reconnect with our beliefs, use those to fuel our energy. Or as she puts in the final sentence of her penultimate paragraph on p. 156: “Remember your core beliefs about life, learning, and teaching, and then let them guide and refresh you.”

For public education to properly serve our students and our society, we must focus on quality teachers. They are the most important in-school factor. We certainly do not want to discourage the best of them, to continue to see them leave the profession out of frustration.

This is a book by a teacher, with words of teachers, about teachers, and about the challenges they face. It can remind those of us who do teach why we do so, not only to reconnect us with our core beliefs, but also to motivate us to speak up beyond our individual classrooms on behalf of the well-being of our students and the ultimate success of public schools.

The book is also something that others concerned with education should read with care, if for no other reason that no meaningful improvement in public education can occur without a solid and continuing cadre of dedicated and committed and highly skilled teachers. Insofar as politicians, policy makers and others ignore that, they will undermine the possibilities of any meaningful reform.

We can no longer continue the ongoing loss of skilled teachers. It costs too much financially. It costs even more in lost learning and benefits to our society.

I highly recommend that anyone concerned about the future of public education read and absorb this book. That would be a good start towards turning our discussions about educational policy in directions less destructive of the core of skilled teachers we have but we are losing.

Why Great Teachers Quit: And How We Might Stop the Exodus

If teachers, parents, school boards, administrators, community members, and lawmakers can listen to each other and work on this problem together, we can lessen the tide of teacher attrition, ultimately improving the learning and working environment in schools for everyone. (p. 156)

Those are the final words of this new book by Katy Farber. Depending on what statistics you use, we lose up to 30% of new teachers in the first three years, up to 50% in the first five. Some clearly should not have been teachers in the first place. But others bring the passion, knowledge and, at least potentially, the skill we need for all of our students. Some of those we lose early in their career are already great teachers, others are potentially so. The reasons that cost us these teachers also cost us those later in their careers, who all recognize are great.

This book can help us begin to address the problem.

Katy Farber was mentoring another teacher at her school in Vermont when that teacher quit after only two years. She was stunned. Her mentee was enthusiastic, creative, and the kids loved her. Farber decided to study the issue of teacher attrition, why we lose so many so early, and in the process began hearing consistent messages from teachers across the country. This was also at a point in her own professional career that potentially represented a cross-roads for her:

A perfect storm of difficult parents, a new principal, and a new teaching partner brought many of these issues to the forefront for me (p. xiii)

This book is something you can choose to sit down and read through, but the design makes it clear that there are other approaches you can take. After the various introductory materials, there are eight chapters, followed by a brief set of Final Thoughts by the author, a list of references, and an index. Each of the eight chapters focuses on a specific area that is a source of tension and possible disillusionment for teachers. In order, these are

1. Standardized Testing
2. Working Conditions in Today's Schools
3. Ever-Higher Expectations
4. Bureaucracy
5. Respect and Compensation
6. Parents
7. Administrators
8. School Boards

Each chapter presents a real-life scenario, drawn from Farber's contacts with teachers through conversations, posts on blogs, emails, and other forms of communication. The scenarios are followed by discussions containing thoughts from additional teachers, as well as a list of suggestions Farber describes as "practicable, applicable recommendations for administrators and teacher leaders" (p. xvi).

It is fair to say that while there is no one single reason causing teachers to leave the profession, a large number of the reasons that influence them, and which Farber explores in this book, could be generally classified as experiencing a lack of respect. That lack of respect applies to skill, knowledge, work conditions, salary, treatment by administrators, and treatment by parents.

Let's focus on working conditions for a moment. Teachers have far less flexibility for things like bodily functions and meals than do most menial workers. There are also issues with unhealthy buildings, use of toxic substances to clean. There are real issues of safety. Imagine you have a college degree. Now imagine you may have to go three hours without being able to take a bathroom break, or that you may have a lunch period as short as 15-20 minutes to yourself. That is the real world of conditions for many teachers.

Or consider this. A significant proportion of teachers, particularly at the elementary level, are female. If they are starting families, and wish to breast feed an infant, is there any provision for a teacher to express milk during the school day? Or is our solution going to be that we are going to exclude nursing mothers from being in the classroom, even though we might thereby diminish the pool of highly qualified and effective teachers?

Farber offers thoughtful comments from teachers on all the topics she covers. Because the impact of testing is perhaps the most covered of these, I will not explore the valuable material she offers on that topic. But we should not avoid exploring the related topic of ever-higher expectations. Even without the imposition of such higher expectations, responsible teachers already feel crushed by the demands on the time they have. Increasingly, the demands “are not directly related to teaching students” which as Farber notes, is often the main motivation for teachers to be in the classroom. She also writes:

This state of affairs is exhausting and dispiriting. Many teachers shared that they simply don’t have enough time to do everything that they feel they should be doing. And it is eroding their personal and professional lives. (p. 44)

The advice offered by veteran teachers is to set limits, as one experience suggests to no more than 9 hours of school-related work daily. Yet this can create conflicts for those really dedicated to their students. If, for example, I were to limit my workday to 9 hours, of which 7.5 were in school, how could I conceivably read and correct papers from the vast majority of my 192 students in order for those corrections to be part of a meaningful learning experience? Do I limit the amount of work I assign in order to keep up with it? Do I shortchange the feedback to which my students are entitled? Do I allow the responsibilities of effective teaching to consume time that should be available for things outside of my school responsibilities? None of the three choices is truly acceptable, yet in reality for many teachers such are the options from which they can choose. Choices like this are just one example of the pressures that many good teachers experience, and that can help drive them from the profession.

Hopefully by now you have a sense that that book will connect you with the real experience of real teachers. The structure provides not merely their reactions, but a context from which those reactions flow, as well as material that can help ameliorate some of the problems that are contributing to our losing some of the teachers we really want to keep.

Just that justifies purchasing the book as a valuable reference tool. But that is not all one gets from this book. The final four pages of text, 153-156, are under the title of “Afterward: Final Thoughts” and these pages bring together final conclusions from the wealth of material Farber has provided. There are three sections, titled respectively, Why Teachers Teach,: To Educational Leaders, Policy Makers and Politicians; and To Teachers. In the first, Farber tells that most teachers look beyond the challenges discussed in the book.

They tend to be idealists. They strive constantly to improve their teaching, public education, and the lives of their students. It is our responsibility as citizens, educational leaders, parents, and politicians to support them in doing so. (p. 153)

In the 2nd, directed to those who are not teachers but have a great influence on education, Farber offers 4 points, the last of which is this:

Elevate the dialogue about public education by infusing your comments, thoughts, and ideas about education with respect for the hard work that teachers are doing in America. As you may have noticed from this book and several others like it, teaching is no easy task. Before making broad and sweeping pronouncements about education, think how your comments will forward the goals of educating children and supporting teachers. (p. 155)

Speaking as a teacher, were the public dialogue about education more respectful about teachers, we would likely be less resentful of others who do not understand the task of teaching and seek to impose “solutions” without regard to the real welfare of the students who are our primary concern.

Farber concludes with words directed towards teachers. You have already read, at the very beginning of this review, her final words. In this final portion of the book she refers to words by Jonathan Kozol about making the classroom “a better and more joyful place than when [the students] entered it” (from his Letters to a Young Teacher). Kozol also reminds us that we cannot let our concern for professional decorum overwhelm and suppress our very human need to reach out to and comfort our students. Farber concludes her quoting of Kozol with words from p. 208 of that book directed to teachers: “A battle is beginning for the soul of education, and they must be its ultimate defenders.”

Farber wants teachers to remember why we got into education, to reconnect with our beliefs, use those to fuel our energy. Or as she puts in the final sentence of her penultimate paragraph on p. 156: “Remember your core beliefs about life, learning, and teaching, and then let them guide and refresh you.”

For public education to properly serve our students and our society, we must focus on quality teachers. They are the most important in-school factor. We certainly do not want to discourage the best of them, to continue to see them leave the profession out of frustration.

This is a book by a teacher, with words of teachers, about teachers, and about the challenges they face. It can remind those of us who do teach why we do so, not only to reconnect us with our core beliefs, but also to motivate us to speak up beyond our individual classrooms on behalf of the well-being of our students and the ultimate success of public schools.

The book is also something that others concerned with education should read with care, if for no other reason that no meaningful improvement in public education can occur without a solid and continuing cadre of dedicated and committed and highly skilled teachers. Insofar as politicians, policy makers and others ignore that, they will undermine the possibilities of any meaningful reform.

We can no longer continue the ongoing loss of skilled teachers. It costs too much financially. It costs even more in lost learning and benefits to our society.

I highly recommend that anyone concerned about the future of public education read and absorb this book. That would be a good start towards turning our discussions about educational policy in directions less destructive of the core of skilled teachers we have but we are losing.

rheeForm

Proposed education reforms that do not imagine that current and beginning teachers can become more effective while on the job should be considered null and void. This postulation, if accepted, would direct Michelle Rhee's new StudentsFirst agenda to the nearest paper shredder.

To be blunt, it is just plain naive and short-sighted to think that we can maximize teacher effectiveness purely by firing more teachers and marginally changing the cadre of incoming teacher candidates. Is supporting and strengthening the teaching practice of our veteran educators not worthy of our focus and investment?

StudentsFirst's "Elevate Teaching" policy objectives are limited to evaluating teachers and principals, reforming teacher certification laws, reforming teacher compensation, "exiting" teachers, and eliminating teacher tenure. Specifically, the objectives are:

• State law must require evaluation that is based substantially on student achievement. Evaluation tools should measure at least half of a teacher's performance based on student achievement, using a value-added growth model. The other aspects of a teacher's evaluations should derive from measures that align with student results, including high-quality observations and student evaluations of teacher practice.
• To avoid all teachers being ranked as effective without meaningful assessment, evaluations must anchor effectiveness around a year's worth of growth.
• State law must require principal evaluation that is based on student achievement and effective management of teachers. Districts should evaluate at least half of a school administrator's performance based on student achievement, and the remaining portion should mostly relate to their ability to attract, retain, manage, and develop excellent teachers.
• State law should give districts the autonomy to develop teacher evaluation systems apart from the collective bargaining process. Evaluations should be a matter of district policy.
• States must reduce legal barriers to entry in the teaching profession, including complicated credentialing or certification schemes that rely upon factors that do not clearly correlate with teacher effectiveness.
• State law should not be structured to penalize districts financially for recruiting teachers from alternate certification programs.
• States should adopt a clear process by which alternative certification programs are authorized, continually evaluated, and decommissioned if not producing high-quality educators.
• State law must facilitate digital learning by allowing certification for online instruction and modifying or eliminating mandatory "seat time" laws.
• State law must require pay structures based primarily on effectiveness. Teacher contracts must allow for individual performance-based pay.
• State law and district policy should not mandate higher salaries for master's degrees or additional education credits.
• State law should require staffing decisions (transfers, reductions, placements) be based on teacher effectiveness.
• State laws must prohibit forced placements and allow district control in staffing. Districts should ensure that teacher contracts require mutual consent placements. Districts should have the flexibility to offer defined grace periods, severance, or other options for teachers who have effective ratings, but do not find a mutually agreeable placement. Teachers rated ineffective should be exited from the system.
• State law should not grant, implicitly or directly, tenure or permanent contracts for PK–12 education professionals.

There is evidence (from sources such as IES and AIR) that shows that high-quality approaches to new teacher induction and professional development pay dividends in terms of student outcomes. Why would a "student first" agenda utterly ignore initiatives that work in favor of some that have a paltry or non-existent research base?

To keep it brief, please read some of my most relevant past posts arguing why a focus on teacher support and development makes sense and why it should be at the centerpiece of every education reform agenda.

• Teacher Quality: What You Need To Know
• Adding Value To The Value-Added Debate
• Positive Effects Of Comprehensive Teacher Induction
• State Teacher Policies Suck!
• Race To The Top: Under The Hood
• Research: Attracting New Teachers To Urban Schools
• Thoughts On Equitable Teacher Distribution
• Measurement Is Not Destiny
• Does Mentoring Improve New Teachers?
  

With regard to the StudentsFirst plan, to use a Twitter construct, #edreformfail.