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I finally saw Michelle Rhee! She spoke on a panel about “Improving Quality Education” with two women from Mali and India–places that seemed worlds apart from Washington, DC but actually face very similar root problems in their schools. 50% of fifth graders surveyed by the NGO Pratham in India could not read simple sentences. The speaker from Mali said 80% of sixth graders in her country cannot read. And Michelle confirmed that those disparities are similar to the academic gap between rich and poor DC students. “I hope this tells you that books and desks and materials are so far from the end game,” she said. “We have all those things in DC. But the quality is still abysmal.”

All three speakers said the solution is high quality principals and teachers. How to get them as soon as possible is the concrete, unifying challenge facing all our countries. Across the world, the teaching profession isn’t structured for children’s education, but rather for adult employment. Currently, adults get paid as long as they show up in the classroom and deliver the curriculum. It doesn’t reward or punish them for how well their students learn the curriculum or how they do in the world. But those purposes are exactly what education is for! If we’re not paying people based on their students’ development, it’s not surprising that there are so many students who are in school but not getting an education. As Michelle says, the system is “adult-centered” and has bred entitlement instead of effectiveness.

Here’s a true story Michelle told. At one of her meetings with DC teachers to discuss her proposed salary reform, one woman asked what would happen to her if student test scores labeled her as a “bad teacher.” Michelle isn’t allowed to say “fired,” so she diplomatically replied, “You get separated from the system.” The teacher protested, “But that defeats the whole purpose of why most of us got into teaching in the first place. It’s a stable job for those who can’t make it in the corporate world.”

That story reinforces to me that it doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been on the job, where you graduated from, what kind of degree you have, or where you come from that determines whether you will be an effective teacher. It’s personal motivation and mindset. If teachers like the the woman in the story don’t even believe in themselves, how can they aspire to transform the lives of their students?

Educating students well–especially in disadvantaged environments like rural China or inner city America–takes people who personally care about their students’ well being and who have the inner resolve, energy and stamina to work like crazy to do it. They may not know how to teach well yet, especially if they’re young or inexperienced, but they have the most important ingredients already: belief and dedication. Support and time will do the rest. (Of course, the kind of support matters a lot and I’ll write more about that in subsequent post.)

Reformers like Michelle, KIPP, Teach for America, and all the others bet that there are enough willing Americans with those basic ingredients to revitalize failing American schools.  I’m betting that there are enough human beings on this planet to transform all the currently failing schools worldwide–as long as the government, private sectors, and NGOs pull together to facilitate their entry into and sustainable growth within the field. I think this is a global movement that RCEF is a part of and I’m so glad we have other like-minded organizations to exchange ideas with.

自从新学年开始以来，RCEF便似乎总被一些类似的麻烦事萦绕着，要说也不是对我们造成了很大的影响，但却经常让我们感到大脑发涨。

其实所谓的麻烦就是不断的有人向我们提出很多忙想请我们帮助，而这些帮助也大体是请我们的成员（除我）发挥一下英语的优势，辅导辅导某位的孩子，给某个学校开个英语角什么的……我们本身并不是不知道五讲四美，不爱帮助他人；也不是不明白中国味道的人情世故，但有些时候为此耽误过多的时间与精力，就有点说不过去了；而且没来由的东一下、西一下，次数多了难免让人生出厌烦情绪，在这里我谨向除我之外的几位工作人员喊一下冤，我们不是干这行的啊！举几个例子来简要说明：

本月有一天，我们的其中的两位被“盛情”邀请，虽然不知道具体是被谁邀请，也不知道邀请去做什么，反正就说是去“谈谈话，聊聊”什么的。于是，留下了待做的工作，在一头雾水中，两人就上了车。过了一阵其中的一位便发回短信来了：在帮×××的儿子补习英语！唉，实在是啼笑皆非。

此事又过了几天，本市一所顶尖的中学又请我们中的一位去“坐坐”，然后就提出了做英语角的请求，虽然当时我们的这位工作人员很明确的说明了我们的难处，与我们的工作范畴，而且还重申了很多次，但不知怎么还是让对方看到了“希望”；于是，之后的一天，该校的一位教师在我们在市里办事的机会，又硬是说所有老师都在等，把我们拉到了学校里。事实也是，学校的英语老师都在场，而且居然提出了一周两次做英语角的请求，那意思是我们再讨价还价，也要接受一周一次的结局了。幸亏我们这次一致婉转而坚决的推辞了，此事才告一段落。

类似的事情还有不少，这么来回折腾势必会让我们心烦意乱。事实上我们的工作任务已经不轻了，我们的成员不是不用花钱请的志愿者外教，套周董的话：我很忙。在这里还请各位见谅。

中文翻译附后

When I first arrived at Guan Ai, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of books in the library. In addition to the hundreds of books for students, there is also a significant collection of books on education and teaching methods. This year, I’ll be reading and reviewing these books and others to hopefully spark discussions on education. This week’s book is The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research by Stephen D. Krashen. The librarian at Trinity School donated this book to Guan Ai when students and faculty visited last year.

Throughout the book, Krashen makes the argument that free voluntary reading (FVR) is the most effective tool for increasing literacy. Krashen describes it as follows:

“For school-age children, FVR means no book reports, no questions at the end of the chapter, and no looking up every vocabulary word. FVR means putting down a book you don’t like and choosing another one instead. It’s the kind of reading most highly literate people do all the time.”

In this edition, Krashen does not present any new research on the benefits of reading, but rather provides a broad overview of what the existing research concludes. As the title suggests, reading is powerful and Krashen cites countless studies to make his point that developing systems that encourage FVR in schools will result in marked improvements in literacy. Krashen does not claim FVR is the complete answer to problems of literacy, but suggests it is the missing ingredient in many language arts programs, both first and foreign language courses.  He argues FVR will improve reading comprehension, grammar usage, writing style, vocabulary and spelling.

How does Krashen propose encouraging FVR? He places his faith in libraries (public, school and classroom), arguing that lack of access to books of interest is the major reason children do not do independent reading. Even if children are doing “light” reading (comic books, teen romance novels, magazines or Goosebumps books), the data suggests literacy will improve and children will eventually select more difficult literature. Thus it is the library’s responsibility to find books of interest for students and the administration’s responsibility to set up programs in the school where children can select books on their own and have the time to read them.

Overall, I appreciate this book. A lot of the information seems intuitive to me, but it’s nice to have it all in one place and backed up with data. While I was teaching 7th grade English in Texas last year, we were working on grammar rules and many of my students were struggling. I told them that I thought a lot of their problems had to do with the fact that they do not read books for pleasure so they rarely saw correct grammar modeled. This book backs up the basic argument I was making to my students.

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The 2008 Clinton Global Initiative starts in New York City tomorrow. For the second year, RCEF has been invited to attend, which is a big honor and unique opportunity to network with the likes of President Clinton, innovative NGOs,  corporate heads, and influential people in many fields. Last year, Wei Ji Ma represented RCEF and got to know some pioneering educational leaders who were subsequently helpful in exchanging experiences with us. These included Vicky Colbert of Escuela Nueva, a very successful NGO that launched teaching reforms in Colombia, and Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America.

This year, I’ve come to New York as RCEF’s rep. The person I’m most excited to meet is Michelle Rhee, the Chancellor of the Washington, DC school district. I’ve been reading about raising teacher quality lately and Michelle is one of the boldest reformers around. Since taking over one of the worst school districts in America, she has attacked failing schools at their hearts–human resources. She fired over a hundred central office bureaucrats and replaced one out of every four principals. Now she wants all teachers to give up their “iron rice bowl” union contracts in exchange for huge salary increases tied to their students’ performance. Many of the young teachers like the deal but most older teachers are wary. We also have the “iron rice bowl” problem in rural China where a lot of the funding for teacher slaries is tied up in some very bad public school teachers and principals while new and better blood can’t get hired. I envy Michelle’s ability to smash iron rice bowls with the full support of the mayor, often in front of screaming parents.

Michelle wants to realign the whole system around what’s best for student academic achievement…not the district, not the existing teachers, and not the schools as “territorial” institutions. For example, if charter schools run by private management do better than her public schools, it appears she’s not opposed to letting the old system “wither away,” according  to a recent Newsweek article. Still, she’s trying her best to re-write the rules of the old system so it has a fighting chance. Her use of economic incentives to get teachers to produce results and students to cooperate is innovative but her immediate goals are still quite different from what we’re facing in China. The mandate to raise student test scores is not disputed in China and the formula of long school hours and test drilling is second nature.  DC students are so far behind grade level that solid work on basic academics is essential. But beyond that, there are other skills and frames of mind that well-rounded students need to develop. Figuring out which teachers are good at that–and how to get more of such teachers–is to me the more important “quality” question.

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中文翻译附后

Recently many of you on our mailing lists will have got invitations seemingly from RCEF personnel inviting you to join social networking site Goodreads. Whilst the site does offer a legitimate service, their methods of finding new users can only be classified as spam. Allow me to explain.

One of our core members within RCEF signed up for a Goodreads account, and as is often the case with social networking sites they were asked for access to their email contact list in order to find which or their contacts are already on their network. Goodreads then unscrupulously sent invites to every single one of her contacts, including people she hadn’t emailed in years. As these contacts included all core RCEF members and some of our mailing lists virtually everyone on RCEF’s contacts database was sent an invitation.

RCEF wishes to apologise for this mess, but would like to stress that it was an honest error by a member who was tricked into sending an invite to all her contacts. Goodread’s creator, Otis Chandler, has himself claimed that it was a mistake on their part, but this is a lie. It is inconceivable in this day and age that someone with the knowledge to launch a social networking site (and let it be known Mr. Chandler is a software engineer, not some clueless IT-phobe) that something like this could happen without premeditation.

The fault really lies with Goodreads and here are some steps you can take to avoid their emails/spam:

1. Mark any emails from goodreads.com as spam. Hopefully in time your email client’s spam filter will blacklist this company.
2. Do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, sign up for the service they offer. If I cheated you once, would you sign another contract with me? No, didn’t think so.
3. Spread the word - this company and the people behind it are dishonest and their service is not to be trusted.

I realise these are strong words and not the type of language you’re accustomed to from RCEF, but I’m writing this in a personal capacity as Director of IT. Social networking sites are popping up every day, most of which offer legitimate and very useful services. But the danger that they abuse access to our data is very real, and companies like Goodreads lower the level of trust we have in legitimate sites.

Therefore it is important that we punish those who act unscrupulously by taking the measures outlined above. If our actions are effective then hopefully the bad PR will cause the next social networking startup to think twice before adopting such shady practices.

Steven Liu
Director of Information Technology

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两天与市教育局的一位官员约好了一起去看看本市不同镇的几个不同的中学和小学，于是下午我们几个人便一同出发了。

路程不远，先到了××中学，这虽是一所小镇上的初中加小学，学生数大约不到200人，但宽阔的校园还是让我们“嫉妒”了好一阵。虽然有些破旧之处，但新盖的饭堂、学生宿舍、大面积的操场，甚至很大的教室，让人身在其中感到舒服自在。我们心想要是关爱小学放在这个校园里多好！

之后的另一所中学更让我们跌破了眼镜片，真是蛮“奢侈”。整个学校扩建过两三次次，有很老的房子，也有新盖的漂亮的教学楼，房子数量和质量都很不错，看得出政府还是很支持这个学校的，投入了大笔的资金。但问题是现在这个诺大的校园里，只剩下了寥寥的6，70个学生，校园里显得冷清，而星星点点分散在各个角落的学生们更衬出了一份落寞。守着这么一片地方，却没有很好的将它利用起来，真是觉得很可惜。站在校园里，我们开玩笑说：“为什么开始我们会选了关爱小学这么个小地方？”我甚至拍着杨校长的肩膀：“怎么样？自卑么？”

说实话，在我们在当地只是听说过比关爱小学更小，硬件条件更不好的学校，但实际从来没见过。这里面有包含着一些问题，比如：现在因为学校的合并政策，很多以前建的很好的学校现在都成了“空壳”，造成了资源的极大浪费。而第二个问题是由于现在教育体制的局限，很多学校的校长能力都不甚突出，按照和我们一同的教育局官员的话讲就是“不得力”。所造成的后果就是即使是硬件条件很好的学校，也可以因为一届校长的“不得力”而面临全面的萎缩。上文中的第二所中学就是面临着这样尴尬的境地，而离关爱小学不远的一所镇级初中，校园环境极端的优秀，大的可以和一所大专院校相媲美。而且校舍，绿化，操场，宿舍一应俱全，黄金时期有一千多个学生，而现在却因为同样的问题，学生只剩下了约100多人，老师仍有很多，但因为是铁饭碗，在这种情况下，混日子的也开始居多了，形成了一个恶性循环，实在是很痛惜。虽然政府可能会有动作挽救学校，但体制上的问题还是明显的暴露了出来。

这些问题的出现，我愿意把它们称为“阵痛”，是中国发展当中所面临的诸多难题之一，需要一个长期的转变过程。每个人，包括我在内都有自己所想到的化解问题的方法，但是我们也都知道事情永远没有那么简单。总之，教育的投入已经在见效，但仍有很长的路要走，而我们大家则应该以平衡的心态面对现实中的不平衡，做好自己的事情是最重要的。

One of the biggest challenges I face teaching in China (also my biggest pet peeve) is what I call “school talk”. It seems that students enter a completely different state of mind when they cross the threshold of the classroom. They cease to use common sense or basic logical thinking, and instead devote their brain power (the part that’s not being used on chatting, daydreaming etc.) to guessing what the teacher wants or expects.

I can’t even count the times I’ve seen this scenario in Chinese classrooms: The teacher asks a question, a student raises her hand to answer but it’s not the answer the teacher had in mind. The teacher repeats the question until the student eventually changes her answer. If you ask a question enough times, the student will inevitably give the opposite answer.

Here’s a dialogue from a Morals and Society (品德与社会) lesson I observed at Guan Ai a few days ago: The students looked at a series of pictures showing a kid who broke a vase when nobody was home. (How
cliché!) The kid was very honest and told his parents when they returned. Instead of punishing him, the parents praise him for his honesty. Next, the students look at a picture showing another kid doing something bad.

Teacher: Would you tell your parents if you were him?
Students (shouting in unison): Yes!
Teacher: Will your parents scold you if you tell them honestly?
Students (even louder in unison): No!
Teacher: Would you be scared of being scolded?
Students (louder still): Yes!
Teacher: But would you still tell them?
Students: Yes!

First of all, most of the students are positive that their parents will still scold you for doing wrong even if you tell them about it. But they’re equally positive that their teacher wants them to say that they will tell their parents. Secondly, the dialogue contradicts itself by later admitting that there is actually a high risk of being scolded. (This is only in elementary school.  I won’t even go into the cognitive dissonance needed to survive “Politics and Society” class in high school.) Read the rest of this post