Former Superintendent of Portland Public Schools Vicki Phillips came back to town this week to deliver the keynote address at the Council of The Great City Schools conference Thursday. Phillips is, of course, the education director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, which makes her one of the most powerful leaders in education today.
Yet if her talk were a dessert, it would be a meringue: little substance and a lot of fluff.
But judge for yourself. Here’s a blow-by-blow:
Phillips’ audience was a mix of about 200 to 300 superintendents from large, urban school districts and school board members from around the country. Perhaps that might explain why Phillips opened with a statement that might have angered teachers (had there been any in the room.)
“What’s the toughest job in education?” Phillips asked. “Urban superintendents and school boards.”
Phillips then switched her attention to a video presentation, a take-off of sorts on the Obama “Yes We Can” video, with close-up images of students speaking directly to the camera and celebrities like Meryl Streep, Harrison Ford and America Ferrera saying nice things about education.
“Powerful stuff,” Phillips said. But “the real power” was in the room, where the superintendents sat, of course. “If you succeed, they [the students] succeed and America succeeds,” Phillips said.
Her talk then launched into a quick biographical sketch that would be familiar to many teachers and parents in Portland. Phillips was born in a place called Falls of Rough, Kentucky, but eventually she earned a PhD in England. “On the one hand, stories like mine are really inspirational,” she said. On the other, she said, they are really sad, because they remind people that a student’s upbringing in some ways determines his or her education.
The good news is, Phillips was there to tell the superintendents they could change that. “Not separate, but together,” she said. “Not by luck, not by chance, but by design.”
Phillips then addressed a theme I suspect we’ll hear a lot about in the coming years from politicians and educational leaders. Borrowing a phrase from a guru named “DK” whom Phillips invited to Portland in 2007 (that’s not a joke, by the way), Phillips said students enter schools today and are asked to “power down.” Meaning, they turn off their cellphones and stop Twittering. This concept of “powering down” is popular, even if it’s not exactly clear what it means.
Regardless, Phillips wants superintendents to “power up.” “We have to power up education,” she told them.
Switching topics again, Phillips then addressed the Gates Foundation’s move away from small schools. “For almost a decade, we tested and invested,” she said. “We thought structure makes a difference. But structure alone didn’t improve academic achievement and college readiness.”
It’s what’s happening inside the classroom, Phillips said, that really mattered. “Structure is not enough,” Phillips added, before dropping a line that sounds kinda funny when repeated outside the room. “High school is not high enough,” she said.
Phillips appeared nervous as she spoke and flubbed a couple of lines. At one point, talking about the possibility of a common set of standards across the country, she tried to dispel the idea that those standards would lead to watered-down standardized tests. She said students shouldn’t be asked “to learn more and more with less and less” then flipped the statement, saying students shouldn’t be asked to learn “less and less about more and more.” I’m not sure what her point was.
Instead, Gates would support “next generation assessments” and the “next generation of learning tools.” She never explained what either of those things would look like, but she did mention Nintendo.
“Learning cannot remain powered up if teaching remains powered down,” she said.
She then jumped to the controversial topic of merit pay, though when I spoke with her after the talk she said “merit pay” wasn’t the right phrase for what she was promoting. “This has been the third rail,” she said, but “we can do this the right way.” She then introduced the Gates Foundation’s “Measures of Effective Teaching” project, which involves videotaping teachers to find out what makes the great ones tick.
Phillips ended with a plea to superintendents. “I’m asking you to please let us work for you,” she said.
The end. As everyone clapped, one person out of hundreds stood to give Phillips an ovation. A moderator then asked if anyone in the audience had a question, and — surprisingly — no one did.
PPS attendees at the lunch included Superintendent Carole Smith; Zeke Smith, chief of staff; Robb Cowie, communications; Jollee Patterson, general counsel; Sara Allan, system planning; Mark Davalos, deputy superintendent; Sarah Singer, high school redesign; Cameron Vaughn Tyler, partnership manager; Dave Fajer, procurement; Judy Brennan, student enrollment; Cynthia Harris, Jefferson High School principal; plus School Board Members Dilafruz Williams, Ruth Adkins, Pam Knowles, Bobbie Regan, Trudy Sargent, Martín González and — for old time’s sake — Cathy Mincberg, formerly chief operating officer for Portland Public Schools.
Vicki, please stay away in the future.
Perhaps you can tap your boos for some cash to make up for the harm you did to PPS.
anton_Chirurh says:
October 31, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Vicki, please stay away in the future.
Perhaps you can tap your boos for some cash to make up for the harm you did to PPS.
Dear AC: As is always the case…DEAD ON!
A superficial corporate ethos will not work in school district with teachers that are educated and sincere. Why do they keep trying on this uniform- PPS admin needs a new paradigm. Perhaps they can use their blackberries to find it.
Vicki always was a lover of buzzwords. Instead of POWERING UP, maybe she should BEAM UP !
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