Bottom-up

Ten years ago or so, I was giving Chrysalis’s annual report to our sponsoring board. I used part of the report to quickly soapbox our opposition to the “all eighth graders will take algebra” movement that was being pushed from on high. (American students are falling behind other nations’ student in science and math as measured by these international tests. Therefore, we will raise our standards so that all students will have taken algebra by eighth grade.) The superintendent politely but firmly shut me down with a “we believe that if taught right, all eighth graders can succeed in algebra”. We, at Chrysalis, never went along with that. Throughout our existence, only a portion of our eighth graders were ready to grasp algebra. They do very well. The rest of our eighth-graders solidify their understanding of pre-algebra and then go on to algebra in high school.

Last month at a meeting of charter schools, this same superintendent was explaining that research was showing that not all eighth graders are developmentally ready for algebra and that it is a mistake requiring them to take it. (The way he phrased these comments contained a coded apology acknowledging I was right many years back.) But back ten years ago, we absolutely knew we were right; we didn’t need some foundation or government-funded published research to know that. We were positive because we were teaching mathematics to eighth-graders.

An important part of Chrysalis’s DNA was inherited from the book, Complexity, by Michael Waldrop. It is most concisely phrased in “Use local control instead of global control. Let the behavior emerge from the bottom up, instead of being specified from the top down. And while you’re at it, focus on ongoing behavior instead of the final result. ” Declaring that all eighth-graders will take algebra is a perfect example of “being specified from the top down.” Similarly, in my mind, the current focus on standardized test scores exemplifies focusing on final results rather than the daily ongoing behavior of students.

In a similar fashion, we are absolutely sure that research will eventually announce that one of the main stumbling blocks to students learning algebra and higher mathematics lies in the way schools currently teach fractions at the third-fifth grades. Far too many students lose their understanding of arithmetic in these grades because fractions are taught far too quickly and superficially. Young students who have learned that multiplication makes numbers bigger are confused by fractions where multiplication makes numbers smaller (and by fraction division that makes numbers larger). In the hope of raising test scores a bit higher, students are led through too many procedures without the time to understand them. If you don’t really understand what 2/3 means, you have little hope of understanding how to add a/b to c/d. We are sure of this fraction-algebra connection because (a) we take the time to teach fractions well and we can see the difference in the upper grades between our long-time students and new students who have transferred in and (b) Alysia teaches our math curriculum to parents (so they can help their children with homework). Most of the mothers experience our fraction curriculum as a revelation and share how they lost it with math somewhere between third and fifth grade.

Somewhat similar, there is a current “push” for more rigorous evaluation of teachers. An article in the New York Times described a new law in Tennessee that would require principals to do 4 observations a year of each teacher at the school. The article went on to say how principals don’t have the time in the day to do this plus everything else they have to do. As the administrator of Chrysalis (some would call me the principal but I am annually evaluated and re-hired by the teachers), I receive much of the correspondence flowing to principals and superintendents. I could easily fill most of my time driving into central offices for meetings with other administrators on how to create a better school. I let most of it flow past because I also teach two classes a day and there is the actual stuff of the day like playing Frisbee with the kids during lunch or working with a student who isn’t getting his homework done or checking in with the other teachers or being available to parents.

Waldrop wrote in Complexity: “Since it’s effectively impossible to cover every conceivable situation, top-down systems are forever running into combinations of events they don’t know how to handle. They tend to be touchy and fragile, and they all too often grind to a halt in a dither of indecision.” I would add another problem to the list. It is far easier to send commands down the hierarchy than to actually execute them. Therefore, log jams can form near the bottom (where the work actually happens) unless the upper echelons of the hierarchy exercise great restraint in their directives. Instead, they need to develop the trust that will allow them to give creative autonomy to the teachers. (Alysia adds: Instead they create orders that are impossible to follow like ‘all children will be proficient at grade level by 2014’. Everyone knows this goal is unachievable. The shear created by being forced to try to do the impossible wastes enormous amounts of creative energy that get spun off into useless whirlpools leading to spiritual dissipation of everyone involved.)

Similarly, I once was talking with a fundraiser about Chrysalis. I was explaining how our small size allowed deeper personal relationships between teachers and families. And the fundraiser said, “You know, the Gates Foundation experimented with small schools and found it didn’t make a difference. Do you think you are smarter than Bill Gates?” I don’t know if I am smarter than Bill Gates or not (I do know he is richer than me and helped create an organization that grew much, much bigger than Chrysalis) but I am closer to the students than he was and I have a different measure of success (“encouraging the light within each student to shine brighter”) than he probably did and I’m not looking for one model of education to scale up to a national solution.

More top-down money is entering the charter school world, looking for educational models that can be scaled up so as to have national impact and/or make money privatizing public education. Schools like Chrysalis are considered “mom and pop” charter schools that have nothing to offer in this search. I believe we do – but it’s not what anyone “up there” is looking for. One thing we have to offer is our mission: encouraging the light within each student to shine brighter. Notice how those nine words follow the dictate of “Use local control instead of global control. Let the behavior emerge from the bottom up, instead of being specified from the top down. And while you’re at it, focus on ongoing behavior instead of the final result.” Public education is being shaped around the measure of standardized test scores – with many consequences we see as damaging to students, teachers, families, nations. “Encouraging the light” is a different measure. At the profoundest levels, Chrysalis and similar schools pose the question of whether we as a nation are even searching for the right thing.

The other thing we have to offer is a teachers’ co-operative model of a school. The top-down, command and control hierarchy of public education can make many things happen. But is it making the right things happen? The teachers at Chrysalis have both academic freedom and the support of one another. It’s a potent combination. The teachers work together a lot. This might be a consequence of our size. The school is not large enough to have two sections of a class being taught by two teachers. Therefore, every teacher will theoretically teach every student. Plus the teachers run the school. My job as administrator is to try to handle all the administrative tasks teachers don’t want to be bothered with while giving them voice to all the decisions that matter. One implication of the teachers running the school is that our collective salaries are dependent on how well the school does. One can’t focus only on one’s own classroom. Each teacher has the opportunity to improve the entire school.

One example of this was the way we hired Alysia’s replacement last year. The leading candidates all came and taught a lesson with the kids who would be in the teacher’s class this year. All the Chrysalis teachers observed – and had the chance to talk with the candidate during the day. But what was nicest was that after Casey was hired, almost all the teachers spent time with him over the summer helping him get ready in a variety of ways. He feels very supported and got off to a strong start from day one of this school year. His strength and confidence benefits everyone.

When I listen to the national dialogue, I hear a distrust of teachers. Teachers need to be observed and evaluated… so they don’t get away with stuff. They need to be ever more firmly set within a hierarchy beneath a higher-paid level of administration that will hold them to the standard. A greater percentage of the resources entering the system is allocated to levels above that of the classroom. Communicating distrust is not the way to inspire the best within someone. One of the joys of Chrysalis is watching the wonderful things that emerge from trusted, creative free teachers helping one another.

Or to put it another way, the direction the national reformers are wanting to take is very different from the direction we are exploring. I believe the difference lies in the difference in our intents. The “reformers” see the top-down hierarchy as a method they can use to quickly create reform throughout the system; therefore they don’t question it or seek to replace it.