http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32042546/ns/us_news-education/

   Friends, Family, and folks who drop into this site, I will go on the record in response to Bill Gates' recommendations by contradicting his major points. He suggests in this online, video conference that universal academic standards and teacher incentives, "merit pay" are the path to school success in the United States. Universal academic standards cannot reflect the unprecedented diversity that our teachers are faced with every day and attaching pay to teachers who, at best, successfully meander their way through their curriculum  and, at worse, force their children to perform well on "bubble-in tests" by rote learning, rigorous training and proscribed curriculum is not the way to improve our schools. In contrast, the opposite of the two is actually the way to improve our schools.
                                        Universal Academic Standards
   Our American school system does an amazing job with the population filling its classrooms. Teachers create curriculum with children from hundreds of cultures, dozens of languages, various family practices, religions, and across the spectrum of socioeconomic levels. The really good ones also manage to prepare their students and show improvement on virtually meaningless standardized tests. The best ones incorporate their students' interests and abilities, with all the aformentioned demographic factors AND still manage to prepare their students for those tests. But there is one thing that is unavoidable in the field of teaching, the Human Factor - that is, our students and teachers are human, consequently, all bets are off.
   Stress, intellectual potential, even affect can influence learning, including testing. We cannot base our students' success on standardized assessments or even comprehensive exams because our children are human and have bad days. Sometimes that bad day happens on exam day or, the physiological (stress)factor. I won't repeat what I have said in a previous essay about standardized assessments but I will summarize by saying, we get nowhere by establishing a "universal academic standard." If it is set too low, too many learners meet it and critics consider it moot; set it too high and only a select few meet it and the standard becomes insurmountable for the previously given reasons and thus, not a standard.
   The question of standards is an easy one to answer because it combines the best intentions of both philosophical camps: set high standards and expectations at a level that is attainable through hard work and diligence however, eliminate any reward or punishment for groups that do or do not meet the standard. The concept is simple psychology really, children often want to meet the expectations of people who care for them and love them. Similarly, most teachers (the conditional statement is something I am working on - I shouldn't assume all teachers are this way) want their students to succeed and want to be perceived as good teachers. I don't believe it is necessary to bribe them or punish them for not making a certain grade - rather, acknowledge and maybe even give a reward based on improvement, not attaining some goal set by people with no relationship to each individual school. That is the contradiction I will write about in the next section, "merit pay."
                                                         Merit Pay
   I will support my opinion of merit pay with two perspectives: 1) teachers don't need to be given a reward for doing their best, again, MOST already do and rewarding those teachers whose students do well on the test implies that the other teachers aren't doing their best and, 2) the result of rewarding teachers who meet certain standards means implicitly punishing those who don't and that is unfair considering the teachers who succeed should acknowledge their students and the teachers who don't may not meet the standards but for reasons out of their control (I can't MAKE a person learn something and if I do try, I risk sacrificing the relationship and positive rapport I have with students who might need someone who cares for them more than they need to pass a test).
   Rewarding teachers for reaching standards not based on goals set by the students and their teachers makes the whole learning process sterile and robotic, education and learning is just not like that. Therefore, if we want to add a reward to the process make it attached to progress by the student and not a 780 on the CAT. There are far too many additional factors involved with the education of people to rest success on a set of tests and for teacher pay to be dependent on that success is further illogical and unimaginable.
   Teacher morale, especially in areas where the safety risks and teaching challenges are higher, are at a record low with teachers staying in the central city, "urban" schools for less than three years before they move on. Statistics suggest that even those urban school teachers are not the "best and brightest" because teachers who score very high on teacher standards assessments are sought after and given more incentive to go to suburban, more well-to-do schools. We add this idea of merit pay based on student success, not progress, to the formula and the morale of teachers in these "at-risk" areas sinks even lower.
   I talk with my student teachers often about "troublesome" students in their classrooms who have difficulty meeting expectations that other students seem to do with little effort at all. I tell them that these are the children for whom "baby steps" toward the goal need to be rewarded. In other words, progress, especially ANY movement toward the goal, should be noted and rewarded. I don't believe any behaviorist approach should be taken but if it is to be used, this is the way. These teachers faced with so many challenges need to be acknowledged for ANY progress made in their classrooms, not just passing scores on national standards assessments.
                                                  Alternatives
   This is the part that I am reluctant to write because, I fancy myself in the likeness of Jonathan Kozol or Alfie Kohn, I don't need to present alternatives just because I observe when something isn't right but in the spirit of an essay and as a talking point for future discussions I will provide some alternatives to a national academic standard and merit pay.
   To national standards: set large national standards based on developmental plateaus so that teachers can look at the national expectation, state standard and district goals to create a scope and sequence for their individual classrooms and their students' abilities, interests and backgrounds.  But most of all, leave teachers alone. It is true there are less than effective teachers out there but there are less than perfect everythings out there. Not to mention, some students need a less academic and more affective teacher and some students need the opposite of that while still others need a balance of the two. Washington, D.C. should have very little part in determining who is the perfect teacher.
   To merit pay: merit pay is no incentive. Use the money, heck even Bill Gates could ante up a few hundred million and not even feel his wallet become lighter and provide resources for teachers to "become" better. By that I mean, who knows how good some teachers could become if they weren't concerned that they didn't have the construction paper, computers, pencils, desks, room, and a myriad of other material resources to challenge - not to mention a salary that ACTUALLY compensates them for the hundreds of extra hours they put in during and after the formal school year. Rewarding teachers whose students do well on standardized national tests points the awarding finger at the wrong person - the students are the ones doing it and we cannot reward the teacher if students score well and blame them if they do poorly because if teachers had their way - all their students would pass!
Education is too human a process to reward teachers whose students do well. All teachers should be rewarded for entering those doors everyday and saying, "I will do my best to teach you, care for you, love you and provide a safe place for you."

   There is a movie coming out on Tuesday, July 21st entitled, Coraline. It has Portland ties for a few reasons: the animation company is here, its initial release was here, and, yes it is easily one of my favorite animated movies ever - and high on my favorite of all time list of movies. This favorite ranking is also for a couple reasons: the animation and 3-D - AMAZING!, the story - amazingly written and presented and finally, it touches me deep in my heart for the character of Coraline; a heroine that tugs at my heart and illustrates the ability of children to use imagination to leave the world of violence, neglect and abuse behind them.

  I have written before about what is the truth about children and "resilience."  Children are not "resilient" or wait, they are resilient but not in the positive way that many psychologists and especially those who expose children to violence and suffering would have you believe. Children's resiliency is more about their lack of formal thought and resistance to keeping harmful memories within reach of their frontal lobe (where decision making and logical response is located). The exposure I speak of includes al lof those types that I have written about in the past: media, interparental, environmental, peer victimization and educational violence. They way that many children respond to the chronic exposure is to stop being in the moment and put their brains to sleep for the duration of the abuse. This strategy sometimes extends to their non-abuse times as well.

Dissociation

   Dissociation is the psychological strategy of pulling away from your cognizant self in order to deal with , usually, trauma of some sort. For example, former child sex abuse survivors who are now adults, remember "leaving" their bodies when the script began wherein they would be abused by their predator; the father would come into the bedroom after the mother had put the child to bed. He would come in to "tuck the child in" but both parties knew it was the time when the abuse would occur so the child disappeared within him or her self in order to deal with the abuse. That is kind of the metaphor at the heart of Coraline. She feels neglected by her family and so she dissolves into a world where she is the center of her "Other" parents' world. Children do disappear into their own worlds because their brain is protecting them from the violence that surrounds them; it doesn't go away.

   What therapists like Drs. Lenore Terr, Bruce Perry & James Garbarino have found is that children don't "bounce back" from trauma - they remember, they are shaped, they recollect. Increased research about post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) is on the rise because we are finding that the resilience of children to move forward doesn't mean they arent profoundly affected by their experiences. Even in Coraline, her real life is what shaped her fantasy life - the ideal parents in her other world weren't strangers, they were her parents - just a little bit different.

   It doesn't take hypnotherapy to retrieve those memories; it takes a close observation of children's behavior. When children are exposed to chronic violence, their behavior reflects that exposure. Children will be "numb" to their peers OR, hypervigilant/sensitive to their peers pain. There is a balance to well-adjusted children that chronic violence-affected children do not possess. In addition, there are more obvious clues like increased externalization of violent responses - a child who has grown up with interparental abuse for example, may quickly strike a playmate should the playmate not give in to the wishes of the child. In both worlds, Coraline's behavior was affected by the other world. But what's even more clever, when the Other World seeped into her real world - it tried to become normalized. That is what the chronic level of exposure to violence does to us - the abnormal becomes normal.

   Again, I don't want teachers, parents, paraprofessionals and caregivers to become therapists - it takes training, practicum and experience to become a therapist for children. What I would hope is that we take a slightly different view of what happens to kids after they have been exposed to violence. It doesn't go away, they don't forget and you need to be aware that children are thinking of, and are shaped by, their exposure. But sometimes they shut it out and do their best to forget until someone brings it up - be sensitive and in the moment to respond positively and not punitively. When Coraline did try to escape the disaster that her Other World had become, it was her parents that helped her to change her real life rather than get lost in her Other.

   Buy, rent or borrow the movie....

   If you are reading this you are intrigued by what the 3 Cs are; they are components that we are all familiar with from our own childhood. The three Cs are: Competition, Cooperation and Collaboration. All of them are important for well rounded development and I will briefly discuss how all three can be a factor in creating a positive environment for development.

Competition

   I will discuss this factor first because in American society competition drives the culture. If you question this opinion, "the west was won" because frontiersman wanted to drive ever forward, there is a book published every year documenting people's efforts to do things faster, longer or more dangerously than others and competitive sports are a multibillion dollar business - not to mention the new spat of "reality" shows that are competitive in nature. These examples can be used to show the positive and negative sides of competition.
   Don't get me wrong, I would not have improved my own basketball skills or developed my drive, sense of determination and perserverance had it not been for organized sports competition. However, that is not the kind of competition upon which I am focusing.  More and more studies are showing that, although competition between individuals can contribute to the development of qualities like perserverance and determination, it is just as likely that ill will, resentment and a lack of comraderie could develop (especially those for whom winning is unlikely due to other reasons, like innate ability, that I won't address here). 

   There is no place for competition between students in the classroom. It is very important that a teacher helps build community and a sense of comraderie in the classroom in order to create ties between students. Setting up meaningless competitions such as "Table Groups" to facilitate silence and obedience for points doesn't maximize the opportunity for life lessons that can be taught at moments like these. Does it work to pit table groups against one another for
arbitrary points? Absolutely - children love receiving things that result in more recess, toys, or treats. But guess what? So does my dog; she will sit, lay down, and give a high five if going outside to play, her "chewie" or a treat are on the table. Our mission as teachers should be to teach life lessons when we can and creating an environment where meeting expectations in order to succeed in a learning environment can be the goal for our students if the teacher sets up the classroom as such. It can be done, I promise you.

   Competition in the classroom and even in the home, can be set up so that children compete against themselves and their previous efforts.  This effort would require that parents and teachers work with the child to set up goals based upon the expectations and starting from their first or previous effort. How does that look? Let's say a parent wants the child to pick up their toys around the house. Quick and easy way, pick it up or get spanked (undesirable); another way, pick it up and you get a special treat (less desirable but not painful); and a way that develops this sense of competition and self-improvement, give the child a timer and pit their clean up time against a previous clean up time. It doesn't cause them to be disappointed in others because no one else is involved, you get what you want because toys are cleaned up and the foundation for the child to create personal challenges is laid.

Cooperation

   Cooperation is the concept that individuals work together to achieve a common goal. Cooperation is unappreciated in the United States. Yet, an educational paradigm is called Cooperative Education, in which groups work together to meet a goal in the classroom - usually inrriculum and classroom management. Cooperation in the classroom and home is a benefit to the development of a positive learning environment. When children feel they have a role in the workings of the environment they have a vested interest in the success of the environment.

Collaboration

   In my opinion, collaboration is the pinnacle of relationships that parents, teachers, children and their peers should have. The distinction between cooperation and collaboration is that collaboration can result in a new end that wasn't anticipated. For example, it is the difference between a parent saying, we are having spaghetti for dinner - who wants some? and a parents saying, here are some possibilities, we have pasta, chicken, some sauce, what do you think we could make with all of these ingredients? and working through some ideas and ways to make dinner. The same thing goes for the teacher in the classroom. Instead of the teacher saying, Please complete this handout then work on your packet until the bell rings, he or she could say, today we need to learn about adding two numbers, what do you know about adding things? How can we add two numbers? The children feel a part of the process from the beginning. It becomes most clear during projects and performance assessments. I remember talking to a student teacher about their "Bridges of Portland" unit. It would be easy just to present the bridges and how bridges work and then give them a lego model of a bridge and they re-create the bridge (a preconceived result). Instead, you teach the fundamentals of bridge building used to create the Portland bridges, show them the examples and then give them different materials with which to build bridges with each other - with no predetermined bridge to re-create. Much more magic happens when children have some room to investigate and discover. That is the core of collaboration.

   Competition has its place but I do not believe home or the classroom is that place - maybe organized sports is the only appropriate place for it. Cooperation builds important life skills for working with others to reach a common goal but it is collaboration that builds the type of skills that develop community, nurture creativity and communication and results in novelty and personal satisfaction in the creators. I prefer collaboration as often as possible.