Education Week - September 26, 2012 - 25

EDUCATION WEEK

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

www.edweek.org

What if teachers are the answer? What if trusting teachers, and not controlling them, is the key to school success?”
against other spending opportunities. In a position to call the shots, teachers have come to understand that raising salaries requires cuts in other areas of their school budgets—especially when revenues are not increasing. No teacher partnership with full budget autonomy has elected to guarantee annual salary adjustments for cost of living or years of experience. None guarantees automatic adjustments to teachers who complete continuing education. In the same vein, some teacher partnerships, in both charter and district settings, have decided that all teachers in their schools will have just one-year, at-will contracts for work. Responsible and

“

accountable for school success, these teachers want colleagues to continuously put forth their best effort, and they want a means of removing colleagues who do not. They also know they must reserve the right to lay off even their wellperforming colleagues when the budget is tight. Some teacher partnerships negotiate waivers from their own union rules so they can increase educators’ working hours and expand their roles. They also obtain waivers to do more (not less) teacher evaluation and to require (not avoid) coaching and mentoring in the name of improvement. Union leaders have agreed to sign these waivers because teacher partnerships have control over professional issues—something unions have sought for their members for decades. In schools
PAGE 26 >

The Best Move for Students

Chess

By Salome Thomas-EL
he next time President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are sitting together discussing education reform, I hope that it will be across the table from one of my elementary or middle school students. If so, there will inevitably be a chessboard between them, and I am certain my students will win every match. My inner-city students, many of whom come from some of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del., have traveled the country to compete in, and win, local, state, and national chess championships. Gov. Jack Markel of Delaware and former Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, all smart men, have challenged my students to chess matches and lost. A host of mayors, members of Congress, senators, and school superintendents—anyone brave enough to visit city schools and spend time with my students—all made the same mistake of taking them on, with similar results. These are the same children that most of society has forgotten. Yet they have gone

KIM FARRIS-BERG is an independent education policy professional based in Mission Viejo, Calif., and a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Studies in St. Paul, Minn. She is the lead author of the upcoming Trusting Teachers With School Success: What Happens When Teachers Call the Shots (R&L Education, October 2012). Her Twitter handle is @farrisberg.

less likely to turn out in local and state elections. Even the most impressive display of grassroots support will be unlikely to drive policy change unless it is backed up by political clout. Stand for Children endorses candidates and mobilizes parents in local elections, with high-profile successes in Denver and Memphis. In New York City, Democracy Builders helped elect candidates to a number of local offices within the Democratic Party, a direct challenge to established Democratic opponents of charter schooling. Fifth, while it is tempting to think of eraos as a monolithic movement with a single agenda, the groups embrace different positions on a host of issues, including the role of the federal government in education, school funding, collective bargaining, and school vouchers. Eraos are also struggling to navigate complicated intra- and inter-party fissures over school reform, and cultivate relationships with business groups, civil rights organizations, and teachers’ unions. In addition, their efforts are fragmented geographically as well as organizationally. As these groups expand their activities and geographic reach, however, it will become more important for them to think strategically about how they can differentiate and coordinate their parent-organizing work. The concerted effort by eraos to inform and engage parents around school reform is a crucial component of contemporary education politics. In just a few short years, and with limited resources, these groups have begun to shift the balance of power in education politics. It is important to recognize, however, that this nascent effort has only just begun, and these groups still face a minefield of determined opponents and nasty politics. Erao leaders are increasingly realizing that the successful enactment, implementation, and protection of the education policy reforms on their agenda—and public perception of the agenda’s legitimacy—necessitates the development of a new, more active approach to parental engagement. This new approach will need to build a permanent, coordinated network of organizations engaged in the type of grassroots parent organizing that can create a lasting social movement behind reform. n
ANDREW P. KELLY is a research fellow in education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington. PATRICK McGUINN is an associate professor of political science at Drew University in Madison, N.J. This Commentary is drawn from “Parent Power: Grassroots Activism and the Politics of K-12 Education Reform,” released by the AEI earlier this year with support from the Walton Family Foundation, which also helps support Education Week’s coverage of parentempowerment issues. The full report is available at www.aei.org.

In the United States, we have become so focused on test scores that we have forgotten to teach our students to appreciate the process of learning, to embrace struggle, and to build self-efficacy and resilience.”
on to attend magnet and private high schools, competitive colleges, and graduate and law schools. Unfortunately, most of our nation’s urban and rural students won’t have the same opportunities as my chess players because, as a general rule, we don’t teach our children to think critically or to think ahead. We don’t teach them to use logic and reason or to consider rewards and consequences before they make decisions. In the United States, we have become so focused on test scores that we have forgotten to teach our students to appreciate the process of learning, to embrace struggle, and to build self-efficacy and resilience. Students must learn that they are not born smart, but become smart through hard work and the process of growth. Chess can help establish that foundation for students as young as 5 and 6 years old, and it is simple enough to learn quickly. Students can use a few pieces, or all of them, as they gradually learn the game. Imagine young kindergartners or 1st and 2nd graders beginning to learn to anticipate moves, think ahead, and solve multistep problems. All

“

children need to learn how to make difficult and abstract decisions independently and think logically and efficiently. And teaching these skills to them at an early age can make a big difference to them as they progress through their education. I have used chess as a teaching tool in the three schools where I have worked as a turnaround principal. In each instance, most of the students were city kids, poor and minority. My mission has been to teach the game of chess to every student I have known over my 25-year career. My current school, Thomas Edison Charter, in Wilmington, Del., serves students in grades K-8, 96 percent of whom are living at or below the poverty level. Many of our students are seen as at risk of not meeting with academic success before entering our charter school, yet they excel, in part, because of our instructional curriculum and the support they receive from the administration, teachers, and staff. But the success of our students is also a credit to our after-school chess program, which has had a tremendous impact on how our older students think and problem-solve. This past school year, we received Delaware’s Academic Achievement Award for closing the achievement gap in a highpoverty school, improving our state test scores, and moving those scores closer to the state average. In addition, this past summer, our 8th graders were recognized for scoring over 90 percent proficiency in math and 85 percent proficiency in English/language arts on our state tests. A year ago, I met with my teachers, and we decided to give our 2nd and 3rd graders the opportunity to learn and benefit from chess with our First Move program. Our 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders are doing the same in our Algebra Through Chess course. In total, we have almost 100 students who participate in our after-school chess program every day. It goes without saying that exposing children to academics in the classroom advances cognition; however, games like chess, played in the classroom, can foster memory, skill at planning and strategizing, and development of cognition. Much of the traditional U.S. curriculum in the early grades does not allow for students to learn and teach themselves. Chess permits students to think on their own without the assistance of adults. Students exposed to chess are much more optimistic about overcoming obstacles and struggles on a regular basis. Research supports the idea that schools that establish innovative programs like chess playing develop high expectations for their students and the atmosphere in which their students can achieve them. America has much to learn from the rest of the world regarding education. Countries as small as Armenia have made chess a
PAGE 27 >

SALOME THOMAS-EL is the principal of the Thomas Edison Charter School in Wilmington, Del., and the author of The Immortality of Influence: We Can Build the Best Minds of the Next Generation (Kensington Publishing, 2010). Widely known as Principal EL, he is a national board member of America’s Foundation for Chess, which is based in Bellevue, Wash.

http://www.edweek.org http://www.aei.org

Education Week - September 26, 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - September 26, 2012