Education Week - January 29, 2014 - 22

LETTERS to
the EDITOR
School Violence Coverage
Should Be Measured, Limited
To the Editor:
I commend the media for respecting the
wishes of those in Newtown, Conn., by staying
away from this community on the one-year
anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary
School shootings. ("Media Restraint on Newtown
Anniversary?," Education and the Media, www.
edweek.org, Dec. 12, 2013). Hopefully it can be a
starting point for addressing the overwhelming
issue of school shootings that have persisted in
our country.
As the superintendent of a school district
in Wisconsin, I tell our staff, faculty, and
students that having a well-rehearsed
comprehensive emergency plan is only a
start. We need to be vigilant and aware of
unusual behavior of anyone who comes to our
schools, which includes students and parents.
When I was in high school in the 1970s, an
older schoolmate of mine committed suicide. I
recall that the funeral was held in the school
auditorium and covered by the local media.
We later learned that by publicly glorifying
such stories, by putting their faces and life stories
in the media, we may have been inadvertently
feeding and encouraging the same actions by
other teens who contemplated suicide. For the
most part, we no longer publicize information
about individuals who commit suicide. I applaud
the media for choosing to step back and avoid
drawing attention to these deaths.
If the media adopted the practice of dealing
with mass shootings in a similar fashion,
the number of subsequent occurrences may
decrease. The recent shootings at Colorado's
Arapahoe High School, however, attracted
the usual media attention. The shooter was
quickly identified. A picture of the shooter, with
a smiling face, sporting a shirt and tie, has
appeared countless times in news reports.
I believe the media want to do what is best
for our society and report the news as fairly and
accurately as possible. Journalists have proven
they can balance the need to report and cover
news events with the need to enhance safety for
everyone in the future.
We need to stop giving unnecessary coverage
to these incidents, or we risk providing a
platform for despicable notoriety for the
impulsive person who contemplates the next
evil plot.
Ronald J. Walsh
Superintendent
Elk Mound Area School District
Elk Mound, Wis.
The author serves on the board of directors of
the Wisconsin Association of School District
Administrators, which recently named him
Wisconsin's 2014 superintendent of the year.
The United States Can Learn
From Others' PISA Successes
To the Editor:
Demographics don't have to become destiny,
despite how people have interpreted the
Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development's recent Program for
International Student Assessment, or PISA,
report ("Global Test Shows U.S. Stagnating,"
Dec. 11, 2013).
The analysis of the places where students
do well in mathematics-the focus of the
most recent PISA in 2012-found that highperforming
students are more likely to be found
in educational systems where:
*Education funds are distributed equitably
so that learning for low-income students is
funded in the same way as for higher-income
students;
*Students are not segregated by their
performance, but are mainstreamed;
*Low-performing students are identified
early and given specialized help and resources
before disengagement takes root;
*Families are involved and encouraged to
keep their children engaged in their education;
*Positive teacher-student relationships are
promoted, as are positive school climates where
students feel they belong and students' views
are solicited and listened to; and
*Education is valued in the culture as in the
national interest.
Because the PISA tests 15-year-olds, it may
seem as if the skills and knowledge it involves
are for older students, but that's not true. Good
age-appropriate early-childhood programs can
build a strong foundation for learning. In all
of the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development, or OECD, member-countries
children who attended pre-primary school
for more than one year scored 53 points
higher in math-the equivalent of one year of
schooling-than those without a pre-primary
education.
The results of the PISA should give us pause
in the United States. If we are teaching to the
test, it is the wrong test. Like leading OECD
countries, we need to promote knowledge and
skills, focusing on helping children stay truly
engaged learners by moving away from our
current test-crazed approach that promotes
rote learning. Instead, we should emphasize
experiential discovery and the learning of
lifelong skills and give children opportunities to
solve real-life issues by thinking critically and
creatively.
Ellen Galinsky
President and Co-Founder
Families and Work Institute
New York, N.Y.
The writer is also the senior director of the institute's
"Mind in the Making" initiative.
Tough Conversation Needed
On Teacher Training
To the Editor:
In his letter to the editor ("Indiana Dean
Questions NCTQ Research Standards,"Jan. 8,
2014) Gerardo Gonzalez, a professor and dean
at Indiana University's school of education,
questioned the results of the recent National
Council on Teacher Quality teacher-preparation
study.
As educators in Indiana, alumni of three
Indiana teacher-preparation programs, and
current Teach Plus Teaching Policy Fellows, we
felt compelled to respond. Rather than focusing
on the methodology of the NCTQ study, teacherpreparation
programs should voluntarily and
publicly report the outcomes of their programs.
Arguing over methodology removes focus from
what we, as practitioners, know is important:
ensuring educators are adequately prepared
from their first day in front of students. We know
this is currently not the case.
Just as we are held accountable for our
students' performance, traditional and
nontraditional teacher-preparation programs
alike should be held accountable for their
teachers' performance. Accreditation councils
should apply tighter standards on the
programs they accredit.
For public colleges and universities, states
should require public reporting of alumni
survey data and evaluation outcomes for
alumni of preparation programs. While
programs resistant to accountability may claim
that they have little control over outcomes once
students leave, we as educators could make
22 | EDUCATION WEEK | January 29, 2014 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary
the same argument about our own students.
We feel responsible for students' performance
in our classrooms and their achievement once
they leave. Teacher-preparation programs
should feel that same sense of responsibility for
their alumni.
It is time for a tough conversation about
teacher preparation, but it should not get lost in
a fight about research methodology. We would
like to challenge Dean Gonzalez to take the lead
in creating a framework that holds preparation
programs accountable for their graduates'
performance. Greater accountability for
preparation programs is essential in ensuring
that students have access to high-quality,
effective educators. We know we can do better.
Natalie Merz
Jacob Pactor
Jennifer Rogers
Teach Plus Teaching Policy Fellows
Indianapolis, Ind.
Caitlin Hannon
Executive Director
Teach Plus Indianapolis
The founder and chief executive officer of Teach Plus,
Celine Coggins, serves on the advisory board of the
National Council on Teacher Quality.
Common Core Will Bolster
Foundational Knowledge
To the Editor:
In the next 10 or 20 years, virtually all
Americans will have access to the Internet. That
will be an important accomplishment, but it will
have little to no impact on the achievement gap.
Why? Because high-speed access to Google is not
the same thing as access to knowledge-at least
not in any meaningful way.
Everyday examples abound: Your newspaper
will tell you what the U.S. Supreme Court
decided; it will not tell you what the Supreme
Court is. You have to fill in the gaps.
If you think you can just Google those gaps,
take a look at the first sentence of Wikipedia's
Supreme Court entry: "The Supreme Court of
the United States (first abbreviated as SCOTUS
in 1879) was established pursuant to Article
III of the United States Constitution in 1789 as
the highest federal court in the United States."
Google is a wonderful tool for those who want to
extend their existing knowledge of a topic; it is
not very useful for those needing to start from
scratch.
Right now, only some of our children are
being taught the broad foundation of knowledge
needed to harness Google for lifelong learning.
But the Common Core State Standards
Initiative could change that. It calls for a
"content-rich curriculum" and states that,
"By reading texts in history/social studies,
science, and other disciplines, students build
a foundation of knowledge in these fields that
will also give them the background to be better
readers in all content areas."
Implementing the common core will be tough,
but those who adhere to the research underlying
the standards will be rewarded with higher
achievement.
Lisa Hansel
Communications Director
Core Knowledge Foundation
Charlottesville, Va.
COMMENTARY POLICY
Education Week takes no editorial positions,
but publishes opinion essays and letters from
outside contributors in its Commentary section.
For information about submitting an essay or
letter for review, visit
www.edweek.org/go/guidelines.
Talking About
A Reformation
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21
than the ride with our students, to
take a cue from the Reformation and
diversify the messages we send our
students.
Too often the disparity between the
lessons we intend to teach and the lessons
we actually teach causes angst
and confusion for students. While we
preach the idea of systematic conformity
as a route to success, virtually
every example of greatness, success,
genius, innovation, or profound influence
that we use in our classrooms is
an individual who did not conform.
The current shift to the Common
Core State Standards will not change
this. Our diplomas will continue to
signify the successful completion of a
prolonged course in conformity unless
we insist on something more.
The practical way to change this is
to teach our students that systems
(educational and otherwise) are both
necessary and imperfect. Education
is, after all, only the first of many
systems that will affect their lives.
We must encourage students to
use school as a tool to help build
themselves, rather than us using
them as tools to sustain the system.
We should ensure that they do not
become a "product" of our system, or
any system. Our curriculum should
instill a belligerent refusal to define
themselves as their transcripts.
Students need to know that
important questions lead to other
questions-that conclusive answers
are for game shows or courtroom evidence.
They especially need to know
that we don't have all the answers,
while we reassure them that answers
are not the same as wisdom.
As teachers, we should mentor
our students in the art of questioning
and healthy skepticism-an art
brought to life by that most famous
(or infamous) of reformers, Martin
Luther. If we lack the wisdom, or
become too jaded or tired to live up
to the intellectual challenge that
teaching should be, we should quit
the profession.
We should help students put the
biggest investment of their young
lives into perspective and find a link
between what is in their heads and
what is in their souls. It's time for us
to do some reforming of our own. n
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Education Week - January 29, 2014

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