Showing Students They Matter

I very much appreciate a recent post by Ella Meisner at Edutopia. Meisner is a classroom science teacher in Austin, TX, and she reports on a gathering of former students. They didn't turn out to all be budding scientists, but...

But during our catch-up conversations, I heard a surprising sentiment: Top of mind for many former students was how a class made them feel, as opposed to the content they learned or even the grades they earned.

She cites a book by Jennifer Wallace--Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose-- and its mention of four pillars for a sense of mattering, and talks about implementing those pillars in her classroom.

This is not simply some warm fuzzy soft skill idea-- for students it's a quick step from "I don't matter" to "It doesn't matter whether I try to learn anything in this class or not." MY former students would laugh at the idea that I was some warm, fuzzy teacher; my class was focused on getting them to Know Things and being able to Do Stuff. That kind of attention is, I'm certain, part of how you convey to students that they matter-- by underlining that it matters if they succeed.

Meisner breaks down the four pillars.

Significant: Helping Every Student Feel Seen

Meisner has her own way of delivering Attaboys to her students, including weekly awards. I'm not an awards fan, but I agree that being seen is enormously powerful for students. Why do some students seem to actively seek out negative attention? Because it may be negative, but at least it's attention. They get to be seen.

Not to belabor the obvious, but the first step in making your students feel seen is to, you know, see them. See them as human beings and not problems or obstacles or just one example of a particular type. In English class, it was easy to give assignments that allowed them to show some of themselves. Being seen doesn't need to be a matter of something formal or carefully planned; it can happen in plenty of small moments that can flow naturally if you see them and talk to them like they are human beings.

This, incidentally, is why it's best to call them by their chosen name. To refuse to do so is to explicitly refuse to see them. Anti-trans laws are bad education policy because they state very clearly "We refuse to see you.

Appreciated: Valuing Students for Who They Are

Meisner says the idea here is to value students for more than just their performance on class-related tasks. In my small town district, this meant things like going to see the students play a sport or appear in a play. It was one of the benefits of being an extra-curricular advisor-- getting to see students function in other settings, and I was always surprised/disappointed at the number of teachers who never attended other stuff.

Seeing students in other contexts in which they may be far more confident and capable than in your classroom can be transformative. Once a year, I took a yearbook photographer and staff member to our version of a CTE campus where I got to see students who struggled in my classroom really shine operating heavy equipment, building a house, or providing home health care. 

Depended on: Helping Students Feel Needed

As Meisner points out, this can be one of the values of group work (and, again, extracurriculars). I feel like elementary teachers have an edge here; my sons feel like a crucial part of their classroom when it's their turn to take a classroom "job" like door minder or lunch counter (insert nostalgic stories from the days of cleaning chalkboard erasers).

Invested In: Showing Students You Care About Their Well-Being

Meisner includes end-of-year notes here. One of my sons' teachers just sent home a thank you note for an end-of-year gift they gave her (and picked out themselves), and while I wouldn't say it will change the course of their lives, it made an impression on them (more so because it comes at the end of a year in which each of these pillars has been a factor). 

Of the four, this is the one that veers closest to an important line-- the one between "showing interest in student's life" and "mind your own damn business." Not every student wants-- or needs--you to invest in them, and sometimes a great sign of respect for them as a human being is to allow them to set their own boundaries and respect them. You can offer to hear if something's up, but if they don't want to talk about it, back off. Showing you care doesn't mean being intrusive. 

Meisner cites the old “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care," and honestly, that saying always makes me cringe. Not just because it requires some sort of overt display of caring, but because--well, I don't need them to care how much I know. I just need them to grasp that the world will be a better place if they leave my class with more understanding and skills than when they entered it. I don't need them to be impressed with me; I would like them to be impressed with themselves. 

Still, for teachers in the field, this framework is not a bad one for a little summer reflection on how you interact with students. 

ICYMI: Penny Carnival Edition (6/27)

 Last night I marched (well, rode) in an Independence Day parade, something I have done for fifty-some years. Friday was the big penny carnival in town, for which the board of directrors is almost, but not yet, too old to really be entertained. This week I'll play in a special concert as part of my city's week-ish long celebration of the Fourth. I'll host the annual cookout in my backyard, followed by some trad jazz jamming. I like this holiday, regardless of what's going on elsewhere, because the government is not the country any more than a set of headlights drive the car. 

Here's the reading list for the week.

Tennessee increases private-school voucher vendor contract by $356M

There is a pile of money to be made by the groups that administer voucher dollars, and in Tennessee that pile is about to become mountainous. Sam Stockard reports for Tennessee Lookout.

Catholic Diocese of Cleveland misleads public about EdChoice

Stephen Dyer keeps trying to explain the realities of funding in Ohio, which becomes more of an uphill climb when certain parties keep pushing out inaccurate information.

School Voucher Advocate is Largest Single Donor in Tennessee Gov's Race

Jeff Yass is putting some of his fortune behind Marsha Blackburn's race for Tennessee governor. Andy Spears reports.

LA Lawsuit Challenges Shifting MFP Dollars to Teacher Stipends

Louisiana's teacher stipend-based sideway raise is the center of legal maneuvering. The indispensable Mercedes Schneider explains.

TN school to pay $10K, rescind suspension over social media post

A Tennessee private school tried to punish a senior for coming out as gay; she took them to court and now they have to pay. Angela Latham reports.

Legal experts speak out on idea of NV religious public charter schools

Including NPE's Carol Burris. The National Education Policy Center published a brief explaining how states could help draw a line between church and state.

Trends in Local Teacher Supply Since the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Teacher Job Applications

The trends uncovered by this working paper are downward, all across the board.

We Can’t Give Up on Teacher Diversity

Sharif El-Mekki does cite the untrustworthy National Council on Teacher Quality here, but his call for more Black male teachers still makes sense. In Education Week.

Bernadette Wilson and Right-Wing Candidates Proudly Embrace Anti-Public School Agenda

In Alaska, Mathew Beck reports, Moms for Liberty still draw plenty of obeisance from GOP candidates. The details are not encouraging.

Understanding NAEP: A Reader

Paul Thomas provides some useful sources for unraveling the data from NAEP. 

How to Get Students to School? Stop Driving them Out!

Nancy Bailey has some thoughts about the general panic over "chronic absenteeism." Maybe schools could stop doing some of these counter-productive things.

Broken Ribs, Broken Narratives, and Why I Still Don’t Trust the Test

TC Weber fell down and hurt himself, but his stay in the health care system gave him a chance to think about things like the Big Standardized Test, and he's ready to share those thoughts.

Like I said, Testing is Bullshit

Jeff Waid also has thoughts about the BS Test, stirred up by Ross Wiener's NYT op ed. 

Comparison of Florida’s Major K-12 (Publicly Funded) Education Options

Sue Kingery Woltanski offers a handy chart for comparing the major publicly funded education options in Florida. Nice and clear. 

Your tax dollars funding fast cars and tuition breaks for millionaires

Stephen Dyer points out that taxpayers are now helping private schools turn a profit (and buy cool cars).

How to talk about "AI" without adding to the anthropomorphization

Emily Bendar and Nanna Inie give some practical advice about how to talk about AI without contributing to the impression that it is a living, thinking entity.

The United States Is the Only World Cup Nation Without Maternity Leave

Liz Plank reminds us that there is one respect in which the US lags all other World Cup competitors.

This week at the Bucks County Beacon I looked at the proposed reform bill for the state's long-time voucher program. 

This selection doesn't really require an explanation.

Choice for the Right Families

The choice system and the public system have two fundamentally different missions, and sometimes the choice crowd forgets itself and makes the difference explicit.

Take this webinar. It came to me in an e-mail blurbed "Attract the right families," and promises to introduce a three-step framework that will help schools "define their value, identify the right families, and guide them toward increased student enrollment."

The webinar is about marketing and features two marketing executives-- Amanda Duitsman for FlexPoint education, a cyber curriculum company, and Ashley Reyes for Florida Virtual School. That makes sense in a country in which school is inextricably welded to free market dynamics. It's not an anomaly; there's a whole industry out there like Schola Inbound Marketing with its promise to help Christian schools recruit "mission-appropriate families" and avoid the "rotten apple syndrome."

The free market does an excellent job of sorting out winners and losers, not just among vendors, but among customers. A business makes choices about which customers it wants to serve, and which ones it doesn't. This makes sense for restaurants or automobile dealers. No restaurant thinks it has a mission to feed every person in its area; it picks and chooses which customers it will serve.

We see this philosophy in the modern choice sector. Charter schools (like Success Academy in NYC) use a variety of obstacles and tests to shoo away families they don't want to serve. Voucher states write the laws to preserve a private school's "right" to reject students for any reason (or none at all). 

Choice fans will try to counter this argument by claiming that public schools aren't open to everyone either. But that glides past a fundamental difference in approach. The public school system says that the government has an obligation to provide your child with an education. The free market choice system says that society at large has no obligation to provide you with anything; it's your job to go find some vendor willing to educate your child. 

In that world, the public schools become holding pens for the hot potatoes that no private or charter school wants, a struggling system starved for resources and without much of a constituency to speak up for those schools.

There's one other irony in the "but public schools don't admit everyone, either" argument. The argument is that families are sorted by housing costs, and that's not wrong, but it also means that free market forces in the housing sector create educational inequity. And the solution to that free market effect is... the free market? The free market in housing has, in some times and places, been warped by prejudice and discrimination-- most notably the practice of redlining. Yet some choice advocates insist that private schools should be able to indulge in an educational version of redlining.

Attaching free market forces to education incentivizes schools of choice to be careful and selective about which students they admit. A free market choice system rejects the principle that we have a shared responsibility to make sure that every child has a decent education and replaces it with the notion that the responsibility belongs solely to the family, and that family will have to hope that they are deemed a desirable family for a school of choice to enroll. For the "right" families, choice; for the rest, good luck, caveat emptor, and here's hoping your local public school is still open.

Stop With The NCLB Nostalgia

Some reformsters just can't stop longing for the days of No Child Left Behind, particularly the test-based accountability component. Reformy Rahm Emanuel thinks there's political gold to be mined by harping on the issue. Mike Petrilli's substack includes spirited defense of NCLB, echoing Arne Duncan's misty-eyed insistance that we quit when we should have doubled down. 

The narrative is that after NCLB started and brought test-based accountability that made schools just get better and better for about a decade, and then things just started to stall about the same time that Congress replaced NCLB with the less stringent ESSA. That was 2015. 

Petrilli and others have been reacting to a New York Times piece from Ross Wiener, and while it gets some things wrong, he's right on the mark with this:

It was a mistake in the past to treat test scores as the purpose of public schools rather than as partial proxies for what a good education actually delivers. Reading and math are profoundly important and improving instruction must be part of any serious agenda. But test-based accountability policies were not sufficient decades ago. They are even less adequate now.

The narrative of NCLB doing swell things until America lost its nerve and bailed does not reflect any reality I lived through. I was classroom teacher of English in those years. Let me tell you the story of NCLB and test-based accountability that I remember. 

When NCLB testing first hit, we received it initially as one more fiddly piece of government paperwork. But early on, there were some troubling signs. 

One was how it trickled down through the bureaucratic infrastructure. NCLB came to us as a state policy; back in those days we didn't expect that kind of micromanagement to come from the feds and it took us a while to catch on to the real source of these policies. We were also used to state trainings that tried to convince us to buy in, the hope that we would nod and smile and adopt the policy like we'd thought of it ourselves. But in the days of NCLB, that changed; no more friendly convincing, but instead a steely-eyed "You can get with the program or get rolled over."

But the program was nuts. While NCLB was "launched" in 2002, very little trickled down to the classroom for five-ish years. My region didn't get our first training in Value-Added measures (PVAAS in PA) until the fall of 2009, and it was absolutely alarming. I wrote about that training at the time in my regular newspaper gig (I wasn't a sophisticated blogger yet) and said, in part, this:

This is a highly complex model that three well-paid consultants could not clearly explain to seven college-educated adults, but there were lots of bars and graphs, so you know it’s really good. I searched for a comparison and first tried “sophisticated guess;” the consultant quickly corrected me—“sophisticated prediction.” I tried again—was it like a weather report, developed by comparing thousands of instances of similar conditions to predict the probability of what will happen next? Yes, I was told. That was exactly right. This makes me feel much better about PVAAS, because weather reports are the height of perfect prediction.

This came just as local district administrators were waking up to the coming NCLB disaster. The required annual improvement on test scores increased slowly at first, but the last few years of NCLB included incredible demands for test score improvement, culminating in 2014 in which 100% of all students in every school were supposed to be "proficient." Every classroom teacher in the country knew this was not possible, but any time one wanted to bring this up to The People In Charge, they simply spat back, "Well, which children do you want to leave behind?" 

Legislators and bureaucrats may have operated on the belief that of course Congress would change the law before 2014 arrived, but they failed to do so, and actual schools had to operate with the knowledge that by 2011 or thereabouts there would be only two types of schools-- schools that were failing and schools that were cheating. 

That unmeetable deadline had multiple effects. For one, there's something very demoralizing about feeling that legislators have set you up to fail. And of course that unmeetable deadline provided the leverage for Obama/Duncan to push states into Race to the Top (or RttT Lite) and the Common Core, with its accompanying message of "Teachers are doing a terrible job, so let us tell you how to do the work." Boy, we were hoping that Obama was going to make things better; that did not happen.

But why did test scores go up for a while, and then... not?

The early approach to the tests was hopeful administration directives. "We'll revisit our curriculum to make sure it's aligned, and then if you just do good teaching, the tests will take care of themselves." That was combined with practice testing and the kind of test prep that is aimed at teaching students how to take that kind of standardized test.

Then came targeting. Schools sorted students into three groups, usually with the aid of the practice test. Group A: These students will do well enough on their own. Group B: These students are unlikely to do well enough ever. Group C: These students are close enough to the line that with some extra work we might be able to drag them over. Group C got extra test prep. They were taken out of study hall and, in some cases, even taken out of music or art or science or history so they could spend extra time getting ready for the tests. 

This was the infamous period in which schools used a simple metric-- Is it on the test?-- for deciding what mattered and what didn't. And for a while it worked, though it came at a cost to other aspects of education. Schools even altered districts structures in an attempt to get the notoriously-low-scoring 8th graders under the same roof as some other better-scoring grade,

But all of these fixes could only do so much. By 2015, an entire generation of students had learned how to take these tests-- there was nothing to be gained in scores there. Nor is there any good fix for one major obstacle-- making students actually care about how they do on a test that is boring and has zero stakes for the students themselves. And of course, painfully for those of us teaching English, a shift from teaching whole works to drilling dumb short excerpts with multiple-choice questions to better mimic the tests.

Schools were in the grip of Campbell's Law, and teachers were shoved into a Dilbert-esque world where we had to take a bunch of time away from doing the work in order to create reports on how we were doing the work. 

So here's my narrative. In 2002, the was an attempt to reorganize the entire education system around standardized reading and math tests. It took about a decade for the reorganization to be fully implemented and for the schools to rebuilt themselves around the new normal. That adjustment period looked like an increase in test scores (which way too many people continued to treat as if they were a perfect proxy for educational achievement), but once the system was rebuilt around testing and students and teachers adjusted to the new status quo, and once they were settled into the new normal, test scores settled into a new equilibrium with the usual dips and bumps that every classroom teacher is used to seeing year to year (because students vary from year to year and test scores do not represent some ebb and flow of a singular body). 

By the way-- the pandemic undoubtedly resulted in teachers and students achieving less than in an ordinary year, but the testing dip also represents schools spending less time to test-taking prep because instructional time was shortened and schools chose to use that precious resource for education rather than testing. 

There are so many reasons not to go back to the days of NCLB, not the least of which is that it made the cynical assumption that education could only be improved by using threats and punishment. My question for every reformster arguing that we need to bring back testing and consequences-- at your workplace, do you only try to do your job well when you are sufficiently threatened by your bosses?

Some reformsters are going to argue that NCLB totally got real test score gains for Group Z. My response is a request to go do a follow-up study on those folks and find out if having a raised test score resulted in improved life outcomes. Because if the only desired goal of raising test scores is to have raised test score, I do not-- and I can't stress this enough-- give a shit.

NCLB and the attendant text-centered accountability movement gave a gut-kick the morale of the teaching profession as we were forced to understand that most of the people who we thought were supposed to have our backs actually viewed us a problem. Test-centered accountability has proven toxic to schools and education. And secondary effects are appearing, because a whole generation has been raised thinking that The Test is the main point of school, resulting in fewer people choosing the profession while those that do choose it come into it with some narrow, meager ideas of what the job is about.

I don't have a lot of trust of the Science of Reading movement, but I do appreciate the reform voices that are saying, "Look, teachers want to do well, so let's help them get the tools to succeed" as opposed to "Let's threaten teachers some more so they'll take out the secret magic lesson plans they've been hiding and start doing better." I know which message was more consistent with NCLB (right down to the implication that it was teachers who were leaving children behind). 

I have no doubt that the whole history looks different when you have a mile-high view informed mostly by spreadsheets. But on the ground, in classrooms, NCLB was a mess and test-centered accountability was destructive and not particularly helpful. Nostalgia for those days is misplaced. Test-based accountability was worse than inadequate, and after two decades, we should know better. 

AK: Can The State Force District To OK Charter?

The Fairbanks North Star Borough School Board has made some charter fans big mad, and now the courts will be involved.

FNSBSD last fall dealt with a request to open a charter school in the district, to be the Pearl Creek Steam Charter School. The board voted unanimously to deny the request. They had plenty of reasons-- 52 pages worth, in fact. Those reason included a lack of a facility plan, lack of a clear enrollment projection, a mess of a contract, no transportation plan, an inadequate instructional plan that doesn't fully address state standards, no student lunch plan, no professional development plan, an admission plan that is probably illegal, an error-filled and incomplete budget, and the fact that this would have a big financial impact on the district. FNSBSD has already been closing schools to deal with dropping enrollment and funding. "Hey, the district is financially strapped, so let's open a new building," said no responsible school board ever. The Pearl Creek proposal is to reopen one of the closed schools as a charter school.

Also, said the FNSBSD board, this school is probably going to fail. "The plans in the application do not demonstrate likelihood of success," is how the board put it. Again, 52 pages of details covering the above.

The charter crew offers an estimate of $830,000 cost to the district. The district COO says it's more like $2.8 million. Coverage of the "controversy" has been extensive, especially from reporters Patrick Gilchrist and Shyler Umphenour at KUAC and Corinne Smith at the Alaska Beacon.

But Governor Mike Dunleavy would really like to see more charters, and so would Education Commissioner Deena Bishop, and so would the Dunleavy-appointed members of the Alaska State Board of Education, which has the power to overrule local school boards.

So in April, the state board went ahead and approved the charter over the objections and explanations of the duly-elected local school board. The state board declared that, essentially, the charter board had filled out all the paperwork, and that was good enough. Took them a whole fifteen pages to say it.

Bobby Burgess, the president of the FNSBSD Board of Education, had a comment for KUAC.

“Basically, my read of the state’s decision is that, if the application is filled out in full, the contents don’t really matter, even if the plan described is impossible to execute,” Burgess said. “It kind of seems like a lower standard than we hold students to on homework assignments.”

Cue the lawyers. The district appealed the state board decision. The charter board filed a civil lawsuit with request for a preliminary injunction in state Superior Court to force the district to sign the charter and get the building re-opened and ready. Last week Superior Court Judge Kirk Schwalm in Fairbanks denied the charter's request for preliminary injunction.

Now, in the newest twist, Acting Attorney General Cori Mills has filed an emergency petition to force the district to get that school opened. Because nothing says "We do too have an adequate plan for this charter school" than insisting you can get it up and running in two months. (Mills is Acting AG because the legislature rejected Dunleavy's first choice.)

Meanwhile, Pearl Creek STEAM Charter is still announcing that it will be open in the fall on both its website and Facebook page.

There are other issues at play here. Veteran reporter and columnist Dermot Cole points out that Pearl Creek will widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots, part of a larger charter trend in Fairbanks:

I believe that nearly all of the charter schools in the Fairbanks area have tended to attract enrollment from families with higher incomes or families where the parents have the time, energy and ability to be directly involved in their children’s education...

There are far fewer economically disadvantaged students in Alaska charter schools than neighborhood schools. There are also fewer students for whom English is a second language. Most charter schools do not have bus transportation for students, school lunch programs or other features that would make them more accessible to poor families.

I’m guessing, based on what I know about Fairbanks, that most charter school families have more flexibility built into their lives, whether it’s because of economic status, help from extended family members or the sense of mission that the best parents share.

Beyond all that, Fairbanks now has the bizarre situation of a district that has tried to cut costs by closing a school now being told by the state that they must reopen the building and pay for someone else to run a school there, reversing the decision of the elected local school board. 

It's not the most extreme version of state governments usurping the power of local school boards (take Ohio, where school districts can get in legal trouble for failing to hand buildings over to charters). But it is one more literal example of how running multiple parallel school districts costs the taxpayers extra. If only choice fans were honest enough to say, "We want choice, so we are going to levy a new School Choice Tax to pay for it." Good luck, Fairbanks.

ICYMI: Blues and Barbecue Edition (6/21)

It's the weekend of another fun festival in my small town. This time it's two days outstanding blues and plenty of good food. If you're in my neighborhood, you might still be able to make it. Admission is free, but what money is raised is donated to local school music programs, so there are many reasons to love this. 

In the meantime, here's your reading list for the week.

Linda McMahon says she heard parents. Parents say special education changes show she didn’t listen.

The Trump administration continues to pretend it's sending education back to the states when it as actually sending it from one federal bureaucracy to another. This time it was IDEA, putting the oversight of education for students with disabilities in the hands of a guy who believes that disabilities don't exist and the weak should perish to improve the nation. It's a bold choice, given that parents of students with special needs are the parents most likely to have a lawyer on speed dial. At any rate, here's the Chalkbeat coverage of this move. Also, the PBS take. 

Special Education Issues Raised on Education Freedom Account Program

Some New Hampshire officials have noticed that special ed students are not necessarily well-served by the taxpayer-funded voucher program. Garry Rayno reports.

Get the Facts About Trump's Terrible School Voucher Scheme

Andy Spears breaks down some of the details of the federal voucher program.

New York: Charter School Operator Violates State’s Charter School Cap

Shawgi Tell reports on a charter chain that is trying to weasel its way around the state charter school cap. Can you guess which one? Yes, it's Success.

McKee Signs Legislation to Place Moratorium on Charter Schools

Surprise twist from Rhode Island

AP Exclusive: The school choice scholarship boom benefits kids already in private school

I am not sure how this story by Bianca Vazquez Toness and Sharon Lurye qualifies as an exclusive, but here's more confirmation that the taxpayer-funded voucher program in Texas is mostly benefiting students already in private school.

Growth of School Vouchers at State and Federal Levels Threatens Public Schooling

As always, Jan Resseger has done her homework. Many sources pulled together here to give a full picture of this mess.

NC Legislators Want to Put an Unproven AI Bot in Your Child’s Classroom in August

Juston Parmenter reports on the North Carolina legislature's rush to provide what nobody really wants. Here comes Khanmigo, like it or not.

Crisis for Public Education and Democracy

Thomas Ultican takes a look at the alrms sounding in the latest Network for Public Education report.

Tied Up in Knots

Jennofer Berkshire breaks down the troubles of pre-privatization pseudo-Democrats. They keep trying so hard.

My Room Is Infected by Jesus

Matt Brady and an examination of classroom culture. Some of you will know exactly what he's talking about.

Understanding isn’t just knowledge (and how we can teach it)

Christian Moore Anderson offers a thoughtful breakdown of the differences and values of knowledge vs. understanding. I may read this one several times.

AI tutor access alone doesn’t equate to student gains, study says

No surprises here, but it's worth looking at the details in this article by Anna Merod for K-12 Dive

College students are voting with their feet on AI.

Specifically, this Nick Lichetnberg article from Fortune argues that they are moving away from AI-vulnerable fields and towards those that may have more of a safe future.

"Education like Netflix"… Hunet declares the era of personalized learning designed by AI

"Education like Netflix"… Hunet declares the era of personalized learning designed by AI

What would make boring corporate training even worse? Maybe AI. Not from this country-- yet.

The smartphone era created an attention crisis — slow tech is fixing it

This article has nothing to do with education, except that it has everything to do with education. Amanda Siberling at TechCrunch

Pokemon Go Scans Quietly Trained the Navigation Tech Now Headed into Military Drones

I've seen variations on this story several times now, including how the game put rarer Pokemon in the spots they needed more pictures of. Just a reminder that when it comes to tech, you need to pay attention to what's really going on.

AI Economics for Dummies

Andrew Singleton at McSweeney's, right on the mark and hilarious.

This week at Forbes.com I looked at the NPE report on how well some states support public education (or don't), and a look at the NEA report on teacher salaries. 

Stevie Wonder and Jeff Beck at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame celebration in 2009. Turn it up!

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Honoring Juneteenth

Juneteenth has been around a long time, with some historians placing the first observances back in 1866. But it has only been a federal holiday since 2021 when Congress passed, and President Joe Biden signed, a law making the observance a national holiday.

The holiday is, of course, highly annoying to MAGA and other cultural conservatives who are certain that white men should be the center of everything. But Dear Leader has done his best to clamp down in his general assault on DEI. Consequently many businesses and the armed forces have pulled away from honoring the holiday. If schools were still in session, rest assured that the feds would be making sure that schools did not mark such a holiday that does. not properly center white guys.

My small town is marking Juneteenth with a festival in the park including food and dancing and music. It's a modest fun time and an appropriate way to honor the occasion.

I think painting it a Black or DEI holiday misses some of the point. It's an American holiday first and foremost because Black Americans are, in fact, Americans, and it is appropriate to mark the point at which they received a more complete version of citizenship to which they were always entitled. But it's also an American holiday because it marks a point at which the country tried to change directions and become a better version of what we had always promised to be. 

It's a complicated holiday. In the main, it is joyous in celebrating the freedom from slavery for an entire people. But it also marks the point at which the country stopped tolerating an odious and inexcusable evil. We should be able to celebrate the first part, but for many folks, it's hard to acknowledge what made the freeing of enslaved people necessary.

It's the root of all those laws against teaching divisive concepts or teaching anything that might make some (white) kids feel bad. The preferred culture panic narrative is "Yes, there was slavery but then se stopped, and yes, some bad individuals did some racism, but we stopped that, too." And since we stopped doing the bad things, it would be impolite and divisive to bring up the Bad Things part. That unwillingness to talk about what some of us did to others of us--what was done, who did it, and how they made themselves okay with it-- has given us a long history of wrestling inconclusively with racism problems. Banning the mention of such topics from school (and national parks and anywhere else) is not helping. 

Like many holidays, Juneteenth has the artificial quality of suggesting that an important thing happened all at once on one day. But there is nothing wrong with taking one particular day to honor an important event, even if that event was actually a long process. As a nation, we did some awful stuff, and then after we stopped, some folks had a very hard time getting past the ideas and attitudes that were used to justify the awful stuff in the first place.

Juneteenth reminds some of us that some uncomfortable conversations need to be had, but maybe not today, while some Americans are celebrating their emancipation. I do wish school was in session right now, but we may honor the day as best we can.