Education Week - October 1, 2014 - 26

LETTERS to
the EDITOR
Teachers' Views on Common Core
Must Be Heard in State Debates
To the Editor:
The Commentary by Patrick Riccards
("Eduflack: It's Time to Reframe the K-12
Policy Debate," Sept. 15, 2014) makes a
welcome call for a better conversation
about public education, with less "rhetorical
posturing" and more reaching out to the
people doing the actual work in our schools-
our teachers.
The current common-core debates in
places like Louisiana and Ohio immediately
come to mind. Education leaders and state
officials in both states approved a move
to new, higher standards, and educators
spent years planning and training for them,
but politicians are now making campaignseason
plays to pander to the common-core
opposition, talking of backtracking and
running roughshod over the important
groundwork laid by teachers.
Thankfully, teachers and education leaders
in those states are speaking out and refocusing
the conversation where it belongs-
in the classroom, where the new Common
Core State Standards are taking root.
When teachers are a key part of the policy
conversation, they lead us to common-sense,
student-focused solutions. We're seeing that
with the debate on overtesting, in places like
Pittsburgh. In response to concerns raised
by teachers and parents, the public schools
in Pittsburgh just announced a significant
reduction in the amount of classroom time
that will be devoted to standardized tests.
"I think this is wonderful," Nina EspositoVisgitis,
the president of the Pittsburgh
Peter Cunningham
Executive Director
Education Post
Chicago, Ill.
Blame U.S. Immigration Policies,
Not Wal-Mart, for Low Wages
To the Editor:
Tom Frank, the second vice president of
the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, is
rightly concerned about the poverty afflicting
working parents ("Cincinnati Teacher: Don't
Buy School Supplies at Wal-Mart," Letters
to the Editor, Sept. 10, 2014). His anger is
misdirected, however.
He should be hammering the politicians
who have created a glutted American labor
market. Wal-Mart and other businesses enjoy
a cornucopia of labor. It's simple supply and
demand.
The situation is very different for workers.
They do not have an abundance of jobs from
which to choose. They take what they can
get or accept some form of federal assistance.
Workers would benefit from a "tight" labor
market.
A study published this summer by
researchers at the Center for Immigration
Studies found that high levels of legal and
illegal immigration in the United States have
greatly increased the labor supply.
According to the study, "Government data
show that, since 2000, all of the net gain in
Federation of Teachers, told the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette. "Teachers have complained for
so long. ... They spend so much time testing
the kids, which takes away from instructional
time. It adds to the stress of the kids."
Let's move the conversation away from
polarized extremes and more toward middle
ground. Let's focus less on political stands
and more on what works in the classroom.
And let's make sure teachers' voices are
coming through loud and clear.
the number of working-age (16 to 65) people
holding a job [in the United States] has gone
to immigrants (legal and illegal). This is
remarkable given that native-born Americans
accounted for two-thirds of the growth in the
total working-age population."
With this type of growth, how bad are
the employment prospects for native-born
Americans, many of whom are parents of
school-age children?
President Barack Obama has met with
lobbyists and interest groups to discuss their
thoughts on immigration policy. Traditionally,
presidents and members of Congress from
both parties have pursued immigration
policies with an eye toward pleasing
organized special interests, primarily
business and ethnic lobbies. Because of this, I
would argue that the unorganized majority is
left out of the political calculation.
To end businesses' policies of paying
"workers absurdly little," as the letter to the
editor put it, the labor market will have to
tighten, and this approach to immigration
will have to change.
Tom Shuford
Lenoir, N.C.
The writer is a retired teacher.
Home Visits Connect Parents,
Teachers for Student Well-Being
To the Editor:
We wholeheartedly agree that the
teaching profession and our children will
be best served if teachers are as diverse in
race, ethnicity, and culture as the general
population ("We Need Teachers of Color in
Our Classrooms," Commentary, Sept. 10,
2014).
And we support an affordable credential
process, higher pay, and better working
conditions so that teacher-credentialing
programs and school districts can recruit
the best of our young people to the field of
education.
In public schools, teachers of all races
and ethnicities must be equipped to make
connections with their students across
inevitable racial, ethnic, linguistic, and
cultural differences.
One simple and inexpensive way to
do this is by engaging families through
home-visit programs that train school
teachers and staff members to deepen
understanding and trust between
communities and their schools.
Studies show that, with home visits,
teachers can differentiate their instruction,
and academic test scores improve. Student
attendance and behavior improve. And
families become more involved with their
children's education. All because school staff
and families replace their assumptions about
each other with connections to each other.
Across the nation, we are far from
achieving the diversity we need in the
teaching profession. Today's teachers need
the tools to connect to their students and
families. Home visits are proven to build
relationships no matter the differences
between school and home, because the
success and well-being of the student is
something everyone can agree on.
Carrie Rose
Executive Director
The Parent Teacher Home Visit Project
Sacramento, Calif.
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.
STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
Show Students You Care: It Makes a Difference
"My
school is
committed to
building the
"I have at
least one teacher
who makes me
excited about the
future."
Students who
strongly agree are
30 times
engaged
SOURCE: "State of America's Schools:
The Path to Winning Again in Education," Gallup Inc.
as likely to be
at school as students who
strongly disagree.
strengths of each
student."
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 32
applicants about them. This was a shocking statement
coming from a company that receives more
than 2 million job applications a year. Yet it seems
as though Google simply discovered what superintendents
around the country already know.
In Gallup's survey of more than 2,500 superintendents,
conducted in partnership with Education Week,
we found that only 5 percent strongly agreed that a
high gpa is the best predictor of success in college, and
only 6 percent strongly agreed that high sat and act
scores are the best predictor. This doesn't mean that we
should throw out grades and testing entirely. But it does
emphasize the need to greatly reduce the weight we put
on these measures. Certainly there is more to success in
work and life than grades and test scores.
We're making matters worse by handing our most
talented and engaged teachers manuals on how and
what they should teach. Yes, we need more rigorous
standards, but what we don't need is more standardized
rigor. Teachers aren't failing us; instead, the system
they're forced to work within is failing us and them.
And if we want to build engaged schools, we need to put
ownership of the teaching and learning process back
in the hands of teachers and students. We need to empower
them to do what they are innately built to do:
thrive when someone cares about their development
and when they have opportunities to do what they do
best each day. We need to create an environment that
gives them ideas and energy for the future-that gives
students hope.
Caring and hope sound like things that are nice to
have, rather than things we need to have for success in
life. But, as Gallup research shows, hope is a stronger predictor
of college success than gpa or sat and act scores,
and caring or "emotional support" elements are crucial to
success in life after college. Not surprisingly, when Gallup
polled Americans and asked them to describe the best
teacher they ever had, the most common word they used
was "caring."
Gallup's recent study of more than 30,000 college graduates
shows how important emotional-support elements
are, and how few young people are receiving them. Graduates
who strongly agreed that they received emotional
support during college doubled their odds of being engaged
in their work and of thriving overall. Emotional support
includes three crucial elements: feeling that they had a
professor who made them excited about learning, that the
professors at their alma mater cared about them as people,
and that they had a mentor who encouraged them to pursue
their goals and dreams. Yet as profoundly important as
these emotional-support elements are to long-term success
in work and life, a mere 14 percent of all college graduates
strongly agreed they received all three.
When it comes to being engaged at work and feeling fulfilled
after college, what you studied and where you went
to college hardly mattered. What mattered is how you did
college-having a meaningful internship or job, working
on a long-term project, and being actively involved in extracurricular
activities-and being emotionally supported
by others during college.
What students need at their core is caring. If we can
create a system that allows caring to flourish and become
a common experience that all students receive, America
will once again have the best school system in the world. n
26 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 1, 2014 | www.edweek.org/go/commentary
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Education Week - October 1, 2014

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