The more than 150 educators from 43 states that were honored at the Milken Family Foundation's annual tribute in June were a testament to the fact that quality teachers have a different and refreshing attitude toward reform. The National Education Awards reward teachers with the recognition they deserve and a prize of $25,000 for their commitment and dedication. It is no surprise then that the awardees uncovered in each state are those who represent the cream of the crop, and are not content with the status quo, but rather, find current reform proposals appealing and exciting.

        Rather than hear the defensive posturing that is so often the hallmark of education conferences (see A View from the Blob on page 7), these educators understand that indeed there is a problem and that it is their job to help solve it - if someone will give them that authority. "American schools are in crisis," writes David Tobergte and Shirley Curtis from Freedom Elementary in Ohio. "It is time to face the crises head on."

        In conversations with dozens of teachers, there is evidence of support for performance-based pay, high stakes testing, freedom from contractual, district-based and state-imposed rules regarding curriculum, school size and structure, and process, and even support for greater choices among children.

        Even a few administrators at the Milken gathering offered their support for choice and flexibility, and in general the group was supportive of using strong standards-based assessments that serve to evaluate and institute consequences for everyone's performance.

        The Milken Family Foundation has researched these attitudes and trends and designed last year a new program that would enable school districts to meet the needs of quality teachers better, while addressing the need to attract and retain new candidates to teaching. Called the Teacher Advancement Program or TAP for short, its five principles for reforming the teaching profession involve multiple career paths; market-driven compensation; performance-based accountability; expanding the supply of high quality teachers; and ongoing, applied professional growth.

        The TAP program is currently being piloted in five schools in Arizona and various TAP principles have been infused into the laws of ten states, most notably in Florida's Mentor Teacher Pilot Program. Also, a new federal education bill being negotiated on Capitol Hill would allow states and districts to use their teacher training and professionalism money on programs such as TAP that emphasize real mentoring, different incentive systems, and greater opportunities for growth while not pushing teachers out of the field to simply be promoted. Visit www.mff.org.

       Indeed many teachers do not want to be a mentor or master; they simply want to be the best teacher they can be and be rewarded for wanting to keep their focus on their classroom alone. The current structure for teachers in most states flies in the face of this, of course. With programs such as TAP, it won't be so for long.

No wonder there's a clamor for good teacher policies. The following are a but a few illustrations of the lack of sense that prevails among people or institutions in positions of power:

• Headline: Teachers Union (sic) Wades Into National Defense

  U.S. military exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques are "not a military issue but a civil rights issue," said Norma White, a vice president of the American Federation of Teachers. (Source: CNSNews.Com, 5/1/01)

• The Iowa Board of Educational Examiners will consider a rule requiring teachers to post their teachers licenses in classrooms for everyone to see. According to the director of that board, having a license hanging in one's classroom would "reassure" parents and "give the job a look of professionalism." Would that it were that simple!

• When the Redford Union School District in Midland, Michigan cut 12 teaching positions because of budget cuts, the Mackinac Center, a state think thank, offered a $350,000 proposal to reinstate those teachers. The group identified cost savings by outsourcing various transportation, food and janitorial services. If that action didn't add up to $350K, the think tank would pay the difference. Common sense? Regardless of the education impact of cutting 12 teachers, the district found no need to look into other measures first.

• The head of California's school employee union thinks it's unfair to single out teachers for awards based on their student's performance. So as the Governor was seeking cuts to boost the state's reserves, Wayne Johnson weighed in and agreed that the bonus program should be scrapped. We wonder how many good teachers he asked first?

The Testing Wars

• The NEA says it will oppose mandatory testing of students. While they couch their opposition to testing as defending parents' rights to opt out, it's clear that what is really at the bottom of their formal policy statement is an aversion to measurements that can be used to gauge teacher productivity and effectiveness. It might be worth reminding the NEA (especially if you're a teacher) that the idea of annual mandatory testing was first proposed by Senator Robert Kennedy in 1965. It was then that he urged that the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act include a provision that districts report years of testing results to the federal government. Unfortunately, because it was left to districts to decide it didn't work and, according to historian Diane Ravitch, the tests were spotty and not consistently applied. Still, it's interesting to see how long this one issue has been around. Everything old is new again...

• Having tests has revealed math curriculum problems in Maryland. It turns out that Maryland's Algebra I exam for ninth graders compares almost identically to the test Singapore gives its fifth graders. What's more alarming is that when given last year, just over 40 percent of ninth graders in Montgomery County passed the Algebra I exam! John Hoven, an education specialist in Montgomery County uncovered this fact and has long pushed for higher standards. Meanwhile, this problem has been creating a huge gap between minorities and whites, although the troubles are equitably distributed. One solution proposed by Commissioner Grasmick is to require prospective teachers to pass at least six college math units. Let's get more radical, shall we? How about making sure prospective math teachers actually majored in math??

• Milwaukee, Wisconsin's school board is split over testing. After a union backed slate won last year, the consensus on high standards and testing for all kids diminished. The previous board had instituted a system that required using annual standardized tests that align with state requirements. They did this to be able to evaluate progress for each student from year to year. While the testing program prevailed, some anti-testers tried to gut the program with the now common argument that tests water down instruction.

• Perhaps those that oppose diagnosing student progress can offer an opinion on what happened in New York last month, when students taking the high school biology Regents exam who got fewer than half of the questions right still got a score of 65, allowing them to pass. It turns out that despite rhetoric to the contrary, the state's education leaders have been manipulating scoring. So to pass, students only needed to score a 46. This incenses Brooklyn science teacher Paul Cohen. And they wonder why teachers are leaving the profession?

• The low passing scores are obviously not a worry to the teacher-led group of 1,500 who stormed Albany to protest Regents requirements. Apparently failing a test and still passing is too much for them.

• Of course, we should not be surprised (sadly) over the fact that passing scores are low or that our children take exams that don't really reflect their grade level. It's been that way for years, and most parents don't even know it. Take California's high school exit exam, for example. While it won't count until 2004, to graduate from high school a student will need only to meet 60 percent of the requirements for 10th grade English, and 55 percent of the requirements of 8th grade math. Let's put it another way: Employers should note that by 2004, high school graduation will not be a reflection of having mastered 12 years of schooling at all, but rather, just a bare majority of necessary material required by 10th and 8th grade in reading and math, respectively. Now there's a confidence builder!

  (Editor's Note: I know, I know - we can't expect children poorly educated to pass new high stakes tests, or we'd be holding most children in school for another ten years. So (the argument goes), it's better to start out slow and build. Shouldn't we require, then, that we tell parents upon entering school that their child only has a 50 percent chance of actually learning what 12 years offers?? Think about it.)

• Florida's annual testing yielded gains this year once more. Reading and math scores were up, while writing scores held steady. Says Florida Governor Jeb Bush, "This is only the latest evidence that real improvement in student learning can be achieved." Indeed, next year the state begins to shift from normed scores to actual progress, using "value-added" measurements to compare each child to his or her own achievement.

• U.S. News and World Report reporter Ben Wildavsky offered a great overview in his May 16 article entitled The question is: Are tests failing the kids? "'Objective measures of academic progress are an especially vital reality check in big-city school districts', says Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, a Washington-based group that favors testing as a tool for improving the education of poor and minority students. Research shows that A students in high poverty schools test at about the same level as C and D students in wealthy communities. For children in low-performing schools, testing fans say, an intense focus on well-defined, measurable educational outcomes is overdue. 'These tests open the doors for kids who are excluded,' says David Levin, principal of the KIPP Academy, a South Bronx charter school that tries to send its graduating eighth graders to private, parochial, and selective public high schools. Without the reassurance of test scores, he fears, 'people are going to say, that kid went to a high school or a middle school in the South Bronx, and we can't trust those grades.'"

• A great quote from Education Secretary Rod Paige, in response to the "we're being tested to death" drum beat: "That's a charge made by people who feel that testing is somehow external to teaching. But it isn't. It's the other side of the same coin. If you don't assess where you are, what the students have learned or not learned, you're teaching in the dark. That's analogous to driving at night without headlights. Do you ever hear anyone saying we're teaching them to death?"

• Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews explores this very allegation of teaching to the test in a must-read column called Trying to Clear Up the Confusion. Without doing justice to the whole piece, here's just one excerpt:

  "How is it that these tests are forcing so many good teachers to abandon methods they know work for kids?" Reflecting on a colleague's column in which an unidentified third-grade teachers remarks that 'I have to teach to the SOLs and so can no longer have students write biographies of famous Americans,' Mathews asks, "what exactly is she doing to prepare for the SOLs that prevents her from teaching deep lessons that seem to be wonderful preparation for the SOLs?

  "How have the teachers at Barcroft Elementary School in Arlington (VA) managed to teach a rich curriculum based on the life of Leonardo da Vinci, full of biographies and art and extra reading, and still done well on the SOLs? What am I to think of the dozens of teachers in Virginia and Maryland who tell me their state tests have not hurt their creativity at all?" Great point.

• Then there's the 87 percent of Americans that think students are indeed capable of learning more difficult subject matter, which makes us wonder who exactly these lower-standards and anti-testing people think they are trying to please! The statistic comes from a poll commissioned by Recruiting New Teachers, Inc., which also found that fewer than two in ten Americans think their community's teachers are highly qualified, and most believe that the unions are an impediment to getting rid of incompetent teachers. For more information, go to www.rnt.org.